Ooh no, we're not ready for it. We have serious business to run.
Implementing open communication in the enterprise is a challenge. And for a good reason. It can impact the way you do business.
There are many arguments that can be thrown on the table against social media initiatives inside the organisation. People can become very creative when thinking of reasons to reject open communication in the organisation.
Most of these risks are based on fear. Command and Control (Top-down) management structures are often also based on fear. (But that seems okay as many countries follow the same strategy with success.)
These risks are serious concerns for decision makers and should therefore be managed carefully.
Risks and Fears
I have to start to admit that open communication or microblogging will not fit in all organisations. It will not always bring clear benefits or it might not work at all. The most evident benefits will emerge in organisations where knowledge workers need to collaborate with colleagues located in different geographical places, in organisations that rely on innovation or have to deal with many unstructured processes.
In other words: it will not deliver many benefits in an environment where the work process consists of simple, structured tasks and employees operate in small silo structured teams. Open communications tools will probably not even be used in these environments.
Culture
This does not fit our culture. We're not ready for it ... yet.
The culture is important. Culture can be explained as the hidden rules of the organisation. You need to find these rules, find out why they exist and change the bad ones. And oh yes, some people resist change by nature "This is not how we do things here". Use influential ambassadors as evangelists and start changing the bad rules slowly.
Management needs to recognize employees as a valuable resource of knowledge and information. That requires trust, respect and openness. Employees need to be seen as an important asset in the organisation, not as a cost factor. That could mean a big change in culture.
Another reason for fear is that some employees want to protect their position which they thank to the hierarchical structure in the company; often these people don't appreciate openness, truth or knowledge sharing. Some of these people have indeed a good reason to be afraid, they might lose their position. And that is a good thing.
Be aware that hierarchical command-and-control cultures have dominated companies for decades.
Microblogging will create new links between employees of different groups. These links can become stronger than the traditional relationships and these new links can be used in ways they were never originally intended.
Create a corporate culture where information sharing is the norm and not information hording.
Create a culture where employees that share knowledge are more rewarded than the ones that protect their knowledge. And show this with real evidence, not by a line in the corporate mission statement.
Privacy Concerns
Information will end up outside the firewall; it will be on the street
Because business information is available to more people there will be concerns that information will leak outside the company.
Trust the employees that they will use the appropriate communication tool for the message. Sensitive information should e.g. travel by email.
Make sure that the system cannot be used anonymously. Anonymous communication does not make sense anyway.
In his book Enterprise 2.0 Andrew McAfee makes mention of the effort he made to collect examples of horror stories, but he did not find any story that out-weighted the benefits of social tools .
Inappropriate content
There will be flame wars, harassment of colleagues, critics on managemen and social chatter
Again, it is important to not allow anonymous posts. People are very important in communication, without real people there is no real communication.
Trust the self-monitoring of employees. In fact employees know that their reputation is at stake when they behave ill-mannered. They will not abuse the system, because they know it can damage their career.
Information overload
Just another tool, people already have problems to go through their emails
There is a risk that the signal-to-noise ratio troubles the communication benefits.
This fear refers to the information overload problem which actually is a filter problem.
Because micro blogging is a pull based platform (instead of email, which is push based), you should only consume information that is interesting for you. There are many ways to filter the activity stream. You can filter on hashtags, topics, groups and the people to follow. Concentrate only on what is interesting for you.
A good implementation tip to mitigate this risk is to force the usage of at least one category or hashtag in a post.
Just another tool
Employees already have a lot of software to use each day (we need less tools not more)
Microblogging will not replace existing IT solutions; it is an add-on to existing solutions like e-mail, document management systems. It actually will make the existing systems more efficient.
It is important to connect to existing communication and business systems. Integrate it with the intranet, combine it with the employee profile (a la facebook, to give the idea) and display activity streams on unit or topic pages in the intranet.
(Remember that the intranet should evolve to be part of the business processes itself.)
Adoption
People will not use it
Gartner has looked in its glass bowl and concludes:
By 2012, over 50 percent of enterprises will use activity streams that include microblogging, but stand-alone enterprise microblogging will have less than 5 percent penetration.
Not everyone will participate, but that's OK. Consider that a new way of working will take some time before it gets adopted widespread in the organisation. Don't panic if it takes a couple of months. Do not expect immediate big wins, but make sure to measure the progress.
Integrate the activity streams with existing communication and business systems to lower the adoption barriers and to make the usage and benefits visible, you could e.g. display updates on usual intranet pages like the homepage, unit pages or specific content pages (filtered by groups or hashtags).
It will surely help when the CEO, Managers and the internal comms department are aware of how it works and what the potentials are. Let senior management lead by example.
A good message to send out is that Senior Management is listening and that participating employees will benefit.
ROI
What's the benefit for the business?
There are often doubts about the Return on Investment. Managers are educated to always ask the ROI question. I mentioned the ROI subject already in Open Communication in the Enterprise, but this will probably not convince all sceptics.
Look for specific opportunities in the organisation where you can prove (by measurement) that e.g. business processes are performed more efficient, projects are delivered quicker or the sales team is better supported.
Focus on finding realistic examples that increasing intangible assets (like e.g. worker efficiency or employee retention) is beneficial for the organisation.
To think about:
If you don't implement it at enterprise level there will be the risk that it will be introduced via the backdoor using departmental budgets or by private initiatives (You can start for free!)
This is the third post in a series of four in which I try to encourage the use of microblogging in the organisation, a way to open up the internal communication in the enterprise and to be prepared for the future. Other posts are:
- Open Communication in the Enterprise - give employees a voice
- 12 More things to do with Micro Blogging
- Open Communication Scepticism and Fears
- Implementation tips (coming soon)
This article as PDF: Open Communication Scepticism and Fears.pdf (144.41 kb)
You can follow me on Twitter at @BasZurburg. I mostly tweet about intranets and changing corporate environments due to new thinking.