Culture Change - harder than you think

Over the past 6 months I have been on a journey to change how my organization and 2 partner organizations work. 400+ people. What is that change? Changing from a project/program orientation to being organized into products (just like many other organizations are considering). One of the questions I get often is, is this just a fad or is this really something that is going to stick?  My answer?  It is all up to the people that are part of the change to ensure it sticks.

Changing a culture of an organization is difficult and while not all culture change initiatives are made of the same size, this one is a big culture change making it even more challenging. There are several factors going against the ability for this change to stay for the long term.  First is the pure size of the organization, second is the change spans 3 separate departments across business and IT and the third is ensuring that not just the organization changes its approach but ensuring the people that are dependent on the organization understand the change and learn the new modes of engagement.

The changes are not done but it is time to document many of the steps taken to accomplish this transformation. My goal is to share as many of the issues and approaches taken over the past 6 months as we prepared and started the transformation.  I will also be sharing many of the things we continue to do and provide updates on the progress, since a culture change like this doesn't just finish in 6 months, but is really a multi-year endeavor. 

Winning

Gettysburg Day 1 Battlefield
Photo by Eric Ziegler

The question that I have heard several times is, how do I know that I am successful, or asked in a different way, how do you know that you have won? This question is particularly intriguing to me.  If you only look at the surface, the answer can appear quite easy to answer.  I win when I beat the other team.  I win when I am faster than other people.  I win when I have completed the task that was requested of me. But if you dig deeper than just giving a surface level answer, you can learn much more about yourself and learn more about what drives you.

I work in IT and provide tools and technologies to the entire enterprise.  I am responsible for delivering these tools and technologies to people in the globally.  At the surface, I can declare success or that I have won by stating that I implemented the technology and tool.  But that is much too easy of an answer, and while I could be happy, in the long run, I know that if I just deliver the tools and technologies I really have not won, and I am not as happy as I could be.

Success in my job is about delivering the tools and technologies but is much deeper than that. It includes helping people learn how to use the tools and technologies to enhance how they do their job.  I am successful when I am able to talk with business areas, listen to what they do today and provide ideas on how they could use a technology to improve how they work.  I am successful when a business area uses the technology and incorporates it into their business processes.   I win when a business area uses a technology and they are much more effective in working with each other and their customers / clients.

The definition of success changes with each implementation.  A win from implementing one tool looks completely different than a win when implementing another technology.  The one constant between each implementation? Success is much deeper than just what is at the surface.  Success and winning only really occurs when you have thought through why you are doing the implementation.  If success is defined without the full picture, than almost guaranteed something is being left on the table and a win didn't actually occur. 

How do you define success?  What does winning look like to you?

Who is correct?

Image by : Eric Ziegler

I recently read two very interesting blog posts.  They are interesting because they were both posted on the same day, and from what I can tell, they both were posted within hours of each other.  The are interesting because they take the opposite side to the debate.    And no, I am not talking about the U.S. Presidential race.   So what am I talking about?

Jacob Morgan and Steve Dale both had posts about collaboration on October 25th.  Jacob's post, Can You Create a Collaborative Organization Without Technology?, discusses the topic of how collaboration would not be possible without technology.  Steve's post, Social Collaboration: it’s the people not the technology, stupid! discusses the topic of how collaboration is about the people and not the tool.

Jacob states, "Is it possible to change behaviors or to build a collaborative organization without technology?  Think about that for a moment before you answer."  Steve states, "But regardless of what labels we give to the technology, the one constant feature is the people, i.e. the staff, the workers, the users."   At first glance, especially when looking at the titles and reading those quotes, you would think that if Jacob and Steve ended up in a back alley, a fight would break out.  Both appear to be on the opposite side of the debate.  So if they are on the opposite sides of the debate, which side is correct?

At this point of the blog, I want to make it clear that I believe both are correct. In addition, if you were to ask either of them, I think they would agree with each other, at least to some extent.  Why do I say that?  If technology was not available, collaboration would be possible, but the amount of collaboration would be less.  Technology enables collaboration.  But, technology does not make people collaborate.  As Steve says, build it and they will come mentality will fail.   I AGREE!   But, as Jacob states,  it is very important to enable the behavior or cultural change needed for employees to collaborate better in an enterprise.  Especially within larger organizations.

So what do you think?  Which is comes first, the culture change or the technology?  The good ole, chicken and egg question.

Enterprise Search Failure

Image by: Phillie Casablanca - link)

How often do you hear someone say, "why doesn't our enterprise search work as well as Google search? Bing?" or "Why can't I find the content I want  to find." or "I can't believe our search engine sucks." or "Our enterprise has a very small fraction of the content that Google searches and I still can't find the content I am looking for." or "FIX IT!".

Fix it sounds so easy, but it isn't that easy.  Internet search is dramatically different than enterprise search.  While there are many technical  differences, the biggest difference is not technical by behavioural.  People creating content in the internet are creating the content with the hope that others will find it.  These people, creating content on the internet, have personal incentives (marketing, personal brand, selling a product) to have other people find the content they are creating.  They use many different techniques to improve the finability of their content.  So, what techniques do they use to improve their content?

They tag their content, they use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) sites to improve their content for search engines.  They use social media to  market their material, which also improves the findability of their content.  The more references to their content, the more likely the content will  show up in a search result.  By using social media, people are attempting to garner a loyal following that promotes their content (think free advertising).  And if they can use social media to have their content cross linked and promoted by other people, the chances that more people (directly connections and indirect connections) are going to see their content, which in the end is exactly what they are attempting to do.

Let's contrast this with what happens in the enterprise.  In the enterprise, employees create content typically for a specific group of people, not  intending for the content to be found.  In many cases, employees are not creating content to be shared. (There are exceptions but those are for  specific groups setup to share corporate information, such as a corporate communications teams).  In contrast, the vast majority of the enterprise is creating documents and information and not thinking about how the information could be found or discovered. They are not sharing and there are no  incentives (personal or corporate) to share the information.  In many organizations the tools the employees use to create content and store the content is not even setup to allow for the content to be easily found.  Enterprise search engines often are not even searching the repository where the content is stored.  While the technical connections are not available, the employee is not helping the rest of the company to find their content either.  For example, when the employee wants to let someone else know about their content, what tool do they first turn to?  eMail.  If you are lucky they send a link to the content.  If not, they send the attachment in the email.  The only people that benefit from the later is the sender and the recipient.  In addition, in both scenarios, search engines don't learn and improve relevancy when eMail is used.

What are some ideas on how to improve the search results in the enterprise?   Incorporating social media techniques into the enterprise is one method of improving search results in the enterprise.   By providing a platform for people to collaborate, share, and to tout what they are working on is just one step in improving search results.   If an employee can use these tools and the search engine can learn from the enterprise social media interactions, the search results will improve.  By providing these hooks, such as tagging of content, cross linking of the content, and getting more people to interact with each each other and with communities will improve the search results, much the same way social media improves the search results in the internet.

But that is not the biggest thing that needs to occur.  While a technology can be put in place to allow people to interact, interactions don't occur because of the technology.  Companies have to change their culture;  companies have to get their employees to think from a sharing perspective. They have to create information and documents with the realization that others can find it and learn from it.  Companies need to find the incentive for the employees to partipate and be active and to share.