Open Business – From Adoption into Adaptation

8 thoughts on “Open Business – From Adoption into Adaptation”

  1. Hi Luis,
    I am a long time lurker, but this time I really feel I need to comment. As a fellow IBM employee I get really engaged by your insights and commitments. This blog entry made me happy, even if I do not know if it should.

    1. Hi Roar, thanks much for dropping by and for the feedback commentary! Glad you have been there for a while participating from the distance reading along and that you, finally, made the jump into the lovely waters of participating in the conversation. Much appreciated. Glad you are enjoying these reflections. They are usually thoughts that occupy my mind for a while, before I give them form / shape and share them along. This one, in particular, has been with me for a few months already and thought this time around it was ready to be out there 🙂

      Oh, if this blog post made you happy, there is probably a possibility that it may have stroked a chord on what you may be seeing as well at your neck of the woods, and why it looks like these are going to be some interesting times, as well hehe

      Thanks again for dropping by!

  2. Interesting post, Luis, which sparks a lot of thoughts…
    I would like to a single point: the Leader illustration. I believe that, instead of being the first in line on the rope, which says at this stage that failure is no more an option, a leader should be the one putting the wheels under the block, opening possibilities, leaving to workers to choice to pull, push, or even make the block fly if ever feasible.

    Those wheels are not necessarily about technology, they can be, but most real new forms of organizations emerge without technology. Think of Gore-Tex, FAVI, Valve Software…

    Which takes me back to your point: “for the first time ever, we have got the tools”. The place of technology isn’t as enabler, but as a co-evolutionary factor influencing people and organizations. Thinking otherwise leads to either technocratism or an augmented version of business-as-usual.
    Technology MIGHT, in some cases (like at IBM, indeed) be the enabler. But organizations should take great care of their own evolution, avoiding to rely on such a causal illusion.

  3. Hi Luis,

    I’m familiar with the law of innovation of diffusion and always remember seeing it via the Simon Sinek video how great leaders inspire action. I’ve used the early adopters as a big sell for my efforts at social integration more recently using a social platform to create a community of practice in HR /L&D in the UK. Again I’ve used the ‘law’ as a means to explain adoption, encouraging early adopters to get to the early majority and highlighted the laggards as those who are afraid of change etc. Reading your post has made me realise that I’ve also come up against early adopters who are prepared to give to a go but either don’t get it or don’t like it. In my happy world all early adopters stay with it spreading the love and encouraging those early/late majority to get involved. In reality this isn’t the case and as you point out they can actually do much more harm as early adopters who come out of the loop and stick to the old way adopting laggard behaviour and telling everybody and anybody who will listen it’s a waste of time and doesn’t work. They are harder to get back on side than the laggards themselves. This has made me think differently to the whole adoption process. Thanks

  4. Hi Luis,
    I followed your block for some while (not too long) I came to it when reading about “Outside the inbox” and that issue really hits a nerv of me. I get flooded with emails every day, I got quite some inspiration and could at least do a few changes, but still have not found the right social (or other?)media tools to change the situation dramatically. I will try further although I seem to be from these rather old fashion knowledge workers. What I however want to reflect on is that you talk about not getting flooded with information, but reading your lenghty blocks gets me that feeling. There are really interesting thoughts and ideas in it, which I enjoy, but it is so hard work to find them among all the sourrounding not really important text and repetitions. Short and on the point would be beautiful and safe me so much time (just imagine all my incoming emails would be written like this . unfortunately several are). But maybe it is just the way you social media workers communicate and I am wrong here. Thanks nevertheless for the inspirations.

Leave a Reply to Joachim Stroh Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *