While doing some RSS feeds catchup, I actually bumped again into a weblog post that I have been meaning to share a thought or two for a little while now since it has been out there in the open for a few weeks already. The article itself comes from one of the main, and most prominent, KM thought leaders in the field for a number of years: The absence of participative technologies in the past is not the only reason that organizations and expertise are hierarchical. Enterprise 2.0 software and the Internet won't make organizational hierarchy and politics go away"
Why not? After all, it is already happening in most places. I mean, if you look at the rampant rate of adoption of Enterprise 2.0 within the corporate world it would, at least, make you wonder if it would stick around for a while, or not. My take is that pretty much like in the consumer / producer market, things may have started slow, but they are here to stay. Why? Because one of the things that knowledge workers are realising about is the fact that Enterprise 2.0 empowers them to collaborate, share their knowledge and innovate with others placing the focus on what I feel is the key fundamental aspect that will make organisational hierarchy and politics go away: The people themselves! The focus within Enterprise 2.0 is no longer on the tools nor the processes, two of the main aspects behind organisational hierarchies and politics, but more on the people, on helping them engage in different conversations and allow them to connect with others by sharing their same passion for a particular subject. This is the reason why there are 71 million weblogs out there, several millions of social bookmarks shared all over the place, millions of podcast episodes downloaded thus far, several million photographs shared all over the place and so on and so forth. The list goes on and on and on. It is a participatory Web, indeed, we all know that, but it is a participatory Web where knowledge workers are now the main voice leading the workplace. It is no longer the organisation with complex processes to follow or mandating to make use of a particular tool because you may have been told so what rules. That command-and-control attitude is a thing of the past because, for the first time in a while, knowledge workers are realising that they are in control themselves of how they work, share knowledge and collaborate with other fellow colleagues. And as result of that, they are seeing how their productivity has increased quite a bit with a whole lot less effort by just helping themselves make those connections. Yes, the good old motto of working smarter without necessarily making it harder. "They won't make the ideas of the front-line worker in corporations as influential as those of the CEO. Most of the barriers that prevent knowledge from flowing freely in organizations – power differentials, lack of trust, missing incentives, unsupportive cultures, and the general busyness of employees today – won't be addressed or substantially changed by technology alone."
This particular quote has got a lot to do with a
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Why Enterprise 2.0 Will Not Transform Organizations...
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