One of the earliest detectives
in the annals of literary fiction is Monsieur Jackal, a creation of the
French writer Alexandre Dumas in the mid-19th century. M. Jackal had a
favorite saying: "Cherchez la femme!"
[i.e. "look for the woman"] - which is not to say that women are the
criminals, but rather, he believed that in any crime of passion or Big
Trouble, a woman could be found to be somehow at the bottom of it.
(Please put the flame-throwers away, these are M. Jackal's thoughts,
not mine.)
In much the same way, whenever discussion turns to the subject of
corporate behavior (e.g. say, user adoption), one slightly-mangled
phrase invariably leaps to my mind: "Cherchez l'incentive!" [or, more properly, "cherchez l'incitation!"].
In my experience, a majority of the behavior in corporate life, whether
by individuals or by teams, can be explained by the incentives in
place. I use the term "incentive" in its broader sense - incentives can
be positive or negative, planned or unintended, serious or silly,
monetary, social or moral. (For a fascinating discussion about the
unintended consequences of incentives, I highly recommend the Levitt
and Dubner book, "Freakonomics"!)
What does this have to do with
Enterprise 2.0? There has been a flurry of blog posts this week about
the different management approaches for addressing 2.0-style
initiatives in the Enterprise. The discussion was kicked off by a
simple and interesting post by Euan Semple: "The 100% guaranteed easiest way to do Enterprise 2.0?".
In a testament to the thought-provoking power of Euan's writing, this
post was picked up, dissected and commented upon by a variety of
high-powered blogs, including: Tim O'Reilly, Andrew McAfee, Dennis Howlett, Dion Hinchcliffe, the 21st Century Organization, Ross Dawson, Dave Snowden, The Fast Forward blog , and others ... (a veritable who's who of thought-leaders for Enterprise 2.0!)
In essence, Euan suggested that corporations could take one of three approaches to address Enterprise 2.0 principles and tools:
- Do Nothing
- Get out of the way
- Keep the energy levels up
While I agree with Euan's main points, and appreciate the beautiful
simplicity of his post, it seems slightly incomplete to me. In terms of
organizational response in the real world, there is a fourth possible
outcome, although it's rarely a deliberate strategy: entities within an
enterprise, whether high-level managers, end users or teams, could
actively resist the
introduction and uptake of these new Web 2.0-ish tools, such as by
creating policies against it. Managers and users, even those who
otherwise happily use Web 2.0 technologies at home, might nonetheless
try to block them at work, for a variety of reasons. Different
individuals have different incentives, and not everyone's incentives
are aligned with each other or with those of the company as a whole!
[If this seems unduly pessimistic, then I can only say that it is borne
out by experiences I've had in some of the work environments I've had
the (mis)fortune of working in.] To some extent, this view follows the
thoughts of Andrew McAfee on this subject, here and here, if I understand correctly what he's saying. I've also written in a previous post about reasons why IT may introduce barriers to the introduction of new technology in the Enterprise.
Clearly,
this is not true for all companies. Certainly there are the innovators
and fast-followers who rapidly embrace new technologies; my position is
simply that, at the other end of the continuum, there are also
companies with managers and entrenched employees who may actively
obstruct their introduction. If the number of such companies is
non-trivial, then it should certainly be a concern to the champions of
Enterprise 2.0, and should be addressed as such.
To put it visually, I see reactions to the new directions of E2.0 as classified into four types, as shown in the diagram below:
It
is that first type [the "obstructionist" enterprise?] that interests me. What types of incentives can be put in place by top managers to
minimize this type of behavior, that raises a barrier to the adoption
of new technologies? Wide-scale user adoption is impossible without
that barrier being overcome; without significant user adoption, even
highly promising new technologies die still-born.
I hope we see more discussion about this topic from the above-mentioned blogs, the thought-leaders of Enterprise 2.0!
P.S. On a related note, I started thinking about the following
question: If we were to plot a graph of the "Ease of user adoption"
against the continuum of the four types shown above, what would the
curve of such a graph look like? My guess at this curve, using a highly
scientific method (I closed my eyes and tried to imagine it into
being), is shown below.
As shown above, my feeling is that the maximum gain comes from getting out of the way! Would you agree or disagree? I welcome more informed feedback on this topic.
