Michael Idinopulos of Socialtext has a thoughtful reflection on the Enterprise 2.0 conference, The End of the Culture 2.0 Crusade?. There are also some good comments following the post that challenge what Michael is saying.
Last week, the Enterprise 2.0 world turned a corner. Nobody pounded the table for cultural change. Nobody talked about incentives or change management. Nobody talked about transparency or modeling collaborative behavior.
Instead, people talked about process.
This discussion is interesting and I think it's a useful connector between the process-centric world and the world of people who suggest that "Enterprise 2.0" software is all about changing the culture of the enterprise.
In my mind it is about both. If there are no processes around collaboration, those need to get set up and built with the organization. And if the organization doesn't encourage or promote collaboration (or sharing or your favorite keyword for "culture"), then the implementation effort is going to have to do more with creating the circumstances for the right culture to emerge from the system.
My approach has been heavy on the "culture" side of things because the other side seems to be so heavy on the technology side: just install it, and everyone will see how great it is. Of course, the process element makes a lot of sense too. In fact, my company focuses on both People and Process (with the other "P" being Profits). We believe very strongly that the process won't work without the people. But the other side of that is that people need a path to follow, without which they'd go back to what they've always known.
[Photo: "Three tips for escaping the creativity peloton without giving up on collaboration" by opensourceway]