Un capitalisme plus humain ?

J'ai eu la chance de participer hier à la première journée organisée par RH&M sur la mesure du capital humain. Mon impression personnelle: la remise en cause d'une certaine approche de l'entreprise par nombre des personnes présentes. Moments choisis:

L'approche de Philippe Masson sur les péchés capitaux du capitalisme, que je cite

• L'Utopie de la sécurité au travailleurs contre le profit aux entrepreuneurs,
  
• L'Illusion plus actuelle de l'engagement des collaborateurs comme prix de leur employabilité,
  
• La Gourmandise coupable de quelques dirigeants, tombés dans un jeu d'égos
  
• L'Opacité sur les stratégies et les raisons sinon sur les chiffres
  
• La Frénésie qui mène à des performances sans lendemains
  

L'impossible mesure du capital humain dans l'entreprise, tant que ne sont pas remises en cause les structures de pouvoir existantes, comme le soulignait Jacques Richard, professeur à Dauphine.

La défense, de la part de Martine Clavel, d'APAX, de la responsabilisation des actionnaires sur la stratégie et la gestion RH, comme élément différenciateur et créateur de valeur.

Enfin, tout au long de la journée, les modèles alternatifs à une organisation classique, ceux qui défendent des principes ou des valeurs différents à la seule valeur aux actionnaires ont été égrainés d''une liste que j'espère voir grandir:

• Mutualité,
• Franchises,
• Partnership,
• Ecosystème de PME,
• MulitSided Platforms,
• Entreprises en réseau,
• Capitalisme familial,
• ...

Il est toujours remarquable que, dans une journée où l'on cherchait à mesurer le capital humain, nous ayons finalement aboutit à une remise en cause, réelle bien que modeste, du système capitaliste actuel.

Séquestrer des dirigeants, ou l'absence de dialogue

Je ne rentrerai pas dans le débat de la justesse ou la légalité de ces faits qui se multiplient sous nos yeux. Je voudrais souligner le fait, plus grave, qu'ils traduisent : l'impossible dialogue, aujourd'hui, entre une logique financière et une vision plus humaine de l'entreprise.

Les faits, tels que je les comprends : depuis un an, se débloquent sous nos yeux les positions de risques extrêmes prises par des opérateurs sur les marchés financiers. Ces opérations ont porté un coup fatal aux intermédiaires financiers, responsables du financement, de la liquidité et du crédit de l'économie, donc des entreprises. Sauver ces intermédiaires est apparu aux dirigeants des principaux états comme indispensable. Cela a été fait et, au premier trimestre 2009, les grandes banques renouent avec le profit.

L'économie non financière s'adapte plus lentement aux bouleversements vécus par les marchés financiers. Devant l'absence de crédit ou liquidité, l'activité diminue; prévoyant la diminution, les entreprises se préparent, déstockent, suppriment les frais variables qui peuvent être supprimés, notamment les frais de personnel.

Pourquoi cela ? Je vais simplifier, mais je dirai qu'il y a deux grandes raisons:

• Pour des TPE et PME, c'est leur survie qui est en jeu; aujourd'hui, alors que les attaques sur les "patrons" se multiplient en France, on entend les histoires de patrons de PME ou TPE qui ne se payent plus depuis le début de la crise;
• Pour des grandes entreprises, notamment pour des entreprises cotées, il s'agit de continuer de satisfaire aux critères financiers qui sont devenu la pierre angulaire de leur gouvernance.

Alors, on peut dire que de grandes entreprises cotées qui licencient assimilent leurs salariés à des coûts variables et les licencient pour satisfaire à des critères financiers impersonnels. Je n'ai pas la malchance d'avoir été touché par ces PSE, mais je peux comprendre que l'on isole un dirigeant pour qu'il s'explique; pour qu'il mette un peu d'humain dans la relation entre des indicateurs financiers et des salariés qui en perdant leur job, perdent aussi une partie de leur statut social, de leurs relations, de leur histoire professionnelle, de leur amour-propre et de leur confiance en soi.

