Group items tagged

Second is a set in which 2.0 is an alternative or addition to 1.0, not a replacement for it.

the primary goal of enterprise IT is not to delight users, but rather to increase the value of the company. But do these two outcomes have to be in conflict?

The biggest challenge will probably be to get corporate technologists (a group that includes IT departments, vendors, and consultants) to stop thinking like monopolists that can dictate tools to users with great confidence that, because of the lack of alternatives, they’ll get used.

I can think of four negative consequences of ignoring these patterns and continuing to act like a 1.0 enterprise technology monopolist.

enterprises will deploy technologies that are disliked and/or not used

employees will use ’stealth IT’ and any knowledge / information captured therein will not be retained by the enterprise

employees and customers will leave because of their frustration with poor enterprise technologies

the enterprise will be handicapped or crippled  –  less productive, innovative, collaborative, agile, ‘wise,’ foresightful, insightful, transparent, clear than it could be otherwise, or than its competitor is.

And while some of it must remain under strict control, particularly in public companies, much of it is unnessarily — and usually to a fault — hidden, unreused, and unexploited.

Explain the reasoning behind retaining more knowledge, in making it public, searchable, and organizing it via tagging.  Describe the benefits of being able to access much fresher and more up-to-date information elsewhere in the organization because their colleagues are managing more of their projects, tasks, and other work via social tools. 

Provide useful templates for common activities and reference material such as projects, tasks, resource management, policies, procedures, standards, and so on.  You still have to keep template layouts and template usage simple; excessive structure tends to kill the golden goose of contributions quickly.  But a little basic structure goes a long way and prevents contributors from having to figure out how to structure all the white space and provide a simple layer of consistency.

The enterprise has not caught up, largely because most enterprise information doesn't allow a hyperlink structure, and links aren't encouraged very much when it does

setting up blog and wiki directories as well as good enterprise search based on link ranking (which is what Google does to make the right information come up in the first few pages of search results.) 

Provide your own search engine in the tools only if you must.

Create an internal Wikipedia that contains a seperate copy of all Intranet content and let users edit away.

This boils down to having some form of moderation, either human or automated, to ensure that the level of discourse remains at some bare minimimum acceptable standard. 

A high-profile executive sponsor that obviously uses the tools can also help in a big way.

Triggering an Enterprise 2.0 ecosystem quickly is likely an early activity driver.  This can mean a lot of things but the link structure of Web tools allows information to quickly flow, circulate, and mesh together.  You can leverage this in a almost infinite number of ways to drive user activity, interesting content, create awareness of what the company is "thinking", and more.  For example, create a blog for every employee in the company and mail the link to them with instructions on how to use it. >  Create a social bookmarking site for the enterprise where everyone can see what is being bookmarked by everyone else that day. >  Create an internal Wikipedia that contains a seperate copy of all Intranet content and let users edit away. >  The possibilities are endless and provide a much greater number of "entry points" where people can get started with these tools.

The problems will be with the business culture, not the technology. 

For example, create a blog for every employee in the company and mail the link to them with instructions on how to use it. 

Create a social bookmarking site for the enterprise where everyone can see what is being bookmarked by everyone else that day.

, the real issue, day in and day out, with getting Enterprise 2.0 to take off is to educate, evangelize, demonstrate, and most importantly, evolve the interface and structure of your tools until you pick the right formula that resonates with your audience.

Allowing the output of SQL queries to be inserted into wikis when they load, calling Web services or using Flash badges that access data resources can turn Enterprise 2.0 tools from pure knowledge management into actual hybrids of software and data

And the reverse should be true as well, getting data back out into traditional tools including Office documents, PDFs, and XML must be easy to inspire trust and lower barriers to use.