This is the third in a series of my notes on the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston, June 14- 17. This post covers the second half of afternoon portion of the workshop, Enterprise 2.0 Black Belt Workshop. Here is the description. My notes follow.

“Planning and executing a comprehensive Enterprise 2.0 program requires an honest assessment of your organization and strong strategic planning. In this full-day workshop meet the vanguard of those who are currently engaged in implementing Enterprise 2.0 within large organizations. Learn firsthand from practitioners who have tackled adoption, architecture, change management, community management, education, governance, and the realities of living an Enterprise 2.0 transformative experience.”

Bryce Williams Eli Lilly, and Richard Rashty, Schneider Electric, covered positioning enterprise tools in the enterprise as not just another tool.  I started late taking notes here. Bryce offered an interesting idea: work out loud. If you find something useful be sure to share it. I really like this concept.  Someone asked about when to share inside and when to share outside the enterprise.  Bryce said that as he is working in a pharma firm, this is a big issue.  He said they focus more on content than tools in setting policy. They try to trust employees but guidelines are still necessary.

Someone said that more smart people work outside the organization than inside so it is good to turn outside at times.  Stan Garfield mentioned that the E 2.0 Adoption Council is a good example of a useful outside community. 

Many people are using unsecure consumer collaboration tools. Rich said thousands are doing this at his firm. There are open Facebook groups for his firms. Senior execs did not believe him and were surprised when he showed them.  Rich also said that he uses employee retention as an ROI for internal collaboration tools as more engaged employees are more likely to stay.

Kevin Jones, NASA, and Bart Schitte Saint-Gobain, discussed mitigating real or perceived risks around enterprise 2.0.  Bart started. He said his firm was created in 1665 by the prime minister of Louis XIV in order to bring expert glass making to France. They kidnapped some Italians to bring the core technology.  Kevin said he is a social media guy at NASA and not a space guy but his kids think he is cool for working there.

Bart mentioned how there are more privacy protections in Europe. For example, you cannot track actions to the people who performed them.  This is an issue for social media and this transparency is one of the benefits it brings in my opinion.

Kevin asked for biggest fears that the audience hears. He got these and others. What if someone enters the wrong information? I do not have time for this. Compliance.  Why would I use these tools if I am already productive?  The network is not in place. We do need this. You are going to give us more liability for e-discovery.   It does not do what I want so why should I use it? I need to be careful about what I say. Why is the search not like Google? We do not want negative comments posted.  I do not want to look stupid.  What if what I say will be used against me? If I contribute it will be perceived that I do not have enough work to do as I have time to do this.

Bart said that these concerns are more US oriented.  He did say that he hears these types of concerns from senior executives: too expensive for value, people will waste time, do not like the term “social.” HR is concerned about protecting personal data and related liability issues. One employee will attack another and the victim will sue the company. It will give the worker’s councils a channel to attack the company.

On the positive side employees said this is a great way to increase their visibility and they can tap into the wisdom of others. On the concern side, there will be pressure to participate and they will be judged badly if they do not. What if my confidential information is compromised?

In Europe some people do not want their picture displayed, as that is confidential information. In some places people will be judged based on how they look. Bart said he had to negotiate with HR for a year over this issue and pictures are not displayed in public sites.

Germany is the most controlled country on privacy issues. Any time there is a new user policy the worker’s councils have to approve it and they use this as a means to renegotiate other issues.  So the companies avoid new policies.

Now Bart and Kevin started on how to address these issues. Kevin said that many of these issues are not really problems. His favorite counter is to ask how you deal with the issue now.  He said there are already resolutions for most of these issues. Employee policies are generally already in place for 90%.  On one hand I agree and issues like these get raised with every new communication technology. But there is more power here and more transparency so there should be some further refinement. Also, guidelines on how to most effectively use the tools are needed.

Kevin said that 90% of the issues are people related and not technology based.  Some issues are real and need to be negotiated. He suggested to get all the stakeholders involved in the discussions. Bart said he got legal involved on a user charter. It had five pages of legal warnings and one page of benefits at the end.  He suggested to edit it.

I expressed a concern over making legal or anyone group the bad guys or bottleneck. There was some discussion on this. Some people said to gain some momentum and they bring the groups in. I think the opposite is better and that you need to get all the stakeholders upfront. The bottleneck is often the group that was not involved up front. Of course, every organization is different. If you think that some group will oppose you no matter what, they you should want until it is too late for them to stop you.

Kevin said the every user needs a personal why to use the system. This is where one on one conversation helps. He mentioned that IBM has 1,400 evangelists. Luis Suarez explained this more. They have evangelists work across projects to promote viral exposure. Kevin said it is useful to think of all the objections and write blog posts addressing them.  These are great closing points to a useful session.