Nous ne sommes plus à une époque où les salariés peuvent être assimilés à des coûts variables. Les conséquences sur le tissu social français sont trop graves; les conséquences sur la confiance que les prochaines générations auront dans leurs entreprises et leurs dirigeants sont trop graves; les conséquences de cet état d'esprit sur la société française sont trop graves.

Lorsque la démocratie abdique à la porte de l'entreprise, il ne suffit plus de regarder la loi. A quels extrêmes sommes-nous arrivés pour que des salariés en soient réduits à séquestrer les dirigeants auxquels ils ont un jour fait confiance ?

If collaboration is bad for you, make it better

An interesting article by Morten T. Hansen underlines the need to carefully analyse whether to launch a collaboration project or not. While he underlines important aspects of successful collaboration, in my opinion, he does not delve long enough in how to build the perfect conditions for successful collaboration within an organization. And what collaboration, exactly ?

I am always pleased to see people taking the time to think about how to make collaboration successful and stressing how difficult this can be. The whole E2.0 movement sometimes seems to forget that collaboration in corporations did not start with the arrival of E2.0 technologies, and that companies have developed skills and capabilities for improved collaboration.

This is, to my mind, why the article by Hansen comes at the right moment. He gives precise examples on why collaboration could fail (overestimating financial results of collaboration, ignoring opportunity costs or underestimating collaboration costs), and therefore contributes to a necessary reassesement of collaboration projects.

Still, I found two aspects of his article that would deserve further research:

• First, when analyzing the projected return of the collaboration project, Hansen seems to concentrate on the cash-flow it can generate;
• Second, when analyzing collaboration costs, he does not seem to take into account the potential for improved collaboration due to E2.0 technologies.

E2.0 technologies, if conveniently deployed (meaning with strong change management support on new usage and skill development), should greatly diminish collaboration costs. This is something I have seen at most of my clients.

I find even more important to go further into the analysis of the projected return of collaboration, depending on the depth of the collaboration project. Obviously, making two different units or teams collaborate at a given point on a given project generates costs and the returns can only be in terms of cash generated.

But shouldn't Hansen go deeper in analyzing the projected returns of collaboration projects that actually change the DNA of the organization ? Because, in my opinion, when he points that "the collaboration imperative is a hallmark of today's business environment", it is not collaboration as usual.

The hallmark of today's business environment is the development of collaboration as an alternative to hierarchy for a precise number of business situations. We are not speaking about making BUs or teams learn to collaborate transversally (even though this is important). We are speaking about giving the organization a new organization dimension, based of people who are able to identify each other and organize to solve a business problem.

It is about governing and giving responsibility for transversal collaboration that does not need hierarchical micromanagement.

The Deep Brain and the Quick Brain

Foundations for social network strategy in a connected world

I have spent the past two years leading internal collaboration-based change management programs. Slowly, the conversations are developing, pushing us to the next issue: how to leverage the internal conversations to find a right voice for the corporation in the social web ?

This is not an easy question, and it does not solely revolve around marketing or PR, because, beyond general conversations (that are not always very well considered), what is just begining to happen within the companies I help is new capability development. And I still do not see that happening in the wider social web, at least not to the same level, unless there is a well identified corporation behind (open innovation, for instance).

In the past few days, a post by Brian Solis (the Micro Disruption Theory and the Social Effect) and a tweet by Ross Dawson (using twitter to build the global brain) inspired me to finish organizing my thoughts.

I understand that a global brain is indeed under construction, that I will call the Quick Brain. To participate meaningfully and profitably in this quick brain, corporations must strive to become Deep Brains and then learn to master a new voice. In this world, strategy would revolve around Engaging, Deepening and Twitting (or socializing).


The Quick Brain

The sheer size of online links, searches and conversations has helped rise many voices that wonder whether we are still able to think by ourselves in this environment (see Is Google Making Us Stupid, by Nicholas Carr). My own thought has been that yes, by linking, conversing, searching, we at least loose some of the time we previously had for deep thinking.

And yet, I for one spend a huge amount of time in this new game, and I would say that the share of global attention being devoted to the web is growing fast. The new skills that I am developing (quick reading, tool switching, quick writing, fast thinking process switch, ...) are key to participating in the conversation. But what exactly am I doing, what am I accomplishing in this web ?

