Comments for Beyond the Cube

Comment on The Enterprise 2.0 Candy Store by Laurie Buczek

Laurie Buczek — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 23:50:27 +0000

@ Ethan- I am a big fan of the POST methodology from Forrester/Groundswell too. Thanks for the link!
@Sameer- managing it will be key
@ Steve Brewer – you are spot on on all accounts!
@ Steve Bell – I like that tactic. Goes to Steve Brewers of having them taste test the candy themselves.

Comment on The Enterprise 2.0 Candy Store by Ethan Yarbrough

Ethan Yarbrough — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 22:55:32 +0000

Laurie, good points. I like that you begin your list of tips by emphasizing the importance of business requirements. Executives can get very excited by the next new thing, but they also have in their DNA a sensitivity to ROI. It’s worth pointing out to the execs that if they make decisions about what tools to build based on what they like rather than based on what problems and challenges that exist within the organization that require fixing, they’re setting themselves up for almost certain negative ROI. The needs of the organization need to lead to the strategic and technical choices. What you’re saying here reminds me of what Li and Bernoff discuss in their book Groundswell, specifically their POST method to developing social computing solutions (People, Objective, Strategy, Technology) — who are the users, what will they use? What objective are you really trying to achieve? What strategy do you have for fostering adoption and, more importantly, how does this idea fit into your overall business strategy (the technology is not your strategy, it is a tactic) and finally, which is the right technology (or vendor) to choose to best create a tool that aids your strategy in pursuit of your objective. Good slide deck here with an overview of Groundswell: http://www.slideshare.net/bnixon/groundswell-post-process-presentation

Thanks for posting your thoughts. Very helpful.

Comment on The Enterprise 2.0 Candy Store by Sameer Patel

Sameer Patel — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 22:04:25 +0000

Laurie,
Its so nice of you to share this. So refreshing to see some tangible and re-purposable how-tos.

I’d say 70% of program managers (at companies that are taking social computing seriously) are facing this right now and almost all will see this over time. If the last spike in intranet/portal/KM uptake is any indication, it will get ugly. We had to navigate this mid cycle intervention on almost every single engagement we worked on back then.

Comment on The Enterprise 2.0 Candy Store by Steve Brewer

Steve Brewer — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:33:36 +0000

Most “integrated offerings” have so many different kinds of candy (micromessaging, blogs, wikis, widgets, tags, tables, collaborative spreadsheets, etc.) to try within their own walls, that it would take months just to try them out in different business use cases. And other candy stores (vendors) have more or less the same kinds of candy. My company just adopted Socialtext, which has a very robust set of integrated functionality. Our challenge is to get executives to try the candy for an extended period of time to really get the sugar in their system.

And finally, the biggest challenge is to convince everyone that the candy is actually good for them.

Comment on The Enterprise 2.0 Candy Store by Kicking off the 5Ws of e20: Who, What, When, Why, and How?

Kicking off the 5Ws of e20: Who, What, When, Why, and How? — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 22:00:47 +0000

[...] Kicking off the 5Ws of e20: Who, What, When, Why, and How?By Susan Scrupski on January 26, 2010 Enterprise 2.0 is maturing, but most practitioners (even veteran players whom we could classify as “innovators”) agree that the opportunity for Enterprise 2.0 is still in its infancy. I saw affirmation of that today on member Laurie Buscek’s post this morning, “Enterprise 2.0 Candy Store.” [...]

Comment on The Enterprise 2.0 Candy Store by Saqib Ali

Saqib Ali — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 18:10:26 +0000

What’s so wrong about being a kid in the candy store?

Remember if you don’t let the exec browse the candy store, they will gravitate back to warm, fuzzy traditional “knowledge management”, which gives them a feeling of being in control…..

Comment on The Enterprise 2.0 Candy Store by Steve Bell

Steve Bell — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 16:18:27 +0000

Could not agree more….

I would add one more item to tactics… This maybe pushing the boundries, but why not. Have the executives use the current tools and capabilities to fully understand what they have today. It is easy to get wrapped up in the shiny new candy… Especially if you don’t fully know what you have today and the direction that the strategy has laid out. It can not be a simple education process, they don’t work. Seeing new candy, you have to ask – how many calories or why is X better than Y. First you have to know the calorie content or Y product.

Comment on Sabbatical Girl Gets Schooled by Steve Bell

Steve Bell — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:42:15 +0000

I have to give you the second – about time! Or maybe I am third or fourth in line.. No matter.. Amen!

Reflecting while away is awesome and necessary. A sabbatical is a wonderful thing if handled properly (and it seems that you have handled it well).Looking forward to see how the second month – adds to the change…

Comment on It’s Not About the ROI by Laurie Buczek

Laurie Buczek — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 05:31:27 +0000

@Sharon- I like your Return on Interaction. Nice!

Comment on It’s Not About the ROI by John Ragsdale

John Ragsdale — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:13:35 +0000

Boy, I have a lot of reactions to this topic!

First of all, anyone who says companies aren’t agonizing over ROI of phone, email and web channels is completely out of touch. Our members have these numbers down cold, with a great example of Cisco Linksys eliminating the email channel last year because it was not cost effective. New channels should be held up to the same scrutiny.

The other reason ROI is important is because vendors have been grossly overstating the ROI of the tools. If you are buying them specifically to receive the cost savings touted by a vendor, and have factored those numbers into next year’s budget, there is risk in the project.

I agree there is often a difference between business value and ROI. It is hard to put a dollar figure on having an engaged, collaborative community. But as long as vendors continue to tout huge costs savings for these deployments (in most cases unsubstantiated), I can’t blame executives for expecting a bulletproof ROI.

–John