Social collaboration isn’t lacking tools, it’s lacking permission

Last week, I wrote a long post on corporate social networks, discussing nostalgia for a promising technology that unfortunately preceded the culture necessary for its use, but whose promises were not entirely in vain, as its legacy is now present almost everywhere in the digital workplace (The rise and fall of enterprise social networks).

The post analyzed the promises and life of a technology against the backdrop of what is commonly referred to as the “elephant in the room,” namely issues related to corporate culture, collective and participatory dynamics, engagement, acceptance of transparency, and ultimately, what we call human nature.

And then I remembered something an old “rock star” on the subject said during a discussion, again about the good old days, when he welcomed me to Bluesky (where you can join me if you think X is no longer worth it and Threads is of no interest).

“Social collaboration? A utopian concept that has failed to overcome fundamental human nature.”

Human nature, yes. But whose nature? The employee’s? The manager’s? The disembodied nature of the business and its culture?

In any case, this sentence sums up a form of disillusionment shared by many early enthusiasts of this technology and what has been called “Enterprise 2.0,” particularly by those who had a very humanistic view of the subject. My own vision, which is more productivity- and operations-oriented, has suffered less, but I think his point deserves further analysis because, beyond an old fad, I find it very relevant to everything related to the adoption of new technologies in business and what is more broadly referred to as digital transformation.

It refers more broadly to uses and technologies that are present in the general public and which come up against the walls of the business despite its desire to import them. Collective momentum that fails to take off despite the tools, intentions, and investments.

What if, in the end, the failure of social collaboration is not linked to human nature but to the way businesses have framed, slowed down, or simply neutralized it?

In short:

• The failure of social collaboration lies in the organizational framework, not in human nature.
• Collaborative practices exist in our private lives but remain stifled in business.
• Without trust, recognition, and permission to be oneself, participation stagnates.
• It is not a problem of know-how, but of culture and environment.
• The solution lies in aligning tools, practices, and corporate culture.

Social collaboration? What’s that?

Since the concept is much less fashionable than it was at the time (perhaps because it ended up spreading once the hype died down), let’s start by clarifying what we’re talking about.

Social collaboration, often misunderstood or reduced to the use of “trendy” Web 2.0 or participatory web tools that emerged in the early 2000s, is an approach to work based on the open circulation of information, the valorization of individual contributions, and the collective construction of knowledge at the organizational level. It is inspired by the logic of the social web (profiles, comments, reactions, communities, general user-generated content, etc.), but applied to the professional context. Its objective is not to “network for the sake of networking,” but to break down silos, streamline exchanges, make visible what is often hidden, and give employees space to collaborate and learn from each other, beyond hierarchical lines.

It is based on a few fundamental principles: transparency (creating and accessing information is no longer reserved for a select few), trust (people don’t share if they feel they are being monitored or judged), voluntary participation(everyone contributes to the extent that they perceive it to be useful), and implicit or explicit recognition of contributions (likes, comments, mentions, recognition by management).

But without a clear framework, managerial involvement, and a business purpose, these principles remain dead letters. This is not a fad or a humanistic issue: it is potentially a real lever for collective efficiency, provided it is treated as an organizational challenge and not as a simple tool deployment.

Social collaboration is not a question of know-how

We need to stop saying that people don’t know how to collaborate: they do it every day in their personal lives without even thinking about it. They react, comment, give opinions, ask questions, share articles, participate in groups, create WhatsApp groups, publish stories, and animate online communities.

No, this culture of collaboration and sharing exists, and the tools that enable it are not mastered by the general public. What’s more, there is almost no generation gap on the subject.

This reminds me of what I used to say all the time when I spoke at conferences on digital transformation. Businesses complain about the gap between highly digital customers, who are proficient in the tools and uses, and employees who are not at all and struggle to get out into the field to meet customers (Are your employees really hopeless at digital ?), be as informed and responsive as them, and do not have the mastery and fluency with digital tools that enable them to be relevant in satisfying customers.

But such a vision assumes that there are two categories of people in the world: employees, who spend their lives in the office, and customers, who spend their lives being customers. This is totally unrealistic: we are obviously talking about the same people at different times of the day. So that’s not the issue.

