Are you ready for social business ?

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Many influenceurs of the enterprise 2.0 (as I a part of), seem to give the impression that things could be easy with the right person and the right methodology. Guaranteed success.  Of course not, there is not THE methods, and no one can say, ok I am hundred percent sure what it will run. You so many issues like organization culture, management, willing of a real transformation into a social business organization…

So if the social business seems to be an answer to many issues that the enterprise has to deal with, it doesn’t mean that your organization is ready to transform or accept the challenge for many good or bad reasons.

Your enterprise is not ready

Don’t worry, usually people feel more comfortable without change, and if you ask the question, people will at least why, but most of the time yes but (that can be worse than a real no in fact). The real question is, what’s the top management really want. A real transformation or just an « internal Facebook »Â to look trendy. Is their a real goal behind the « magic words social business ». Without support or real will for change, there is a lot of chance that you’ll fail. But may be it’s worth it finally. A good pilot, can convince other people, could be the first step of the maturity curve. In the opposite, it can create bad memories, and stop that kind of project for many years.

More a top down than network

Once in an organization where I’ve been requested, you needed an authorization for anything. Authorization from the middle manager who should ask to the director who needed the go from the C-suite, crazy. To illustrate this process, to post something on the website (we don’t even talk about social media), you needed to go through 6 stages of validation. As you can imagine, so long for the updates. Can you imagine how would have been the process for an enterprise social network and the governance issues. 

Manager as gatekeeper

A lot of  of manager positions to just control information and put them in the equation information = power. They are here to watch their team, micromanage, appropriate their team work. No easy to change and for many people is the major barrier and they though no chance to succeed. I won’t argue again about that, it was the topic of the last week post.  But to sum up, they are under pressure too, like anyone they can change, you just have to trust them. In fact you have no choice, an organization won’t change wihtout the support of the managers. But it could be a long journey.

Lack of empowerment

Employees are used to obey wihtout thinking, just do their job, because that’s what the top management want. That’s why 70% are not engaged anymore. So they are like « sterilized », not use to think out of the box May be it is one of the major obstacle and the more underestimate. Engage them.

I am an island

Each manager is assessed on the results of his business unit. But there is no bonuses for everyone so it’s a struggle, a kind of zero-sum game. And of course no one will collaborate with someone in another business unit. It is not just silos, it’s an internal competition. You are in the same company but not in the same team, and everyone is collaboration adverse. You need to change the Os of the company. And some time it is just a house of card, and it will change quickly because most of them are fed up with this feeling.

IT = security and control

Collaboration = breach in the security system, so no discussion at all. Even worse you don’t have a corporate IT, but several It department and you will create digital silos. May be the solution is in the SaaS, if you can escape to the IT patrol…

Nothing is ineluctable and unsurpassable, but it could take time. If you tick all the idea above, well may be, even if you are patient, mais be you should think about something else.