The New York Times ‘Corner Office’ interview on January 16 was with Cristóbal Conde, the CEO of the Fortune 500 IT services company SunGard. I found it fascinating for two reasons. First, Conde spends the first portion of the article talking about Enterprise 2.0, and about how and why he’s tried to increase the amount of freeform and emergent collaboration at his company. Below are a few of his quotes on the topic, followed by links to related posts from this blog.
Second, I liked hearing what he had to say on other topics as well. The final three quotes below aren’t directly related to E2.0; I just wanted to include them because I think they’re really sharp.
- Organizational Structure. “I think top-down organizations got started because the bosses either knew more or they had access to more information. None of that applies now. Everybody has access to identical amounts of information.” -I wrote about this in “The Great Decoupling“
- Fostering Collaboration. “a C.E.O. needs to focus more on the platform that enables collaboration… You have to work on the structure of collaboration. How do people get recognized? How do you establish a meritocracy in a highly dispersed environment?” – see this 3-post sequence on Enterprise 2.0 ratings for knowledge workers.
- Peer Effects. “The answer is to allow employees to develop a name for themselves that is irrespective of their organizational ranking or where they sit in the org chart… recognition from their peers is, I think, an extremely strong motivating factor… By creating an atmosphere of collaboration, the people who are consistently right get a huge following, and their work product is talked about by people they’ve never met. It’s fascinating.” – “Three Mantras“
- The Utility of Microblogging. “One thing we use is a Twitter-like system on our intranet called Yammer… because of my title I get to see more senior people. And so then they’ll tell me things — you know, what are their biggest problems, what are their biggest issues, what are their biggest bets. All this information is incredibly valuable. Now, what could I do with that? I’m not going to send that out in a broadcast voice mail to every employee. I’m not even going to write a long e-mail about it to every employee, because even that is almost too formal. But I can write five lines on Yammer, which is about all it takes.” – I wrote about microblogging’s attributes and many uses in “17 Things We Used to Do.”
- How Command-and-Control Breaks Down. “Early on, I was very command-and-control, very top-down. I felt I was smart, and that my decisions would be better. I was young, and I was willing to work 20 hours a day… The last year I did that, I was away from home 302 nights, not including day trips. I had to fly around all over the place making all the decisions. And I would walk in, make an uninformed decision, get on the next plane, go somewhere else and repeat the process. I look back at that year; I don’t think I got anything done.” – I particularly like Conde’s insight that he was making uninformed decisions when he was working in this mode.
- Micromanagement. “If you start micromanaging people, then the very best ones leave. If the very best people leave, then the people you’ve got left actually require more micromanagement… Pretty soon, you’re running a police state. So micromanagement doesn’t scale because it spirals down. [T]he trick is to get truly world-class people working directly for you so you don’t have to spend a lot of time managing them. I think there’s very little value I can add to my direct reports. So I try to spend time with people two and three levels below because I think I can add value to them.” – Lovely. His job is to develop people, not meddle or second-guess. And he concentrates his efforts a bit lower down in the organization.
- The Importance of Writing Ability.”English is my second language, and I write reasonably well. I don’t see very much excuse for people not to be able to write well. I just don’t.” – I can’t tell you how happy I was to read this
What else did you like about the Conde Interview? Was there anything he said you didn’t like? And what other excellent executive interviews have you come across recently? Leave a comment, please, and let us know.
{ 31 comments… read them below or add one }
I like all of this and the last point can't be overstated. It is so important to write well and communicate your ideas clearly. I think that is a skill in the enterprise that is not thought of often, but is critical in many ways. Blogging, twitter, presentations, etc. all demand writing and communication skills.
I also think that storytelling is a critical part skill to think about and develop.
Mark
Andy,
Thanks for your instructive analysis of the interview with Cristóbal Conde, the CEO of SunGard.
Please see the interview with Brad Anderson the former CEO of Best for more “Signs of Intelligent Life in the Corner Office”:
http://bit.ly/4xkXFf
We certainly need to interview more Enterprise 2.0 CEO's to help frame our conversation.
Thanks,
@ariegoldshlager
Interesting interview. But what caught my eye was Cristóbal's advice to young people, “Selling something to somebody who doesn’t want to buy it is a lifelong skill”.
