by Rob Paterson
August 22, 2007 at 9:57 am
· Filed under Enterprise 2.0
I wonder if social software will really take hold in any conventional organization no matter how great a ROI may be possible?
I am finding that the barrier remains culture and culture always is happy to reject a good idea if it conflicts with the prevailing mindset. I think that the Corporate World is really a return to the Medieval World - organizations are in effect Feudal. I am playing with an idea here but so far I can’t find a hole in my comparison.
It’s a feudal monarchy. There is a big guy at the top and he owns all the property. He has vassal lords, called executives, who have lands, called divisions, who in turn have knights, called managers who have small estates called departments - who in turn have peasants who toil in the lords fields and who have no power. Everything is based on land - aka positions or jobs - and on obedience. Anyone who displeases his superior risks all.
As in the Medieval world there is a God who actually is not real but is used as an excuse for things. This God is also a trinity. He is part - Shareholder Value, Part the Customer and Part “Our people are our most important asset”. As with Popes and Kings, God is the public excuse for action. But the real end is to make the King more powerful.
All the Kings are related - they may go to war with each other but they also look after each other. They are related on boards that also dole out goodies to each other such as pay. They are a class apart from the rest.
As in the Medieval world, there is a church and Priests. These are called Consultants. On the surface they help the King serve God - shareholder value, the customer or the people, but in reality, they usually give the King a licence to do what he wanted to do - Henry the VIII wanted a divorce.
As in the Medieval world, the King and the Priests control the communications system. It is a one way top down system. The Priests write books that tell the people how clever they and the kings are.
As in the Medieval world, there is no room for observable science. Just as Augustine and Aristotle were held up as authorities, so there are untouchable dogmas about HR and Marketing. Any evidence that machine hierarchies are unnatural is quashed. Heretics are rooted out inside organizations and are threatened into submission, expelled or killed.
So on what terms would this world want to adopt Social Software? It threatens every aspect of the system.
For the real business of business is to serve the King.
Show me why I am wrong.
Later I will talk more about the new rebels - the White Companies that are emerging that are bound not by feudal allegiance but by competence
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This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about. I wouldn’t go so far as you’ve gone but there is definitely a massive culture barrier to break down.
Even when we do break it down how do we know people won’t just start to game these social tools just like they have everything else. What makes a team blog any different from a team meeting where the most senior person is the only one who says anything because they are the one with the most power?
My underpinning frustration is based on my experience - I have not got one really corporate client to do this properly
The senior folks worry that they will not look all knowing
The junior folks worry about saying the wrong thing or being criticised by others
It’s not allowable to not know.
Another aspect is voice - most have forgotten how to write using a personal voice - they use either a memo style or a press release style
I find that most people are also filled with tasks - there is no room for reflection - the crisis de jour fill their days
Worst of all - what if the hierarchy was disturbed by hidden talent beneath? Imagine you really did have some good ideas - how safe would it be to show up all your colleagues and worst of all - your boss?
What am I doing wrong? I have not been able to get past this?
Feudal monarchy…I like the image that conjures. I’ll need to ruminate on that a bit longer.
I was going to say that I would likely want to focus more on the feudal than the monarchy, because I’ve typically seen that most ‘barriers’ are really about misguided understanding of what “others think that others think” (ruminate on that for a while). But then I realized that in a monarchy, the leadership operates in much the same way — they don’t tend to exert any real authority — they’re figureheads. So it is appropriate…but I’m still thinking about it…
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BrianAugust 23rd, 2007 at 5:23 pm |
Feudal, maybe. But the first hole that comes to mind is modern mobility. Most anyone with reasonable skills can pack up and pick a new ‘lord’.
yes they can but not as many as could - that’s my sadness I see so many who feel that they are not worthy
Rob,
I tend to agree that many corporations struggle to find an authentic voice in the web 2.0 space that doesn’t sound like a chopped up press release.
I liked the analogy with the Medieval World. However, unlike in those days, the kings(read: executives) don’t control the conversation. They can join in, but don’t have the ability to set the discourse as in the middle ages.
There are countless examples of companies who have tried unsuccessfully to employ the “command and control style” of communications. That may have worked in 1307, but in 2007, user generated content (blogs, podcasts, wikis) reign supreme. Is that not a significant difference, or have I missed an element of the analogy?
Cheers.
