I’ve had the privilege of being a speaker at one of nGenera‘s Executive Summit’s around the theme of “Restarting the Business Growth Engine.”  This is being held at the lovely Hyatt Regency Tamaya Resort at the Santa Anna Pueblo in New Mexico.

My topic was “Leveraging Web 2.0 to Discover and Exploit New Business Strategies.”  But more on that in subsequent posts – for now I want to capture some immediate reflections on some of the commentary and discussion.

“Spending Time On Facebook is Sapping Our Employee’s Productivity!”

This was a comment made by a very seasoned and successful CEO in the conference.  The comeback from another executive was, “But these people are working virtually 24×7 – at work and at home – they are far more productive than they were in the old days – before Web 2.0!”

Two contradicting perspectives – which one is right?  Does giving employees the freedom and trust to spend time on social networking sites during the work day detract from productivity? Or does it increase employee engagement (a sorely lacking characteristic according to data presented by a couple of the speakers!)  If employees abuse this trust, and spend significant time on non-work related activities, is that a performance management problem (or a reflection of an engagement problem?) that needs to be addressed in its own right, rather than revoking or preventing these external social networking privileges in the first place?   What has happened to trust in the workplace, and the good old “employee/employer” compact, and what does that loss of trust cost us in terms of productivity?  I suspect this issue is significantly more productivity draining than time spent on social networks.

By the way, this argument reminds me of a speech I head many, many years ago by IT guru Tom Demarco.  Early in his career (I think it was with Bell Labs), Tom was sitting at his desk, with his feet up, head back, gazing at the ceiling.  His boss was walking by the office, and noticed this relaxed posture.  “Tom, what are you doing?” asked the boss, Tom’s programming manager.  “Thinking!” replied Tom.  “Your not paid to think – get back to work!” was the bosses comeback.

“A Key Barrier to Collaboration in the Enterprise is Lack of Purpose!”

My highly value colleague Tammy Erickson, in her presentation on “Why Collaboration Is So Difficult” hit on the “If we build it, they don’t come!” theme.  Collaboration without a clear purpose is unlikely to take hold – no matter how good the platform and the IT support.

I’ve found this to be a true statement, but like all good rules there are exceptions.  I know one client where strong collaboration (in an inherently silo-ed culture) is taking place – and around SharePoint, of all platforms!  The IT organization provided the platform, and the business people climbed on in spades!  The take-up was so successful, IT had to re-architect the collaboration platform and services.

Image courtesy of Hyatt Regency Tamaya, NM

Filed under: General, Next Generation Enterprise, Next Generation IT, social networking, Web 2.0 Tagged: | employee engagement, Facebook, Performance management, social networking, Web 2.0