My experience with working in government agencies previously was a eye-opener. Everyone was relaxed, happy and takes things at their own stride or their own sweet time. There is no rush to complete anything or accomplish much. It almost seems like working in the government sector is almost like a lifestyle, mindset or a kind of personal belief. Employees at my current client is similar in this way too. It used to be a government agency and it got privatised many years ago but work habits are still very much the same as the government sector. (I am not saying all government agencies are like that. The above is just my experience and I might be very wrong in some cases)
Enterprise 2.0 is a ideology that requires a fair amount of proactive human participation. It would work very well when everyone is willing to share knowledge, contribute to the online community and do their part well at work. But in the case of the above, how would enterprise 2.0 work? Even with enterprise 2.0 installed and implemented at the work place, the technology might make life better for employees and increase efficiency by a small margin but the promises that Enterprise 2.0 would never be achieved. The more I think about enterprise 2.0, the more I think it is a workplace revolution.
Anyone has any thoughts on this topic? I would like to discuss this further.
Thanks!
2 responses so far ↓
1 pali // Jan 23, 2008 at 11:11 am
I totally agree.
It is changing the way people work. Workers need to be willing to provide that knowledge capital in the enterprise space in order for the enterprise as a whole to benefit.
A case in point, why do people use google to search? Not yahoo etc, because google does a good job of finding all the useful information out there in the net and provide that to you at your finger tips.
Now an enterprise is a far smaller place than the whole of the internet, so the quality of your enterprise 2.0 implementation depends very much on the people using it.
Maybe there need to be certain incentives, or recognition given to the knowledge workers of today to encourage them to contribute.
On the technology front, perhaps it means that the technologies need to be more flexible more user friendly. Perhaps asking an older worker who barely knows his/her way around Outlook to set up his/her own blog is a bit too much to ask…maybe a desktop plugin is the way to go…
2 Sean // Jan 24, 2008 at 1:04 am
You are so right. Incentives and recognition is the way to go. I do believe that the maturity of the company/industry to a certain extent would play a big part of getting enterprise 2.0 ideas going.
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