Enterprise 2.0— A Change in Corporate Culture Before Changing The Tech

Article By:

VIKAS SHUKLA

Associate Consultant (UBS)

Iflex solutions

Being an active part of this corporate culture, I was little curious about it. What is this corporate culture? As I am new in this stream so was more concerned about the advances and transitions happening around in corporate world. Then there is something which came out in Enterprise 2.0 conference held in Boston a couple of months back which caught my attention. After going through it, I figured out that this business/technology move isn't so much about the tech behind it but about harnessing what evangelists call the 'collective intelligence.' What they're getting at is that blogs and wikis aren't just cool and fun, they could help smart employees who are never heard find a corporate voice.

Isn’t it strange? Blogs and wikis!!!! How come they find an existence in corporate world now. I expanded the horizon of my thoughts and started some extensive thought sharing including as part of my research regarding this transition.

Then, there was an interesting debate between Andrew McAfee, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, and Tom Davenport, a professor at Babson College. While McAfee is credited with coining the term Enterprise 2.0, Davenport calls himself a "pragmatic killjoy" who doesn't think Enterprise 2.0 is revolutionary or even worthy of being given a new name. The two men, who generally go at each other in the blogosphere, faced off at the conference, talking about whether technology might revolutionize the way businesses function in the future.

Then I came across to know about CoreMedia a software company in Germany. The Executive Director of the company, Williams Buhse made some cultural shifts in the methodology of corporate culture, which shook up CoreMedia a few years back. According to him, changing the corporate culture is more important than changing the technology. The cultural shift -- from the traditional hierarchy of follow-the-leader to an open exchange of ideas - needs to come before even the coolest new technologies can make a real difference.

They got rid of company departments. Gone was marketing, sales, finance. They spent some time creating a team of leaders for the company and then they gave their employees a voice by first using wikis and then allowing them to blog on an internal network. By this fall, Buhse said they hope to open up the blogs to a network of partners and then, and soon in future, they hope to open it up to the general public.

"For us, the organization was the important thing," he said. "It's about the corporate culture."

But what about the inevitable moment when an employee starts talking about something embarrassing to the company or relays sensitive corporate information? How open will they feel then?

Buhse said he's just not worried about it. "If something is going to be said, the discussion is ongoing anyway," he explained. "Currently, I'm very happy to have the discussion companywide. It would happen in the sales kitchen anyway… I would rather have a negative comment on my website, rather than people talking about it without us knowing it."

At this point, out of 150 employees, as per their survey and records at least 30% are blogging and they hope that 80% are reading them. Now they're working on a new interface that will combine e-mail, wikis, and blogs, making it easier for mobile workers to submit blog feedback from their smart phones and handhelds.

It's an interesting approach of running a business and opening up communication lines.