Connecting the Dots to Competitive Advantage

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Hi Matt,

Thanks for your question.

For me it’s not so much how individual web 2.0 tools can be linked to individual OD interventions etc, but how well the overall social connecting / collaboration / social capital strategy connects these different options to help achieve the same outcomes.

Enterprise 2.0 is about culture change.  But the debate about whether social media creates culture or whether we need the right culture to implement social media is a red herring.  Enterprise 2.0 is culture change.  And the more that this change is supported by a broad set of diverse enablers, the more effective that change is going to be.

But you could do this at a more granular level as well – for example if you’re introducing a new wiki, you could easily intervene to create some useful and aligned conversations around the importance of and ways to improve collaboration. 

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How am I going to make my case (that we need to connect the dots to gain competitive advantage through enterprise 2.0)?

I'm going to explain:

1.   Why businesses need to integrate web 2.0 with other approaches if they're going to gain competitive advantage rather than simply save costs or help meet existing business objectives (which can much more easily be done through a single focus on the technology).  The same applies in the public and voluntary sectors in relation to fundamentally transforming the levels of service organisations are providing.

 

2.   What businesses need to do to enable this integration.  This is largely about a shift in focus / mindset from pure enterprise 2.0 (the technology), through the social business (the environment) and onto what I currently call a competitive society (the outcome).  A clunky phrase I know but the best one I've come up with so far to describe the particular combination of internal and external connections, relationships and conversations / social and relational capital that provides one or more particular forms of organisational capability (eg learning, collaboration, responsiveness, innovation, speed, sustainability, transparency, knowledge etc) and the potential for competitive success.

By the way Matt, this is why I note that enterprise 2.0 is about culture change (and I probably should have written this as enterprise 2.0 for competitive advantage is about culture change).  Social capital is the main basis for most definitions of culture, so if enterprise 2.0 is about creating social capital, then it is automatically about creating or at least changing and extending culture.

 

3.   How businesses and other organisations can capture this opportunity.  I'll describe use of a framework that helps identify and communicate a) the capability the organisation is trying to create, b) the business impacts it hopes will result from this type and level of capability, and c) the activities (web 2.0 technology but also structure, processes, other interventions etc) that will lead to the desired capability being formed.

The framework can also be used to support measurement and calculation of ROI.  I'll also talk about how it can be used in a way which minimises the need to motivate people extrinsically to use web 2.0 and drive adoption etc.

 

 

So basically, we get the required integration of web 2.0, connecting the dots, quite simply by focusing on the outcomes of enterprise 2.0.  These outcomes aren't simply the attributes of the sort of flat, open, human environment that is often associated with this field (although these attributes are useful as well).  The real outcomes are the connections, relationships and conversations we want to develop with people inside and outside of our organizations.

If we can fully understand the outcomes we want to create, we can look at the various enablers which will develop these things for us.  Technology then becomes one, very important, enabler.  But it also very naturally becomes part of a more integrated approach.

 

 

Is this real, detailed and specific enough for you yet Matt?

By the way, I do think your questions challenging anything slightly generic have been useful in helping people to tighten up their proposals - so if you do want anything more from me, just let me know.

 

Also, in terms of my thoughts re Ralph Stacey & Dave Snowden - I've got a lot of time for them.

When I set up my company, Strategic Dynamics (which now includes the Social Advantage business), in 1995, I actually named it after one of Stacey's books, Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics.

So I've been trying to use some of his and other complexity approaches for quite some time.  And I'd see some of these approaches being examples of the interventions that I believe are important accompaniments to web 2.0 to gain competitive advantage. 

In terms of Enterprise 2.0, I agree complexity and emergence are important factors that will govern the way we work.  This is even more the case at the higher levels of value which link with competitive advantage.  However, I do also find that a focus on outcomes (competitive strategy) rather than environment (social business) helps make things clearer, reducing the complexity, and making it easier for senior leaders (in hierarchical terms) to influence what's happening in the organisation, including adoption of web 2.0.

It might also be worth adding that as well as a framework, I’ll present examples and case studies of how organizations have benefited from linking these different enablers together.

I have some of these case studies already.  But over the next six months, basically through until the conference, I’m going to be writing my second book, focusing on the creation of social capital and to be called Social Advantage (also the name of my new blog - http://blog.social-advantage.com).

The book builds upon some of the approaches described within my first book on human capital, but also includes other inputs from social psychology, sociology, social network analysis, etc, and obviously a much stronger focus on social technologies too.

This won’t be a book launch – the book won’t have been published by the conference – and I’m not going to use it as a selling session either.

The only reason I mention my book is to point out that I’m shortly going to be talking to a lot more organizations about their experiences in using social technologies and other approaches in a discreet or integrated fashion, in order to achieve certain outcomes or create social capital.

So I’m going to have a lot of recent case studies to share in my presentation as well.

Lastly, as well as some background, my framework and some case studies, I want to ensure this session is interactive and fun.  I’m thinking about using a scenario, perhaps based upon one of the case studies, to go through the framework with everyone.

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KAT SMITH   ANALYTICS, WEB and COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
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