Considerations before jumping on the E2.0 Bandwagon.

Here is a recent post I did on the Wikinomics group on Facebook. I thought I'd share it here for those readers that are not on that discussion group. This post was part of a discussion around good & bad experiences with social networking. Regular readers of this blog will see the first point a recount of the Mesh07 session on Digital Blinders.

Aug 6, 2007

Here are a couple of my thoughts related to the the conversation. Let me start by saying, I am convinced about the positive power of mass collaboration but so much is written on this, that I didn't think I would add to it here. Instead I picked a couple of thoughts that hopefully are a bit different.

1. In theory, could social networks of self-organizing individuals actually pull people further apart? The concept is that people often band with those that have similar thoughts and ideas rather than thoughts that have ideas that go counter to theirs. For example, if I was active in politics I might join a community that caters to and reinforces my political beliefs further driving in my beliefs and "dismissing" others beliefs. I saw a news show that talked about some disturbing organizations that held beliefs that were downright scary (and illegal) but apparently members banned together to reinforce that their beliefs were "justified" and everyone else is "wrong". I spoke to an editor of Wikipedia at a recent conference around some apparent concerns that Wikipedia, was "slanted to the scientific" beliefs and not accurately providing "creationism" a fair chance, so a separate encyclopedia for "creationism" perspectives has been created. What is good though, is that at least one of the ingredients is there to improve upon understanding and that is availability. An individual can choose to open their minds to alternate concepts or not. If however they choose not, they can likely find ways to reinforce their beliefs and dismiss others. I was introduced to this concept at a recent Mesh conference. Here is my blog on it if you're interested:

http://rexsthoughtspot.blogspot.com/2007/05/mesh07-digital-blinders-are-we-inch.html

2. The "whisper" and "smear" topics made me think about the reality of speed and the potential negative impact if we're wrong. Recently in Ontario, a government official made a derogatory remark referring to a citizen as a "ghetto dude". They didn't realize that they had sent the e-mail back to the citizen and when news broke, groups started popping up in several spots (including facebook), many of which publicly showed the picture of the person and demanded their resignation. The concern here was that some of these sites actually put the wrong picture up! Same name, wrong person. I listened to the mother of the falsely accused girl on the radio tell her story,(I suppose the girl herself was too distraught to tell her story directly) about how people accepted these pop-up groups as truth and immediately started harassing the girl and her family. Yes, they got the picture removed eventually but it seems much damage had already been inflicted. Here's the Toronto Star article on this:

http://www.neowin.net/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t576946.html

I guess a common thread here is that each individual has the opportunity to seek multiple perspectives and sources of information through the Internet and social networks. But do they? Do they REALLY seek to understand those different beliefs? Are we sometimes victim to the zero-sum game concept? That there can only be 1 right answer? I don't know the answers but would recommend enterprise 2.0 practioners consider these concepts when building their overall strategy.

Getting started with Enterprise 2.0: Now what?!

So your company has decided to go head first into Enterprise 2.0 thing. Perhaps you convinced those decision makers with that slick "Meet Charlie" slideshow on why it's key to the business. Great! You've read all the articles, subscribe to all the key blogs, bought all the nifty tools and you are ready to go! Now where to start?

Well, perhaps you'd want to listen to the input of 119 CIO's that Forrester surveyed. In general, their finding was that of the whole web 2.0 spectrum of applications the three that had good business value were RSS, wiki's and tagging. The tools of questionable business value included blogging and social networks.

The "good value" ones, are clearly productivity enhancers. RSS provides the ability to manage information and personalize content, free from clutter and ads. It saves valuable time in getting the best information from several sources. Wiki's address the challenges of coordination of documents, version control and tagging provides a decentralized means to metadata that allow us to classify things the way the author had intended and ultimately able to find relevant information faster. If you are looking for incremental gains, definitely look at these. Although wiki's are closer to being a collaboration & innovation enabler, RSS & tagging alone do not push collaboration.

You could try to argue that the "questionable" tools also create productivity but it would be difficult. In fact, you are likely to get the exact opposite reaction, which is, these tools provide opportunities for our employees to waste time. It is reminiscent of McGregor's Theory X & Theory Y (which is nicely summarized by Bertrand Dupperin) work done decades ago. It is also the classic risk reward scenario. The perceived risk by Theory X'ers are 1) People will Waste Time, 2) People will blog about items that run counter to the goals of the organization.

Blogging, isn't only a communication vehicle for keeping in touch, it's a rich communication vehicle capable of providing a personality to an executive. Those who use it wisely, will be able to show genuine character, vulnerability, sincerity, transparency, emotion, personalization, and personality. So what? TRUST! Trust is something that evolves over time, through a series of interactions and history. Think about it. Why do you trust the people that you do? I've written before that trust is a pre-requisite to employee engagement and ultimately collaboration.

