Over the weekend I read a fantastic article from Mat Fogarty (http://mashable.com/2010/03/05/companies-crowdsourcing/) and it started me thinking on the topic of Enterprise Social Media. In particular I believe that we've only begun to explore the different ways that social media related innovations will change the internal culture and operational dynamics of large corporate organizations.
Mat touches on the potential transformative affect on corporate culture-
"The ability to manage and profit from employee knowledge through social networks, idea funnels, and prediction markets will be the defining competitive advantage for this decade. Employees will have a voice and enterprises will truly leverage their most valuable assets."
Most people today spend more time at work or doing work than they do at home or at leisure. Indeed social media is already making a substantial impact on how we spend our home / leisure time and how we communicate with each other. With numerous, ubiquitous communication tools integrated into our daily lives, social networks are becoming integrated communication hubs where we share content and experiences.
What Mat doesn't explore is the cultural challenges that might be an obstacle to corporate adoption of social media in the workplace. Social Media provides the opportunity for massive improvements in workplace productivity and quality, there is no question. But adoption curves might be hindered by fears of downsizing. Increased collaboration should be a good that is directly measured by and rewarded by management. Is it possible to accelerate adoption and reward resulting workplace efficiency improvements with increased time off, bonuses, promotions etc?
As we continue to drive towards increasing automation within technology organizations through the use of Social Media we'll be exploring how to reward those who help their organizations rise to the top.
I think you're absolutely right -- there are significant cultural challenges. But it's starting to feel like it's more a question of when and not whether these kinds of initiatives and technologies will really take off. In spite of the many significant obstacles. Here's another nice post on the topic by Cisco's CTO: http://blogs.cisco.com/news/comments/the_next_generation_collaborative_enterprise/
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree more Matt. I really like the post by Padmasree. As we try to get out our crystal ball, I'm intrigued by both the disruptive and formative potential of social media in the enterprise. We (generationE) have first hand experience of the potential, given the speed with which our Resolve RBA product has taken off in the enterprise IT operations space. I'll be digging in more to see Cisco's take on the future here.
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