Stowe Boyd

Work Media, Systems Of Engagement, or Social Business?

In the same week that I revealed ‘work media’ as a term to use in distinction to ‘social business’, CV Harquail joins Geoffrey Moore in making the case for ‘systems of engagement’ for the same purpose:

According to a new report by AIIM and noted author Geoffrey Moore (Dealing with Darwin, Crossing the Chasm, Inside the Tornado, The Gorilla Game and Living on the Fault Line), one of the keys for economic recovery lies in aggressive investment in Social Business Systems designed to dramatically improve the productivity of middle tier knowledge workers. These “Systems of Engagement” enhance the ability of knowledge workers to quickly cooperate with each other in order to improve operating flexibility and customer engagement. 

“We have spent the past several decades of IT investment focused on deploying ‘systems of record.’  These systems accomplished two important things,” notes Moore. “First, they centralized, standardized, and automated business transactions on a global basis, thereby better enabling world trade.  Second, they gave top management a global view of the state of the business, thereby better enabling global business management.   Spending on the Enterprise Content Management technologies that are at the core of Systems of Record will continue — and will actually expand as these solutions become more available and relevant to small and mid-sized organizations. However, there is also a new and revolutionary wave of spending emerging on Systems of Engagement — a wave focused directly on knowledge worker effectiveness and productivity. Social Business Systems are at the heart of Systems of Engagement.”

[…]

According to Moore, “The first wave of spending left knowledge workers mostly on their own. We gave our workers laptops, connectivity, email, and the Office suite, and told them to go be more productive.  The world of consumer social technology has given our workforces a taste of what is possible beyond this kind of rudimentary e-mail driven collaboration.  Given the pressures that global business models are putting on collaboration and coordination across enterprise boundaries, the demand for increased capabilities is escalating rapidly.  The implications of this for IT organizations and CIOs are revolutionary — organizations need to quickly get in front of this curve or they run the risk of getting run over by it.  We are on the cusp of a new wave of investment in Social Business Systems that will focus on providing knowledge workers with the tools to collaborate with a business purpose.”

Sounds like Moore is working on his next book.

I completely disagree with Harquil when she says:

But no one, as yet, has directly addressed the organizational, cultural, and leadership issues related to systems of engagement.

That exactly what I have been doing since 1999, when I began to write about social tools, and specifically with regard to their impact on media, business, and society.

Granted, I have not used the term ‘systems of engagement’, and I won’t be using that going forward. And I am moving away from using ‘social business’ because it is becoming radioactive from all the marketeering going on under that banner.

But you will hear me talking a great deal in the coming months about work media: the adoption of technologies based on social media and social networks and the cultural milieu in which they are most effective.