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Transparency problems...

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One of the benefits of an internal social network is the openness and transparency i.e. anyone can see what's going on and the hierarchy of communication is completely broken down. Let me give you an example... at Google we an open way of sharing information, so anyone can follow Larry or Sergey to see what they're talking about. A person at the lowest level can see what the guys at the top are talking about and can reply/interact if they so wish; there is no middle management filter in place to influence either the top-down or bottom-up communication stream.

I've implemented social networks in quite a few medium size orgs, but Google has around 20,000 people, all are tech savvy and most are fairly participative in the social networking sense. This creates an interesting effect when you hit this scale of usage.

Right now I'm looking at a post by Sergey Brin, who is sharing his opinion on how a certain piece of technology behaves. Within a few minutes, there are over 40 comments from across the globe. It's great to see people's opinion shared out in the open, and some people's comments will trigger further comments from others. This is quite valuable because feedback can be gathered very quickly and the relevant action can be taken. This helps us to be more agile as a business.

The main question is, and this is a common question when implementing something that offers open and transparent communication, "will you just end up with a lot of noise from people trying to get noticed"?

Of course that is always a risk, but my observation is that it balances itself out over time, and in general people don't want to be seen as the "brown noser 2.0" so they seldom shout out repeatedly. The benefits of being transparent far outweigh the risks, so the bottom line is get over the fear and J.F.D.I. :-)

PS - I recommend you read wirearchy  http://www.wirearchy.com/

Comments

Submitted by Steve Radick May 13, 2010 - 12:34 PM

You said - "The main question is, and this is a common question when implementing something that offers open and transparent communication, 'will you just end up with a lot of noise from people trying to get noticed?'"

My experience has been the total opposite of this. At a place like Google, this may be your biggest issue, but here in the government space, the main question has been, "how do you get people to feel safe so that ANYONE posts anything substantive?"

I'd gladly take a little self-promotion if it meant people would start posting SOMETHING. All too often though, I receive the following reasons why people aren't posting anything:

"What if I spell something wrong - will everyone think I'm an idiot?"
"What if I say something offends someone?"
"Can I post anonymously? I want to ask a question, but don't want to be seen as a problem child."

And so on and so on....so be happy Rob, of the two problems, I think you've got the one far more preferable :).

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Submitted by Rob Gray May 20, 2010 - 10:12 AM

yes this is very true... in some govt projects I've been involved in, I've had two extreme (and opposite) problems.
1. people were afraid to post. So we enabled anonymous posting.
2. anonymity instills bravery... once they become unafraid, it became a ranting board where people were insulting the chief exec, so we had to shut it down.

My key learning out of that was that anonymity is bad in an enterprise social network... however then you are back to problem 1...

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