In the parable, a ruler, who wants to demonstrate that so-called
wisemen see issues from a limited perspective, presents the tail of the
elephant to one blind man, to another its foot, and to another a tusk.
He then asks each to tell him what an elephant is. The man who was
presented with the tail says it is like a rope, the one who touched the
foot says it’s a pillar, the one who felt the tusk says it’s a plough.
They then argue with each other until coming to blows.
Similarly, with Web 2.0, we might hear IT say it’s all about open
source; Communications might speak about the focus on blogs; and
Finance says “The stuff we’re looking at now is cheaper than the stuff
we used to look at.” And then they come to blows.
Ok, fisticuffs are never involved, but in too many cases, the
departments all touch the element of Web 2.0 that directly effects
them—technology, communication models or budgets—but don’t make the
effort to pool their knowledge in order to develop a unified vision and
a common plan. That means Web 2.0 must be viewed as a critical
management challenge—not just a technical or communications issue—one
that calls for an organization to take an enterprise-wide approach to
evaluating its implications and adopting new management approaches for
implementing it.
The Wisdom of Crowds
Coined by O’Reilly Media,
Web 2.0 refers to web sites, products
or services that are highly interactive, deep in dynamic data and
harness collective intelligence. In the
first article in
this series, which discussed content in the Web 2.0 world, I noted
that with more than 9.5 million citations in Google, Web 2.0 is clearly
generating tremendous interest online.
As anyone who has ever searched for information online knows,
Google succeeded because it did the best job of finding the right page
fastest. Google’s breakthrough was PageRank, a method of using the link
structure of the web rather than just the characteristics of documents
to provide better search results. This approach not only exemplifies
the need for deep respect for data espoused by O’Reilly, it also
demonstrates how to capitalize “on the uniquely democratic
characteristic of the web by using its vast link structure as an
organizational tool,” according to James Surowiecki in the
Wisdom of
Crowds.
Surowiecki’s book has become one of the key reference sources for
developing management approaches to Web 2.0, because he provides a
strong case for why we’re smarter as a group than we are as
individuals. As a result, organizations cannot succeed if they restrict
themselves to a top-down, hierarchical management philosophy.
The Web 2.0 technology that best exemplifies how to harness the
wisdom of crowds is the wiki, which
wikipedia defines
as:
“A type of website that allows users to easily add, remove, or
otherwise edit all content, very quickly and easily, sometimes without
the need for registration. This ease of interaction and operation makes
a wiki an effective tool for collaborative writing…. The term Wiki can
also refer to the collaborative software itself that facilitates the
operation of such a website.”
Governing crowds
Unfortunately, crowds aren’t always wise and helpful. Ironically,
one of the best examples of this tendency was featured on wikipedia a
few months ago. The definition of “wiki” was locked and featured a
statement that read: “As a result of recent vandalism, or to stop
banned editors from editing, the editing of this page by new or
unregistered users is currently disabled.”
That seems like a heavy-handed, distinctly non-Web 2.0 attempt to
stifle debate, but underlines a key point: information online must be
accurate and credible. Many organizations deploy a cumbersome approval
process that ensures accuracy, but does so at the expense of immediacy
and the gathering of comprehensive viewpoints.
But organizations that have understood how to incorporate
wikis into their web content plan, are able to do so
because they have two success factors in place: an existing community
that is motivated and committed to ensuring information is accurate;
and they have implemented an effective governance model that ensures
there is:
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Responsibility and accountability
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Support and championship by senior management
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Enterprise-wide, cross-functional support and usage
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Adequate funds and staff
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A well functioning and stable technical environment
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Motivated users
Just use it
Another management mindset required to embrace Web 2.0 is the
understanding that it enables innovation from all areas of the
organization. Unfortunately, according to
CIO
Magazine, research indicates that many IT executives view
innovation as just the privilege of IT organizations. “According to the
June
2005 Innovation survey, CIOs believe that IT has a critical role to
play in innovation, particularly process innovation,” writes Allan
Alter in the article. “Yet most appear to be taking a proprietary, even
parochial view of emerging technologies. Few encourage business users
to experiment, even with free applications they can download from the
web. That may explain why most respondents say Web 2.0 technologies
have not been frequently deployed, despite their explosive growth and
low cost. Even more remarkable is how many IT executives say their
company has no interest in these applications.”
That mindset returns us to the parable of the blind men and the
elephant. In effect, IT is focused on the team collaboration tools that
directly benefit them and are blind to the benefits of social
networking and wikis. In doing so, they are denying their organization
the ability to gain a broad enough perspective to understand how they
can participate in the explosive growth of technologies like
wikis.
Web 2.0 Management Checklist
The steps below are not a comprehensive list of everything
required to tackle the management challenge created by Web 2.0, but
they will provide a means for gaining traction toward full usage of
these opportunities within your organization.
Build the foundation:

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Existing internet and intranet sites create positive
impressions
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Content management plan delivers current, relevant
information
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Enhance your strategy:
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Internal competence: more collaboration
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Customers: how do they want to interact with data?
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Competition: what are they doing to data?
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Environment: Understand and use the technology
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Fine tune management models:
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Governance model crosses silos
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Challenge team to embrace new models
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Identify and empower communities
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Understand generational change in staff
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Engage Web 2.0 initiatives:
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Establish thought leadership with blogs
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Facilitate internal collaboration
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Give a community a wiki
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Relentlessly enhance your data
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