Leaders In the Know

How CIOs Demonstrate Leadership in Web 2.0

Charlie and I were co-panelists, along with Chris Anstey of GlaxoSmithKline and moderator Berny Wright of Agilysys, at the CIO Forum & Executive IT Summit in King of Prussia, PA on April 16, 2009.

Click here to view our slide presentation.

Companies are at very different stages of how they use Web 2.0 and social media technologies and tools. Managers and employees are all over the lot: some use these tools as they would the telephone, while others are a little skeptical of the value.

We rely on the web in every facet of  our daily lives - so much so that the boundaries between our work and personal lives are not as clear as they used to be.  We forget that we're still seeing the infancy of the web from a management perspective. 

We are only beginning to understand the best ways to figure out which tool works best for which purpose and how to measure the result.  They aren't sure how to reconcile a myriad of corporate concerns, not the least of which is around security and bad press. 

Managers brought up in the traditional role of organizing, planning and control need to be trained on how to manage in the new realities of an open, transparent, agile and empowered web-enabled workplace.

CIOs have an important leadership role to play. Their knowledge can help their business partners become educated consumers of web-based products.  They can help guide their companies from experimentation and ad hoc use to strategic use of web technologies and tools.

Social Media: More mindset than media

Charlie and I are developing a course for American Management Association called Making Sense of Web 2.0: Levaraging Social Media in Your Organization.  (The consensus was that social computing - while perhaps more accurate  than social media - sounds too geeky.)  But regardless of  what you call it, the modern web is mostly about mindset.

Web 2.0 is familiar turf for marketers, project managers, consultants and developers. There are many, many fantastic examples of how it's used with internal and external audiences.

But when you cut past the flash, Web 2.0 works best when we stop selling and telling and engage in listening and learning.

It sounds so simple: we need to treat customers as people with something valuable to say. We need to treat employees as responsible adults. But how many organizations actually do? After all, there aren't any extra "Hay points" in it. And it could get us in trouble.  Not much of an incentive there for the average corporate soldier.

You may want to look into Pfizerpedia (Pfizer's version of wikipedia). You can read about it on a number of sites. I'd like to suggest Karl Kapp's blog. Considering the sensitivities of large corporations, with signficant investment in intellectual property, in a highly regulated industry in which compliance dominates behavior,  accustomed to strictly following processes and protocol -embracing Web 2.0 is nothing short of a major shift in mindset.  Even though I've given away the plot, I still highly recommend the movie:

meet Jessica

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The current economic crisis may reveal that companies really see Web 2.0 as a "nice to have" rather than the necessity it is for "keeping the lights on." If so, those companies may have snazzy Web 2.0 sites - but not a Web 2.0 mindset.