A friend who (whom?) I met through the Social Learning Question of the Day on Twitter wrote me an email with the following opening:
“I’m insanely frustrated right now. At our company, Twitter is blocked.”
He goes on to say that he tried to submit a request to IT to have them allow it. And, you guessed it – SNUB!
Here are the reasons he received for the rejection notice (everything is paraphrased to protect the innocent and Twitter willing):
1) The training information you need can be received from other resources. Twitter may be easier, but approved websites give the same information.
2) If Twitter is approved that would open a can of worms – allowing other social and dating sites. We can’t do that.
3) I discussed this with a number of people and they all agree on the rejection of your request.
4) We would lose productivity if we opened Twitter up – allowing everyone to use it for non-business purposes. This risk is high.
Then he asked, what do I do? Wow – where do I start?
First of all, IT manages systems. They don’t always know what is best for the organization as they too often manage the systems and not the purpose for having the systems. If they are blind to the ‘whys’ and work on the ‘what’s,’ then they they stop serving those for whom they were created.
Does anyone see something wrong with these two thoughts – both given for the rejection:
a) “Twitter may be easier, but approved websites give the same information.”
b) “We would lose productivity if we opened Twitter up.”
Oxymoron. So you want to find information, but we are going to make it difficult for you and then complain about the possibility of losing productivity. Hmmmm.
<sarcasm> So I guess no one ever uses the phone for personal reasons, do they? What about email – I am sure not. And the Internet? Nah. How about the pen you gave them? They probably don’t doodle during your incredibly boring meetings, do they? And are cell phones not allowed at your company? Can they not access all the sites you block from there? </sarcasm>
To help out I asked the SLQOTD group on Twitter and they gave some great responses and resources. I HIGHLY suggest you look at that.
So, seriously – how would I answer this? Logic. Reason. Numbers. Stories of success – your success. And never give up. It is time for some serious campaigning. Get a meeting with some of the people who denied it. Not to be combative, but rather to talk about their understanding and feelings about it. In other words, get past the paper request and go personal. One-on-One. Start some conversations that way. Ask them questions:
- Have they ever used Twitter?
- Do they know why it would be used?
- Have they seen any studies on it?
- How much have they used social media overall?
- What is their experience with it?
Get personal. Get buy-in. Get Twitter.
