The future of work… it’s happening now!

September 22, 2011 by

Coming up on the October 4 episode of IBF Live, we will talk with some of the most interesting pioneers of the digital workplace – the wider world of workplace technology – about new ways of working that emphasize empowerment, transparency, collaboration and healthy incentives.

From the video A Day Made of Glass... Made possible by Corning

People who think deep thoughts about the future of work…

We welcome three wonderful guest hosts for our October show: Irina Guseva from the Real Story Group (formerly CMS Watch); Oscar Berg from Tieto; and Stephan Schillerwein from Infocentric Research AG.

Chris Chambers from Prescient Digital also stops in to tell us about the results of a study conducted by Prescient Digital Media and IABC Research Foundation that examines the use of social media tools on corporate intranets. The study is based on a survey completed by 1,400 organizations from around the world and provides the most current and comprehensive data on Intranet 2.0 tools.

Next up, Jon Froda from Podio tells us about an exciting project called the Future of Work movie. Earlier this year, Jon and his team traveled the world, gathering the best thinkers within the field of work and debating trends and technology. The movie features a number of discussions related to the future of work, such as: The challenge of working from many locations; how the workplace is becoming ‘a thing you do rather than a place you go; the “open follower” model and what that means for the cultural legacy of control and hierarchy; and how social tools can support a cultural shifts towards more openness.

…and two intranets that show what the future of work might look like

Live tours include two extremely agile and forward-thinking companies, ThoughtWorks and 12 Stars Media Productions.

Dinesh Tantri, Head, Knowledge Strategy at ThoughtWorks will give us a tour of a social intranet built that is turning into a hugely valuable knowledge commons and collaboration hub. myThoughtWorks, built on Jive, was implemented earlier this year, and Dinesh estimates that 80% of the work was change management. 80%… isn’t that a lot? Was he trying to introduce a tool into a culture that wasn’t ready? No, in fact… just the opposite…

ThoughtWorks has always had thriving communities of practice, and myThoughtWorks simply supports those existing behaviors. Dinesh’s team — Knowledge and Learning Services — in particular lives many of the practices/values put forth by Wirearchy — a term coined by Jon Husband — which refers to a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority based on information, knowledge, trust and credibility, enabled by interconnected people and technology.

To prepare the organization for the change, the team went to all the opinionated people in the organization, giving demos and getting feedback. They made sure every leader knew how to use platform for a specific use case that was relevant to him or her. For example, they went to the CEO and trained him in on how to blog using the new tool.

If change management required so much time and effort at ThoughtWorks, what does that mean for those of us who work in more traditional organizations? Can a tool help accelerate cultural change? Or does the culture first have to be ready for the tool? Listen to what Dinesh has to say, and come prepared to share your experiences and perspectives as well!

Rocky Walls is CEO of 12 Stars, a video production company based in Indianapolis, Indiana. A few months back, 12 Stars implemented Podio — a social business platform — to support their sales, marketing and production processes. They also use it for forms, messaging, email, tasks, reporting, workflow and contact management. Oh… and did we mention that it also serves as the company news hub and intranet? Social intranets have proven themselves as fantastic people connectors and collaboration enhancers; but they’ve faced challenges moving beyond that to widespread business adoption. And the reason is integration (or lack thereof), according to Andrew McAfee:

E2.0 tools today are typically not integrated with the rest of a company’s applications. So the unstructured / emergent / social work happens in a totally different digital environment than the structured / pre-defined / formal work. Orders get filled using the ERP system, while conversations about why the order’s not getting filled happen in email, IM, a wiki, and so on.

At 12 Stars, everything is social, and everything is integrated. As a result, they are nimble, fast, and disciplined and collaborative. Is this only possible because 12 Stars is small (<10 employees)? Or is it because Rocky is a young, passionate, energetic, millennial CEO? Or is this a glimpse into the future of the digital workplace?

See you there!

