Sometimes the Answer is Just Staring You in the Face

I have been thinking about the ways in which social business collaboration technologies can be used in the enterprise to facilitate achieving business objectives, such as improved customer service, improved productivity, and reduced costs. At first I thought that the challenge was to simply reengineer business processes to take advantage of these “enabling technologies”, much as has been done in the past. Now I am not so sure.

My point of reference for many years has been Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation. When I consider how ERP has helped to redefine how work is done, some of the things that come to mind include improved planning processes and tools, improved integration of business processes across functional domains and significant automation of tasks. In many ways the beauty of ERP is that it enables the enterprise to systematically decompose business problems into manageable and executable chunks.  For example, the time buckets for sales and operations planning is months and quarters, the time buckets for master scheduling is days and weeks and the time buckets for production execution is hours and days or shorter. The process allows you to seamlessly move from one level to another. From the perspective of the employee, the interaction with ERP software is fairly straightforward. There are business roles and processes to learn and procedures to follow but any one transaction is impersonal, more or less deterministic and concrete. ERP does not typically engender much of an emotional response.

What I have failed to appreciate is that the “social” in social business represents not only an opportunity to do things differently but also presents some new and very different challenges. Not everyone places the same value on sharing information or collaborating, nor feels as comfortable doing so. Social interaction is far more personal than interacting with an ERP system, much less deterministic and far more abstract. It is no surprise then that we view it as acceptable if only fifteen percent of users are contributing content in a given month. If you experienced a comparable rate of participation in an ERP setting then the business would grind to a halt.  

It may seem “as obvious as the nose on your face” that social business is very different than what has come before, but I must admit that I wasn’t seeing the extent that this is true. As I continue to develop my understanding I find myself drawing more on the practice of social science than computer science.

Years ago I took the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment, a “questionnaire designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions.” I found that the assessment provides a useful insight into personal preferences. For example, the following is a description from Wikipedia of the preferences of one the sixteen possible combinations of assessment – ENTJ:

·         E – Extraversion preferred to introversion: ENTJs often feel motivated by their interaction with people. They tend to enjoy a wide circle of acquaintances, and they gain energy in social situations (whereas introverts expend energy).

·         N – Intuition preferred to sensing: ENTJs tend to be more abstract than concrete. They focus their attention on the big picture rather than the details, and on future possibilities rather than immediate realities. They tend to focus on the final product rather than the current task.

·         T – Thinking preferred to feeling: ENTJs tend to value objective criteria above personal preference. When making decisions, they generally give more weight to logic than to social considerations.

·         J – Judgment preferred to perception: ENTJs tend to plan their activities and make decisions early. They derive a sense of control through predictability, which to perceptive types may seem limiting. ENTJs often try to predict outcomes and plan accordingly

This model, and others like it, helps to remind me how different each of our needs and preferences can be. I plan to keep this in mind as I think about social business collaboration in the enterprise.

What do you think?