Arguing against a fear of open collaboration inside an enterprise

February 17, 2010

Opening your organisation up to blogging or wiki’s is difficult for many organisations. It flies in the face of traditional management control over messages and information. It opens the organisation to all sorts of crazy or litigious things that people may write.

Your milage and details will vary, but the basic argument for the safety of open internal enterprise collaboration goes something like this:

  1. Anything people publish will have their name on it.
  2. Is there anything an employee could write on their blog or a wiki that would create a problem for your organisation but does not breech existing policies around communication, confidentiality, etc? If so, is that a problem with blogs or a problem with your existing policies?
  3. If an employee breaches communication policy, is it more likely to occur in email or on a public forum? Which would you prefer, one you can see and act on or one that is hidden and may surface in the future?

Beyond all the policies and controls, your employees aren’t idiots and should value their job. (If not, that’s two good things to find out ASAP anyway.)