The description that Brian Solis makes of Contextual Networks was very helpful in making me understand that role. As I see it, when I participate in a conversation or just forward some information that was interesting or helpful (RT or liking), I am part of an ephemere contextual network, in which I am bound by topic and time to other people. This network is based on existing connexions (friends, contacts, links, followers, depending on the social platform), yet different from those connexions, and it serves a specific purpuse (forwarding a piece of information and increasing resonance).

It is possible therefore to say that the accelerating linking of people in the web is similar to the development of a new kind of infrastructure, let’s call it the human infrastructure. Its objective is to accelerate the transmission of information from one person to another, using existing links and search engines, but also those contextual networks defined by Brian Solis. The web has hypertext links for individual usage. The human infrastructure has contextual networks that it uses to, yes, think (in want of a better word to call this process).

I could then say that, when I tweet, blog, comment, RT or contribute, I am an individual component of this Quick Brain.

Why do I call this brain the Quick Brain ? Because it seems to me that its primary purpose is to accelerate the rythm of information/knowledge sharing, thus provoking insights, inspiration, learnings, ... in the members that are touched by that sharing. And it also seems to me that, in order to think deeply and organize my thoughts, I need to disconnect (or at least, partially disconnect). This brain goes fast, and it inspires or surprises or helps learn. It does more than sharing but does it think ?

To answer that question I would say that deep thinking rests with individuals and organized groups or communities. In that sense, it is clear that companies, much like individuals, are supposed to think. Or at least think deeper than the quick brain.


The Deep Brain.

I make a difference between corporations operating and corporations thinking. Corporations need to be good at operating their business models and also at advancing ideas and concepts, and later use them either to develop services (R&D) or to solve client problems. Increasingly, it’s their ability to continuously advance ideas and solve problems, and transform new ideas and solutions into lean operations, that makes a difference.

The knowledge economy is not a new concept and corporations are used to developing ideas and solutions. What is then different with the arrival in corporations of social computing, E2.0 or, as I like to call it, improved and people-centered collaboration (I have already said that we are entering a time of People-Centered Organizations)?

The main difference is the soft infrastructure that the companies are developing. Yesterday, and contrary to what happens in the Quick Brain, there was a Knowledge Infrastructure in most companies, but not yet a Human Infrastructure. Companies were (most still are) knowledge-centered. With the arrival of social networks and other social computing tools, the corporations have an opportunity to recenter themselves around people or talent.

I would say the Deep Brain is the new, people-centered, corporate working environment that leverages both the strengths of the organization and of the social networks. Like the Quick Brain, the Deep Brain has in speed a fundamental asset, and yet it strongly differs from the Quick Brain:

• People (employees) have the ability to create their contextual networks depending on their interest or they can participate in existing contextual networks. Still, many of these contextual networks are long-lived (existing functions or departements), and they maintain strong ties with a number of employees; the attention spams are wider, and people concentrate on a limited number of topics because they have a result to reach;
• The number of topics itself is limited, and most of them concentrate around the professional field of the organization;
• People (employees) have developed strong common ways of working. Not only do they share a common knowledge, they are also able to work together very efficiently (today, this is what we call a corporate culture);
• Most important, to my mind, employees do not engage in conversations or contextual networks only based on their personal interest or attention; they engage in these contextual networks based on their professional responsibility and interest.

When I started thinking about the difference between the Quick Brain and the Deep Brain, I was thinking that there would be a difference in tools: twitter would more useful in the quick brain and blog in the deep brain. Actually, I think now that the important thing is usage, that very often comes after tools. It is how people in a corporation use these tools in consistent ways that will make much of the efficiency of their deep collective thinking.


Engaging, deepening, connecting

How then to leverage your Deep Brain to make a difference in the social web ? That is what I plan to work on for the next months. But I would give a number of insights:

• It is more important to engage your people than to train them;
• Only based on a special kind of motivation is there a chance for collective deep thinking;
• That ability for collective deep thinking will probably be a key skill, and it will be a part of your employees personal reputation, therefore making a strong impact on your corporate reputation.

