Is Cisco Stuck in 1984?

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Cisco Collaboration 2010

Mighty Cisco Systems has published an utterly ridiculous white paper. The specious title is, “Transforming Collaboration Through Strategy and Architecture.”

We are NOT making this up.

In this hot mess they extol the virtues of a technology approach to collaboration. Then they claim most projects will fail. In fact, the only surprise in this pap is the conservative Gartner claim that ONLY 70% of enterprise collaboration efforts will fail outright.

Honestly, we have not seen any other major company offer products that 70% of the time will fail. It is identical to a food company that sells products that will make you sick only 70% of the time. It’s offensive and outrageous.

 

Cisco is as Cisco Does

Meanwhile, this is what the brain trust at Cisco came up to solve the 70% failure rate of enterprise social media and collaboration: a transition from “deploying technology to deploying business-relevant technology.”  Woo-hoo! Disruptive innovation? Give us a break.

Promise. We are NOT making this up. It is in the paper!

It really sad to see how little progress has been made in understanding enterprise collaboration. The authors even have the gall to retrieve the tired and bogus 1990s mantra of collaboration being about ‘People, Process, Technology.’ Three word response: God help us!

If you read or follow this revolting, self-serving rubbish, BEWARE, your actual failure rate will be closer to 100%. Run as far and as fast from this ‘architectural’ approach to collaboration as you possibly can.

Look Cisco, 'architectural' is the most lame and overused codeword for technology ever invented. This approach to collaboration is patently incorrect. Don’t you think people have learned ANYTHING from the ‘70% failure’ rate? C’mon.

How DARE Cisco, or anyone else, freely admit a “high failure rate” and then systematically offer the identical thinking and technology that leads to the stunning, expensive collapse of enterprise collaboration?

Collaboration is NOT a process, technology, architecture or strategy. Collaboration is a complex human behavior. That it is from a company that uses (abuses?) the tag line, “The Human Network” is pathetic.

Good grief.

Why even bother with a paper on "Transforming Collaboration Through Strategy" and leave OUT the Number One way people collaborate: face-to-face authentic conversation.

The vulgar, dehumanizing, technology-saturated, anti-social enterprise needs LESS collaboration technology, less process and more, a LOT more human conversation.

 Cisco Founded

The irony is Cisco Systems is an extremely well-managed company. They focus on the individual. They are open, thoughtful and depend a lot on actual human interaction.

Cisco employees are not the automata to be ‘structured’ a this paper advocates: “The structured use of people…” The authors seem to be living in 1984, figuratively and literally. Unbelievable.

You have been warned. If and when Cisco management, or The Human Network, gets wind of this nonsense, they will probably and should remove it.

BTW, if you want to know what the future of the social enterprise and collaboration looks like, just go here --

RT @fonetworks: The Social Enterprise w/Wiig, Dixon, Krebs, Jooste –

http://networksingularity.com/2010/09/03/the-future-of-the-social-enterprise.aspx 

 





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