Is that really a commendable “skill”? Persuading people, in the words of Victor Papanek, “to buy things they don’t need with money they don’t have to impress neighbors who don’t care.”
Andrew,
I found the interview interesting and certainly agree with a number of the points made by Cristóbal – particularly his beef with how people use PowerPoint (I'm guilty myself but trying to change).
I have a question for you – I moved from the private sector to academia a few years ago. Whilst I can relate to and agree with much of what you write about Enterprise 2.0 in relation to “enterprises”, how relevant is it to the public sector? More specifically, is your research applicable to, for example, Harvard or MIT? From my experience, there is a very different culture in relation to dealing with change and new ways of working at my university compared to some of the companies I have worked in previously.
Saquib,
Cristóbal didn't say to sell something to someone that didn't need it, instead he specifically said “somebody who doesn't want to buy it”. There is a big difference there.
As a sales person, I never want to pull the wool over someone's eyes and sell a freezer to an Inuit. But, if I had a better fishing pole to sell, and he didn't want to give up his fishing pole, it does take skill to get on the same side of the table to demonstrate why my fishing pole is the better choice for him.
That is a skill that easily translates to any job role.
Thanks for flagging that important distinction; I like your interpretation of what Conde was saying.
E2.0 tools, approaches, and philosophies can certainly be put to use to some extent at universities. They are, however, organizations composed of highly autonomous departments and individuals, so E2.0's ability to draw the enterprise more tightly together is not as useful as it would be in some other contexts.
I'm surprised at how hard it is to find people who write well, and I think we need to refocus our education efforts to re-emphasize this skill.
Thanks for pointing out that interview – I hadn't seen it.
I should have read Conde's advice more carefully
Thanks for the clarification Sully.
I find it ironic that there are all these calls for a corporate rethinking of management style from top down to bottom up yet these calls are always directed at the top. I propose that we “walk the talk” and start calling for change from the bottom up.
To that end, I have published a http://www.dynamicalsoftware.com/internet/skills that challenges knowledge workers, the rank-and-file, to upgrade their remote communication and collaboration skills.
I think that the C level players will be more open to bottom up management once they have more confidence that the bottom can pull the group up.
To respond to a small portion of Conde's interview, I see command-and-control still relevant in the 2.0 methodology. I think it will be framed in a different way. From my research of scouring countless articles and books, it is still rare to find any research or best practices on how management can best utilize 2.0 methods to run their businesses.
Sure, we have all sorts of writing on marketing, collaboration, innovation, etc, but how does the process of planning, leading, motivating, changing organizations, etc adapt to 2.0 methods? I think the basic methods of management will shift and we will see different processes with different names. In a way, you can say that management will still hold to some semblance of control, but it will be different.
I agree, Andew. However, I just read that the average young adult or kid sits behind the television and surfs the interent a combined total of 5 hours per day. This does not lead to much time on academic-based homework in their schools. They are texting, tweeting, and social networking as you know, all valuable skills, however, they too are over-taxed with information and enjoy the multi-tasking.
As an adult, I try to constantly hone my writing skills, but it is hard to fine the time for good writing!
Great post ! coming from on operations research background, I have been searching for metrics to measure collaboration within the enterprise (hence to show the relevance of 2.0 communication & collaboration tools.
I am closing the gap between the two visions (so to speak, between management science and system science).
I am glad to see that I reached similar concepts and principles as those expressed in this post (http://collaborationsociometry.blogspot.com/).
My list of “elementary principles” of 2.0 effectiveness is still uncomplete and somehow conceptual (I am coming to this field from a mathematical & simulation angle) but since I am currently reading “Enterprise 2.0″
More of this type of thinking is needed at every level everywhere.
Andy,
Please also note this Economist article for more Yammer case studies: http://bit.ly/9ixUgj
Thanks,
@ariegoldshlager
On peer effects.
That's fine within a company where the (physical) employees have waived all their intellectual property (IP) rights to the employer.
How about a community of which (physical) members are not bound together by a contract to a legal entity (the enterprise) that governs their collaboration ?
How about creating a Creative and Open blog named “Business impact of IP” and define
“academy 2.0 / institute 2.0″as “the use of emergent of differentiated IP commons within a knowledge community”.
Tru Dô-Khac, Creative Commons Paternité-Partage des Conditions Initiales à l'Identique 2.0 France License.
agreed!
