E 2.0: What Comes First, The Chicken or The Egg?
It’s About Sustainability
I have been in Africa for several days and have learned more about Culture, Relationships, and Resources. Our Mission Team from America has been working with local teams at Humble School in Uganda. Humble School provides care and education to children here in Africa. The school, just like many organizations and individuals here, have very limited resources. Some people come here and see the needs and then try to implement THEIR solution. Some of these solutions die a horrible death and it’s usually due to poor communication and disregard of culture. It’s sad to see that here and in Enterprise 2.0 Solutions.
When I see hungry people in the morning, I think eggs, but no eggs were to to be found. I was thinking we could buy eggs to help feed the people. Eggs got me thinking about chickens, which lead to plans about lunch and dinner. What if we gave the school a truck-load of chickens?
The Chickens and Eggs System
A chicken ranch would give the people a simple system for producing chickens and eggs. A big chicken ranch could feed the community and provide an income stream by selling chickens and eggs to other communities. This sounds like a great idea, right?
Death Before Life
The “Chickens and Eggs System”, just like any solution will die without a full-lifecycle plan. The ideal plan puts Cultue first with a focus on Sustainability. A plan without these two key elements produces a stagnant (If something such as a business or society is stagnant, there is little activity or change) solution, which leads to Death before Life.
What’s Wrong with The Chickens and Eggs System
- How would you keep them healthy?
- How would you feed them?
- How would you protect them?
- How would you help them be productive?
- What if the community could not or would not eat chickens or eggs?
- What if the community preferred fish?
A Little Culture Goes A Long Way
Our “Chicken and Eggs Solution” is not that different from Enterprise 2.0 Solutions. The main lesson I see is understanding Culture first improves our ability at creating Sustainable Solutions. Attend any Enterprise 2.0 Conference and you will hear, “It’s about the people, not the tools”. This is more than a “buzz phrase” and goes beyond responses from a subset of people in the Enterprise. This is about a complete understanding of the culture within the Enterprise. What works in one Enterprise, does not work in all. A good place to start understanding more about culture in the Enterprise is with Susan and her teams at The Adoption 2.0 Council.
Tags: Adoption, Adoption Patterns, Culture, Enterprise 2.0, strategy
