I have been leading Communities of Practice (CoPs) in my organization and also delivered presentations on the value of sharing and collaborating. There are enough technology platforms (yammer, Sharepoint, etc) to enable all of that.
Over time I have come to realize there is "something" that pulls back social collaboration in enterprise and does not allow it to thrive like it happens in facebook, twitter, etc in the external world. I am reasonably sure this is pretty much the situation in any sizeable company with tens of thousands of employees. I have hypothesized a few underlying factors which may be the cause:
1) Built-in hierarchy within the enterprise - You have to be careful while 'commenting' below the posts published by their superiors - specially if you are disagreeing with his / her views. This can be a killer.
2) Downside of "honest opinions" is much more in workplace: This is the area where internet thrives. You are a free individual out there and express yourself to the full. Inside the enterprise, you have to be aware of all the 'politics' and 'unwritten protocols' which can be inhibiting
3) Culture of the organization: In the real world, reputations are built by being active in social forums (think stackoverflow like forums where members are actively helping each other to get "visible"). The culture in the workplace is often the culprit. There is often lip-service on social collaboration but workers who spend too much time on it can often be labelled as having no "real work" which can be more harmful for them.
Having said all this, still feel workplace will continue to evolve with the brave new generation of workers joining each day and social collaboration will change for the better
Over time I have come to realize there is "something" that pulls back social collaboration in enterprise and does not allow it to thrive like it happens in facebook, twitter, etc in the external world. I am reasonably sure this is pretty much the situation in any sizeable company with tens of thousands of employees. I have hypothesized a few underlying factors which may be the cause:
1) Built-in hierarchy within the enterprise - You have to be careful while 'commenting' below the posts published by their superiors - specially if you are disagreeing with his / her views. This can be a killer.
2) Downside of "honest opinions" is much more in workplace: This is the area where internet thrives. You are a free individual out there and express yourself to the full. Inside the enterprise, you have to be aware of all the 'politics' and 'unwritten protocols' which can be inhibiting
3) Culture of the organization: In the real world, reputations are built by being active in social forums (think stackoverflow like forums where members are actively helping each other to get "visible"). The culture in the workplace is often the culprit. There is often lip-service on social collaboration but workers who spend too much time on it can often be labelled as having no "real work" which can be more harmful for them.
Having said all this, still feel workplace will continue to evolve with the brave new generation of workers joining each day and social collaboration will change for the better
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