Barriers to Web 2.0
Wednesday: April 9, 2008 3:52 PM
In the latest issue of KMWorld, Hugh McKellar references some work done by Gartner where they identify five major challenges for deploying Web 2.0 within the enterprise.
1. Overcoming Cultural Barriers
2. Managing Personal and Professional Time
3. Ensuring Privacy
4. Governing Participant Behaviors
5. Delivering Business Value
Not sure that I would disagree with these but I do think I might modify them slightly. I would expand the cultural barriers to include awareness, education, and belief system. Clearly awareness is an issue in a large organization; people just don’t know these tools are available. Even if you have emailed the entire company that doesn't mean they heard you. Until they have been engaged, awareness will always be an issue. The second addition is that people don't know how to use these tools in a business setting. Talking about the Hilary and Obama mess is one thing, collaborating on business strategy is another. People need to be educated on how to use the tools, when to use the tools, and where it is appropriate to engage. My final addition is the belief system of the individuals. It’s not culture that keeps some people away but their belief system. A belief in a single vendor may keep them away (i.e. I hate Microsoft, so I won't use Sharepoint). A belief in hierarchal structures may keep them from engaging other groups. Or perhaps a reward system that rewards control and condems collaboration. All of these have little to do with age or experience. Ok, maybe we could mix those under culture but you get my drift
Your thoughts?
In the latest issue of KMWorld, Hugh McKellar references some work done by Gartner where they identify five major challenges for deploying Web 2.0 within the enterprise.
1. Overcoming Cultural Barriers
2. Managing Personal and Professional Time
3. Ensuring Privacy
4. Governing Participant Behaviors
5. Delivering Business Value
Not sure that I would disagree with these but I do think I might modify them slightly. I would expand the cultural barriers to include awareness, education, and belief system. Clearly awareness is an issue in a large organization; people just don’t know these tools are available. Even if you have emailed the entire company that doesn't mean they heard you. Until they have been engaged, awareness will always be an issue. The second addition is that people don't know how to use these tools in a business setting. Talking about the Hilary and Obama mess is one thing, collaborating on business strategy is another. People need to be educated on how to use the tools, when to use the tools, and where it is appropriate to engage. My final addition is the belief system of the individuals. It’s not culture that keeps some people away but their belief system. A belief in a single vendor may keep them away (i.e. I hate Microsoft, so I won't use Sharepoint). A belief in hierarchal structures may keep them from engaging other groups. Or perhaps a reward system that rewards control and condems collaboration. All of these have little to do with age or experience. Ok, maybe we could mix those under culture but you get my drift
Your thoughts?
Comments (4)
I agree with the five major challenges. I think for large organizations, governance becomes a big concern for the management/executive side. The fear of putting too much power in end users hands with public wikis and blogs goes counter to how many Web 2.0 tools have grown through user empowerment. It really becomes an issue of striking a balance of the opposing forces. I also think culture is a huge challenge because even with education on tools many people left to their own devices will choose not to participate if they see no immediate benefit for themselves. In these non participatory scenarios I think management may need to step in and put the collaboration tools in the middle of the process to jump start the content creation with information that may already being done but in less collaborative ways.
Posted by: Bo George on April 12, 2008 23:54
Todd,
I would also agree with the highlighted barriers. The 'cultural change' issue plagues pretty much every 'new thinking' initiative be it web2.0 in the organisation to information quality to BPR.
One question I've been batting around with my 'day job' boss is what is different now in organisations that are trying to implement Business Process Management/Metadata management change as compared to 10 years ago or even 5 years ago.
The debate is raging because my boss feels he's been here before (mapping core processes, defining information about information and data about data, assigning responsiblities/accountabilities, creating repositories of knowledge etc.). He lead similar initiatives in our organisation about 10 years ago which basically withered on the vine.
What, do you think, is different now (and what remains the same)?
Posted by: Daragh O Brien on April 16, 2008 05:03
I would say the responsibility for the information has shifted away from the Data Stewards to the Business User. The complexity of Data Management, ETL, Metadata, and Repositories has pushed people toward the simple tools available today. While some functionality is lost, much more is gained from the ease of use. So have we been here before is like asking is Web 1.0 like Web 0.0 and the answer is yes in many ways. The same is true with Web 2.0 and 1.0.
Posted by: RTodd on April 16, 2008 06:26
I had put forward a similar thought to yours. The tools we had 10 years ago were scary for non-technical users and created a barrier to adoption (either licence fees for desktop clients or learning curves for the tools). Now we have tools that may be less 'feature rich' but 'usability advantaged', which remove many of the barriers that might have existed in the past which contributed to failure.
I think I need to think this through a bit more to get the argument right for my boss, but it's nice to know I'm on the right track!
Posted by: Daragh O Brien on April 17, 2008 06:25