In a recent (March 10, 2010) guest post on TechCrunch forwarded to me yesterday, The Facebook Imperative Cannot Be Stopped, Salesforce.com‘s Marc Benioff addresses the "ruckus across the blogosphere" created by an earlier post titled, The Facebook Imperative. In light of the recent conversation going back and forth between the PapercutPM, our blog, and others in the #pmot universe, I thought it was particularly interesting.
"Why isn’t all enterprise software like Facebook?" asks Benioff.
"Energized" by what he sees as the next generation of collaboration software, he continues, "There are an overwhelming number of you who agree that it’s time to transform the business conversation the same way Facebook has changed the consumer conversation."
Does that apply to project management software and the way project teams collaborate? I certainly believe it does. However, I think it’s less about the particular medium and more about what it is within the medium that fosters the dialog.
In a comment on yesterday’s post, Derek Huether of The Critical Path blog wrote, "Top down communication is being replaced by direct communication, regardless of the organizational structure. It doesn’t matter if you are using Facebook, Twitter, or some other new media communication tool. Just have the conversation! Increasing the communication pathways to discuss a project will increase the probability of success. We all want that, right?"
Benioff says, "I consider Facebook and Twitter—and the ability to tap into my network of friends and followers—one of the most productive ways I can start my day. Using these new Internet phenoms, I’ve tested new ad campaigns and elicited great customer responses, promoted my book to a large audience of people who cared, and with the help of my network, even named new products—all before I sat down for breakfast."
Anyone involved in project based work who works with a team, can hopefully see the value this type of collaboration and networking could deliver to a project.
Describing how his organization is using Salesforce Chatter, Benioff argues, "I have learned more about my own company in the last three days using Salesforce Chatter than I have in the last three years. The awareness I have today of what is happening with our employees, our customers, our products, our customer service escalations, and even the deals we are closing is spectacular. Social computing for the enterprise is about seeing what matters to your company, what is happening with your products, and among your people. It’s about the information you need to make decisions finding you."
I believe Benioff is talking about the same type of paradigm shift we discussed yesterday. Project management software companies who are looking at social media and working to incorporate ‘what it is in Facebook and Twitter’ that fosters communication will be successful at creating the next generation of project management tools.
"Facebook and Twitter have shown us the way," says Benioff, "…not everyone has to get it yet, but eventually they all will. As they say: Shift happens."
Hi Ty, love reading your blog, though (I must admit) I’m quite skeptic about this whole social media thing that you and others are trying to promote. My objection is not emotional but is rather based on my organizational experience and the extensive research of studies and reports dealing with the social media evolution. In terms of this article, having been operating in an environments where IM has been widely available and used (more specifically tools like Microsoft Messenger and Microsoft Communicator) I can attest to the fact that although (as you suggest) it enabled direct and uninterrupted communication between individuals and groups, it also culminated in constant interruptions to people’s work and resulted in the symptoms you would normally identify in heavily multi-tasking based environment. The net effect of constantly being involved in IM activities (as the socially acceptable thing to do) resulted in activities taking longer (similar to cases where people were assigned with a number of tasks simultaneously – the results of which are well understood and documented). Extending the communication possibilities by the introduction of easy to use collaboration and communication tools (similar to Twitter and Facebook) are an interesting concept, but I suspect that most proponents of this technology fail to see the basic impact they these would have, as people waste their productive time on wasteful chatter, instead of attending to the real productive tasks for which they were been employed. What do you think?
Shim, I’m glad you like the blog. I can appreciate your skepticism. I’m not suggesting that we use any particular medium to encourage the collaboration and communication we’re talking about_��it’s not the medium. However, there is something to the social media that makes it easy for people to communicate. I’m suggesting that we investigate what that is and incorporate it into the way we talk about projects. The failure of the medium that you describe is why this is such a sticky topic for some. I think we need to look beyond any particular tool and consider how people communicate with each other within the medium. Thanks for your contribution to the discussion.
I did laugh at the quote, “Why isn’t all enterprise software like Facebook?” I thought of a few reasons. Because enterprises: * Value security * Do not want to promote spam or spam-like messages * Cannot make money (legally) in Ponzi-scheme-like systems * Because there can only be one “Facebook” Facebook is not the ultimate answer, nor is any social media system. They are great tools, but the whole world cannot offer social media services. They are a natural monopoly, because the network grows in value as the number of participants grow. I have seen LinkedIn and Facebook take over on-line communities that used to exist in forums, Usenet, mailing lists, and other, older collaboration technologies. “Social media” is not nearly as new as people think. Usenet existed before the web, and the concept of “on-line reputation” certainly dates back to Usenet. What is new is the critical mass of people using these services. We can get more useful information from social media because so many educated and informed people are using it. I do think that there will be a “social media crash” at some point soon, just as the Internet bubble popped. I recently talked to a professional speaker who was considering paying a “social media expert” over $5k USD for advice on how to improve her presence in social media. The speaker already had a substantial on-line presence, the “expert” was not particularly well known, and the “expert” offered no guaranteed outcome for his fees — just the activity of setting her up on several free social media sites. Sky-high prices for advice of dubious quality is to me the hallmark of the end. We will keep using these tools, but I think the amount of money and time invested in them is going to go down at some point soon. –Alex
Alex, I don’t believe Benioff was asking, “Why can’t all software be Facebook?” He describes Facebook as a metaphor, which is how I am looking at it too. Facebook may not be an enterprise application_��I agree with you there_��but there is something to the way people interact with social media that we should take seriously, regardless of how trivial we consider Facebook or Twitter. Team members who must be begged and cajoled to update their task status in the workplace are some of the same people who go home each night and willingly update status and interact with their network via social media. It begs the question, “What is it about social media that fosters that?” The dialog should really be less about Facebook and more about whatever it is that is working within Facebook. In that regard, I must admit, I agree with Benioff.
Okay, I admit that I_��m old-school. I started in project management in 1962 when I introduced computer-based scheduling to the nuclear navy component of GE. But I_��ve also had the opportunity, during the last decade, to observe the profound failure of ad-hoc communication techniques for project planning and control. For example, several flavors of _��personal_ѝ request and allocate type software, such as Microsoft_��s Team Manager, were complete failures and were quickly pulled from the marketplace. The most notable flaw was the expectation that projects (and project control systems) could operate in a basically unstructured environment and that two people could make decisions via e-mail that had significant impact on a much larger community. I find it difficult to conceive of any significant advantage gained from integrating Facebook or Linkedin type capabilities into a robust and well-designed system such as At Task. So far, my experience with Linkedin is to be notified when someone in my network add a person, joins a group, or takes a trip. Surely this is an unwelcome distraction and makes no contribution to my work. I reluctantly acknowledge that project planning and control is a high-maintenance process. But any attempt to get around the necessary structured approach to this process will bring the process down. The process would be better served by building friendly communication mechanisms directly into a well-structured PM product.