For web workers inside businesses, gaining access to social computing tools can be a significant uphill battle against a world that seems not only to not know or care about del.icio.us, LinkedIn, corporate blogging and wikis but to be actively against their introduction to the workplace. This might be frustrating, but there are things that you can do as a web worker in cube-world.
First, treat yourself as an intrapreneur – an entrepreneur inside the wall – a cubicle commando. Take yourself and your goals seriously, and be truly passionate about them. The can’t-doers who want to kill your ideas will push back, but with the right attitude you can probably bring them around.
Second, consider management’s point of view - this is a high emotional intelligence approach and is likely to be a big plus on your side. It doesn’t matter that you understand the benefits to you of social computing. What matters is that you understand how to communicate the benefits to management. Make sure you:
- address management goals – change that offers improvements to existing processes and boosts productivity is more likely to win support than change to the way the business is managed;
- suggest slow and measured adoption – the softly, softly approach where tools are adopted by small self-selecting groups who then socialize the benefits to other parts of the business by word of mouth drives bottom-up “groundswell” adoption;
- reduce risk - potential threats to business will scare management off in a second. Keeping adoption within the business while acceptance and understanding grow can benefit in the long run when tools must eventually break through to the outside world;
- get IT on your side – you’re going to need to play with these folks eventually and they may end up being the implementers of your quiet revolution. With IT on your team, you have another ally in the fight.
Third, research as much as you can. There are lots of great articles and academic research on the benefits of social computing in business – usually termed Enterprise 2.0. Read the latest work on approaches to take and the benefits realized by businesses who have done the work before you. Organizations like IBM, Sun, The New York Times and a big business favorite, SAP, have all undertaken significant social computing initiatives in recent years that have resulted in measurable positive change. Knowing that what you propose isn’t as radical as it might seem can be very reassuring to management. Thinkers like Harvard Business School’s Dr Andrew McAfee, ZDNet and Web 2.0 Journal’s Dion Hinchcliffe and IBM’s Luis Suarez are all doing excellent work in this area and should be on your required reading list.
There’s no need for the push to introduce social computing to your company need be a hard, unpleasant fight. Go in armed with the right attitude and an understanding of the benefits and you might just be corporate blogger #1 by the end of the year.
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