The reason that social
networking tools are coming to the enterprise is simply that they work
a whole lot better than the existing tools for internal communication.
And they can be turned outward as required. Consider the painfulness of
sending an inter-office memo around by email for a few days to get
everyone's opinion and sign-off. And compare this with an open
framework where only stakeholders in the concept join in the
conversation.
Across
the Web recently industry analyst James Governor presented a case for
Twitter as an enterprise tool. It's easy to disparage Twitter as a
fragmenter of focus and a disrupter of time; many of its users would
agree with you, but they would also claim that the platform is a
landmark innovation in collaboration method.
By a coincidence, enterprise architect James McGovern
was thinking about an earlier post that Governor had made regarding
Twitter, and brought Governor's arguments to bear on his own rhetorical
question, Enterprise Architecture: When was the last time you had a meaningful conversation?
McGovern
was saying that Twitter-like tools could be used within the enterprise
simply to restore some of the face-to-face feel, paradoxically using a
technology system.
James Governor came back the following day,
very pleased to have read James McGovern's post, and agreeing with his
points. In fact he amplified them with an illustration of Twitter's
value worth quoting in full:
"Let me just finish with one of the reasons I like Twitter so much- you
might call it Twitter as social glue. We are all busy people at RedMonk
(all three of us) and we live in different time zones. We’re always
traveling and we don’t get much time to catch up face to face (almost
never happens). But I don’t only want to know What Stephen and Cote Are
Working On. Rather I want to know How They Are Doing. Good managers
take a view of their people that goes far beyond the tasks they assign.
Twitter helps to keep us all in the loop." -
You can keep your “business language”: that’s not meaningful conversation
During
the course of this post Governor noted some additional commentary on
McGovern's post he had seen coming from the Aloof Architect, talking
about the value of personal networks of trusted advisors, the kind of
things students begin creating in college. He suggests that maybe
enterprise architects should build their own networks. This thinking in
turn he derived from Gardner Campbell writing about the future of
education:
"Traditional course-for-credit models will persist–they certainly have
their uses–but more and more learners will arrange their own “cognitive
apprenticeships” by means of RSS feeds of content generated by a
personal suite of trusted and inspiring experts,
and they will build their reputations through certifications,
testimonials, and a body of their own online work that generates
persistent, sophisticated commentary." -
The Future of Online Education
Meanwhile
back at Aloof Architecture one of the parts that got Governor's
attention was the thought that enterprise architects, who have to
stretch a long ways across the whole enterprise, could be using
technology such as Twitter to network inside the organization as well
as outside, in order to build and maintain consensus.
So
imagine, if you can, having the foregoing conversation in an internal
memo sent around between departments - it doesn't seem likely does it?
On the other hand imagine if these separate blog posters actually had a
common wiki to work in, what kind of tightly crafted proposal they
could have arrived at by now?
If you had a small version of the
Web inside your company, wouldn't you see better ideas being passed
around? Wouldn't there be more accidental collaboration?
