Enterprise 2.0 naysayers emerge

We are happy to announce that next week, we will be publishing a One on one interview with Andrew McAfee [1], the man widely credited with coining the term Enterprise 2.0. Just last week the Enterprise 2.0 Conference [2] debuted their west coast version in San Francisco, proving the growing interest in the technologies around the term. But even while it seems that Enterprise 2.0 is heading into the mainstream of the corporate consciousness, a group of naysayers is emerging who question the need and the validity of Enterprise 2.0.

Pushback is Good

There is no such thing as a perfect technology that is right for every organization, but the Enterprise 2.0 umbrella term has been around long enough to have some successful cases in play and to understand it well enough to suggest it's more than a flash in the pan. That's why I was surprised to see Dennis Howlett's stinging missive [3] against Enterprise 2.0 in his ZDNet blog last week. Yet his is just one voice in a rising chorus questioning Enterprise 2.0 as a concept. 

I think push-back is good. It forces people to think through their positions, to look at the subject from different angles and to sharpen their own understanding of the technologies and how companies can use them, but I also think there is a clear place for Enterprise 2.0.

Technology versus Politics

Most every organization is drowning in information. Any technology that makes it easier to share and get at information is going to be helpful, and to me that's what Enterprise 2.0 technologies at their core enable an organization to do. Yet there are always issues involved when making transitions from one technology to another, and one of the core tenets of Enterprise 2.0 is simplifying the technologies to the point that people are free to make many adjustments on their own (within the framework of organization rules and norms of course). This independence is threatening to many in any organization who have created their value by being the technical gate keepers. If the technology forces the gates open, you don't need those individuals any more, at least not to the same extent. The front end suddenly belongs to the population at large, but the back end networks and systems still require those same technical folks to operate.

The other big bugaboo here is the idea of "flattening the hierarchies." To many, when they hear this, it means that the authority of management is suddenly going to be usurped by a democratic utopia created by workers communicating freely with Enterprise 2.0 tools, but that's not how I see the term at all. What these tools provide is a means for *everyone* in the organization to communicate in the same set of tools. That means that you might end up communicating with a manager whom you never would have talked to using email or the corporate gatekeeper system. While it gives equal access through communication, I don't see Enterprise 2.0 changing the way organizations are structured in a real sense, but many critics overplay this because it speaks to a real concern of managers who might be considering Enterprise 2.0 technologies.

There Are Use Cases

When I was at Enterprise 2.0 in Boston in June, I saw a presentation where McAfee interviewed two men from Lockheed Martin (which I wrote about in The Enterprise 2.0 generational myth [4]), who had helped implement an Enterprise 2.0 technology set [5] in an organization that is about as top-down, security conscious and staid as one can imagine. Yet this company was able to successfully implement a system and find ways to answer all of the issues and criticisms that developed along the way (and McAfee did a splendid job of addressing those concerns in a rapid fire Q&A with the Lockheed Martin representatives).

The fact is that companies have implemented these technologies successfully. Can it be done badly? I'm sure there are examples of that. Are there people who have called themselves experts who don't understand enterprise politics and technology? That's probably true as well. Are there cases where it has been tried and didn't work? I'm sure there are those too, but the fact is that you can't simply sweep the entire Enterprise 2.0 set of technologies aside. In my view, Enterprise 2.0, while by no means a communications panacea, can contribute to better communication and knowledge sharing, which should be welcome outcomes in any organization. - Ron
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