Thinking about the barriers to enterprise 2.0, I came to the conclusion that one of them, an not the smallest, is we way people feel within the organization, the way they feel they are considered, which leads the way they will behave.
By building enterprise 2.0 and favorizing social computing we also ask people to participate. The risk is that, after a few time, people give up because they realize their participation didn’t change a thing. So enterprise 2.0 adoption depends a lot on how people are considered in their enterprise.
If the common idea is that there are those who know and decide on one side and those who execute on the other side there’s a lot of chance you’ll fail. Because in this case you won’t give any attention to what the community will bring. When people will realize their investment is useless, and almost risky considering management behaviors, they will stop making content…if they ever did. Because if you want them at least to try and start, they must feel they’re a part of what is done, a part of the decision, a part of the choices.
Actually, decisions will always belong to few people, because there must be people who decide and assume, and because majority’s choice isn’t always the right choice. But this assumption doesn’t prevent people who decide to gather as much information and as many advices as the whole company can bring them. Because as we all know, just because you never tell bad news to you boss, top management has always a more attractive vision of operations than people “on the ground”.
In order to come back to the subject, one key element in enterprise 2.0 adoption (and so in 2.0 tools adoption) will be the change management assumptions and behaviors to make everybody in the enterprise become a stakeholder, not only on the paper but also in the facts and in everybody’s head.
You can find the "original" french version of this blog here
