Re: Some Questions You Might Get Asked

Andrew McAfee posted a blogpost on some questions you might get asked when planning to deloy emergent social software platforms. I could not resist putting down my views to the questions.

Here it goes.... (Warning! It's a bit lengthy)

• What if employees use the their internal blogs to post hate speech or pornography, or to harass a co-worker?
• Every organization will have an IT usage policy that is communicated down clearly to staffs on the Dos and Don'ts. Any violation can be reported and warning can be issued for the first time. Subsequent offenders should be punished severely.

• What if blogs are used to denigrate the company itself, air dirty laundry, or talk about how misguided its leadership and strategy are?
• It is possible for the content to be posted elsewhere (on the net) or brought up during the grapevine sessions. Having a platform allows people to voice out and the proper clarification or corrective actions can be carried out promptly. Of course, the top management will need to be prepared, as having a platform will cause other people to think that they are given the freedom of speech. Otherwise it can be communicated down that the platform is limited to official work and refrain from any personal views. This will have to depend on the culture of the organization.

• What if nasty arguments break out in a discussion forum and the whole thing descends into name-calling and flame wars?
• Arguments do break out in the real life as well. Some mediators can step in. But prevention would be the best by having a set usage guidelines. Of course using real names and putting the face to a name does helps in reducing these occurrences.

• Won't people be tempted to use forums to talk about current events, review movies, ask for advice about camcorder purchases, and have other non work-related conversations?
• It depends on the goals of the organization. Whether there is a need to build relationships? If there is, the platform can be enhanced to provide such forums. Otherwise it can be skipped and people are unlikely to misuse it without large scale usage. It will most probably scale down at email or IM level within their cliques.

• What if people waste time filling up their employee profile pages with pictures of their kittens and vacations?
• Again. It will depends on the organization's goals and the nature of work of the employee. If they are connected to the internet, they can do it elsewhere or do other offline things like reading magazines or gossip with emails. As long the employee are meeting their KPIs, they should be given certain autonomy. My concerns will be the time wasted by people reading the profile pages. One employee's uploading of his travel photos will have a multiplier effect on the time wasted as his fellow colleagues go through the photos. This can be cut down by imposing some disk quotas and keeping the profile pages with limited enhancements. With this, it is likely that the employee will move his acts to public domains where it is reachable to a much larger group of audience and with more convenience.

• Will people just use social networking software to plan happy hour, rather than to get work done?
• There's always a likelihood of it happening. Sometimes planning happy hour together does get work done much faster due to the relationships. As long the employees are meeting the targets set upon them, it should be ok. If employers are really uncomfortable with the idea, then enterprise 2.0 might not be suitable for them.

• Don't Enterprise 2.0 platforms just yield another source of discoverable content -- material that must be turned over as part of a lawsuit or other legal action?
• If it is wrong, don't do it. The Chineses have an idiom, "若要人不知，除非己莫为" (The only way to stop people from knowing it is not to do it.). Although there is no Sarbanes-Oxley Act for many countries, the stakeholders of the company will have better trust in the management with tools that helps to surface those irregularities.

• If the information on these platforms really is valuable, won't it be harvested by spies and sold to the highest bidder?
• Possibly. Information and Knowledge are invaluable. So what is preventing this from happening with the current IT solutions? What happens when experienced employees leave with all the precious knowledge to the competitors? This can be minimized by putting in place a proper set of security infrastructure and policies.

• Won't hackers break in to our Enterprise 2.0 platforms and steal their content?
• This can be minimized by putting in place a proper set of security infrastructure and policies. Very important information should not be placed on the internet facing platforms. Encryption will also help. What is stopping them from robbing the laptops of the employees?

• Don't these technologies make it easier to deliberately or inadvertently leak secrets to the outside world?
• Yes, Enteprise 2.0 supports knowledge discovery and sharing especially when searching is all powerful. But it also helps to identify any compromises easily rather than to let people exploit the loopholes easily. There is a need to invest in a platform with good security features.

• Don't they make it too easy for confidential information to leap over our internal Chinese Walls?
• With proper planning, education and control, it can be prevented. There is nothing to stop a confidential email to be forwarded to someone. For a start, very confidential information should be excluded from Enterprise 2.0 as the platform will be in exploratory stage and is unlikely to be endowed with a comprehensive set security infrastructure.

• If we give up tight control over our Intranet's content, how can we possibly avoid running afoul of all potentially relevant regulations and laws around information sharing in all the places we do business?
• It is possible to segregate information from the intranet and internet with good usage guidelines. It also establish a need for enterprise 2.0 platforms instead of using public platforms. For those non-sensitive content, by posting it online, it helps by having more people to know and alert the company of any non-conformances and corrective actions can be done promptly instead of waiting for grave consequences.

• What if an unhappy customer uses uses our community site to air their grievances, and to talk loudly and often about our lousy products or Kafkaesque customer service? Or a supplier uses them to complain about how we never pay on time?
• It allows corrective actions to be done promptly rather to have the bad-mouths taking place at other sites unknowingly for a long period of time.

• Are we responsible and liable if people give incorrect information or bad advice on question and answer forums we host on our Web site?
• Nope. You can always put a disclaimer. Even television programmes also carries a disclaimers on the views of the participants at their shows.

• If we try to take advantage of lead-user innovation and ask people to submit their ideas to us, who owns the resulting intellectual property -- do we have to share resulting revenues and/or profits with the submitter?
• It will depends on the arrangement up front. Usually companies will put up certain terms of conditions during the submission. Nevertheless, if the idea is really that good, the submitter should be aptly rewarded.