This afternoon's Enterprise 2.0 sessions in the main hall were two good bookends to success in collaboration.
First, Andrew McAfee moderated a panel, querying Art Fritzson, VP and Walton Smith, Senior Associate at Booz Allen in a terrific session on "The Secret Sauce of Enterprise 2.0 Success at Booz Allen Hamilton."
Walt presented the details of the Booz Allen Hamilton "Hello" community at the Boston E 2.0 conference in June. Walt and his community team have created a dynamic, engaged community that is widely adopted, actively used, and not only connects people day to day, but also functions as a rapid on-boarding platform for new employees.
But it was Art Fritzson that was especially impressive as a senior executive with exceptional insight into the value of collaboration. His daily remit is not Enterprise 2.0 per se (he runs the defense IT arm of their business), but he championed, participated, protected and engaged in this process.
As he stated, "this transformation has been about moving the conversations to an online environment," instead of keeping them fractured and siloed in email, document management and business process applications.
The success of adoption, according to Art, is not about generational issues, but about relevance and learned behaviour. While a younger generation of worker may be initially more fluent in the use of collaborative tools, any employee grasps the experience and the tools as soon as the relevance and usefulness is understood.
"Hello" , the collaborative environment at Booz Allen Hamilton, now exposes, captures, links, and fosters faster, more meaningful contributions and expertise into projects and relationships. And Walton pointed out, that their 360 interview process doesn't just include feedback from co-workers, clients and managers, but an assessment of what intellectual capital they are contributing back to the organization by their participation in the community.
But all good success stories also require that "bottom's up" champion; that E 2.0 pioneer that enlists, cajoles, pushes, inspires, reassures, in short does 120 laps around the company to get everyone on board with the project of changing a company to a community.
Three years ago, I was at Enterprise 2.0 when Andrew McAfee call for more user experiences and case studies. There were lots of technologies to talk about and companies to present them, but only a smattering of real users.
Today's Evangelist of the Year award was a wonderful step forward, acknowledging the tremendous efforts it takes not only to implement new technologies, but the unique qualities it takes to change a culture. The inaugural winner of this year is Claire Flanagan of CSC, who championed and led a successful company wide effort that yielded broad adoption across the entire company.
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