The "real" Enterprise 2.0 is not a technology or marketing plan, but the reinvention of the enterprise itself. It's a rethinking of the structure, process, culture and even, in some cases, the very purpose of the enterprise.
With technology erasing barriers to participation and communication, we're seeing a change in the nature of how we go about running an organization.
How Social Media Is Changing Enterprise 2.0
The phenomenon of social media is starting to have a very significant impact on how we think about work. We are starting to appreciate the efficacy of simpler, friendlier ways of dealing with work, problem-solving and business. And this new paradigm is pouring into the enterprise via the business pundits, the newly agile engineering team, the "social media experts" and old-fashioned necessity.
People who have thought about such things for a long time will recall Senge's 5th Discipline and Complexity Theory, and others who were on the fringe, but not the mainstream of corporate thinking.
The external, market-facing view of this gets a lot of press. Now we can ask customers about their ideas or what they know or see. But the internal impact — the way we work with each other and why — is, perhaps, even more profound and likely to have a greater impact on most of our lives and careers.
The shift whispers the notion that we are nearing the limit of what "command and control" and "divide and conquer" organizational structures can do to create efficiency and productivity, and solve extremely complex, wicked problems. The complexity and pace of our world requires new approaches to understand and respond to the world around us. The decentralized, informal, seamless, easy, human elements of the social media mindset are compelling on their own, and are beginning to be recognized for how well they work for work.
This rapid shift hints that together we can do so much more than we have so far, that the best is yet to come. In other words, it is exciting.
Identifying the Pivot Points
The challenge when talking about the phenomenon of the real Enterprise 2.0 is that it is hard to nail down and describe the precise factors in play here. Nearly everything is subject to re-examination through this new, vague lense. Here are a few of the dominant themes, however:
1. The Power Shift From Information Hoarding to Sharing
In traditional organizations, information is status and confers power. In the Enterprise 2.0, people are valued for how they share, not for what they have in the closet.
This means that your ability to recognize where and when your information is valuable, and being recognized as a reliable source confers more status. It marks you as more valuable, more influential and more powerful than a person who acts as a gatekeeper, implying greater knowledge and insider status without inviting you to participate in that knowledge. Those people are beginning to get a new label entirely. It's not a nice one.
2. Replacing Perfection with Perfect Aspirations
Enterprises have, since the dawn of time, striven to portray themselves as perfect and infallible. It has always been considered a PR blunder to admit any ignorance or imperfection. Employees have been encouraged to show the same polish and invulnerability as individuals.
These days, it's the enterprises that embrace their opportunities to improve that are our heroes. It's the enterprises that cop to their mistakes, own them and demonstrate the will to do better. Consider Dominos Pizza, Best Buy, Dell, Campbell's. They've all had major problems that they've owned up to and have come out as heroes. On the other hand, we have BP, for example, and how they handled their early responses to the fact that they created a natural catastrophe so large we can't even understand it. The ones who say "Yes, we've erred," and here's how we're doing better are the ones that we respect. Not the ones who try to justify themselves or ignore problems.
Continue reading this article: