The Social Enterprise – Nothing New Invented Here!

12 thoughts on “The Social Enterprise – Nothing New Invented Here!”

  1. Indeed, it’s all about agility, a connected workforce building a strong sense of working better together; it’s all about innovation, about being part of an ecosystem where the co-creation process is the one that regulates how we interact, share our knowledge and collaborate with one another in an efficient and effective manner, not just internally, but also externally with our clients, which is where the conversation is (and should be!).

    Hmmm .. now let me see, where did I put that … ?

    What is it that makes all this potential possible ?

    1. Hummm, let me see, Jon… How about Wirearchy? Oh, wait, but that’s nothing new, is it? I mean, it’s been years since you put it all together exactly as described above and how it permeates through the video interview. Ahhh, well, the title seems to be right after all… Nothing new here: let’s move on into implementation, engagement and enjoyment, baby! πŸ˜€

      Seriously, many thanks for dropping by and for the great input! It must be rather rewarding to witness how the business world seems to finally be catching up, right? πŸ˜‰ hehe

      Speak soon!

  2. Well. yes .. the various bits and pieces seem to be falling into place (so to speak). But I think “we” all saw that as inevitable some time ago, no ?

    I don’t really care what “it” is called, and you are right my friend. Let’s get on with the getting-on-with-it, so as to help make the world(s) we inhabit a better place for both working and living.

    1. Yes, I know what you mean, although I would say that the “we” has been a minority till not long along and perhaps we are seeing how more and more knowledge workers are flocking towards what you already saw as inevitable… It’s like coming back home! πŸ™‚

      Amen to that follow up wording, Jon! You know what? You would make an excellent hippie 2.0, you know that, right? Fancy joining us sharing some content on that site as we ramp up efforts to get things moving? πŸ˜‰ hehe

  3. It really isn’t appropriate for Lee to blame the IT department for so many things. (And I say that as someone who worked in an IT department developing CICS systems on MVS.) Business has a long history of administrative culture.

    Virtual pub quiz: everybody knows that there was agriculture, then manufacturing, then information technology. But in what year did information processing become the largest part of the workforce in the USA? I’ll come back tomorrow and tell you.

    1. Hi Gordon! Thanks for the great comments! Greatly appreciated! I don’t think Lee was blaming entirely IT for the whole “mess” we may be in; I think he was justifying more the fact that there is a huge disconnect between IT and the business, in general. I have seen that far too many times myself with plenty of the customers I get to interact with, as well as inside and it can surely be frustrating sometimes. Now, if IT & business would partner together, instead of engaging in those political fights, I think we would all be much better off, for sure!

      On the pub quiz … hehe … I bet that didn’t happen till the late 90s or something; probably at the same time I started working for my current employer πŸ˜‰

  4. I believe the “de-socializing” of the work place correlaets with the increase of division of labor and automation. Granted, there’s also a human political dimension by which people tend to self-segregate into “us” and “them,” but I’ll leave that as a chronic issue in that this is an “always-has-been” aspect (that is to say in the historical period, at the very, very least). But primarily, functional silos begat a lack of workplace socialization (as we are using that term, that is) and those functional silos are *NOT* due to coherent process focus but rather to specifically that rise in the division of labor and increased automation which rely on a silo focus (especially/specifically division of labor; I will grant that automation is less of an issue but I include it because historically it has led as well to a view of “point A to point B” linear thinking).

    Automation is not to be confused with the last few decades’ focus on process modeling. And in this context, I take exception with the idea that process focus killed the enterprise (or any such declaration, I realize that was deliberately bolder than to be literally taken). In fact, I would argue that it’s precisely the *LACK* of process focus while automation and division of labor were pursued that has killed the enterprise. Real, holistic process focus takes into account an end-to-end view and necessarily focuses at least at some level on collaboration points needed to break up needlessly linear and time-consuming processes. Now, that said, I recognize that process notation and methodology lack the tools to go deeply into collaboration and are poor at modeling the elements in detail of said collaboration, but that is a matter of a “white space” in how process modeling/methodology illuminates a need for collaboration – it doesn’t do more than identify the need and leaves it to us – and our faulty, siloed organizations – to figure out. In this light the work of HIM (http://missionfacilitators.com/Articles/Organizational%20Development/Articles/Human%20Interactive%20Management.pdf) is of great interest, though it is my view that HIM needs to be developed for a stronger coupling with process modeling rather than away from it.

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