Social Glass

Veodia was just announced as the winner of the Enterprise 2.0 launchpad at the E2.0 unconference in Boston today. This makes me happy. I walked away from my trip to china with a renewed sense of how valuable social connections are between teams and started trialling Veodia last week. Video is a great way to enhance the bond between remote teams and helps build a more cohesive, single team unit.

Veodia allows me, as a Manager, to record standup meetings and whiteboard sessions and embed them on our internal wiki much as you would a Youtube video. It also allows me to create a “live meeting”, where I provide a URL to my team in China and they can see me as I talk (I suppose Skype does a good job at this too). And the beauty is Veodia is free for up to 500 MB of video storage. That’s perfect for me as I convince others within my organization of the value add.

What I don’t yet understand, and what’s keeping me from being more aggressive about rolling this out to the rest of my division, is the security model. It seems that there is “security through obscurity”, where cryptic hyperlinks are the only thing preventing a would-be snooper from viewing my content. This is unsatisfactory within an enterprise setting where confidential data is being stored and shared among internal teams. If Veodia can get their security model right they’ll kick some butt.

Aaron Newman and I have been working for several months on putting an Enterprise 2.0 implementation guide together. Aaron Fulkerson, CEO of Mindtouch, has been doing the tech editing for us. And we’ll have another all-star, Jevon MacDonald, doing the forward for us. This is my first book, and let me tell you the process is extensive. Figures and illustrations have to follow a special naming pattern, chapters have to meet pre-determined page counts, and the tone of the book has to be consistent (which is tough when you have two authors writing it). Aaron and I edited each other’s chapters as they were completed, then sent them on to Aaron F. for more editing.

Then it’s the publisher’s turn to edit which means even more revisions and re-organization. But I must say this process, though tedious, adds tremendous value.

What’s really interesting is I’ve never met my co-author in person nor have I had a phone conversation with him. We used Basecamp to manage our deadlines and share deliverables. Twitter, IM and email were used for everything else (Basecamp rocked). I am continually amazed at how efficient it is to collaborate using social technologies.

I’ve been spending a lot of time with the book over the past few months (they didn’t give us any chance to give our input into the cover design. I’m not sure what I think of it), which is largely why I’ve been neglecting this blog.

But besides the book I’ve spent time adapting to the consumer world with my job at active.com. We’ve got a lot in the works to overhaul the site and make it more social, engaging and single-purposed. But we’ve got a long way to go and I’ve got a lot of people to manage.

Through the transition away from consulting towards a proper job I’ve learned a lot of things about how E2.0 may or may not add value to an organization. I must say I’ve been somewhat unbalanced with this blog tending to lean in favor of Enterprise 2.0 without adequately considering alternative perspectives. Going forward I plan to entertain opinions from the dark side a bit more to drive debate into a growingly homogenized E2.0 “industry”.

It’s been an interesting transition for me back to industry. “Industry” is the term consultants use to describe normal jobs with normal companies - the kind where people bring their plants to work and setup pictures of people they know in their cubicles. The kind where people wake up on Monday morning, drive to work, work, drive home and do the same thing every day until Friday. It’s been three months, and I’m starting to acclimate to this routine way of living.

When I started I came in guns ablazing with a consultant’s mindset. “What, no data warehouse, no sweat. We’ll implement a master data management strategy and breathe life into dying data. And let me tell you about this nifty little thing called Enterprise 2.0. It’s going to revolutionize the world, man. Ever heard of SLATES?”. Sarcasm aside, people had actually heard about Enterprise 2.0 and were actually keen on the idea. But seeing things from the other side I’m starting to think Enterprise 2.0 will be overwhelming for many.

Here’s the logic: Enterprise 2.0 assumes that, within corporations, there are a lot of unsung heroes who’s voices are muffled by a thick wall of bureaucracy. These under-utilized knowledge workers are in dire need of a platform through which their ideas can transcend old-fashioned hierarchical structure so that their potential can be fully realized. Enterprise 2.0 promises meritocracy.

Sweet.

But consider alternative reasoning: Good workers are already very busy. Their managers already know they’re good and are filtering a saturating set of inquiries and non-critical disturbances into a trickle. Trickles enable concentration, and concentration is needed for people to do good work.

So why in God’s name would a very busy person want to put himself in a position to be even busier by seeking corporate-wide recognition for his bright ideas? He’s already well compensated. He’s already highly regarded. Why make life harder?

Good workers might run and hide from Enterprise 2.0 (and bad ones might embrace it).

I’ve taken a new job with a consumer-focused company in San Diego. I am responsible for a group of people that develop a web site in the endurance sports market (and we use Clearspace externally). Most of my team works in the office with me. Others work out of LA and China. Together we fix bugs and implement new features on the site. Gone are the days of Management Consulting and talking to clients about Enterprise 2.0. Instead I’ve become a middle manager - you know the kind that does nothing but control the flow of information in and out of his group. The kind that adds no value to the business.

Or at least this was my “pre new job” thinking. I couldn’t imagine the chaos that would evolve should I allow the business unbridled access to my team. Focus and prioritization would be non-existent if I sat back and waited for my guys to self organize like a colony of ants. Teams need direction. They need to understand business initiatives. They need to be structured. They need to have context behind the flurry of requirements that would otherwise be hurled at them. On top of this the business needs to manage risk. It needs to know that my team can produce on a relatively consistent basis.

Certainly the Enterprise 2.0 community would never condone absolute dissolution of middle management. But I’m admiting now that at least I am guilty of being over-presumptuous about the lack of value that comes out of the middle management layer. I’m sure organizations are full of bureaucrats, but there also full of good managers who are there for important reasons.

Apologies for the lack of posts.  I’ve started a new job this week as a Development Manager for a company in San Diego and have been busy coming up to speed on everything (and everybody) I’ll need to know to do my job.  What an interesting 6 months.

1. I worked in Austria from late June to mid August.
2. Moved to Sydney from mid August to mid October.
3. Moved back to Melbourne from mid October to December.
4. Repatriated to the United States in December and was in Colorado to mid January.
5. Moved to San Francisco for a month, and…
6. Took a job in San Diego which I started yesterday.

All that time I’ve been co-authoring a book and have tried to keep blogging.  Man I can’t wait to be settled again.