Andrew McAfee est-il le messie…(suite et fin)

À la suite du Webinar d’hier sur l’entreprise 2.0, je suis retourné sur le blogue de Fastfoward pour lire les réactions et commentaires sur la nature du débat Davenport-McAfee. En voici une amusante sur la notion de contrôle de la part des gestionnaires :«They have already LOST control of the message. They need to get over the command & control idea. It’s nonexistent.»

Beaucoup de commentaires ont cependant porté et gravité autour de la notion de gestion du savoir ou Knowledge Management. Je voudrais ainsi vous rapporter les deux commentaires les plus pertinents sur ce sujet crucial et écrits par nuls autres que Bill Ives et Jon Husband, tous deux présents au Webinar. Tout d’abord Bill :

«I think that most of the successful KM applications were workflow aligned and when KM was a separate document repository outside of business processes, it was much less successful. Then it became managing knowledge rather than supporting work. I think there is a parallel with web 2.0. Tom seemed to use the blog or wiki outside a work process as a strawman. Many of the documented success stories in enterprise 2.0 have been when a team replaced email with web 2.0 type tools (rather they be blogs, wikis or some of the newer workflow apps that have emerged). When web 2.0 or enterprise 2.0 tools are aligned with workflow to make process and participation more transparent and more efficient there are documented business benefits. I know team workspaces have existed for some time but they did not have the same impact. Blog as speaking platform can work in the right situation but web 2.0 as project enablement works most of the time. »

Et ensuite Jon en réponse à Bill :

«I think that most of the successful KM applications were workflow aligned and when KM was a separate document repository outside of business processes, it was much less successful. Then it became managing knowledge rather than supporting work. I think there is a parallel with web 2.0.

Yes. The Enterprise 2.0 environment (for shorthand purposes here.. I personally am not too hung up about whether something should be called 2.0 or not) characterized by the tools (wikis, blogs, RSS, etc.) provides the “connectivity” called for in KM theory. It was called for in KM theory, but not so much addressed in (generally) KM implementation initiatives. Much of what was addressed by KM over the past decade was the architecture and functionality of taxonomies, database, info retrieval capability, re-use of knowledge “objects” and so on. This fit better, at that time, with the prevailing management-science derived mindset efficiency as a primary driver of productivity.

The aspect(s) of KM that was less addressed back then (and brought up in the McAfee / Davenport dialog) was the access to and use of collaboration practices, tools and the embedding of those in ongoing work design. Back then this was the province of organizational development theory and practice. As a work design practitioner, I can assure you that collaboration was not widely discussed in most workplaces until the late 90’s. Previous work design involved separating and segmenting knowledge and accountability (take a look at any of the most-widely-used job evaluation schemes, job evaluation being the assessment of how a job is designed and where it belongs in an organization’s designed structure). Yes, there were books and workshops about organizational culture, and (starting in the early 90’s) more and more books and pronouncements about learning and ongoing change and the importance of effective leadership.

BUT … the tools and web services that underly what we are calling Web 2.0 have begun to enable more easily, more widely and more ubiquitously the kinds of things that OD theory and practice called for but were only able to work with as “interventions”, as attempts to make smallish changes to work processes, to the why-and-how of people doing work in a highly organized and highly structured setting.

I think this is why there has been so much talk back-and-forth about emergence versus architected work design. We are coming from an era where it was highly architected using one dominant model in which people would talk and exchange and share and do all the things that are now accessible with social software in connected environments .. but they would do this outside the formal architected environment. It went on, and it was the grease, the enabling mechanism .. it just wasn’t visible as “work” .. except in the arenas where it was acceptable, the less-defined and higher-value “knowledge work”, or in other words, the stuff senior managers and executives did ( talk in meetings, sharing questions and viewpoints and other sources of information and knowledge about something or other).

The era we are moving into lets more people do more of this .. and it does not fit easily into the ways that we still design work. The “connectivity” afforded by social software and a much more highly interconnected (tools, infrastructure and people ) environment will keep teaching us more and more about the need for new ways to design work.

It’s been building up and coming at us for a long time. The connectivity was essentially missing, or was not the first part of KM theory to be addressed a decade or so ago. Social computing in the workplace, what was called KM previously and enterprise 2.0 (whatever it is and will become) belong together, in my opinion.

The combination will have a large impact on organizational sociology. I would bet that how we design work will change a great deal in the next 5 to 10 years. The impact I suggest on organizational sociology has also been building up and coming at us for a couple of decades .. check out how management and leadership development curricula have changed (and not changed) over the past three decades.»

J’aime bien le dernier paragraphe de la réflexion de Jon qui amène la notion de sociologie organisationnelle et qui lie KM et 2.0 aux changements fondamentaux à survenir au cours des prochaines années au sein des entreprises, 2.0 ou pas. Des changements que j’ai associés dans mon billet précédent à l’arrivée des nouvelles générations 2.0 et 3D (la génération Y et la NetGen). À ce sujet, Éric Blot se demandait en commentaire :

«Mais pour que les générations 2.0 et 3D imposent une nouvelle façon de se comporter dans l’entreprise, ne devons nous pas attendre qu’ils vieillissent un peu eux aussi et prennent véritablement les commandes des postes clés de nos entreprises   ?»

À cette interrogation, je réponds par la négative. Comme le dit Jon, ils vont profondément marquer la sociologie organisationnelle au cours des 5 à 10 prochaines années. Les services RH appréhendent un choc culturel et générationnel et sont présentement avides de solutions pour contrer ce phénomène. La vague, que dis-je, le Tsunami de départs à la retraite d’ici 2014 et le renouvellement de cette main d’oeuvre va forcer la hiérarchie traditionnelle à s’adapter. Le changement de paradigme est là ! Avant, quand la vague du BabyBoom a investi les entreprises, hommes et femmes ont adhéré au  modèle hiérarchique traditionnel. Comme le disait un manager français à qui j’en ai déjà parlé : «Donnez-leur an an et vous verrez, ils auront intégré le moule.» Tu peux bien manifester et avoir les cheveux longs à l’école mais au bureau c’est complet-cravate et cheveux courts. Tu commences en bas de l’échelle, tu te bâtis une carrière, tu accumules l’information et les contacts et tu gravis les échelons de la hiérarchie en partageant le moins possible parce que l’information, c’est le pouvoir.

Ce modèle traditionnel basé sur la compétition interne est présentement mis à mal par les «petits nouveaux» de la génération Y. Ces derniers se foutent bien de la «culture d’entreprise». Ils sont mobiles et veulent non seulement une qualité de vie mais aussi une qualité de travail. Un travail basé sur autre chose que la compétition et le semaine officieuse de 70 heures. C’est pour cette raison que j’avais conclu qu’ils allaient imposer à l’entreprise leurs valeurs, leur mode de vie, leur façon de voir le travail, leur façon de collaborer et leurs outils pour le faire.

Et que je disais que la vieille hiérarchie n’a qu’à bien se tenir car une autre et à la veille de naître et Jon Husband en parle depuis déjà quelques années : la Wirearchy. Une relation à l’autorité beaucoup plus inclusive, moins autoritaire, plus participative et non directive. Une entreprise plus horizontale que verticale et branchée non seulement sur les technologies mais sur la créativité de ce que l’on appelle encore aujourd’hui et de façon très 1.0, son «capital humain».