On an archives list I'm on, there was a recent back and forth discussion about the role and purpose and usage of their organisational Facebook and recalling similar (although often more heated and confused) discussions about Web 2.0 ideas and concepts in institutions, I was encouraged to find the following rather good article about Government Departments and the adoption of Web 2.0 projects.
While it is about Government Departments, you could apply most of it to almost any top down institution - big or small. http://fcw.com/articles/2009/06/08/feature-social-media-government.aspx "Social-media gurus often sound like Zen masters when they try to explain their discipline to initiates or skeptics. To take control, give up the illusion of control. Learn from your audience and embrace the unexpected. Failure is one of the surest signs of success. Social-media pioneers and proponents from government, academia and industry gathered in Williamsburg, Va., last month at the Government Leadership Summit, which was sponsored by the 1105 Government Information Group, the parent company of Federal Computer Week. Many of their conversations focused on the paradoxical nature of tools like Twitter and Facebook. It?s not that social media defies logic, like a Zen riddle. But its logic does not necessarily fit easily into government?s traditional models of governance. Agencies typically take a top-down approach to deploying new applications, with a central office providing the resources and defining specific rules of engagement. That won?t cut it with social media, which works best at the grass-roots of an organization. Successful deployments involve a push-pull balance between the two. Agency officials need to define basic goals and parameters for the use of social media, but they also need to let an application take on a life of its own. This way of thinking is a challenge for the federal workforce, said Robert Carey, chief information officer of the Navy Department and one of the first federal CIOs to have an official blog. Some guidance might be needed ?to get us out of this very bureaucratic structure into a more collaborative, flat environment,? Carey said. "... more above Almost everything in the article is reflected in my own recent experience when I was involved in some exercises about "re-visioning" or "re-imaging" an institution. There were lots of good ideas (though most introduced from the top down) about making everything more customer/client oriented, about moving from being a top-down to being a bottom-up organisation, about moving from unilateral decision making to shared decision making, from "management" to "leadership" and so on. And in the whole process Web 2.0 came up. Lots of excitement about the potential. Lots of verbal commitment that this was a way to go to open up the institution, help bring it into the 21st Century etc etc. Excited as I was by the potential in all this, the cynic in me managed to sneak out and... I asked if we were really committed at all levels to what this would involve. Did people realise what this would involve to put these ideas into effect and follow through with them. I was assured we as an institution were committed. Several months later my caution was justified. The institution hadn't truly taken into account what the whole thing - especially the web 2.0 social networking aspects - would involve. While staff (especially - but not only - younger staff) were were keen to engage with it all, management at all levels were too entrenched in the traditional hierarchical mould to take the risks involved. Essentially it ended up in a place where, for example, every facebook entry or action, every blog post or twitter etc would have to be "cleared". Nothing could be even close to being off-message The result was the whole idea of any kind of renewal was pretty much stifled - there was no risk taking creativity, no interaction with new constituencies and certainly no wish to encounter external dissenting views.Unfortunately, the organisation was enable to relinquish control to the extent that would allow the new directions to flourish. btw, there is a second article here on business and Web 2.0 which compliments all this from a slightly different direction - The Jazz of Social Media http://www.jeneane.net/?p=74 The problem is that while traditional marketers and MBAs and HR folk understand what it feels like to ?broadcast their message,? they don?t know what it feels like to ?jam,? to play with micromarkets in an already-in-progress composition, an evolving melody, on the market?s own stage, in the customer?s own house... And if you are looking for a fairly simple way to explain Web 2.0 and the move into Web 3.0, I also came across this - Web 3.0 for dummies: http://thenextweb.com/2008/06/26/web30-for-dummies/ http://www.slideshare.net/freekbijl/web-30-explained-with-a-stamp http://www.slideshare.net/freekbijl/web-30-explained-with-a-stamp-pt-ii Might not agree with it 100%, but it is quite clearly set out:
