Heavy Mental

Yet another Bullshit 2.0 presentation (via Bertrand Duperrin).

I used to be kinda okay with this sort of Armanoesque material. But I just can’t anymore : I just find this type of presentations disgusting.

Here is the pitch : there is this emergence of Enterprise 2.0 tools that transform the way we work in the company. These are natural tools for the digital natives but not so natural for the baby boomers. The generation in between (it doesn’t say but I would think 35 - 45) are the knowledge workers 2.0 (blimey !) who can link the two generations together. Innovation … blah blah … collaborative work … blah blah … bullshit … blah blah

Something very interesting : out of the 55 slides, there aren’t so many on the very grounds you build teams on, teams that then become greater than the sum of their parts : trust, transparency, commitment and enthusiasm.

The problem with this type of statement is that the container (mode of communication) replaces the contents (what is communicated) : “use 2.0 tools and you’ll be creative“. This type of colorful demagogy is typical of the marshmallow speech which has been served to the Generation Me, as Jean Twenge depicts it in her book.

In the IT area, you end up having to cope with young professionnals that just get upset because you show them their software have severe performance issues, is not tested properly or is not easily deployable / maintainable.

They also get upset if you’re not happy with their standard of software documentation : a couple of lines in a wiki. Don’t get me wrong : Wiki is cool, but posting crap documentation in a Wiki is just as useless as writing crap Word document.

You then become the villain, the poor old guy who doesn’t understand software innovation (read unfixed level of abstraction and complexity) and who is only interested in the dark and boring side of the industry (read deliver the best possible software on time for it to be used as expected i.e. industrialization).

Now I guess all these consultants have to keep the whole thing buzzing to make a living. Enterprise 2.0 tools definitely can help getting things done but only if they remain the mean not the objective. They can’t replace the principles that rule professional work and teams organization as this type of propaganda tends to make believe.