I hear this comment all of the time, “This (Enterprise 2.0) is the same old same old repackaged.”
Yes and no. Saying it that way assumes that a) because it is basically the same, b) the outcomes are basically the same. Point A may be true, but because it is even ever so slightly different it totally changes the game and point B becomes null and void.
There was a post recently by someone who mentioned this fact and she had four great points:
1. Same old same old – There isn’t much new here – it is communication but on a supersonic level.
2. Responsibility – The greater the ability to communicate = the greater the responsibility to do so appropriately.
3. Fact Checking – Making sure information which is passed on could be considered ‘facts’.
4. Work Life Balance – There has been a boundry between social life and work life.
I agree with just about everything she said, yet we are missing a key element.
Point #1 – The Same old same old
When the phone was widely adopted, it wasn’t anything new: communication via voice between (usually) two people. This has happened since the dawn of time. But with a phone it is supersonic. All true. The real difference is that the outcome was drastically changed because the rules changed. Because they could suddenly talk to someone far away in an instant, my great-great grandmother didn’t need to write a letter to tell her son that his father had passed away. If a letter had been sent, by the time the son would have received it the funeral would have taken place. Via the phone the son received the news and was able to make the two day train trip to attend the funeral and to support his widowed mother.
Apply a million similar situations and we find that although the communication isn’t new, what it enables is drastically new.
Point #2 – Responsibility
The author of these points stated that we need to be careful in how we express ourselves, talking about clarity of purpose and intent. We often see verbal vomit because they have the ability to do so.
Very true. And that hasn’t changed either. How many times have we seen someone verbally vomit in a letter or in a meeting? Or tell someone “facts” in a person-to-person discussion or in an email which were wrong? Again, it has happened since the beginning.
She is especially correct when she wrote that “extra care needs to be taken…” Why? Because suddenly the audience is different. Hugely different. If I wrote an embarrassing letter it might be copied and sent around to a few others. If I write a blog or tweet, and incorrectly slandered or mischaracterized someone, anyone can copy and paste that and spread it to the world. Or if I show my ignorance on a phone call, that conversation can be recorded & posted to the Internet for the world to hear. Yet those are the more nefarious uses.
Because we can post anything to the world, we know instantly that there was a shooting at UAH and that we should call a daughter to make sure she is OK. In fact, this was done during the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007. The New York Times reported,
Even The Roanoke Times, which is published near Blacksburg, Va., where the university is located, noted on Thursday that Wikipedia “has emerged as the clearinghouse for detailed information on the event.”
It is interesting to note that the previously assumed ‘authoritative’ source (the newspaper with official reporters) was not the best source for information. How is that? Minutes after the shooting occurred a Wikipedia page was created. As soon as anyone had updates they could post it there. Within one week 2,074 different people had contributed to the page to share information with more than 750,000 page views within two days.
Apply a million similar situations and we find that although the communication isn’t new, what it enables is drastically new.
Point #3 – Fact Checking
We must always take care in any situation using any communication medium to do our best to pass on the facts. I fully agree. Yet we must recognize that sometimes facts are secondary and that the information we are trying to gather or communicate out is not fact based. Because we have new modes of communication which are cheap (if not free) and prolific, we need not stick to the facts. Obviously we trust others not to tell lies, but communication goes beyond the facts.
In a way, people’s perceptions become their own truth (constructivism). And sometimes that is what is more important and what we need to deal with. Read the first few page of the book Diffusion of Innovation (Rogers, 1962) (see also these posts) and we will see that facts have less of an impact on our behavior than we would imagine – it is perception that drives behavior.
Amazon.com is a perfect example. They give the “facts” on their products. But often more valuable are the opinions it asks for from the customers. Opinions are contextual and highly personal. When I look at a product on Amazon.com, they give me the fact sheet. This is very helpful, but the context in which it is often as helpful in making my decision. This comes in the form of ratings and reviews from the users sharing the opinion and not fact. I recently researched a gizmo that takes the output audio from my iPhone and relays it over FM radio in my car. The “facts” stated it worked. Yet from reading the reviews I found that it worked sometimes, but not at other times – in some circumstances, but not in others. In fact, the gizmo was given a very poor rating even though the facts stated that it worked. I did not buy it even though the facts were in their favor.
Often we are not looking for the authoritative source but we are looking for those who are self-proclaimed “experts.” In this case, those experts are the actual people who bought and used the gizmo.
Apply a million similar situations and we find that although the communication isn’t new, what it enables is drastically new.
Point #4 – Work Life Balance
There used to be a boundary between one’s social life and one’s work life. I would make the argument that the same line still exists today, but because it looks different we mask it as a new line.
Internal social networks are not created to further anyone’s social life, but to simply “make visible the practices and outputs of… knowledge workers.” (Andrew McAfee, Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration, MIT Sloan Management Review)
How many times have we been in a meeting where we ask each other about the weekend, our kids, or the vacation we took? We freely share this information without hesitation. Sometimes we find we have similar interests. Those interests lead to social activities. And there are a million different ways in which this takes place. From the coworker who talks too much in a meeting about their adventures, to sharing the details of a brother’s wedding, to the passing around the link of the highlights from the state championship game in which your daughter played. It is the same today. We share personal information all the time. For the most part, the only real personal information we usually share in an E2.0 environment is in the profile fields, and even that is almost all professionally focused.
This boundary doesn’t change unless we individually let it. Unfortunately, those who abuse it are held up as the example of the new ‘rules’ instead of them being portrayed as what they are, the exception.
Yet when we do share, the information has a much larger audience. And how lucky we are for that! Imagine if everyone filled out their profiles in their E2.0 environment(s). When change comes and the business needs to shuffle personnel, wouldn’t it be great to be able to see the details – quickly and easily – of thousands of people who might fill a particular role instead of relying on a posted job requirement which may not reach the right people to submit a resume?
