Online Educa Berlin 2008 workshop

1. The Three Bears
It’s not the technology
Excerpts from It’s Not About the Technology by Jay Cross

2. What’s in it for us?
• Speed up the flow of information through the organization
• Improve customer service
• Streamline workflow and slash bureaucracy
• Unleash the power of collective intelligence
• Create a nerve center for corporate news and market intelligence
• Make all corporate know-how accessible 24/7
• Recruit the best candidates for new positions and make them productive quickly
• Replace training classes with informal, hands-on learning
• Open the process of innovation to all employees
• Help workers build strong, supportive relationships
• Enable managers to assess the status and direction of projects
• Empower all employees to contribute ideas and feel part of the team
• Develop more productive relationships with customers, prospects, recruits, partners,
supply chain, and other employees

3. Baby Bear Mama Bear Papa Bear
Motivation Curiosity, immediate Opportunistic Leverage enterprise
need application assets
Focus Prototyping Applying Exploiting
Level Individual, team Group, department Enterprise
Benefits realized Capture Increase innovation, Nimble, quick-
organization-wide cut bureaucracy, response
knowledge and keep don’t reinvent the organization,
it alive, save time, wheel, simplify improve service
self-service project management
information, non-
controversial
projects
Sample project Coordinate supplier Google searching Knowledge
information across inside the firewall management that
co. works

4. It’s not about the technology.

5. Baby Bear
Enthusiast Prototype
Bottom-up,
Collaborative
local
Not Sound
controversial business case

6. Is the organization ready?
Not obsessively controlling
Willing to share ideas
Want to enable many voices
Workers are online
Can live with messiness

7. Social Pact
Respect the team
Be active
Share ideas & suggestions
Respect one another
Any tool that works
Trust one another

8. Hints on what works with social software
• Keep it simple
• Keep it flexible
• Do it yourself (blog/wiki) or you won’t understand it
• Be innovative, ever alert to productivity improvements
• Be open to new ways of doing things
• Release early and release often. Just do it
• Promotion is important. Remind people where to look
• Focus on the function rather than on the tools
• Provide step-by-step how-to guides
• Provide the opportunity to celebrate small successes
• Give people time to practice using the software

9. Mama Bear
Maintain
Pragmatic
momentum
Fearless (See list of
Seeks key targets on
business issues next slide)
Hungry for change

10. Mama Bear’s Shopping List:
Inefficiency & bureaucracy
Unenthusiastic, sluggish staff
Underdeveloped organization
Not learning enough to keep up
Suboptimal execution
Insufficient revenue
Deficient service

11. Poppa Bear
Exploit social
Collaboration
relationship software
framework
to the max
Customers,
suppliers, Enterprise
the market infrastructure