While perusing my Google Reader subscriptions the other day, I came across an interesting post from Venkatesh Rao on the Enterprise 2.0 Conference Blog. Please read the post/comments yourself, but to paraphrase, the basic idea is that as Web 2.0 style technologies move within the firewall (ala E2) they become boring. The “exciting” and “consequential” part of the business is missing from the (insert your 2.0 technology of choice here), because the “exciting” and “consequential” people are missing as well. Similar to this post from Steve Radick, it is more of the theme that technology is a reflection of a culture.  Both posts raise some excellent points, but I found myself shaking my head while reading. I said to myself “Self – am I boring? Am I inconsequential? Was I transparent and collaborative before E2?”

I rarely disagree with these sorts of folks for two reasons. One – they are way smarter than I am. (Seriously. Not being sarcastic. I make it through the day by force of will and dumb luck. ) Two – they seemingly have way more time than I do to write retorts confirming the former. Disagreement sounds like a dicey proposition to me, but in the interest of perhaps proving my point, let’s run a few rounds.

My first issue is this paragraph from Venkatesh:

The exciting people — say the guy leading the consequential re-org, or managing the “bet the company” product launch, is probably far busier than everybody else. But I suspect there is another reason: to put it in terms of an American high school analogy, it is the same reason the “cool kids” avoid the “loser kids.”  Enterprise 2.0 is mostly populated by the equivalent of band geeks. The equivalent of football players and cheerleaders are possibly avoiding it. Just possibly, they might be thinking “nobody who is anybody goes there; nothing that matters happens there.”

Wow. Talk about a shot to my E2 gut. I was in fact a band geek in high school and I think Mr. Rao just stuffed me in a locker and stole my flute-playing girlfriend. On to something similar from @sradick:

Ultimately though, no matter how many pages your wiki has or how fantastic your internal blog is, the technology is going to reflect your organizational culture.  Not the culture you talk about on your website, but the real, honest culture of your organization.

Huh. So if I slap these two thoughts together, I am left with the fact that our Enterprise 2.0 implementations have been nothing more than a transparent magnification of the collective loserdom.

Gentlemen…Respectfully…I disagree.

First off, the claim that Enterprise 2.0 is inhabited by the equivalent of band geeks and high-school losers sounds like a text message you wish you could take back after a SharePoint bender. My dear friend, we are not losers. We are the organizationally elite. We are a minority because of the majority interest’s penchant for feeding tube IT and collaboration that is…well…easy. Keep thinking I sit alone at lunch because nothing that matters happens here. I am sorry, but in the rat race to be a better, faster, more informed knowledge worker (can I still say that?), the cool kid good looks, easy going nature, and belief that all problems can be fixed by relationship X or quid pro quo Y is a surefire sentence to a lifetime of inconsequentiality.

Secondly, the claim that technology is nothing more than a reflection of your internal culture is sleight of hand for change management consultants. Enterprise 2.0 technologies do not reflect a culture. They present a desired future state and an opportunity for that culture to change. It is not that I was always this collaborative or transparent. It is not that I have always wanted to blog (or whatever). In fact, I didn’t think anything of the sort was possible until I was exposed to the technology. Furthermore, I didn’t jump in immediately, thinking that this wiki thing was some sort of missing glass slipper I had been longing to wear. It was the opportunities that the technology presented that allowed my personal culture to change. The capabilities and power of the Enterprise 2.0 technologies are there out of the box. As the culture begins to change and understand their value, the culture itself becomes a representation of the capabilities manifested in the technology.

Frankly…both of these ideas have some merit. However, they are gross oversimplifications. Yeah sure…there are some geeks using the technologies. And yeah sure…the  guy who is a jerk in real life will probably be a jerk on the wiki. But in both of cases, having these events occur in the clear will go a long way toward said “loser culture” breaking down the crippling organizational and technological silos – put there by the football players and cheerleaders –  evidently as a representation of their “winner culture.”

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