Blogs

In my first post, I got on my soap box a bit to sketch out some of the fundamental beliefs that inform my approach to E2.0. In the next few posts, I want to dig into each of these a bit more to talk through the implications they have for E2.0 strategy and practice.

You need to go all in

Here’s my first fundamental belief from my inaugural post:

E2.0 is more than just a buzzword or passing fad, and is not simply a collection of superficial attributes layered on top of “business as usual”.

On the one hand, this statement is about where you stand on E2.0: do you view it as a fundamental shift in the way people work or as time-worn functionality (e.g., BBS and mainframe computing) packaged in a slick wrapper?

But on the other, it’s about how organizations respond to change: do they go all in and seize the opportunity to transform for the better or do they attempt to do as little as possible, responding to change in ways that least disturb the status quo (i.e., by slapping a thin veneer of change on top of business as usual)?

For me, based on the organizations I work with, E2.0 is not something organizations should be considering—it’s something they should be doing right now. The E2.0 domain is no longer “emerging”, it’s here, and here to stay.

It’s not a question of if

The real issue for organizations, then, is not if but how:

• How will E2.0 contribute to larger organizational goals? Culturally? Operationally? Financially?
• How will E2.0 impact operational and performance metrics? Are we prepared to measure that impact?
• How well will your current people, process, and technology landscape support E2.0?
• How will you move from where you are now (E1.X) to E2.0?
• How might your organization look once you achieve E2.0? How will it look at important milestones along the way?
• How will you get the funding and political support for the move to E2.0?
• How will you make sure that achieving E2.0 positions your organization to continue the journey to E3.0 and beyond?

And it’s important to note that you can’t address the “how” of E2.0 solely with vision and strategy. I’m a strategy consultant, so I know full well the dangers of confusing ought with is: just because we should do something (and have a strategy to tell us), doesn’t mean that things will turn out that way.

You need to tie strategy to results in order to effectively address the “how” of E2.0, hence the questions above about operational metrics, measurement, and achieving funding, as well as about organizational readiness and capacity—all of these details have to be worked out for your vision and strategy to be actionable and lead to meaningful organizational change.

The final word

In this respect, E2.0 is no different than any other organizational initiative. You have to combine your vision with a plan for achieving that vision, a detailed picture of how you’re going to get from where you are to where you want to be.

We have to be careful, because all the cutting-edge, “the future is now” aspects of E2.0 can easily obscure the fact that, when all is said and done, every organization still needs to do business. And at its heart, the fundamentals of doing business haven’t changed that much from E1.0 to E2.0, although their context certainly has.

Which brings me to my second fundamental belief about E2.0:

E2.0 is not a completely radical departure or a whole-cloth innovation, but a natural extension of E1.0.

We’ll dig into this in the next post, but in the meantime, would love to get a conversation going: do you agree with me that business hasn't changed all that much or that E2.0 isn't so different from other organizational initiatives? Jump in and tell us what you think!