Your people will be ready to connect, based on skill and reputation.


How do you think this distinction between deep brain and quick brain is helpful for a social network strategy design ?

Social media and governance

I have been reading several posts lately that adress the issue of governance of social media governance within corporations. Opinions range from designing guidelines to defining and deploying policies. To my mind, both are right and wrong, as governance is first dependant on a company’s culture and organization.

To be on the practical side, this is what I do when adressing social media and governance:

• Linking with the existing governance structure of the corporation, rules, practices, culture and the new social culture (internal and external),
• Not setting a document (a charter, for instance) but developing a «charter community» to manage the issue in the longer term,
• Work on a beta mode, both on the contents and the form that will be given to the governance charter and charter community
• Take time to work on principles (that should not evolve easily),
• Take time to work on the «how to» dimension, that should evolve more often.

Progressing towards an increased level of collaboration (that I really prefer to the much publicized Enterprise 2.0) is about managing changes and evolutions. I think developing a real governance initiative is key only when:

• The first pilots are over, before it is too much of a constraint and it is enough to define the few principles that will ensure consistency between pilots;
• The scope is large enough. Without the proper scope, the need for governance is less obvious at executive level.

Once governance of the social media environment has been designed, once it is operational, it is time to manage relations with key issues: HR driven regulations, communication policies and management practices. How we manage these relations will make all the difference between implementing a social media or transforming the corporation.

My connected life changed with Twitter

I am just about to start working on a presentation I will be giving at Netexplorateur next Thursday and as I sit and gather some papers, some thoughts and some coffee, I look at Firefox opening ...

Gmail, Google Calendar, Linkedin, Facebook, Friendfeed open slowly and I also launch Twhirl. I can tell you I am rather tired at this time of the evening and feeling rather slow intellectually.

Then I notice an RT (retweet) from Bertrand Duperrin, speaking about how Michael Arrington was spat on the face earlier today. I read his post, which impacts me strongly.

And I start thinking about how Twitter and my small but growing Twitter world has impacted me since I became an active member about a month ago. I actually, right now, two minutes after my MacBook opened, feel much better, energized by all those guys I see working and reflecting on the same subjects I work on, or just twitting some news about their life, their friends or the latest news from their reader (right now, Andrew McAfee wondering whether executives should know about the cloud, and I'm answering yes, obviously).

The subject I am trying to organize my ideas about is "Management, mobile Technologies, stress and autonomy". Just thinking about Twitter, writing this post, I get at least one insight: To feel autonomous, not only do I need to learn about tools and usages, but more importantly I need to be a member of the correct community through the correct media. And I need to be able to change tools and communities if I change subjects. This is all about increasing intellectual and social mobility for all of us, empowered by mobile and social technologies, and seamless access to the cloud. Managing this is something corporations have not learned to do.

For me, Twitter is the place where I go when I am working or thinking by myself. Yes, not so much by myself, now. I am just beginning to understand it, I think this little tool has changed the way I work.

By the way, for those interested in Twitter, don't miss the great series from FastForward blog.

Web2.0 and profits ?

I was just pointed out this article by the Web 2.0 LinkedIn Community. It basically says that social media ventures will make no money, and be bought by other new start-ups which are trying to increase the utility of the web (location based servides and payment systems), that they dub web 3.0

The comparison with the glorious era of railways development has often been made, and yet it is useful to say it again: social media is basically a new kind of infrastructure that shortens distances and time between people (just as the railways did).

In the end, there will only be a handfull of social media companies around and they will regroup most social media vehicles (blogging, microblogging, video, presentations, podcasts, virtual, ...).

We are learning to "travel" in these new infrastructure and maybe some of the frenzy about blogging or microblogging can be compared to what happened to former generations when they discovered railways, cars or the telephone. I am happy to be part of the frenzy and more than thankful to Facebook and its likes.

I do not agree that money will not be made. But even more importantly, a huge value is just being created, a value that might be difficult to evaluate from only a short-time financial point of view. Strange that Fortune should appear to be this shortsighted.

