The Socially Integrated Enterprise: Organisations or Communities? The new Collaboration Ecology - Luis Suarez

The Socially Integrated Enterprise
Organisations or Communities? The new
Collaboration Ecology

Luis Suarez - Social Computing
Evangelist at IBM
@elsua
http://elsua.net

Monday, June 6, 2011 1

Acknowledgements New kind of collaboration
across teams ...

@jenokimoto Tara Matthews

@lbenitez @falabares

@nhsocial @inter_vivos


Collaboration as an IBM wide priority

“We know that our integrated business model – from the way we design
and deliver our systems and solutions to how we transform our end-to-end
business processes – demands that we work together collaboratively.
Every time we work as a team, execution improves.... making our culture
even more collaborative, in support of delivering client value as we strive to
build a Smarter Planet.”

Sam Palmisano, IBM Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
19 July 2010
Second-Quarter 2010 Results


Changing landscape in workplace
collaboration

 Collaboration is changing from stable teams to groups where
membership is dynamic. [Mortensen & Hinds]
 Workers are often members of multiple groups – a.k.a. multi-teaming.
[Chudoba et al, O’Leary, et al., Zika-Viktorsson et al.]
 New forms of collaboration have been identified that leverage the
internet or social software, such as “collective intelligence.”
[Kittur & Kraut, Shirky, Moon & Sproull]


IBM - A Socially Integrated Enterprise Coming from a Globally
Integrated Enterprise...

In 170 countries, with 400K employees
Products and services built and sold in worldwide
markets

More than 50% work away from traditional IBM
offices
73% of managers have remote employees

60+ software acquisitions in 10 years
Half of employees have less than 5 years with IBM


On a Smarter Planet, people are
transforming the way they interact ...
A social transformation is taking place in how
people interact and how relationships form and
develop, and this is changing the way we work
and the way we engage with our customers.

Customers Employees
are leading the are using social media
conversations that
Competitors in all facets of their
are crowd-sourcing
define your brand lives, including work
ideas to bring new
solutions to market


... and this transformation presents
new challenges to organisations

Marketers have less control over their brands as customer
comments and feedback are becoming more influential to brand
perception than advertising or PR

Product development is challenged to deliver new products
and services quickly and at lower cost to keep up with fast
moving, new sources of competition

Human resources faces difficulty increasing worker
effectiveness as work becomes more mobile and global, and
as a new generation joins the workforce

Organizations are paralyzed by security and governance
concerns as employees increasingly use public facing social
media tools in the workplace


Becoming Social Businesses is all
about embracing this transformation

A Social Business cultivates trusted
relationships and capitalizes on
Social them when and where needed in
Social Transformation Business order to grow, innovate and make
people more effective

A Social Business is:

 Creative – allows the right mix of talent and information to
come together to deliver new insight
 Consistent – aligns business goals and delivers a consistent
brand experience
 Empowering – gives each individual the opportunity to
participate meaningfully and improve the business
 Everywhere – enables the work and web experience to
happen where, when, and how it is most effective


A Social Business embraces networks
of people to create business value?

At its core,
a Social Business is:
Engaged
Transparent
Nimble


A social business seeks to deepen ...faster ... and enable an
effective and virtual workforce
client relationships, generate ideas ...
A Social Business
 Builds trusted relationships and
increases sales through relevant
messages across all channels
Traditional Business  Drives brand advocacy through
Deepen communities and dialog
 'Push' marketing via client
traditional channels relationships
Marketing  Control over brand image  Shares insights to generate break-
and brand
through ideas and speeds time to
communication market, gaining market insight and
Drive readiness
operational
 Invest in R&D effectiveness
Product  Generate new ideas
Development internally  Reaches out to professional networks
 Test ideas in market to respond faster with business
decisions to new opportunities, saving
Workforce money
 Email and phone based optimization
Operations,
communication
Human  Knowledge kept in silos
Resources


How are organisations changing?

 GIE's changed the internal structure of the traditional MNC
Resource Utilization: focus on client relationships and employee skills
Benefits: cut expenses, improve service and agility, reduce risk, address new markets
 How companies innovate is changing; the nature of the core mission and goals are changing

Single Value Multiple Values

Classic “multinational,” GIE's distributed processes SIE's manage a “birds nest”
replicated smaller versions across a skilled global of values of external
of the parent company in workforce or partners; with stakeholders; building trust
countries around the a common set of values; and are socially adaptive.
world;

clone

Multinational Globally Integrated Socially
Corporation (MNC) Enterprise (GIE) Integrated Enterprise
(SIE)
Source: IBM Annual Report 2009 (MNC, GIE)
SIE is a proposed ICS concept, diagram Charles Leadbeater “We Think”


