May 2nd, 2009
Visceral Experiences
There’s a world of difference between watching the amazing in-car footage from this race car during April’s Portugal World Rally Championship event and actually experiencing it.
Driver Jari Matti-Latvala and navigator Miikka Anttila plunge their BP Ford Focus RS off the road near the end of this footage of the Portugal World Rally Championship event last month, after an amazingly visceral run over switch back roads with sheer drops on either side.
Following on from my previous two posts about ediscovery and IT security, I’d like to draw an analogy with the footage above and Enterprise 2.0.
Experiential
Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and Collaboration networks are highly experiential: you can talk about the theory of how the processes and associated technologies might benefit your business, hire analysts to tell you their view of the evolving ecosphere etc, but nothing beats actual hands on experience.
The pent up pressure created by individuals experiencing the power of Web 2.0 applications in their personal lives is creating pressure on business to provide similar tools at work.
The World Rally Championship team analogy is this: the driver is reacting to instruction from his navigator, who is reading - in conditions like a small boat in a violent storm - detailed previously prepared course notes.
The Ford racing car had been built and set up by a Formula 1 team sized group of experts who travel the world with the car to react perfectly to navigator Miikka Anttila’s detailed instructions on speed, surface conditions and corner velocity.
Teamwork
The well oiled team analogy is done to death in corporate advertising - thinking beyond this, visualize the Enterprise 2.0 collaborative network as the car the team have crafted and the users as the driver /navigator team.
Arriving at work on a Monday morning somewhere on the planet you need access to the unstructured information that powers you through the day.
The back office enterprise class systems are the backbone, but contextual information in the moment is what is going to save you time, get you through the day and make you look good.
Our lives can seem like the intense rush over the rough roads in the above video, but there’s a world of difference between relishing the challenge and being well prepared, and feeling exposed and unsupported.
That’s the real time effect of collaboration networks on employees and teams. When everyone experiences participation in a well thought through collaborative environment on a team, the synergies and connections overpower the petty rivalries and fiefdoms.
Ford are competing at a world level with other manufacturers in the World Rally Championship: while this stage didn’t end well (Latvala and Anttila were both unhurt), they are one of the most competitive teams, winning in Argentina at the end of April and competing next in Italy.
Working as a team and flexibly reacting to well organized information as it emerges is a key to competitiveness, but so is showing up and participating.
Oliver Marks provides seasoned independent consulting guidance to companies on the effective planning of 'Enterprise 2.0' strategy, tactics, technology decisions and roll out. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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