It would almost seem that the courts would have to be able to separate out from where the knowledge is created. I could create knowledge on my blog, that is on my own time and not related to my job duties. This should be intellectual patent, however, I am wondering about this very idea. Facebook seems to believe that everything is theirs, even the pictures I take and post. I disagree and I am waiting the first time they attempt to sue someone and the rights of the artist are upheld.
Intellectual patents are just plain getting complicated.
Jeff,
you raise a point that Facebook seems to be fully aware of. When you look at the terms, one of the very first clause (Clause 2.1) deals with intellectual property (IP) and the “IP license” you grant to Facebook when using their services.
When i talk about “emergent differentiated IP commons”, i refer among others to the family of Creative Commons (CC) licenses.
On peer effects add-on
again, paying tribute to Andrew McAfee :
When i say : “Academy 2.0 / Institute 2.0″as “the use of emergent differentiated IP commons within a knowledge community”.
IP commons enable people to share, remix, reuse, -legally (source : Creative Commons)
Differentiated means various contractual environments in which the path of creation and/or innovation is traceable and persistent over time.
Emergent means that the commons have been made readable and understandable by reasonably educated people.
Creative Commons Paternité-Partage des Conditions Initiales à l'Identique 2.0 France License (CC) BY-SA Tru Dô-Khac, Paris.
On organisational structure
“Everybody has access to identical amounts of information”…
“Amounts” maybe… But qualified and relevant?
such as contracts clauses, unit costs, merge & acquisition date, products announces, internal balanced sheet… etc.
That’s lead to Institute 2.0 version 2.0
“Institute 2.0 as the use of emergent differentiated IP2 commons within a knowledge community”.
where IP2 (IP square, police was not taken) means Intellectual Property and Information Protection
Creative Commons Paternité-Partage des Conditions Initiales à l'Identique 2.0 France License (CC) BY-SA Tru Dô-Khac, Paris, France.
On fostering collaboration.
“A structure of collaboration in which people get the right recognition” triggers the next question: which recognition supported by which structure?
As innovation is more than ever praised by enterprises, let’s address specifically the creation of intellectual properties (IP).
Recognition starts at the task of attribution, and we can observe already some cases.
- in movie credits, where every one of the team is mentioned, even the accountant or the purchasing manager (!).
- in a social network forum or discussion, where all posts are attributed
- in a Paris based association of leading French companies addressing the value creation and innovation through the use of IT , where every research report is furnished with a list of contributors with their precise roles : sponsors, steering committee members, project manager, core team, reviewers, etc.
Then recognition actualizes into entitlements to be rewarded, that means to own some IP rights. Again, we can observe some cases
- in the blogosphere were all blogs are copyrighted
- in an university where professors/doctors are allowed to patent and own the patent
All these examples have some attributes of an Institute 2.0 organisation.
The following cases may be fully Institute 2.0 organisations:
- some enterprises of the opensource industry
- ParisTech Graduate School Open CourseWare
(CC) BY-SA 2.0 France Tru Dô-Khac.
Tru Dô-Khac is chairman of X-Propriété-Intellectuelle (X-PI) “X-Intellectual-Property”, a professional group addressing IP issues within the Ecole Polytechnique ParisTech alumni association. On X-PI agenda: IP market places, emerging IP practices impact on organisations, IP commons impact on IT use and IT governance.
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On “fostering collaboration” and “peer effects” where recognition issues are addressed
Peter Drucker coined “knowledge worker” in 1959.
In 2009, some discussions under the label of Intellectual Property 2.0 (IP 2.0) developed in the blogosphere.
IP 2.0 commons might create a paradigme shift in the knowledge economy at least as dramatic as web 2.0 technologies.
Let's introduce “Knowledge worker 2.0″ as a “worker enabled/allowed to take/get intellectual property entitlements on his creation/invention(s)”.
(cc) BY-SA 2.0 France Tru Dô-Khac, March 2010.
Sure, we have all sorts of writing on marketing, collaboration, innovation, etc, but how does the process of planning, leading, motivating, changing organizations, etc adapt to 2.0 methods? I think the basic methods of management will shift and we will see different processes with different names. In a way, you can say that management will still hold to some semblance of control, but it will be different.
On second thoughts, M. Conde, you are right, every one has the same amount of information to create/innovate
http://www.institute-20.com
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