Withholding information

Posted by Sean Lew on Sunday, 3 August, 2008 under Enterprise 2.0 |

Enterprise 2.0 delivers transparency and tries to reduce information asymmetry across the organisation. This new empowerment for employees makes it extremely exciting for lower level employees but for the senior people, that would mean they would have to fore go some of the information power they have held for a long time. This must not be taken lightly when proposing Enterprise 2.0 to the senior management.

Why is withholding information so powerful? Let me give you an example. Terrorism is something that is spoken alot in the news, however the number of people worldwide who have died in an event linked to terrorism is less than the number of people who have drown and died in backyard swimming pools. So why does terrorism gets so much more hype? The reason is because of its unanticipated, unexpected acts of violence. This instill fear into alot people as they do not know when and where they will attack. They attackers just have to do some silly random acts once in a while to renew the fear and they can easily control the minds of people. Withholding the information of their attacks makes them powerful.

So how can you convince senior executives that Enterprise 2.0 can help their careers? At every level of the organisation, people use information differently and you need to sell enterprise 2.0 at senior executive level where they could see the benefits of having enterprise 2.0 directly changing their job performance. Things like able to track and oversee how are project teams going and communicate with other C-level folks while still on the run and being able to find the information that you want without getting your assistant to do so. This is empowerment for senior executives as well – not a loss. Withholding information is so 60s, 70s – time to move on.

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