This is a timely article in light of the last couple posts I’ve written regarding Web 2.0 and productivity. “Genie in a Bottle” (great title) from InformationWorldReview examines some of the obstacles to adoption of the myriad Web 2.0 tools (including wikis).
The word ‘productivity’ appears twice…here –
New systems of any kind involve a disruption of existing work practices and a negative impact on productivity in the short term. A typical response from one senior salesman in a large multinational was: “I try and do my job rather than keep up.” So inconvenience and, for sales people, a consequent loss of income is another fear.
And here -
Even if a company has a fairly transparent culture, it may still be wary of introducing these new systems. The management is probably tired of hearing promises about improved productivity from an endless succession of software salespeople in the past. “Invest hundreds of thousands in this knowledge management system, it makes staff more effective and increases the organisation’s intellectual capital at the same time”. Except, very often, it didn’t work out that way. Fingers were burnt and budgets sacrificed.
That comment along with the next are points I’ve made in the past about the damage done by undelivered promises from expensive enterprise system implementations:
Neil Macehiter, a partner in IT and business alignment advisory firm Macehiter Ward-Dutton and one-time Ovum analyst, points out that: “Knowledge management, collaborative software and intranets just didn’t move high enough up the corporate agenda. Significant investments were made and the hoped for returns didn’t materialise.”
I stand by my previous posts about the disconnect between Web 2.0 ‘solutions’ and enterprise productivity ‘problems’ that need solutions. The two primary sources of resistance appear to be management fear of losing control and user apathy.
Some of the 'Management' perceptions from the article:
- ...social computing on a wide scale has the potential to shift the power structure of an organisation irreversibly
- ...companies don’t want their employees to have a voice, to answer back or to question the management
- Leakage of essentially private information or opinion is a major concern for companies
- ...organisations find it difficult to trust their employees to behave responsibly and not leak information or fritter time away when using these new systems
- ...concerned about training costs and the likely hit on staff performance as new systems are adopted
Some 'Employee' perceptions:
- ...older people will do their best to avoid learning new ways of working
- ...people will perceive different threats from social software according to their role in the organisation
- ...they are likely to be afraid of the unknown
- ...knee-jerk reaction will be to refuse to adopt it unless forced
- ...managers and staff are afraid of embarrassing themselves through the kind of exposure that social computing brings
This comment validates a point I’ve made in the past about the disconnect between the Web 2.0 hype I am reading and the reality I actually see in the corporate enterprise
Jaap Favier, vice president and research director of Forrester Research, highlights another issue. “I’ve spoken to quite a lot of executive boards over the past few months and I started to see a very simple answer to why organisations aren’t looking at social computing,” he says. “It’s because senior executives are alpha males. Being in control is what they’re good at and what they like, which is what brought them to the board seat to begin with. Sharing power is not part of their genes.”
My only question is this – with all this reluctance, paranoia, secrecy, and control obsession, how do these companies actually survive?
Or will they survive? We'll see.
Comments