Understanding collaborative work We found distinct types
patterns (patterns) of collaboration:

stable project team client-supplier relationship group

dynamic project team
community

professional relationships …
committee


Dynamic project team

[Customer] XBRL Tools RFP Demo.
A team pulled together to create a demo
that addresses a customer need in order
to win a sale.
Definition: A continuously changing group of  SMEs on XBRL tools and other
customer needs that arise are recruited
people working together toward a
from the group’s professional network.
common goal that is a job-related focus
for its members.
Arise to enable flexible formation of teams to
meet emerging needs, while highly
utilizing subject-matter expertise.
Sub-types based on subject-matter expert Engineering Efficiency Pilot.
Develop a method to identify and
(SME) recruitment:
eliminate waste in the daily engineering
 SMEs are recruited informally via workload at a manufacturing plant.
professional relationships & communities.  Various engineers doing the work
being evaluated are brought on the team
 SMEs are identified through organizational to help identify waste and later to
connections. evaluate the method.


Client-supplier relationship group

[Customer name] Client Relationship.
Coverage sales rep working with
various brand specialists to maintain an
ongoing relationship with [customer
name].
Definition: A stable group including people
from both client and supplier who work
together in an ongoing basis to make sure
the needs of the client are being met over
time.
NV RAM Customer Facing.
Arise to provide a consistent, known A manufacturing engineering team
interaction to make customers feel interfaces with customers to ensure
comfortable and know who to go to. that the hardware product meets their
needs before fabrication.


Professional relationships

Rolodex.
People I’ve met who I contact for resource
allocation (staffing) and quality assurance
… on solutions we’re proposing.

Definition: A professional relationship
between two parties, typically with minimal
structure.
Arise to provide individuals with career .
Internal Microblogging
enhancement opportunities (e.g., Collaboration.
mentoring) are leveraged for the expertise I use this for career enhancement (to
each side provides the other (e.g., to find start up new collaborations, to
experts to staff a dynamic project team). volunteer and build my exposure in the
company, for reputation building), and
to get feedback and support from
colleagues.


Community

Rational Change & Release
Management Community (CoP).
Community of people specializing in this
particular type of Rational software. Used
to gather knowledge about this technology,
in service of customer needs.
Definition: A group of people with similar job
functions or a shared interest, who come
together to share (knowledge, information,
best practices, Q&A) and possibly to spark Firefox Champion Team (CoI).
A community of 4250 SMEs who offer
new collaborations.
knowledge and services to facilitate others
Arise to provide support for dynamic project using Firefox within [the company].
teams (group maintenance, SME
recruitment) and individuals with career
enhancement opportunities. Coverage Software Architects in Federal Sales
Sub-types: (Bounded CoP).
 Community of practice. Direct reports of a single manager who all have the
same job role. These people do not work closely
 Community of interest. together; they are SMEs who participate primarily
 Bounded community of practice. in dynamic teams and client-supplier groups. But
they provide each other with peer group support.


Stable project team

Quad2 Review.
Create and review the plan for that
week’s manufacturing load and
verify that it will meet any customer
needs.
 Repeated every week, long term.

Definition: A fairly stable group of people
working closely together toward a
common goal that is a job-related focus
for its members. Health Services Team.
Current project: Redesign
Arise because of a need for sustained employee health services case
contribution from a specific group of management for IBM to meet
people. budget requirements and delivery
needs in growth markets.
Sub-types based on duration:
 Recurring organizational processes
 A particular combination of expertise Biztech Redesign Work / Life Zone.
invoked across multiple contexts Software redesign of an intranet site
focused on work-life balance issues.
 A single long term complex deliverable.  Bounded, 6 month project.


Committee

World-Wide GBS Distinguished
Engineer Board
Forms yearly to select Distinguished
Engineers for the Global Business
Definition: A group formed to handle a goal Services division. Half the members
return, half are new each year. Involves
that is secondary to most members’ main
splitting up the candidates and coming
job focus. Though there is often a “lead together to make a decision.
cat herder,” these collaborations tend to
be consensus run.
Arise to handle various organizational needs.

Women in Technology Leadership
Task Force.
A group of SMEs are formed to tackle
the organizational issue of increasing
women in their technical areas.


Distinguishing attributes

Collaboration type Goal & Duration Personnel Work focus Work style

Pooled & Co-
Stable project team Deliverable Stable Core work focus
creation
Pooled & Co-
Dynamic project team Deliverable Dynamic Core work focus
creation
Peripheral for most Pooled & Co-
Committee Deliverable Stable
participants creation
Independent with
Client-supplier relationship
Relationship, ongoing Stable Core work focus bursts of
group
communication
Exchange expertise
Stable &/or Peripheral for most
Community and best practice, Independent
Dynamic participants
ongoing
Professional relationships Relationship, ongoing Dynamic Peripheral Independent


How do workers handle new demands
of dynamic teams and multi-teaming?

