The methods and technologies
of the Web are coming to the enterprise, in the form of wikis, blogs,
messaging, widgets, peer review and comparison voting, and other proven
knowledge management tools.
Web 2.0 moving to the corporate network becomes known as Enterprise 2.0, of course.
“Enterprise 2.0-style IT requires a shift to much
more openness using a Web model, a shift in preferred end-user tools,
and flat collaborative space in order for it to work and get reasonable
returns.
“But our enterprises don’t look like the Web. So this
is the call to action to IT departments where they can actually do the
most good and use their top-down influence to find ways to embrace Web
2.0 by eliminating the intrinsic barriers to it without compromising
the integrity of enterprise systems or our businesses.” From Encouraging Enterprise 2.0: As simple as possible, but no simpler?
The sea change of Enterprise 2.0 must happen
if the enterprise is to survive in today’s changing conditions.
Customers are growing smarter, aided by knowledge tools from the Web,
and this forces the enterprise to present equally smart and
knowledgeable responses from all employees at all customer touchpoints.
Furthermore. the growing ruthlessness and volatility of markets and
competitive environments requires increasing business agility from the
enterprise simply to survive.
All of this change is
delivered by software and systems, and the commensurate burden on IT
departments is large. The danger lies in personnel accustomed to Web
methods going outside the corporate firewall for collaborative
knowledge services, with the inevitable security breach that IT cannot
allow.
“Trouble is they will do it outside your firewall on
bulletin boards, instant message exchanges personal blogs and probably
on islands in Second Life and you will have lost the ability to
understand it, influence it, and integrate it into how you do business.
“The second easiest way is to find ways of allowing
this to happen inside the firewall which can be as simple as sticking
in some low cost or free tools and then making sure your existing
organisation can: GET OUT OF THE WAY
“The third easiest way is to do the second easiest
way and then engage those who would have done the easiest way and get
them to help you: KEEP THE ENERGY LEVELS UP” – The 100% guaranteed easiest way to do Enterprise 2.0
As we have often noted, the greatest burden
of change lies with the enterprise culture. Even charismatic leadership
can’t change the habits of community overnight, especially not by
dictate from the top down. But software has the wearing effect of
water, and can change ways of doing things, through repetition at the
micro level.
The natural instincts of people to do the
best they can with what they have becomes a great advantage when what
they have increases, as we see from the enormous gains made by
implementing Dovetail enhanced functionality in a legacy Clarify install, and as the Web proves with its collaboration triumphs.
The
great challenge and opportunity for IT is to implement controlled
change through Enterprise 2.0 architecture and tools, deployed in
collaboration with all stakeholders throughout the enterprise. Euan
Semple recently described how the BBC incorporated social media tools in their sprawling operation.
“They started with an internal bulletin board, which
has been used by over 18,500 of their 24,000 employees. Then they
created their own social networking tool called Connect, which helps
them track down specific expertise in their organisation, and form
interest groups for particular projects. After that they started using
blogging tools for internal communication. There are currently over 130
in the organisation, one of which is regularly read by over 4,000
employees. They have also implemented use of wikis as well. Around 500
people have access to them in a controlled way to do things like
creating procedural documentation, or for project collaboration. He
talked about how they got 89 bloggers to collaborate to produce a
corporate blogging policy. There are now around 3,000 wikis in use.”
See Wiki and Social Media roundup
From his experience Semple recommends
separate tools, loosely joined, rather than trying to tackle the
problem with one corporate combined approach. Again, this requires the
finesse of IT in fine-tuned control of the galloping horse.