Collaboration, business and democracy

I am working on a couple of "what's next" projects about corporate networks and communities, and this post by Jon Husband (The New Management - Bringing Democracy and Markets Inside the Organization), really struck me as very accurate.

One of the key milestones for widely and successfully deploying collaboration in an organization is the process for choosing a new governance charter. Basically, in my experience, after some pilot communities and networks have helped identify why and how a specific organization should deploy a collaborative way (to innovate further; to increase individual productivity; to bring its internal culture to the level of its employer brand; and so on), people start thinking about some key issues like:
- what name should we choose for this initiative,
- what rules should we have to organize our collaboration,
- how should HR processes change to take into account this new dimension ?

Bringing an answer to those questions is one of the key milestones to bring collaboration within the corporate culture. And, more than the answers themselves, it is how the organization choses to bring an answer to those issues (how it learns to think, design and decide collectively) that matters.

Why did Jon Husband post stricke me ? Well, I think we are at a time when the rules and governing principles of corporations are going to be built by the employees. That is, to my mind, somehow a move that "increases the democratic level" of the corporation.

Most governing principles used to come from power or from history: corporations internal organization codes and rules are mostly based on hierarchical decisions or on culture (the way we do things around here).

What I see now is quite different. Collaboration projects, and even more so if E2.0 tools are chosen and deployed wisely, can result in new rules and charters that have been collaboratively built and adopted. This is new and can be very powerful.

This is hapening. But we should not be too idealistic. I do not think this is about how the corporation will become a democracy (at least, not yet). I think it is about how the responsibility for the organization projects, performance and social role is more widely distributed and accepted than before.

By asking to build the rules, the employees are asking for more responsibility, and by launching these collaborative projects the organization is getting ready to share it. I could not say what will be the outcome of this. What I can say is that most corporations structure and processes will have to change deeply to benefit from this trend (see Martin's last post on Cisco for an example of change).

Christmas thoughts

I am just about to leave for holydays, and was thinking about how 2008 is finishing. It actually started out pretty well for all of us engaged in "collaboration based change management" or "enterprise 2.0" development. But then, there was the credit crunch.

Simply put, somehow along the way trust disappeared, and the whole system started contracting. It is still contracting.

The question is, why did trust disappear ? Too complex a question to adress in a post. In here, I would only say that we do not believe the economy can go on growing at what was its pace in the past few years. Or, more precisely, that it cannot continue growing if it keeps the same structure and governing principles.

Isn't then this crisis a good moment to step back and act (not think) on those governing principles ? Based on the most visible reactions (governments and big business), it certainly does not seem so.

On the government front, billions have been poured into incumbant banks, financial institutions and industrial groups. Nothing has really been done to ensure that they will learn from past mistakes.

On the business front, we are getting ready to cope with the huge layoff frenzy that goes with this type of crisis (200 000 jobs to be lost in France according to Les Echos, even the tech layoffs are happening).

At the same time, there has been a lot of buzz arond how Enterprise 2.0 (to be overly simplistic) could have a positive impact in these times. For instance, putting down IT costs (as argued by Ross Dawson here) or even reinventing our business models (as argued in this interesting conversation led by Paula Thornton here)

And yes, I have to agree that all this "collaboration-based change" will have increased productivity of work (individual and collective) as its main impact for incumbent corporations. At the same time, and as argued in the post of Paula Thornton, business based on different business model and even different founding principles will emerge.

It's time that leaders started thinking big and forgetting about old recipes. I do not think they will work. In fact, I think we have just started a period that will end with bringing down two of the idols on which we have built our economy: growth for growth and financial value.

Poursuite du cycle E2.0 de Boostzone

Suite aux deux premiers petits déjeuners sur l'entreprise 2.0 (transformation des usages et transformation de l'organisation), l'Institut organise le 9 janvier 2009 le dernier petit déjeuner de ce cycle, centré sur l'Innovation

Plus d'infos sur http://www.boostzone.fr/

Le dernier petit déjeuner, sur la transformation des organisations, avait aboutit au constat du nombre de questions encore ouvertes sur les transformations au cours. Le petit déjeuner du 9 janvier offre l'opportunité de répondre à quelques unes de ces questions sur le sujet de l'innovation.