The politics of collaboration
Traditionally, organisations hide information from the public to maintian their competitive advantage, secure trade secrets and a whole lot of various reasons. This is logical and I understand. However, within organisations, people also try to hide to improve their position, power and importance. The enterprise 2.0 idea reflects a total opposite of this. People are asked to collaborate, exchange information and share. I call it the “love all, serve all” model.
Let’s face it, within organisations there are always a bunch of people that are like that – love to hide stuff. They do not see the benefit in sharing. Is it true that hiding can propel someone’s career? Can the enterprise 2.0 way propel it even further? These are questions that I can’t answer for sure but I do believe the Enterprise 2.0 can propel someone’s career in a great way.
In any case, how can we change a politically intense environment and get users to share and contribute? First of all, senior management needs to acknowledge that its a problem and it needs to change. There will also be some changes that needs to be made to the company culture, team bonding and common understanding. They can start by doing it themselves and setting an example. One must know that in a politically intense environment, sucking up to senior management is generally one of the traits.
Next, middle management needs to provide a reason for everyone lower in the food chain to come onbaord and use it. I always believe this – if there is no reason for me to do something, why do it?
I think alot of people underestimate the importance of a quality enterprise 2.0 tool. Personally, my team and myself use it daily and posts hepas of information and comment of truck loads of stuff. If its something of such importance, make sure its a good tool and fantastic and pretty tools are pretty cheap too! We cannot just look at the functional requirements but also the look and feel of it. There are plenty of people in the world who are not techies and look at things very differently.
What’s your experience in implementing Enterprise 2.0 in a political sensitive environment? Would be interested to hear your side of the story.
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Peter B said,
I tend to disagree. People who exhibit the behaviours you are talking about do so in a day to day process based way. They are sneaky in what they do and do so because they are most likely lacking real substance as an employee.
Real leaders, those who will go beyond middle management ranks, have to share (or be perceived to be sharing) information and expertise. This is vital for both their development and that of others (major leadership quality). Collaboration could be seen as a tool to expose these people for who they really are. Let’s face it if they can’t build a reputation built upon content that they share through collaboration, then they don’t deserve to be promoted.
I think historically when people share information, once it has left their possession, the association is gone. I.e. somebody could claim it as their own. The benefits of technology and collaboration is the visibility. The visibility of sharing content and ideas that will be, for its digital life, always associated with the creator. There in lies the power.
I’m coming from a 4,500 person consulting organisation within Australia (170k globally), we have 1300 people who actively use yammer to share ideas, information and contacts. The visibility that they obtain in doing so is extremely tangible when it comes performance review time. In addition to this, yammer’s integration with Twitter and our company channel on Twitter has resulted in unsolicited work for the company!
In my own opinion and experience, it’s not that I don’t want to collaborate, it’s making the time in an already overloaded schedule.
When adopted properly, collaboration is extremely valuable for the individual and the health of the organisation.
Sean Lew said,
I totally agree with all your points. My post is acknowledging that there are workplaces where there are people sneaky and in many ways politically sensitive and what are some of the ways to overcome the problem. Sorry if i was not clear.
You raised an excellent point on “making the time in an already overloaded schedule” That’s a good one to think about.
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