There are predictable patterns of interrelationships among a person’s
collaborations


Collaborations are Interrelated in a

Ecology (in biology) – the interrelationship of organisms and their
environments.

Collaboration ecology – the interrelationships between people’s
collaborations in business contexts.



Stable Groups (e.g., client
supplier, stable project…)

set
goals

Dynamic Groups (e.g.,
dynamic teams…)

recruit SMEs &
provide group
maintenance
Professional
Community
Relationships




set
goals

dynamic teams…)

The responsibility of the Technical Affinity Group is…
to extract discrete data points from our sales and
customer facing staff so we can figure out strategically
where our architecture work and solution design stuff
should be headed… Our goal is to always be strategic
in building out the toolkit of piece parts that solve
patterns and generic customer needs.



dynamic teams…)

recruit SMEs &
provide group
maintenance
Professional
Community
Relationships

My linkedin is 500, plus [company] internal, there’s 60 people I can approach right
there… So if I need to get a number of people on board, I need to know if are they
available, and when can they start? If I need project management, I think who's best
suited to manage the project as it goes into delivery, then if I need contract
management, and technical advisors, people who are really good at doing dial plans
for instance, or people who are good at creating scripts… If I need a resource, then
I identify a resource and then bill it to the account, they can bill hours. I get pinged
all the time with the same requests.



dynamic teams…)

recruit SMEs &
provide group
maintenance
Professional
Community
Relationships

We do a monthly community call [for the whole community]
where we tell stuff about what is happening with the
community. Then we have the education sessions in the
community. They are typically every two months where we
provide education and various different community building
techniques. And then we have the watercooler call every two
weeks to provide like a virtual gathering for them to share.




set
goals

dynamic teams…)

recruit SMEs &
provide group
maintenance
Professional
Community
Relationships


Collaboration Ecology Challenges

There used to be a team and it was their whole job to
create these proof of technology materials, keep them
 Communities sometimes were updated, add new scenarios to them, make them
responsible for critical, time- better... Due to [our company’s] organizational reasons,
that group is no longer and the responsibility of keeping
consuming organizational functions, up those materials—think of them like training
which did burden members. materials... fell to the community of practice, which is
voluntary (laughs). But it is so important that we keep
 Difficult keeping communities active maintaining those artifacts, but it became voluntary. But
it is a challenge. There is a person that runs that
enough to handle group community and needs us to be active... or else it won't
maintenance tasks. Leadership be a good thing.

teams helped.
 Recruitment for dynamic teams is a At the beginning of last year I changed from process
development to business optimization, it’s a completely
challenge for workers not plugged different set of people and it’s amazing the lack of
in to the right networks. knowledge that we in [this company] have between
different divisions. At the beginning nobody knows me,
and so no-one is aware that I am there. And then it
started very slowly, and then after a while it’s like an
avalanche of opportunities that come down because
people start to know me and they recommend me to
other folks. It’s the problem that we have in [this
company] to find the right person.


Collaboration ecology argues for a Implications
suite of integrated tools


set
goals

dynamic teams…)

recruit SMEs &
provide group
maintenance
Professional
Community
Relationships

28


Collaboration ecology argues for Implications
management support

Management needs to directly encourage participation in peripheral
collaborations as they can have strong implications for the success of
core projects.

dynamic teams…)

recruit SMEs &
provide group
maintenance
Professional
Community
Relationships


Different collaboration types have Implications
distinct collaboration needs

Dynamic personnel (dynamic project teams, communities)
 Recruit subject-matter experts to participate
 On-board dynamic members
 Capture knowledge / outputs of dynamic members for use

Deliverable-focused (stable & dynamic project teams, committees)
 Co-creation for distributed teams
 Closely coordinate activities around deliverables

Communication-focused (professional relationships, client-supplier groups, communities)
 Various communication channels (e.g., urgent requests, broadcasts, etc.)
 Cross-organizational archives

Democratic leadership (committees, communities)
 Mitigate challenges caused by this not being a primary focus of member attention (e.g.,
participation incentives)
 Efficient decision making in discussion-oriented, consensus-driven collaborations (e.g.,
voting)


Conclusion - Living the New

 Workers participate in multiple different collaboration types with distinct tool needs.
 We discovered a collaboration ecology where different types of collaboration
interrelate and support each other
 Membership in multiple symbiotic groups
 Compensates for some of the challenges of dynamic groups, such as recruiting and group
maintenance.
 Helps workers deal with these challenges caused without perceiving them as a huge
additional workload.


thank you it’s been my pleasure

Luis Suarez
Social Computing
Evangelist @ IBM
http://www.elsua.net
@elsua

Ohhh, and one more thing ...


The Socially Integrated Enterprise: Organisations or Communities? The new Collaboration Ecology - Luis Suarez

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