I was recently included on a list of “Enterprise 2.0 experts” that the Enterprise2Open blog hosts. Martin Koser (a.k.a Frogpond) send me a list of questions, and my answers are now posted on the Enterprise2Open site here. This list contains real experts in the field, but is still missing many other great experts too (Martin is working on it). And I almost feel like I need to explain or justify the term “expert”. As much as I’m honored, I’m also slightly uncomfortable with the term.
I read a quote attributed to Mark Twain, an expert is an ordinary fellow from another town. A kind interpretation: There is a mystique to the person with a different perspective who can see the problem in a new way and offer value. What he probably meant: Don’t be fooled, he’s just an ordinary fellow. I know that once someone calls you an expert there are some who will think highly of you and seek your consul, there are some who will wonder why they are not included on that list, and there are others who will lobby criticism in order to show how clever they are in their ability to critique a so-called expert.
What is expertise in Enterprise 2.0? As I see it, Enterprise 2.0 is a term that captures both a trend and a vision. Is the expert the one who makes the trend happen? Who understands the vision? Who leads the way? To some, expertise is the ability to implement a set of tools and demonstrate that usage of these tools yields success. To others, it’s the ability to observe the dynamics of the marketplace and understand how the pieces can be leveraged for commercial success — by facilitating mergers and integrations between vendors, or by positioning purchases in a judicious process. But for many, the valuable conversation transcends tools and market dynamics. It is about how we work with others. And expertise is quite hard to measure in that sense. Do you measure how many successes you have had? Or how many failures you have learned from?
The profile on the Enterterprise2Open blog asked some very insightful questions. The one about how I got into this field was the most fun to answer — since I realized how accidental this was for me. I was busy doing my work at Fidelity Investments a few years ago, and I started to take on social computing behaviors that I found to be successful from observing and participating on the Internet. So, with hardly any real support from my management, I created an internal discussion list, published a blog, hosted a wiki, and managed multiple communities in a way that brought employees together for work-related purposes. These behaviors opened new conversations and created work opportunities and efficiencies for the community members and me. I found that I was very successful at my job because of the communities I managed. Many senior level people from across the company asked me to help them apply the patterns of work that I was using, for their environments.
Large, complex, highly regulated, extremely conservative, ridiculously political, globally dispersed, financial institutions are hardly easy places for Enterprise 2.0 experimentation. I assure you there was a barrier at every turn. Every day was a struggle. And in irony, all of us were simply doing our jobs in the best way we could. Sometimes senior management saw this and rewarded our success. And sometimes we ran into the kind of resistance that makes you wonder why even bother, there are other places to work. Being in the trenches provides an important perspective on the realistic goals that you have to set for E2.0. There are many employees who will not, and I honestly believe – should not – participate in workplace communities. The active resistance movement on the part of certain factions in IT, Risk Management, HR, Legal, and elsewhere, are healthy parts of the evolution process. And yet, I can document tangible value that our implementations brought to the business bottom line.
That said, I have to credit my time at Forrester Research for providing me with a new perspective on many elements of E2.0. I got to work with people who are real experts. I had regular discussions, (or debates), with folks like Rob Koplowitz, Oliver Young, John Cass, Jeremiah Owyang, Josh Bernoff, Ted Schadler, Matt Brown, and many other bright and insightful people. Simply too many to list. I also worked with analysts who covered related fields, where we found intersections between E2.0 and Security (Dr. Chenxi Wang), E2.0 and Business Intelligence (Boris Evelson), E2.0 and Enterprise Search (Leslie Owens), E2.0 and Customer Service (Dr. Natalie Petouhoff ), and so many other intersections and leverage points that added value to our clients. Every day I got to meet with the CIOs or CEOs of vendors in the E2.0 space — large and small vendors, those with well known products, and those working on the next big idea. Every day I got to speak with clients who would call in asking for help, guidance, insight, and advice about a issue related to a report we published or a speech we gave. But it was more than just information brokerage. It was about providing insight that made a difference to them.
One of the best days at work was when I organized a group of analysts (which included some of those mentioned above and others), to help our CEO, George F. Colony, prepare for his workshop at the World Economic Forum in Davos. George wrote about his workshop on his blog. George is an amazing thinker, and a really nice person too. As smart as he is, he understands the value of learning from others. So although he’s always good about sharing his insight, he’s just as good about listening for something new. In a fast paced hour or so — some of the smartest folks on the call and in the room quickly distilled the most important and relevant points, issues, and stories to support his session objectives. I did not get a chance to debrief with George after his session, so I’m not sure if it all lived up to his expectations. But I can tell you that the pre-session briefing was fascinating.
Prior to my job at Forrester, I really did not understand what industry analysts have to do in order to get a report out the door, to be invited to a stage to speak in front of hundreds, or to be called “expert” in anything. Customers pay a non-negligible amount of money to spend a day with an industry analyst. And our job was to make sure that they got their money’s worth. In order to do that, we spend much of our time researching facts, learning, experimenting, challenging, and packaging information in ways that make it incredibly relevant to the exact situation that our client was facing. We were not journalists telling you what others did. We were not consultants selling you products. But we played in a space in between and above both. There was an element of reporting, and an element of consultation. But the value proposition was more than education. It was focused, refined, and packaged. I now understand how so many people are successful as “former Forrester analysts”. Forrester is a training ground like none I have seen before. It’s an impressive place.
So, I came into the field by accident, I learned in the trenches and from the insight of others. I have a ways to go before I’m an expert. But I’m glad to be in good copmany, and even more glad when my customers find value in my guidance.
