As the talk in last week’s videocast interview between Robert Scoble and Jackie Bassett
progressed, it turned inevitably to the subject of blogging, social
media, Web 2.0 – as all enterprise technology discussions must turn
nowadays.
Jackie said that at her latest CEO conference in October, out of all the subjects
under discussion, 56 CEOs were most interested in the matter of
blogging. As she pointed out, most CEOs have nothing to hide and
would do well to be public bloggers. But they’re still trying to
grasp how to do this and what the payoff is.
This is where IT can help, by showing the way and
deploying the technology to make it easy. As Bassett says, the
CIO and CEO can converge at their lowest behavioral delta in
agreeing that the social media allow the enterprise to see the two
things the CEO cares about:
what’s the next big thing; where are the new customers going to
come from?
We’ve suggested this ourselves many times, elaborating
the concept that IT is best suited to lead the company simply
because it has a handle on technology, and all communication and
knowledge is technology-platformed now. Our point is that software
is revolutionary, and can change not only IT culture but CEO (and CFO and CMO) culture
as well:
“While Nicholas Carr asks the question, Does IT Matter?, and as the IT department
is encouraged to operate IT like a business, the possibility
remains that the most beneficial tools for change that the
executive and management layers could receive, will be handed to
them as gifts by their own IT people.” – Revolution – the Software Heard Round the World
We also said:
“It may even be in some cases that IT is the only force
capable of breaking through dysfunctions in the executive layer,
and giving the enterprise a future.” – IT
as Enterprise Change Agent
Enough about us. Except to say that in minute 28 of the
videocast Jackie mentioned how she and Dovetail Software first
became acquainted, because we blogged about an article she
wrote.
Connections abound in the Web 2.0 tools, and none of
this is new to Robert Scoble, busy talking up his social media
starfish to corporations.
It takes some risk and faith to deploy the new social
networking tools, allowed Scoble, but as Bassett reminded us, CEOs
swim in the waters of risk continuously. They’re not afraid of
risk, they know this is where the reward is. Their problem is how
to calculate risk and return in technology projects – it comes back
to the CIO again, and
remembering to address the CEO
concerns.
And what about innovation? Bassett and Scoble discussed
if a larger, older company is even capable of seeing the new small
things. Scoble recounted the frustration of trying to convince your
company to innovate in specific ways.
Bassett rejoined that in the very large picture there
usually is a logic to the conservatism of the enterprise: in cold
analysis, the new thing may simply not belong on the balance sheet
yet. This is why companies acquire startups, buying their
innovation once its bootstrapping phase is done.
Scoble likes to see internal innovation however, and
clearly believes the large enterprise is capable of it. We’ve
addressed this ourselves, maintaining that collaboration leads to
innovation, and collaboration comes from communication, enabled,
once again, by IT.
“A culture of collaboration beats a full set of
Enterprise 2.0 software tools hands down, and fortunately one tends
to beget the other, because it will take both things working
together to spell survival for the modern corporation.” – Collaboration Culture and Tools
So while Jackie Bassett says that enterprise blindness
to the small yet obvious gives the rest of us a chance, Scoble
wishes the corporations could actually do better in this regard.
Many of the answers coming from this remarkable videocast are that
the CIO, rather than the CEO, is the one who can actually make
the biggest difference here.
The videocast, Consulting Managers with Jackie Bassett, is 45 minutes
long, and downloadable as well as viewable online.
We recommend you spend the time to listen to it at
least once. What’s clear is that the opportunities are abundant –
and the time was never better – for IT and the
CIO to excel and take their necessary place at the
leadership table of the modern enterprise.
