Here’s an excerpt from the announcement of this year’s Enterprise 2.0 conference:
What if more conferences were like that? What if the discussion could begin even before the doors open?
When I talk about blogs or wikis, I often hear people’s concerns about sharing what they know. Will the sales guy take my work and give it away for free? Will someone else steal my thoughts and take credit for them? Will I get into trouble if I honestly tell people how I think things can be improved? Companies talk about the benefits of collaboration, but internal competition and individual instead of collaborative incentives show what the real story is.
One of the difficult things about introducing enterprise social computing is that culture plays such a large role. Here’s what Charles Jeter describes on his blog:
I think it depends a lot on the type of corporate structure; to be blunt about it a hostile work environment rewards innovative and individual thought destructively and can jeopardize someone’s position. Having a wiki, which tracks good ideas openly, may endanger those free-thinking people without them even realizing it.
Charles Jeter, CharlesJeter.com » How Wikipedia Works (Or Doesn’t) | Can Corporations Use Wikis?
via Stuart Mader, wikipatterns.com » Why I respectfully disagree with Charles Jeter
Corporate culture isn’t something you can change in a few months. You can’t install goodwill. You can’t enable cooperation. But your company believes that this is the way to go in the long run, how can you start changing its culture?
One way is to find and support networks of people who value collaboration, either by connecting people across the organization or by gradually hiring more people who believe in collaboration. A company can then help spread the lessons learned from those groups to the rest of the company. Stories are important in spreading cultural change. Through the stories that the company tells about the people it prizes, the company shows what it values. Here are some related books:
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The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative by Stephen Denning |
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Influencer: The Power to Change Anything by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler |
This is by no means a quick or straight-forward process, but a collaborative culture must be in place –even if only in some pockets–for blogs and wikis to take root. Even then, some people will resist sharing. This is understandable. Reach out to all the people who want to share, and perhaps influence those who are ambivalent by showing them how they can personally benefit from these tools.