The Workplace Blog

CIO magazine recently had a great article around service oriented architectures (soa) the truth about soa. It started off pointing out that 36 percent of IT departments “can’t keep up”.

SOA is a great way to expose just the functionality needed to complete the business task and help keep up with business requests. It allows for enterprise style mashups and enables companies to extend the reach of existing investments like SAP and Seibel.

While the ws-* standards (sometimes referred to as ws-deathstar) are trying to pave the way, they may end up following the same fate as ejbs and corba. We are seeing consumer sites move much more quickly using simpler approaches like rest or pox calls. Of course consumer sites don’t have the same sso requirements and challenges, but they do move fast.

Knowledge Management is most certainly not just an information problem. It is a social issue covering people and processes as much as it covers information. In fact, it more a social issue than anything else. In a thought provoking paper, Thomas Erickson explains that as a social prolem it involves people, relationships and social factors like trust, obligation, commitment and accountability.

I couldn’t agree more. And it is no surprise that enterprise collaboration companies like Social Text and Traction that emphasize the social issues are succeeding the most these days.The most important question is whether organizations are ready to address the social issues. Most aren’t and instead expect the technology or the governance to solve their knowledge management questions. They also leave it to the technology departmernts to solve without getting the business units directly involved. No wonder the KM initiatives fail so often.

It’s official now that podcasting is gaining popularity in America. Nielsen//NetRatings announced today that 6.6 percent of the U.S adult online population or 9.2 million web users, have recently downloaded an audio podcast. 4.0% or 5.6 million web users have downloaded a video podcast. These figures show that podcasting is on par with those who publish blogs and online daters.

It’s obvious that podcasting is getting more attention. Just visit any major news outlet’s website to get a sense of that. The question is whether podcasting will get an enthusiastic reception within the enterprise or not. For many, it is just another fad - a nifty way to deliver corporate announcements and basic training information. Some employees also aren’t too excited about having to listen to their CEO speak while they drive into work each morning. Are these employees in the minority or the majority? You tell us.

A couple of interesting reports have been added to the Avenue A | Razorfish Points of View section. Stephen Turbek discusses interaction design tactics that can make for better financial services web applications. Naveen Gunti delves into re-engineering legacy applications while Ajay Lodha discussed information security. You will need Acrobat Reader to view these reports.

A few days ago Google launched its much awaited e-commerce mini-app called Google Checkout (formerly known in the blogosphere are GBuy). Google Checkout is an online payment processing service aimed at centralizing payment and order tracking. The business model is as powerful as it is simple:

1. Entice users to use Google Checkout by giving them one-stop payment processing and order tracking and providing fraud protection.

2. Entice merchants to use Google Checkout by alleviating the need to maintain complex payment and shipment tracking modules and deeply discount advertising via Google.

3. Cash in on micro-payments – .20 per transaction and 2% purchase price.

Contrary to early reports that Google Checkout was going to be a PayPal killer, it does not offer person to person transaction processing (yet) and (so far) appears to be cast in a different light. PayPal focuses on internet based money transfers. Google Checkout seems to focus less on transferring money than enabling payment. Why is this nuance such a big deal? Google is already offering deals to businesses using AdWords and partnering with heavy hitters (like CitiGroup). If Google places analytics around linking AdWords and Google Checkout, then it has created a veritable golden egg of conversion tracking tools.

Another interesting aspect to Google Checkout is the fact that it is an auxiliary application. Just as Web 2.0 saw the maturing of web-based software and software as a service, Web 3.0 or Next Net (as Ray Valez called it the other day) likely will see the burgeoning of plug-and-play mini-apps.

In any case, it will be interesting to watch what happens as Google Checkout evolves gains traction in the marketplace. Here’s the buzz so far…

Google Checkout Checks In

Google Aims to Speed the Online Checkout Line

Find it with Google. Buy it with Google Checkout

While design thinking and user-centered design have gained all-around prominence, implementation is always of interest, since that’s where “the rubber meets the road”. What we believe and what we do converge within the enterprise workplace. In an interview, Sam Lucente, HP’s vice president of design, described an all-too-common syndrome, 3 years ago, of siloed innovations within its design practice–ironic given its brand (“invent”).

