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"Conversation. What is it? A Mystery! It's the art of never seeming bored, of touching everything with interest, of pleasing with trifles, of being fascinating with nothing at all. How do we define this lively darting about with words, of hitting them back and forth, this sort of brief smile of ideas which should be conversation?" ~ Guy de Maupassant ~

 Thursday, April 10, 2003
Conversations for C-level Execs

Following up on thoughts i've had on how organisations and corporations could benefit from networking through communities or blogs, either on their own intranet systems, or through networks outside of their organisation.  As part of an informal survey on Ryze - one question that keeps recurring is why are senior executives staying away from such communities. Here's what one senior executive of a non-ICT firm, with offices worldwide and many thousands of employees has to say :

"Even within our own company, there’s low levels of sharing across departments .. because each dept is a profit center – the fear being, will they steal my business, will they share techniques I have developed with clients that may compete. 

 

Altho we have an internal knowledge management system for better networking, it is highly underutilized and scarcely populated.  The success of a knowledge management system depends on how well populated it is, and how much people share.  Without trust, it cannot work.  Possibly, ours does not work effectively for the following reasons:

 

  1. Employees not seeing the value - they see it as an additional ‘task’
  2. Levels of mistrust, low motivation to share - a sense of holding onto my thoughts and innovations, not wanting to share – will they steal my business – fierce competition within the organisation  - between units, across units – if I/my team/my profit centre has invested time/money into devping something let me first milk it .. reap the benefits … before it turns into a commodity.  
  3. Organisational culture - is if u invest time and money, it comes out of your budgets and targets – no support from the corporate office -therefore u have to work that much harder to recover time and money spent in networking and innovation"

These are only a few of the many barriers organisations have  - in a recent email exchange with Scott Allen and a few others, i remember Scott saying "and, of course, tipping points help.  Imagine the impact when one Fortune 100 company decides that online business networking is an important thing and commits to establishing a sensible policy, training their people, and encouraging them to participate"

 

Stuart Henshall in his post Open Doors talks of a solution that is "at once :

  • more open - enhances sharing - more personalised
  • increases enterprize security, and risk management
  • builds and accelerates trusting exchanges within and across the community. 
  • reduces work, adds efficiency and accuracy,
  • qualifies external connections

    Is that, open doors, expand circles, make new connections, harness  social capital?  From the enterprise point of view empower attention economics while retaining important connectivity and network links even when an employees become alumni. " 

    He has some good ideas too, on the business model for this.  

    Roger Patterson speaks of trust :

    "I am finding that this is true for me as well.  I have formed an opinion based on months of observation about a group of bloggers that I feel comfortable with. Trust is engendered because you have access to a quite complete perspective of the other. How often at work do you know how a colleague really thinks? You may know his opinion on a project. You may know his opinion of a person but I seldom was let in deep enough at work to understand the full person. Blogging gives us that chance to see below the surface"

    Here are two more comments from the informal survey on Ryze :

    "What’s working for ryze today …. is its warmth, is the relative freedom it allows in accessing people you would not have done so easily elsewhere,  human connections that may be endearing .. for instance, a top notch IT guy who’s so into cats … connects at that level and shares freely with other cat lovers, or a photograph of a top honcho with his little baby in his arms"

     

    “I find the interaction on the micro-networks (formerly known as "Tribes") such as Serious Play, The End of Free, and 500 Citizens, the most compelling aspect of the Ryze experience. Those forums provide a focal for some very high quality discussions. And if I want to find out who is doing the talking I click over to the poster's page and find, not just some statistics or resume, but pictures of the person's sailboat or family or dog, and some guestbook interactions - all of which is very revealing about the person, and fascinating...”

    It is my belief that the key lies in the recognition that conversations and exchanges can add real value.  And that Blogs and Networks can and do facilitate and encourage these, quickly and effectively, through 'soft' human profiles and opportunities for jamming on thoughts and processes, within an ever-expanding neighbourhood (somehow implying 'safe') that you trust. What needs to be stressed upon is what additional value or unique/dicriminating value they can provide over other forms for the C-level Executive. 

    Are the 'tool guys' listening ?


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