The Third Estate

Consultants as Change-Agents

Several things come up when one discusses ‘Enterprise 2.0′ consulting. While it seems to be the phrase of the day, any good management consultant will tell you that this is what we have been doing all along. Helping organizations to build internal / external communities of practice, driving at solutions, and of course empowering employees and customers to help move the organization forward is nothing new. However, with the preponderance of inexpensive and easily implemented collaborative and ‘hive-think’ Web 2.0 tools, there has been a shift in how this type of consulting can be delivered and a lower barrier to entry for many organizations who haven’t been able to afford the luxury of out-side consultants / change-agents and the higher end tools that come with them.

There is no shortage of creativity within organizations and the communities they interact with, and the ‘Enterprise 2.0’ tools will help to expose that, however, there is a shortage of people who can take those ideas and convert them into an operating reality. This is where the management consultants earn their fees – putting into place the structure to execute on the creative solutions, and then shepherding the process from conception to implementation to monetization to sustainability [rinse and repeat].

Any organization planning on undertaking any ‘Enterprise 2.0’ effort must be wary that they avoid many of the issues we saw in the mid-to-late 90′s where companies thought that just by purchasing and implementing a particular software tool, it would solve whatever issue they were trying to overcome [e.g. CRM software on its own didn't increase customer satisfaction]. As the whole ‘Enterprise 2.0′ phase evolves in the next few years, it is my hope that we will see a shift — from just hoping that a tool will create transparency, break down silos, cause conversations to spontaneously happen — back to a more practical approach that leverages the new tools to implement solutions that are measurable and follow the best practices that have been around before there was such a thing as ‘Enterprise 2.0′.

With that being said, we are seeing successful innovations around ‘Enterprise 2.0′ that borrow from AGILE / SCRUM software development practices. “The AGILE Enterprise” – It is not a software development approach, but it is the way organizations interact internally and externally, emphasizing the core tenets of AGILE Software Development:

For a good case study to see ‘Agile Enterprise’ in action, take a look at what my team was able to accomplish at BusinessWeek while developing their social media offering called the BusinessExchange [BX]. We created an new delivery organization, utilizing ‘Enterprise 2.0’ tools to collaborate, employed Agile in software development practices, and extended Agile to all parts of the BX delivery and management operations. This effort created a noticeable shift in the way business as usual was practiced and was recognized as a model for successful projects within the larger parent organization going forward. And yes, complete with metrics and best practices.

Through the practical use of ‘Enterprise 2.0’ tools, and by taking a more Agile approach within the organization [includes shifts in delivery of services / projects and corporate mentality], and sticking to the fundamentals of good management consulting, ‘Enterprise 2.0’ can avoid the “software is the solution”, and become a successful change agent for organizations willing to embrace a new, transformative, way of doing business.