Archive for the 'New organizations' Category

Final eSangathan conference in Brussels, Sept.18, 2008, about active ageing workforces and virtual workspaces

Miguel Membrado September 17th, 2008

Register at http://www.esangathan-conference.eu/registration.asp

Description

Europe faces a major
demographic challenge! According to OECD, demographic projections are
uncertain, but on middle-of-the-road assumptions, the ratio of people
over 65 to those between 20 and 64 could double between now and the
middle of the century. And in some countries, such as Italy and Spain,
this ageing will be much stronger. The situation is similar in most
developed countries due to the combined effect of the lowering of the
birth rate and the “boomers” reaching retirement age. The phenomenon
will be reaching the emerging economies within a few years as was
discussed during the eSangathan Mumbai
 conference.

The
shift from an industrial society to a knowledge society, as well as the
extension of the individual lifespan in healthy conditions, and the
increasing role of ICT in the work process are a set of factors
enabling people to work longer in good conditions. It will be a
personal choice for some people, and a necessity for others. The real
question remains: how to increase the percentage of aged workers
(55-64) included into the labour market?

This was exactly the purpose of the
eSangathan project!

The
project focussed on two particular segments, of this 55-64 population:
one consisting of employees about to retire in the corporate world, and
the other being people willing to be further involved into the labour
market as entrepreneurs. eSangathan analysed
the situation based on two pilots: one in a major Indian corporation,
Mahindra & Mahindra and one at regional level in the Öresund region
in Sweden and Denmark.

ICT
played a major role in the project and in the life of the pilot
members. Indeed, the consortium made the “a priori” assumption, based
on previous experiences, that Collaborative Working Environments (CWE)
could represent a well adapted solution to improve working conditions
and offer a better work-life balance to the ageing workers. The
consortium members will be happy to share with you the results of these
experimentations during the conference.


eSangathan
was also eager to innovate in the field of tools and methods used to
reach the social goals of the project. We all know that the Nordic
countries are the “best in class” in Europe with regard to the
employment of the “seniors”; so, we knew we would learn from our
Swedish, Danish and Dutch partners. So will you when attending the
conference. You will discover how we shifted from a hierarchical
management approach to a heterarchical one.

The
inclusion of the ageing workforce into the labour market becomes a hot
topic in all the countries where their employment rate is low. Indeed,
15 countries out of 27 do not reach the strategic objective of 50%
employment rate for the 55-64 population segment. This brings Europe at
44,7% of employment rate at the end of 2007. The employment rate varies
from 28,3% (Malta) to 70% (Sweden).

Despite
the recent research led by IRDES saying that 31% (The Netherlands) to
67% (Spain) of the 50-64 workers say they want to retire as soon as
possible, one can assume that the working life of the Europeans will be
longer in the future. This economical and social reality has been a key
concern of the eSangathan team. It results in a set of recommendations and proposals which will be presented in the
eSangathan White Paper.

The White Paper will be presented and made available during the conference!



You want to know more or share opinion: contact us at event@esangathan.eu
or visit us at www.esangathan.eu

Register the conference at http://www.esangathan-conference.eu/registration.asp

Enterprise 2.0 and Corporate Governance

Miguel Membrado May 1st, 2008

(This article has been originally published in the 7th eSangathan newsletter)

What are the links between e-management, web 2.0 and corporate governance? They are in the fact that it is more and more clear every day that participatory tools and collaborative working environments are changing drastically the human interactions within corporations, and impacting first the organization and the management. For the benefit of the corporation itself, thanks to the raise of a new level of collective intelligence, and a new standard of productivity.

The use of participatory technologies in the company is changing radically relationships between individuals. Breacking top-down hierarchies, we are moving to a Network Centric Management, where the supervisor will no longer base its legitimacy on its authority to direct the work of others, but where he’ll be at the same time coordinator, moderator, advisor and arbitrator of his teams and employees.

Lying, incompetence and other bad habits of a lot of deviated organizations that can be more easily concealed in an authoritarian management, will be unveiled in broad daylight in a participatory management imposed by the use of this new tools.

The introduction of these technologies in the enterprise, and even within the extended enterprise (customers, partners and subcontractors), will change this things, it is inevitable. Why? Because in the same way, when intranets arrived in the companies, they were sometimes promoted by the hierarchy, but most often they were growing from the grassroots, under the radar, because the need was too strong to prevent people to deploy them. People wanted to publish information without constraints. But a few years later, IT people succeeded to master this freedom, and intranets became again a hierarchical organization for content production. So the intranets were at the beginning a cultural revolution in most of our businesses, but at the end the impact in terms of management finally was very weak.

It’s totally different with the participatory web, where the questioning of management is complete, and hence the organization of the enterprise itself. That is why we can replace the previous-decade-words “e-management” with “Management 2.0″, and “e-organization” with “Enterprise 2.0″.. Not to be hype with a « 2.0 » acronym, but because the prefix “e-” hasn’t been disruptive for organizations and management. The “2.0″ prefix by contrast illustrates this qualitative and fundamental leap that we can no longer go back.

The Enterprise 2.0 will be a cross-organization, where information will flow seamlessly and securely, and where the creativity of everyone will be unleashed giving to everybody the opportunity to write, to say, to show, to talk, to share, to discuss, to participate, and ultimately to build together.

Other virtues will then appear as a result of these liberation, such as individual and collective efficiency, increased productivity, quality improvment and transparency.

Business leaders, from large and small organizations, that will anticipate the first these new usages, both within and outside their company, will be the first to reap the real benefits of this new corporate governance. It is necessary to invest massively, to train and support users, from the assistant to the CEO, because adopting these practices doesn’t happen overnight.

This is not about learning to use a software and pushing buttons. This is about thinking and acting differently, working differently, establishing different relationships, and this will not be done in a day, but in several months. It’s why the change must start as soon as possible in order to reap the benefits as soon as possible as well.

We must all commit ourselves to evangelize. We are on a fertile ground, because we are not at this disruption level only thanks to the technology. We are facing the convergence of two fundamental factors: (1) technology, and (2) the changing usages due to the Internet being here now for many years.

Most of the technologies of the Web 2.0 have nothing revolutionary, and some of them exist for over a decade! But they have spread this recent years very quickly because human beings were ready to receive and exploit them.

We’ve reached the limits of our actual organizations, and it is not possible to gain in daily productivity continuing to use the same tools (files, emails, and legacy systems) with the same organizations, because this tools are not anymore helping to improve these organizations. They are even creating more and more disorganization, and people are a lot more conscious of this now.

This is why we are in the good momentum, because the consciousness and the demand exist. We must therefore push both managers and users to be trained to these new usages, in order to implode the traditional business models and managements, and usher them in a new era of corporate governance, an era where individual, its efficiency, creativity, and its relationship to the team and the corporation, will be at the very heart of economics and social growth the next few years, for the benefit of all.

Miguel Membrado (May 1st, 2008)

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From Collaboration to Participation

Miguel Membrado March 15th, 2008

For more than 25 years, asynchronous collaboration tools have been used by thousands of companies all over the world. Technologies have evolved from Lotus Notes to web-based self-service collaborative environments like eRoom, QuickPlace or SharePoint Portal Server, just to name the most popular ones. And today there are dozens of such products. What is the feedback of such dissemination? Are employees working better in their daily life? Are all employees using collaborative tools at their desktop?

The answer is NO! The most used collaborative tool is still the electronic messaging system. Why? Because e-mail is an unstructured way to send and share information; an immediate and effortless system. When you enable people and teams to work with powerful collaborative tools, you notice that it takes time for them to consider these tools as part of their daily work.

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