Corporations are lagging in providing Web 2.0 capabilities to its workforce. The savviest who use social networking tools like Facebook or Myspace desire to use them in their workplace. For many employees of Fortune 500 companies, these tools are more of a dream than a reality. The truth of the matter is that Enterprise 2.0 tools (Web 2.0 in the enterprise) are a year or more away from deployment. In spite of that, business clients of IT are still using these tools to communicate, share, collaborate (and listen) with their colleagues and vendors they do business with on a daily business. How? They are doing one of a few things.
1. They are building silos of functionality that touch others in their department
2. They are using tools like blogspot and wordpress but password protecting the content. Usage of these tools are typically kept fairly low profile so as not to be chastised by either IT or executive leadership.
3. They are engaging IT but funcitonality is built tactically, on a project basis.
So who or what is to blame for these tools taking their sweet time in getting deployed to the enterprise. In most organizations, it is corporate communications who take the lead in setting a collaborative direction. But here’s a secret . . . corpcomm is scared to death to unleash these tools to an organization. And the issue is governance. To blog, communicate or engage in a useful fashion, one must do it freely, openly and feel empowered to do so. Otherwise it is probably best just not to allow it. Before IT takes on a project of this nature, they need to look to corpcomm and make sure they are on board and engaged. This way, they can ensure that whatever is being built can be part of a strategy as opposed to being just part of a project.
As for #1 and #2, key learnings can take place at least. If corpcomm or IT is unaware of these projects, you should, at least, bring people from those organizations into the loop. This way they can see, first hand, how tools like this can enable the workplace. After all, this should be a part of a larger Knowledge Management strategy. And after what we’ve learned from The Long Tail, we know that this content will be used and re-used years from now, probably when those blogging or collaborating will no longer be employed. If the right people are engaged, this content can be exported and imported into tools that eventually become the standard.
This way, you’re ensuring these conversations continue long after you stop writing. And thats the real beauty of these tools.