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Can technology build community?

The Xpragmatic View #144
May 13, 2010
by Marc Buyens (@mbuyens), Xpragma
marc.buyens@xpragma.com
url: http://www.xpragma.com/view144.php
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While revelling about the marvels of a given tool, we often tend to forget that every tool will be used 'in context' and that, in most cases, the presence of the right context will prove to be more important than the choice of the right tool. Also in a network economy, this rule still holds.

The 2010 Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston is only a couple of weeks away, so the momentum is building.

A couple of days ago, we received a post about the new 'Accelerating Business Performance' white paper, written by Oliver Marks and Sameer Patel of the SOVOS Group that is more or less the lead theme of the conference. As is stated:

This paper examines the value of collaborative and 'social' concepts and their associated technologies towards achieving core performance goals and facilitating underlying business process.

The paper gives an excellent overview of today's Enterprise 2.0 thinking and correctly points to the various domains where this technology and the associated approaches can address some of the major challenges of today's organisations.

But accidentally, this post was followed in our "information flow" by 'Rebuilding Companies as Communities', by Henry Mintzberg, Professor of Management Studies at McGill University in Montreal, an article that was already published in the July-August 2009 edition of the Harvard Business Review. In the article, Mintzberg argues that

Companies must remake themselves into places of engagement, where people are committed to one another and their enterprise.

Now, in essence, both publications carry a similar business view, a plea for more collaboration, engagement and community, enabling a better, more social enterprise.

So, the logical question came: can Enterprise 2.0 concepts and tools be the vehicle or the lever for creating these 'places of engagement'? Can Enterprise 2.0 be used to create a "community"?

At first sight, the answer seems obvious. Of course it can! The real essence of Enterprise 2.0 is about community building!

However, is that really so?

If we look back, the Facebooks of this world were initially not created for connecting a bunch of strangers. Facebook provided a platform that allowed a dispersed community of former classmates to get in touch again. There was already a community with a willingness to interact.

But what when you have a company where there is too little of such community feeling, little openness and transparency, and no trust... Will the introduction of e2.0 change this picture?

Everything is possible, but we doubt it. Absence of a real community feeling can have many reasons, but in general, being able to connect to or interact with more people will not remove these reasons.

A place of engagement. The "culture" thing. Is this what makes or breaks the success of an e2.0 rollout?

And interestingly enough, Mintzberg's research about best practices for community building also points to other approaches than what is often common e2.0 thinking.

First, there is the recommendation to start community building with rather small groups, whereas most e2.0 thinking favours large initial rollouts in order to get to a critical mass.

And second, middle management is seen as an important driving force in such community building process, whereas middle management is often viewed as an obsolete category in the e2.0 space.

Interestingly in conflict, but in reality, not really. Our problem is that our perception of what Enterprise 2.0 is and can do is simply too broad. We tend to forget that e2.0 is always implemented "in context" and in most cases, this context is much more important than the choice of the e2.0 tool. Enterprise 2.0 is not a starting point; it builds on other capabilities.

If such feelings of community, of places of engagement are missing, it is never because there is a lack of tools or technology. Communities can exist irrespective of the available means, but creating the conditions that allow communities to emerge goes way beyond the call of technology.

Let's use Enterprise 2.0 for doing the things that it's good at: leveraging the capabilities of existing communities and extending the reach of these communities. If however such community feeling is missing, then first do the dirty groundwork.

Tags: enterprise 2.0, organisational change

 

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