I attended the Dachis Group Business Summit a couple of weeks ago, and one of the sessions that impacted me the most was Dave Gray's "The Connected Business". Gray's talk was a riff off his blogpost by the same name, which positions a modern company as a complex, living organism that no longer fits into the paradigm of a machine. Gray posits that a company has always operated as a machine, which has to be controlled, maintained and fixed. A machine is rigid in the way it operates; it works the same way all day every day until it breaks. This is indeed reminiscent of how many organizations have set up their structures and processes -too rigid and disconnected to be relevant in today's fast-changing and fluid world. The demands of a modern business are challenging this notion. With a globally distributed workforce, customers demanding service on their terms, a generation of knowledge workers are yearning to solve custom problems vs. being a cog in a wheel, and competition is fiercer than ever.
Inspired by discussions with Thomas Vander Wal, Gray draws an insightful parallel between the complexity of today's organization and the human organism, and the ultimate system of human organisms -- a city. Cities are complex systems, which can grow and support their own growth organically. Gray takes the following lessons from city design and adapts them to the enterprise. Below I'm riffing off his ideas, adapting them to use cases for internal social networks, and adding my own ideas.
1) Importance of culture: A "connected company" - the term that Gray uses throughout this blog - is first and foremost a complex patchwork of humans. As much as each person has a unique voice, they are all united by a common culture. However, many companies are missing a unified and a strongly-pronounced culture. I think this is caused by several things, such as a by-product of merger and acquisition activity, and quite simply lack of investment. Yes, it takes work and effort to develop and cultivate a culture.
2) Pilot programs: Gray says that the best communities inside of cities are the ones that are tightly (but not too densely) populated with people. Ultimately, humans want to belong and be part of something bigger than they are. In a system like Yammer, this can be achieved rather naturally, as a result of virality. Communities start with a few people and spread to other parts of the organization; they have to start somewhere and be artfully seeded with users who can unlock and communicate their meaning.
I'd also take it a step further and say that for a community to be truly successful, tightly-knit and functional, it has to come close to being able to sustain itself. For example, a neighborhood should have a food shop, a bakery, a post office, a clothing store, a dry-cleaners, public transport, etc. Similarly, your internal community should be filled with people with a solid cross-section of skills, so they can unlock the power of collaboration.
3) Every space must have an owner: Just like I wrote in a post last week, every community needs a community leader. This person ensures that the community is performing the task it was created to perform, that no one is vandalizing it, and that ideas are flowing freely in an environment that's safe and productive. A good community leader will be able to start conversations and elicit feedback and creativity from others. If you have many leaders and power users, that's fantastic! However, to unlock the true power of the community, there must be one responsible party, a shepherd who guides it gently, without overpowering it.
4) Every person needs a place: This is something that I haven't thought about prior to reading Gray's post. Each employee in the organization must have his / her own place. That place can be physical (desk), as well as digital (user profile with all created content archived in perpetuity). Each person's job definition, however fluid it is, still needs to identify what activities fall under the purvue of this person. A job without an "owner" won't get done.
5) Serendipity on purpose: Gray draws a parallel between serendipity that can happen in the street of a city and the serendipity that's possible in business human networks. Often through the use of Twitterm I've been able to connect to people physically, because I identified them as being at the same event via the use of hashtags. Internally, I'm seeing a lot of that on Yammer also; posing an idea or topic of conversation in front of a community can often open your eyes to alternative ways of thinking and expertise from outside of your "world".
6) Watch, learn and adapt: Gray notes that a city, just like the complex organism of a company, must be flexible and empowered enough to evolve on its own. Within a company, there's also a certain fluidity as ideas percolate, spread, gain support, evolve, and eventually either come into their own or die. Same thing with organizational dynamics, processes, culture and makeup of the workforce.
I couldn't agree more with Gray's points above, and also would like to contribute the following three points:
7) Leadership support: True strategic leadership can move the needle by providing vision and ensuring change works with existing culture; this type of leadership supports and nurtures, while encouraging structure. Executive support and vision of how human collaboration networks fit into the larger picture are paramount. At Yammer, we've observed that the most successful networks have the support and commitment of senior leadership, who can set an example and signal organizatonal transparency and "flatness", without mandating policy in a top-down manner.
8) Build infrastructure: Roads and streets are key to the health of a city. Roads carry people and goods to and from the city, and streets do the same on the inside. Similarly, in an organization, processes by which information is shared, and the manner in which resources are activated, are very important. A knowledge management, exchange and collaboration platform like Yammer can become a virtual grid of streets connecting various parts of the organization, and connecting the organization to the outside.
9) Policy and governance: Just like each city must have a charter and / or some kind of governing document, each organizational endeavor must have some kind of governance / set of best practices set forth. In the case of using internal social networks, we encourage all of our users to create the usage policy, which outlines acceptable norms of behavior and data privacy guidelines. In the case of externally facing social media involvement, guidelines and policy should also be established that drive the organization forward.
Thank you, Dave Gray, for writing this post and for inspiring with your work! I find the concept of building on wisdom of other industries fascinating and really productive. Instead of reinventing the wheel, we can borrow a lot of great ideas from the world around us.
So.. What are some other parallels to a modern business that you are seeing? The comments are yours!
Photo source: ecstaticist