There are things that seem so obvious that you don’t care about them…and one day you realize you may have made a big mistake. It all started when I wrote a note on my french blog to introduce the famous “meet charlie” slideshow. I received a comment saying “this presentation is very nice but focused on tools…where is the employee 2.0 “.
We can see the employee 2.0 in the presentation. But, after having seen it again and again I had to agree our friend Charlie was just here to promote the tools he uses. But it seems quite logical : the employee needs tools to apply his new “best practices” in the enterprise, especially when it’s broken up. What allow people whon are 2.0 in their mind to be 2.0 in their actions are precisely tools.
Another analysis would be to consider that if the enterprise goes 2.0 the employee will follow. That leads to another question : does the employee become 2.0 because its enterprise goes this way or does an enterprise become 2.0 because its employees are 2.0 ? According to me both are true : no 2.0 practices if the enterprise doesn’t want it, but adoption will highly depend on people. Enterpise 2.0 is a choice that belongs to the “top of the enterprise” but the success will depend on the bottom of the enterprise. Obviously there will always be “under the radar” initatives, but what we’re talking about is global adoption.
Another question : are employees 2.0 by nature ? I’m convinced of that. If they adopt contrary practices it’s not because of them but because of the organizational context they use to work in.
And…last but not least…What’s en employee 2.0 ? It will be the topic of an upcoming note.
But there’s a fact we can’t ignore : employee 2.0 isn’t a major issue and nobody really thinks about it. Perharps it’s an underlying concept of enterprise 2.0 but it doesn’t deserve to be neglected : the central issue for enterprise 2.0 is adoption, what implies employee are the central question.
You can find the "original" french version of this blog here
