Enterprise 2.0 is not a game anymore, it's serious business

Another good post from Bertrand Duperrin following the Enterprise 2.0 Forum in Paris on March 17th/18th.

His bullet point list of conclusions is good news for everyone (like me) promoting the uptake of E.2.0.

I will highlight the following 4 points:

• It’s not a game anymore. Now projects are global and carried by the top management. That’s the end of social bubbles disconnected from reality. Companies think global and pilots are not made to test but are the learning stage before global rollout. I really appreciated Claire Flanagan’s approach that set a time limit (5 month) instead of limiting the number of users what allowed her to quickly get a critical mass (nearly 30 000 users) with an opt-in policy.
  
• Tools come second. We talked a lot about management, culture, governance. 90% speakers did not even mention the name of the platform they used and, in fact, the question is elsewhere (even than there’s always the same usual drudge in every conference). The best example comes from Danone where the “networking attitude” program was launched in 2003. It’s all about management and behaviors. Management 2.0 without web 2.0 tools. Tools came only when the behavioral dimension was natural in people every life in the workplace.
  
• There’s no “one size fits all” adoption model. Each company has to define its own way depending on its culture and on local cultures.
  
•  Support from top management. That’s been known for ages but it’s clear that a bottleneck appears when top managers are not active sponsors. I don’t mean being benevolent from a distance (”ok…let’s go guys…I’m watching you play..”) but being able to understand the change, make it theirs and imagine them, their staff and their behaviors in the future, be comfortable with it to be an active sponsor.

I (and many others) have been writing for years now about the importance of a strategic consideration, visible top management leadership, conducive corporate culture, adapted management behaviours and internal processes for the successful introduction of knowledge-sharing tools in an Organisation.  Looks like business leaders are finally getting the message.