Social Forums & Social Networks, are a bit more complicated in my opinion. At first glance it would seem to make sense that people sharing stories and helping one another out is nothing but good value. You still get the concerns over time wasting, but you also have greater concern over controversial content as larger communities are required for forums. Blogs for example, could be controlled so only certain people are allowed to blog at first and can more easily be governed if one wants to. There are also questions as to what forums are allowed and not allowed, and possibly concerns that forums may actually bring some people together, but drive larger groups apart as discussed at Mesh07.

Like all business decisions. Understand first what you are trying to achieve, and be specific. Incremental productivity gains, go with RSS, Tagging and Wiki's. There is little downside to these tools beyond standard change-management. If you are after cultural change, innovation, next generation collaboration consider social forums, blogs and other social based applications but proceed with well thought out plans around the process and people aspects and not just the technical aspects. Not all enterprise 2.0 technologies are created equal. If you get stuck... You might want to join an E2.0 social network ;)

Mesh07: Edelman's PR advice applied to Enterprise 2.0

Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman, the worlds largest independent public relations (PR) firm kicked things off this morning at Mesh 07. I am not a PR person myself but his insight can be applied to any enterprise looking at adopting Web 2.0 technologies (i.e. Enterprise 2.0) such as blogging, and social forums. Here are some of his comments and my corporate view to them.

"Don't leave the whole conversation up to the opposition."


You may be bold enough to introduce corporate blogging but how would you respond if you started receiving several extremely negative comments? Some "purists" would argue that you must never "govern" these comments. Personally, I believe that if a comment is inappropriate and adds little to the conversation, it should be removed. Definitely, Techcrunch personality, Mike Arrington was upfront with the audience yesterday in saying that he regularly re-edits his comments after-the-fact.

At a minimum, you SHOULD provide the counter arguments and support for your blog. Being accepting of criticism doesn't mean just hiding until the bombing subsides. Your supporters will be looking for your support and want to hear your side of the story.

Another important point... THINK before you blog or crowdsource. For example, providing an opportunity for anyone to create a commercial for the Chevy Tahoe in a climate where there is heavy evangelism over environmentalism isn't the wisest move. For those who know the story, several "creative" people took up the offer from GM but created attack ads that put the Tahoe in a very negative environmental light. Perhaps another communication medium would have been better.


"There is a trade-off between Control and Credibility"

Edelman suggested middle management would be a good place to start blogging. He talked to the Microsoft example in which Robert Scoble, gained credibility by being transparent and genuine as illustrated in his public attack on his own company. In the long-run, Microsoft may have benefited from letting Scoble's opinion flow instead of shutting down the conversation.

Another example was the Dove campaign on YouTube, "In search of real beauty". The Dove brand rose considerably with this transparent approach.

In the end, Edelman gave 3 points of advice.

1. Make your stories visual. Go beyond the words.

2. Don’t let yourself be defeated by set backs. You will fall a few times.

3. Don’t let clients put you in a box. Stand your ground.

This was just the kick-off. No Doubt you will see many more blogs coming out of Mesh 07!

Mesh07: Digital Blinders - Are We an Inch Wide and a Mile Deep?

Today I attended the Mesh 07 Conference and for me the most interesting (philosophically intense) session was the one titled "Digital Blinders - Are We an Inch Wide and a Mile Deep?" with a panel consisting of Mark Schneider, Nora Young and Mark Federman.

To be honest, I had no clue what this would be about. As I sat down I noticed a cartoon backdrop depicting 3 teenagers slouched on a couch surfing the web and commenting on sensational pictures of Britney Spears. The tag line said "The Death of the Newspapers"

We were quickly informed that this session was to discuss whether the abundance of information has caused us to be passive, lazy consumers of mass content lacking depth of understanding? It was kicked off by an excerpt from Al Gore's recent book, "Assault on Reason" in which Gore expresses anger over the media's single focus on salacious topics such as Paris Hilton, OJ Simpson, Laci Peterson, etc... while the US quietly made catastrophic errors in judgment about the environment, and the war on Iraq.

Of the many points discussed, the one concept that made me really think was whether the allowance of self-organized social communities actually drove collaboration further apart? The reasoning is that people are more apt to look for websites, communities, articles that support their disposition on certain topics rather than counter arguments to their pre-conceived ideas.

As communities of like minded people form, it reinforces their positions and causes an "us versus them" divide. Mark Federman, pointed to our Western education system that reinforces the zero-sum assumption in the way they teach children then you are either "right" or that you are "wrong". You can not have two right answers.

After the session, I chatted with some peers and discussed the implications to a company. Here are a four concepts from that discussion.

1. Focus on creating integrated forums that offer multi-perspectives instead of separate forums dedicated to specific interests.

2. Provide access to multi-source of information for multiple perspectives.

3. Focus on improving critical thinking and the ability to process multiple arguments and identify strength of arguments.

4. Accept the concept of emergent understanding and that it is ok to NOT have an immediate position.

Looking forward to tomorrow's session.