It’s all about organisational effectiveness. How fast, efficient and correct all information is disseminated, how effective hand-overs in the workflow happens, how visible and easy to understand the process is, how effective the capture and subsequent dissemination of knowledge is and how little time you spend on making the flow happen.
That counts. That means better profits. That means more time for the kids and less stress.
Sig has another crack at enterprise software and its emphasis on efficiency, and the gap it leaves in effectiveness – doing the right thing, not just doing the thing right.
Dennis Howlett also weighs in, contrasting Sig’s view with the current Enterprise 2.0 push, which he sees as perpetuating the “efficiency” approach:
Wind back to what I was saying about Enterprise 2.0. If they can change the focus to one that talks about effectiveness and less about efficiency I am willing to bet they will see truly astonishing breakthrough value. The question is – are they up for the challenge or are they prepared to continue trying what amounts to Band-Aid technology application?
I had something to say about this a while ago:
It’s probably no secret that I believe that there ARE benefits to an organisation, directly and indirectly, in this idea of moving the work to the network, assisting connections to the short-term detriment of personal productivity. This shouldn’t be a foreign concept … we’ve been urged for years to be “team players” and “collaborators” – why has it taken so long to realise that those objectives are the antithesis of personal productivity? (or has the urging to team play been less than genuine in the past?). And how many times have we been told as we moved through our careers that it’s “not what you know, but who”? It’s ALWAYS been about the network; that is how most stuff gets done … it is very rarely a lone hand effort.
Note: there’s nothing wrong with enterprise software and efficiency per se – social media/E2.0 shouldn’t be trying to replace those things, but to augment existing business process with a cross-silo conversation to help improve WHAT we do, as well as HOW we do it.
