There are a number of obstacles to the implementation of real collective dynamics and the tools that go with them. These include many fears, the ‘we’ve always done it this way’ syndrome and the traditional ‘we’re not ready’ and ‘it’s good for others but not for us’.
My vision is different, and as I often say, change that is desired is always better than change that is undergone, so we might as well be one step ahead of the others. I often tell the decision-makers I meet that there are an impressive number of young people using blogs and wikis today, for whom sharing information, resources and work is second nature. When people say to me ‘we don’t hire teenagers here’ with a wink, I simply point out that teenagers have grown up over the years and are even attending higher education. Tomorrow they’ll be your interns, your juniors, asking for wikis, internal blogs (or even external blogs… in any case if they don’t exist they’ll create them on their own) and at that point we’ll have to act under the pressure of an age group that will impose its methods. If that still makes you smile, I would add that these people are already starting to arrive on the job market and that some of them will have management positions within 2/3 years… and that future promotions will be full of their clones.
I’m sure that companies don’t allow their choices to be dictated to them. But I doubt it. E-mail was introduced into many companies because employees had one for personal use and wanted to use this tool in their professional lives. In the same way, many corporate websites were created around 1997/99 under pressure from customers or employees.
Two things to back up my comments.
‘Where the Internet goes the Intranet will surely follow€¦’
In other words, it is certain that your employees, who are heavy users of ‘2.0’ tools in their day-to-day lives, will one day be asking for identical functionalities internally. Depending on their level of responsibility, they may even be the prescribers.
‘They are the future and they’re coming soon to a workplace near you’.
This is the title of an article in the Financial Times that came to my attention via Jane McConnell. In it we learn how young people arriving on the market see work, organisation and management, imbued as they are by a culture that is very much dominated by video games and the web.
I’d like to quote the end of his article, which describes the vision of work that these young people have, and which fully corresponds to the one I’m trying to promote (and which I apply to myself as well)
- you have to react, making decisions quickly on the basis of constantly changing factors,
- having visible feedback and immediate rewards
- there’s no penalty for losing – you can start again as often as you like
- learning takes place informally and among friends
- Success is measured by completing tasks, not by hours of attendance.
That’s their vision of the company and we’ll make them unhappy and less productive by locking them into a straitjacket. They are certainly the first generation to really embrace the concept of collective intelligence acquired before entering the labour market. Many of us are interested in this issue because we have tried to improve the systems we have worked with. It is innate in them, and to restrict them would make no sense from a managerial point of view, at a time when companies are looking to optimise their collective intelligence. The question now is how to implement these practices in ‘world companies’. Moving to Enterprise 2.0 means anticipating greater efficiency in your recruits of tomorrow, and even giving yourself the means to attract the best people who will be sensitive to your organisation.