If you are already an DWG member or an IBF Live subscriber, you can get the login details on the extranet (no need to register in advance). If you miss IBF Live or want to watch it again, you can view this or prior episodes via on-demand playback.Guests can sign up for a one-time free guest pass, but hurry, there’s limited seating. Don’t miss out!

Meet the studio guests:

Oscar Berg is currently Future Office Evangelist at Tieto. In this role he is responsible for Tieto’s Future Office™ concept – The digital workplace of the future – in Sweden, driving the business and offering development for the Swedish market. Oscar has more than 10 years experience helping organizations understand and make smart use of new communication and collaboration technologies in order to improve knowledge worker productivity and efficiency, organizational responsiveness and agility, employee engagement, and innovation. Oscar is a blogger, contributing author for CMS Wire and Social Business Expert Blogger for AIIM. He is a frequent keynote speaker at conferences and events. Connect with Oscar via Twitter or LinkedIn.

Chris Chambers is Vice President, Client Development at Prescient Digital. Mr. Chambers has been a Sales & Marketing Executive and Business Development Consultant for over 25 years.  He has specific experience developing and executing strategies, guiding organizations to improve their business operations.  He has held senior management positions at both large and small corporations helping reengineer or reinvigorate operations and providing expertise on a variety of enterprise infrastructure challenges. Connect with Chris via LinkedIn.

Jon Froda is co-founder of Podio. For several years Jon has been researching the field of social software, specializing in strategies and products that help organizations develop knowledge, lead and to stay ahead of the market. As a founder of Podio he has involved with marketing, product development and customer service. Podio started because the way we work is broken. Most tools we use are anti-social, anti-collaborative, and were designed by engineers in some far away location who have decided how we should do our job. At Podio, we want to give back the power to manage work to where it originated, with the people who do the job. Connect with Jon via Twitter or LinkedIn.

Irina Guseva is an analyst covering technology across the enterprise information landscape including web content management and digital asset management. Irina has more than 15 years of experience in content technologies, starting her career as a journalist working in print, TV, radio and online. Prior to joining The Real Story Group in 2011, she worked as a CMS practitioner, consultant, and industry watcher. Connect with Irina via Twitter or LinkedIn.

Stephan Schillerwein acts as Director of Research at Infocentric Research AG, headquartered in Switzerland. In his role he is leading innovative research and consulting projects in the areas of intranets, enterprise search, social media and collaboration. He is an information management professional with 14+ years of experience in the online business. His past activities include being an intranet manager at major organisations, operating his own consulting business with noticeable success and heading the European chapter of the Digital Workplace Group. Stephan is a regular speaker, has written numerous articles and contributed to four books. His seminars have been visited by more than 100 companies. Connect with Stephan via Twitter or LinkedIn.

Dinesh Tantri is currently Head, Knowledge Strategy for ThoughtWorks. Previously, he was an Enterprise 2.0 Strategy Consultant with the Web 2.0 Labs at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Chennai, India. Dinesh has seven years experience in application development, social computing, knowledge management, organizational change consulting, business development and teaching. Dinesh maintains a weblog titled Collaborative Enterprise focusing on the implications of social software on enterprises and education institutions. Connect with Dinesh via Twitter or LinkedIn.

Rocky Walls is CEO of 12 Stars Media. With more than 10 years’ experience in digital content creation, as CEO of 12 Stars Media Productions, Rocky Walls works with businesses to create video that’s so real and simple it changes audiences into relationships.

In 2009 Rocky received a nomination for the Most Influential Social Media Up & Comer and in 2010 his company was nominated as Indiana’s Most Ethical Company at the Indiana Social Media Summit. An avid networker, Rocky is a graduate of the Referral Institute and currently a member of the IBC Chapter of Business Networking International (BNI). He is also one of the first five Honorary Commanders of the 434th Air Refueling Wing at Grissom Air Reserve Base.

With the launch of its new service Candidio, 12 Stars Media is on track to see a 400% increase in gross revenue for 2011. Connect with Rocky via Twitter or LinkedIn.

Categorised in: DWG24

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