Enterprise Collaboration or Human Monitoring?
I was the first keynote speaker for Hong Kong ComputerWorld’s ‘Enterprise Collaboration Forum 2011’ - http://enterprise-collaboration.questexevents.net/speakers
Even I was surprised by the amount of people who turned out and the quality of the attendees – all CIOs, CTOs, and CMOs – from Financial Services especially Insurance (where in Hong Kong the war between Insurance companies is hinging on analytical advantage and faster team collaboration). More surprisingly was how heavy attendance was being it was a Social Enterprise Collaboration Event within the Enterprise –emphasis on within the Enterprise – while Egypt was in the midst of its social media deliverance.
Everyone knew that the PRC Government was jittery and scraping social sentiment from within their ‘Great Firewall’ readying to put down any possible digital revolution. Yet, one fourth of the 200+ of the attendees from this Enterprise Collaboration Forum were from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen.
Two-thirds of the attendees were from Hong Kong. That also struck me as odd. The week before had been Asia-Pacific’s first ever Social Media Week – and the host city was Hong Kong. Hong Kong had a steadfast anti-social reputation with social media in the mainstream media which I wrote about for Computer World - http://www.cw.com.hk/content/don%E2%80%99t-be-anti-social-during-hong-kong%E2%80%99s-social-media-week
I started my speech that “Collaboration is the key to innovation; and without collaboration or being able to share ideas freely, you are creating a technology glass ceiling that prevents breakthroughs, inventions, new ideas to bubble forth.” I was also quick to point out when I refer to Enterprise Collaboration – I omit micro and macro blogging. Micro and macro blogging only allows for one way communication.
Like this blog, I can only project outward. Yes, people can comment but there really is no back and forth, sharpening of ideas, editing of concepts.
I also positioned that the introduction of social technology was pushing us back into a cycle. Facebook was now the new OLTP, next would be the self-warehousing, then forecasting, prediction based on life experiences, wants, and likes that will feed the ‘social search’ craze (semantic search is dead), and finally – what drew the biggest crowd reaction was - experience engines.
Think of ‘experience engines’ as the ultimate culmination of enterprise social collaboration software – combining version control, email, unified communication, and business process management. The concept I posed was simple: what if all the life experiences this new generation is inputting into Facebook or the next social networking sites – their status updates, their likes, their pictures, videos – the style of language – can be queried. You can pose questions to the ‘experience engines’ built from the persons inputs. If you put this into an enterprise context, currently in Asia-Pacific because of the high attrition – and workforce shrinkage set to occur in the next 10 – 20 years because of the one child policy, how do you train up replacements? Or how does a company not be dependent on one key employee if they are off sick, on holiday, or leave the company? ‘Experience engines’ solved this issue. It takes all the content uploaded, expressed by the employee – what reports, links they thought was most effective to do their job – and shared amongst their team members – and allowed them to be summarized into an information repository to be queried.
One of the next speakers was from the MTR Corporation in Hong Kong and discussed how they were already building their own ‘experience engines’. MTR is about to have a majority of its workforce retire because their employees have loyally been working for the company since its start in 1979. They are pushing hard for innovative ideas to ramp up the replacement and ‘learning curve’ for new hires. But time is short, the first wave of retirees will depart the company in 3 – 5 years.
After lunch, the next speaker helped me understand potentially why the attendance was so large. The presenter was from Mainland and excitedly introduced tools and social collaboration software from his company that allowed management to ‘monitor’ the use, input, emotional sentiment of its employees and if need be quarantine it. During their Q&A, I was first to put my hand up and ask, “Am I attending the wrong forum? Isn’t this about collaboration? Not human monitoring?” The speaker cleared his throat but deflected the question with marketing lingo.
During the executive panel discussion, I was asked by the moderator “Why can’t enterprise collaboration be a human monitoring system?”
I was quick to say, “Maybe it’s a translation or cultural issue. To me, Enterprise Collaboration means openness, sharing, or my quote ‘listening creates loyalty’. Not monitor the work being done – and if one rises to high or creates an idea that’s innovative – quarantine them. Pressure them to stop.” I then went on to say, “An organization must have the corporate culture to allow for innovation. It’s better to have your own people tell you how to fix a problem, than your competition using it as their strength against you. Yet, if employees feel they are always being monitored, always afraid of getting in trouble for new ideas, new concepts – employees will settle for collecting a pay check, clocking in and clocking out – but too afraid to make a difference. Which one is the better business model?”
As Libyan people are overthrowing its government with social media as did Tunsia, Egypt did before it. China is making huge technological advances in how to automate the use of social media to “quarantine and put down its digital revolutionaries.”
Enterprise Collaboration has become the new nuclear technology. Nuclear technology was created to end wars and or end the human race. But nuclear technology is also used to power cities – such as Hong Kong – cleanly and efficiently.
Social Media and Enterprise Collaboration within the organization allows for the quick proliferation of ideas and concepts throughout a company; and or Enterprise Collaboration can be used as the technology to stop new ideas, concepts from proliferating through the organization. But it is my hope, we will look back at today and it will be said that Enterprise Collaboration became the power source for freedom of ideas, the birth place of truly innovative companies that run cleanly and efficiently.