As part of HP’s transition towards creating “common design signature elements” across its offerings, it pooled together talents from within its design practice. In a period of 3 years, Lucente developed an enterprise workplace where 200+ employees built on and collaborated with each other’s discoveries. Each of HP’s product lines began to emerge with consistency. This was evidenced as HP integrated its product lines and created a common feel across platforms (i.e. from its digital camera to its printer to its online photo service website). In its software division, it consolidated its 47 help menus within its management software into a single help menu. Its user-centric efforts were reflected in the development of its “Q navigation control system”; this came out of an ethnographic study conducted by observing how users around the world interact with their electronic devices.

This brief vignette, like Shell’s transformation (mentioned in a previous post) begs the question of implementation. How can we ensure organizational fitness towards collaboration in the workplace? 30,000 respondents from over 100 countries to a survey launched in December 2003 resulted in a promising model that identified 4 tangible elements that define an organization’s culture. Booz Allen Hamilton’s Organizational DNA model posits that the effectiveness of an enterprise workplace can be assessed with these 4 inseparable elements: Decision Rights, Motivators, Information and Structure.

Decision Rights have to do with “Who makes the call?” and “How does it really happen?”

Motivators have to do with “What makes people tick? What incentives are in play? What career alternatives do people have? How are people influenced by the past?”

Information has to do with “How are activities coordinated? How is knowledge transferred? How is performance measured?”

Structure has to do with “How does this place really run?”

Visit their site to take their survey and read their results, like how most organizations are unhealthy by a margin of nearly 2-to-1, how all industries show significant signs of organizational dysfunction, and how results compare across industries. A detailed report with a graphical depiction of the Seven Cultural Patterns is also included.

An earlier post introduced Eric Beinhocker’s new book, The Origin of Wealth, and the concept of Complexity Economics. Far from being a theory, the concept is presented in the book as a consortium of sorts; the author calls it a work-in-progress of a system of hypotheses and discussions. Undoubtedly, this dynamicism will continue to evolve as we wrestle with new ways to consider how it will affect strategy, organization and business applications in different contexts. Having just finished the first section of this work, I have so far found just the opposite of what a reviewer from Publishers Weekly concluded: Namely, that the author presents Complexity Economics as a panacea for political and social ills.

While Beinhocker questions the assumptions of traditional economics, he grounds his views on a growing school of thought that views the business context as an evolving and organic reality. This premise reminds me of a helpful case on Shell’s advertising activity. This paper (written by Dr. Verity of Cranfield School of Management) attributes Shell’s success in transforming its global business coordination and its communication and branding activities to its dynamic capability, the processes and routines within an organization adopted to bring about change. Especially valuable is the real-life perspective the paper provides throughout the transition process.

If competitive advantage is to move from the safe harbors of theory into the unpredictable waves of reality, organizational reflexes must be in place as it develops, adopts and implements new technology solutions to their everyday operations. Perhaps Shell’s transformation might provide just the right jumping off point for your organization.

In The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics, Eric D. Beinhocker argues that the traditional view of economics as a static, equilibrium-balanced system is going through a radical rethinking involving a multitude of disciplines. The new spin is “complexity economics,” in which the economy is a highly dynamic and constantly evolving system that is all but impossible to predict. Given such radical dynamism, how can companies set strategy? Beinhocker proposes viewing strategy as not singular or unified but rather a portfolio of experiments. He writes:

“The key to doing better is to “bring evolution inside” and get the wheels of differentiation, selection, and amplification spinning within a company’s four walls. Rather than thinking of strategy as a single plan built on predictions of the future, we should think of strategy as a portfolio of experiments, a population of competing Business Plans that evolves over time.”

An excerpt printed in Harvard Business School’s “Working Knowledge” newsletter details how Bill Gates’ and team pursued six competing strategies in 1987 thereby enabling Microsoft to rise to dominance.

What I find compelling about this mode of thinking is its emphasis on preparedness. By preparing for multiple scenarios, businesses can be more agile within an increasingly complex and dynamic marketplace and hence remain competitive. A major step toward facilitating the preparedness and agility necessary to practice a portfolio approach to business strategy is making knowledge management a top priority. For further insights, download “The New Knowledge Management Imperative: User Centered, Focused, and Organic” and find out why Avenue A | Razorfish was named one of KMWorld’s 100 Companies That Matter In Knowledge Management.