This is the next in a series of posts which present different views on the state of Social Business in the UK from a video interview series compiled by our friends at Kongress Media. Around our #e20s Meetup sessions Bjoern Negelmann asked well known consultants, practitioners and thought leaders in this space where we are with digital and social collaboration compared to the rest of Europe and elsewhere.
Here is Lee Bryant. Lee was one of the pioneers of using social tools inside the enterprise in the UK, starting Headshift way back in 2002, well before people were talking social business consultancy or digital transformation. Over the years we’ve supported each other’s events from London Wiki Wednesdays to SOMESSO (which used to be a conference) to the Dachis Business Summit. Headshift was acquired by Dachis Group in 2009, became Dachis Group London, but then Lee and Livio Hughes rebooted with Postshift, a foundry for new business structures, a consultancy and a place for learning in 2013. Lee will be contributing and running a workshop session at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit London.
Watch the video, but here are some highlights:
in an interesting place
a lot of companies have gone through the phase of building a platform or putting a platform in place and beginning to see a little spike of collaboration and sharing
many of them have got to the point where they’re asking what that’s for and maybe in some cases lost a little bit of purpose and so they’re starting to ask questions about organizational transformation and what comes next, you know how do we make this more business relevant?
many of these projects began with CIOs or IT departments, but I think now they’re being owned more by the organisation so we are seeing more communications leads, more HR leads, more knowledge leads
and also executives, which is the really important thing, are starting to take over these projects and to try and define their purpose for the future
interesting times!
gone past the initial excitement, just beginning the next phase which is about what is the impact on the organisation, how does this really improve the business, and how does this change the way we’re organised and structure?
people are tempted to link them to business objectives
but we are zooming out now to look at the wider impact on the organisation and that’s what makes it really interesting… …in terms of business purpose
OD and HR are starting to understand they have some some skills and some experience that could really help push this forward, but I think it’s still in the realm of enlightened executives
where we are seeing real change, it’s enlightened leaders who are leading that
digital transformation is probably the overall goal
you need a base of a more socially connected organisation on the inside
If you want to find out more and about what works, what doesn’t and what next then take a look at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit London on November 26. Lee will be on an expert panel and running a workshop session called “Building the next generation organizational chart”. More information here.
More #e20s state of UK social business interviews in the series here.