Digital social behaviors exist, are mastered, and are widely adopted outside the office. What is problematic is not the ability to use these tools and master their codes, but the fact that these codes remain blocked at the door of the company, even when attempts are made to bring the tools inside.

The workplace is a place of dissociation

Indeed, as soon as we enter the professional world, as soon as we walk through the office door, these practices become suspect.

We hesitate to comment for fear of expressing an opinion, we don’t dare to “like” something for fear of taking sides, we don’t ask questions for fear of exposing our ignorance, we don’t dare to speak up for fear of being judged. We wait for others to express themselves, we read (sometimes), without reacting (always).

We adopt a posture.

This is a profound phenomenon that has been around for decades and even seems to be growing stronger over time. But it is not about a tool, but rather an implicit rule that says the office is not a place for personal expression. We must be measured, cautious, and professional in the strictest sense of the word.

When you know people well inside and outside the office, you sometimes even notice a form of symbolic dissociation. If you haven’t seen the series Severance yet, you should: it depicts a dystopian world where employees experience a mental split between their personal and professional lives, against a backdrop of criticism of the business world that forces us to forget our identity, our uniqueness, and manipulates us into blending into a collective where, in a way, we sacrifice our identity on the altar of productivity (Severance Is Not Only the Dystopian Future of Workplace Burnout…In Many Ways We’re Already There).

We’re not there yet, of course. In any case, our employers don’t implant chips in our brains to make us forget who we are once we step into the elevator.

But in terms of practices, whether we’re talking about digital practices or simply relationships between people in the office or a meeting room, dissociation already exists: it is cultural, implicit, and almost normalized.

The problem isn’t people, it’s the framework

When something doesn’t work in business, I have often found that the problem is less about the individual than the system (The Problem Isn’t the Employee, It’s the System). This applies to highly operational issues, but I believe it also applies to more cultural or behavioral issues.

To say that social collaboration doesn’t work because “people aren’t built that way” is to ignore the fact that what we call “human behavior” is strongly influenced by the rules, incentives, and environments in which people operate.

People know how to collaborate. But collaborating in public, in a hierarchical, standardized environment, without a safety net, without recognition, and without ritual… that’s something else entirely.

And that’s where the organization plays a fundamental role: it’s up to it to create the conditions so that social collaboration is not a risk, but a practice as natural as when we are at home, with family, friends, in a community, online or offline.

This requires:

• Clear objectives.
• Structured and embodied leadership.
• Tolerance for experimentation, imperfection, and even mistakes.
• Genuine recognition of contributions.
• Implicit and, why not, explicit permission to be yourself while remaining professional.

What we call “human nature” is often a lack of permission

It’s not that people don’t want to contribute, help, or share, but that they don’t feel allowed to do so without being judged and subsequently penalized in their professional lives.

This permission cannot be decreed in a memo, even though it should be included in all digital tool usage charters. For employees to believe in it and embrace it, it must be built through example, practice, framework, and meaning.

Those who speak up online in their personal lives do so because they see immediate value in doing so, regardless of the nature of that value (getting an answer, an opinion, recognition, etc.) without putting themselves at undue risk, and those who remain silent at work are simply conditioned to think that it is not the place for it.

But let’s not forget that these are the same people.

The paradox of corporate culture

But I haven’t answered the original question: whose nature?

In my opinion, it is neither that of the employees nor that of the managers, but that of the business, which has a distinctive feature: it has become an independent construct that is not the sum of the cultures of the individuals who make up the business, and may even be the exact opposite. But if corporate culture is the emanation of individuals, does that mean that they want to neutralize themselves out of fear of the professional world? 

That may be the real question, and perhaps I will try to answer it another day.

Bottom line

Social collaboration is not a utopia, but it only works if it is based on the freedom to be oneself and to engage, in every sense of the word, as oneself.

It fails as soon as it is thought of as a catalyst that will enable employees to bring their outside habits into the office, despite the fact that they are prohibited from asserting their individuality.

It is not a question of technology, as too many have wanted to believe, but of alignment between tools, practices, and culture.

Image credit: Image generated by artificial intelligence via ChatGPT (OpenAI)