Enterprise 2.0 means cultural change

Mike Chapman on the Squared Root blog has written a interesting post on Brand Awareness and “large” enterprise 2.0.  In it he quotes Susan Scrupski on the topic of enterprise 2.0 adoption in large enterprises:

“we find that social, emergent behavior can be viewed as dissent in large enterprises. In the enterprise space, we find the major barrier to adoption of 2.0 ideologies is culture. Even if there is a groundswell of support to embrace social media, corporate cultures can run counter to its actual widespread acceptance. Marketers in large companies are more inclined to recognize the benefits of building relationships via social media sooner, but they run into roadblocks from other, more conservative, areas of the business. It’s a huge challenge for some large brands.”

I’ve been an evangelist for opening up product documentation using wikis, inside IBM, so that any IBMer could modify/improve/correct the content as they see fit.  And in the process, self identify on our intranet as a subject matter expert.  It was a radical idea when I first proposed it 30 months ago, and its been a great experience leading the effort to launch it on the IBM intranet.  There certainly was (and still is) a lot of status quo bias against trying something based on the principle of crowdsourcing inside such a large and traditionally hierarchical enterprise.  No surprise there.  But at the same time, there have been many IBMers who have been very supportive.

Based on my experience so far, Susan’s observation above is perfectly correct.  When it comes to enterprise 2.0 transformation in larger enterprises, its all about culture.  I think only once you have a business culture that values (and measures!) transparent knowledge sharing amongst fellow employees will 2.0 things like I propose above start to achieve critical mass in larger enterprises.  And – those who share the most will become new centers of power and influence.

Mike also has a lot to say about my recent IBM Gets It presentation to the Austin Social Media Club.  By the end of my talk that evening it seemed like I had gotten all of the social media maniacs in the room rooting for IBM.  The comments were sure nice.  But actually, in a deeper sense, I think they were rooting for social media to take over the IBM enterprise, and I was just there to show them that yes there are evangelists working very hard on the inside trying to do just that.

Why would they root for IBM?   Well if the mother of all computer technology brands becomes a 2.0′ey social media driven enterprise, then they will all feel a terrific sense of validation.  And here I’m touching on something that I think is really cool about working for IBM.  During the presentation it became obvious to me that the technorati in the room were (1) surprised by the amount of activity and innovation around social computing technologies that is happening inside IBM, and (2) they want IBM to succeed with social media in a big way.  Ok – re. point (2), I was preaching to the choir.  But, my point goes deeper than that.  To illustrate, have a look at this fantastic community zen poster:  “The Web is Agreement“.  If you download the hi res PDF and have a close look you’ll see that across the entire technical landscape in the illustration you don’t find any mention of “IBM”, relative to the moral compass.  But IBM is playing a very active role in just about every part of this landscape (w/exception of the “Industry of Malware” thank goodness), and leading in some parts. Yet IBM doesn’t warrant a sign post on the map like Google or Microsoft.  That fact gives me a nice warm fuzzy feeling about the IBM brand – how IBM is able to be a huge player yet stay above the fray.

So in a sense, IBM isn’t just another player.  IBM helps define the playing field too.  How IBM succeeds with social media will define success patterns that other large enterprises will then follow.