Synergise IT

I’ve been speaking to many “Normans” lately and its extremely eye opening to hear some in depth comments on what people really think of Enterprise 2.0. Sam Lawrence got it pretty spot on the different statements Normans would say. By the way, Sam just wrote a really really good post on the anatomy of the enterprise octopus. Totally recommended.

As an enthusiast and evangelist, I have been using blogs, wikis, social networking tools and countless collaboration tools (testing and reviewing them as they roll out of the factory). It has certainly improved my productivity, expanded my network of friends and increase my knowledge. This is what I showed some of the Normans I work with.

1) I started logging on to the corporate wiki and showed how people from across the world contributes and edit each others work, discussed and came to conclusion on difficult and complicated problems. No face to face meetings, possibly no conference call as well but consensus was achieved through the enterprise wiki. This Norman browsed around the Enterprise wiki (first time he was there) and found information he was looking for previously but could not find it. He saw the value straight away.

2) I opened up Twitter and my blog. My blog allowed to rant about stuff, ask questions, write about my experience and document my knowledge. There was some levels of discussion with people I have never met before who contributed to the increase of my knowledge. Some of these people even became my online twitter mates! I am building my own little knowledge empire and its growing.

I went on to explain to this Norman that if people across the world who works for different companies, have only one known common interest (enterprise 2.0), never met/spoken in their life and is exchanging and sharing information and knowledge via the very same tools they preach about. These are random people and they are helping each other to grow and learn more about Enterprise 2.0. Something must be right here and the conclusion is that the more you give, the more you get back.

Even though Wikipedia is built collaboratively but most people can’t seem to transform that idea to the enterprise. Another Norman said “Wikipedia contributors are geeks with no life and no such people exist in my company” I went on to look for three people in his company who contributed to Wikipedia who were NOT geeks and they have a pretty amazing life. That changed his perspective.

3) I showed another old Norman the Lego video and that shut him up totally. It changed his perspective of “organisations tries to create the best products they THINK its the best for them and force it down their throats” to “have a relationship with the customer, listen to them, improve on their ideas and give them what they want”

This is how I get people excited about enterprise 2.0. How do you do it?