John
You are right the new way does rule - “Dell Hell” - Kryptonite Locks etc
My point is that “Feudal” Kingdoms cannot bring themselves to use them properly
So, the new will replace them in time as Luther and the North German Princes replaced the Pope and the Emperor in Northern Europe
Interesting side element that modern capitalism was also an output of the reformation - might Natural Capitalism be an output of this Reformation?
There are countless examples of companies who have tried unsuccessfully to employ the “command and control style” of communications. That may have worked in 1307, but in 2007, user generated content (blogs, podcasts, wikis) reign supreme.
… followed by …
John
You are right the new way does rule - “Dell Hell” - Kryptonite Locks etc
My point is that “Feudal” Kingdoms cannot bring themselves to use them properly
My sense is that he first italicized comment is optimistic, and Rob’s follow-on is a bit more tempered. The advent of the Net / Web has often been likened to the arrival on the scene of the revolutionary printing press. It’s revolutionary effects, however, were only more clearly seen quite some time later (per Rob’s concluding points).
So, to today’s issues. Check out the organizational structures, the compensation plans, the performance management and reward schemes in place at most modern corporations. The Economist wrote a good article on this 18 months ago titled The New Organization, in which it lamented the fact that there has been almost zero real change in the way org’ns design the “interfaces” between the organization’s work and the ways it is carried out by people in an organizational form. We all know that there is today a dominant organizational form, with its roots in Taylorism, division of labour, etc … but that underlying structure is primarily informed by traditional hierarchy. It relies on a fundamental non-negotiable construct of hierarchical knowledge, some of which comes from the codification of “knowledge” through advances like the Dewey Decimal System and the codification of knowledge-put-to-work as modern organization developed in the latter half of the 20th Century. The codification is embedded in arcane and dry disciplines like job evaluation, management science, etc.
Hyperlinks operating in a digital interconnected infrastructure can and do change things .. first the dynamics and then (maybe) the structures … but at the moment the struggle with / by organizations to come to terms with the new conditions is not unlike trying to set up your organization in a new country, with a new language, different culture, different customers. It can and has been done (many examples avaiolable from the last 20+ years of globalization) .. but it took time, energy, money and patient, repeated learnings.
Stan Davis wrote early on (in 1987 in a book called Future Perfect) about the growing (at that time) impacts of IT and networks … at a time when today’s awareness and understanding of hyperlinks and the Web were but ideas.
Quoting Stan Davis:
“Electronic information systems enable parts of the whole organization (here, we can read organization in the large sense, as a nation or society as well IMO) to communicate directly with each other, where the hierarchy wouldn’t otherwise permit it.
What the hierarchy proscribes, the network facilitates: each part in simultaneous contact with all other parts and with the company (see expanded definition above)as a whole. The organization can be centralized and decentralized simultaneously: the decentralizing mechanism in the structure, and the coordinating mechanism in the systems.
Networks will not replace or supplement hierarchies; rather the two will be encompassed within a broader conception that embraces both.
We are still a long way from figuring out the appropriate and encompassing organization models for the economy we are now in. At the very least, it is clear that we will have to reconceptualize space, transforming it by technology from an impediment to an asset.
We are still today, 20 years later, on the path glimpsed then by Stan Davis. A little further on his book (the next page, IIRC) he suggests that it is likely to take 30 to 50 years at least for these major changes to have been implemented and fully understood.
It’s a cukltural, human thing … as Rob and many others have pointed out. We are (slowly) moving from a machine / efficiency analogy to a biological, organic / effectiveness model .. based on the fact that all humans ever do and ever have domne is communicate with each other to get things done.
We are evolving from the control of clan chieftains through kings and clergy through the modern replacement of kings and clergy (execs and consultants) to a messy and fractious demos. To get things done in an organized, efficient and effective way in these new conditions will require both hierarchy cand networked organization and dynamics, and more mature adult-to-adult negotiation and accountability schemes. Look to the OD literature on self-organizing systems and self-directed teams, etc.
It’s been around for two or three decades, while the basic assumptions of structure and accountability have remained by-and-large cautious about forays into the new territories.
The issue(s) will not go away .. and in the grand scheme of things it is still very early days.
Jon
Thanks you so much for your comment - you always have so much insight to add - and you more than most I know have seen what is really going on for such a long time - I get so frustrated myself - your still having hope gives me hope too
Rob
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