Social in the Enterprise

 communication, enterprise architecture, social media  No Responses »
Jan 292012
 

JP Ranganswami posted an article that resonated with the work I am doing on my MSc as well as some thinking about social enterprise in my day job.  Please take the time to read JP’s post Thinking about the Social Enterprise and Flow, it will definitely stimulate and challenge your thinking about how people and companies conduct business.

Here is the main paragraph from JP’s post :

The theme was simple. What causes friction between companies in a market? How can that friction be reduced or removed altogether? What can be done with the resources that are freed up by removal of the friction? It may sound boring to many of you, but I enjoyed thinking about it and talking to friends and colleagues about it. Most of the time, in a post-trade world, frictions are caused by “reference data” mismatches: names, addresses, that sort of thing. Low-volatility data are incredibly important in capital markets; vast sums of money are spent in seeking to keep them accurate and up-to-date; and yet errors related to such data continue to be immense sources of friction within that trading environment.

Here is my comment back to JP:

JP, thanks for another outstanding post. The timing for me is particularly good. I am taking an Enterprise Social Media course as part of my MSc in Information Management at Syracuse University. The course is taught by Dr Anthony Rotolo (@rotolo). I just completed reading a book by @chrisbrogan and @julien smith called Trust Agents. They proposed similar themes to yours about friction, community, trust. While the book doesn’t speak specifically about “flow” the proposed characteristics would generate it:

1. Make your own game – pick something and do it well
2. Be one of us – join or create a community
3. The Archimedes Effect – leverage your environment
4. Agent Zero – be at the centre of wide networks
5. Human Artist – be genuine with people
6. Build an Army – empower others to take up the work

Some of my thinking about social business/enterprises puts the actors at the centre instead of the policies and processes. Perhaps your focus on company pairs can take a similar approach. If we have companies (this is really simplified) be more open and tell a community about what they are doing and perhaps need then matches may be found with other companies who are equally social. Finding the medium to do this and changing corporate culture seem to be the big challenges.

Thanks again for the inspiration and pushing all our boundaries. Leo

JP replied with:  Read more...

Full Disclosure, A Favourited Tweet Does Not Mean I Read It … Yet

 education, personal  No Responses »
Jan 202012
 

As many of you know, I am a huge fan of Twitter.

Twitter provides the medium for my tailored news source (I find out about world events on Twitter faster than any of the regular news outlets), my 24×7 global support base (see my post The Evolution of My Global Network) and my notetaker (this attempt failed as it was too verbose for a Twitter feed).  Finally, Twitter is a deep mine of refined precious metal harvested by the brilliant people I follow.  Here are a few examples of posts I wrote because of Twitter:

All of these posts were triggered by a tweet that I read or a tweet to me about a topic that made me think and then share something with all of you.  Powerful stuff for me and hopefully for you too!

I have been getting @replies and mentions for favouriting certain tweets.  Twitter recently enabled a notification to the original tweeter if someone favourites a tweet they posted.

In the interest of full transparency to those who thank me, I have a confession.   Just because I favourited your tweet does not always mean that I have read the link in your tweet.

I have taken to spending 15 minutes each morning scanning my Twitter feed (mostly to see what went on in the world while I was asleep in Vancouver) and look for interesting tweets (usually ones with links to articles).   I favourite them (my Twitter bookmarking method) so that I can look at them at a later date.  I do most of this scanning on my Blackberry Mobile Twitter app.

One ask I would have is if you have a website, think about huge shift to the mobile world and enable a mobile theme please!  I would be more inclined to browse to the link and read it if the content presented was for a mobile experience (especially now that I am getting middle aged eyes!).

So, it is really me who needs to thank all of you for sharing all the great content.  Keep tweeting and sharing because I for one, am listening and learning from you!   Thank you!

Enterprise Architecture in Higher Education – Yes!

 education, enterprise architecture, higher education  2 Responses »
Jan 152012
 

Adrian Grigoriu wrote an article in eBizq titled Enterprise Architecture in Higher Education in Nov 2011 – http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/ea_matters/2011/11/enterprise-architecture-and-higher-education.php.  I have been meaning to write a supportive post to Adrian and finally have time.  In a nutshell, I agree and Adrian’s makes 3 excellent points for why Enterprise Architecture should be taught.  Adrian’s short article is worth the read and there is an extensive discussion on LinkedIn about this topic here.

What EA could bring to the MBA:

1. EA may offer generic models or typical architectures for the enterprise. EA comes with the Capability map concept which unfortunately is not standardised or mature enough to be employed yet.

2. May provide the framework that links and integrates all the tiers of the Enterprise together: business process, technology and organization. That is a “true” EA framework. Currently there are a few meta-models that are an expression of the framework rather than the framework itself.

3. Last but not least, EA would provide the method of implementing the target enterprise state in alignment to strategy. Existing EA methods propose various processes to do exactly that.

Over the past month, I had the opportunity to build a new one week module on Enterprise Architecture for a 13 week Technology Management course.  The course is targeted at business management students and I ran into exactly what Adrian pointed out:

The EA concept should be taught in any business study. Unfortunately the body of knowledge is too fragmented and incomplete right now to arm the student with a method that delivers results.

I reached out to my Enterprise Architect community on Twitter.   My request for guidance started a great Twitter conversation with Nick Malik, Richard Veryard, Martin Howitt and Aleks Buterman about the approach to constructing the module and the elements that should be included.  Many thanks to these esteemed Enterprise Architects.  I continue to marvel that I am able to connect with all of you with the power of technology and Twitter in particular.

Here are a few choice tweets:

@richardveryard : @leodesousa @nickmalik Do you want your students to passively consume #entarch services or to collaborate effectively with #entarch experts?

@richardveryard : @nickmalik ‘s solution to @leodesousa ‘s requirement assumes the goal is to appreciate the difference between #entarch and its absence.

@nickmalik : @richardveryard @leodesousa Yes, as foundation. Build understanding as first step to empower collaboration between biz and #entarch

@aleksb6 : @leodesousa @richardveryard @nickmalik I’m trying to cope with the idea that #value of a #planned approach needs to be explained. #entarch

@richardveryard :  @leodesousa @nickmalik my idea of a learning objective is that the students learn to do something, not that they are persuaded of something.  Read more...

 Older Entries

Switch to our mobile site