Potential Pitfalls in Enterprise 2.0
I have been preaching the goodness of Enterprise 2.0 for a while. However, we must understand that nothing is perfect in this world and hardly anything is. There is always a downside to any great thing. I would like to explore more in this space.
First of all, let me recap some of the key fundamentals of Enterprise 2.0 – social networking with friends, colleagues and business partners, collaboration on job specific tasks (possibly on the same platform), sharing and trusting people in the network. So what are the potential problems people might face?
1) As social networking grows, it gets integrated into someone’s life – friends, family, colleagues and business partners are networking on the same platform and communicating constantly. As technology moves forward, we get status updates, notifications, emails and updates from mobile phones. Such advancement in technology would mean that there is a very blurred line between work, family and social life. The problem of work life balance comes into play. Without control, for example, someone might be responding to emails on their honeymoon because a server crash and he saw a SOS on the wiki. We can’t be working all the time. We need to know when to stop. (I’m still learning!)
2) Collaboration would mean that teams come together and try to get something done. However, some teams can never decide on the proper cause of action or agree on certain things. This can pose as a problem as collaboration might increase the chances of such things happening (this is from my 3rd party observation of a project)
3) Sharing – free rider problem will always be a problem. “Free riders” are those who consume more than their fair share of a resource, or shoulder less than a fair share of the costs of its production. However, I feel that the younger generation is quite ethical in this space. They will normally reference the work done by others. Technology has also played a part in this. For example, if you copy/embed a youtube video, the creator / uploader of the video will always be referenced on the youtube site.
4) Trust – when one join a social community and put trust in their network, its like opening the front door of your house to the people in the neighbourhood. One can choose not to open the bedroom door or the secret cabinet in the basement but the front door is still open. Someone can always come in to attack. (Hopefully this is a good analogy)
Add A Comment