Web 2.0 (Social Media) and the CIO

There are two camps out there, which hype the perils and advantages of social media for an enterprise—both are gaining ground and visibility. The CXO suite is confused, and this leads to pendulum like actions (moving from one end to the other) on how they react to these prophesies and theories. In many cases, it also results in total inaction, as they understand, and are comfortable with status quo. This leaves the employees in disarray—they act in an uncontrolled manner, thereby adding to the uncertainty.

Confusing? Well, that’s the moot point, so let me elaborate.

There are enough consultants, research papers, anecdotal references and general hype—that every business (irrespective of industry, geographical presence, market share and multi-channel presence) should leverage social media by connecting to consumers. This connection is deemed so important that businesses are creating presence across almost every social networking site—trying to gather the consumer around this space. A few have been able to get there with some degree of success, while others are struggling to find the meaning of being there. As organizations understand this social media revolution bit by bit, the general feeling is that it might translate to real money in the bank.

The same enterprises are paranoid, when it comes to opening access to social networking sites for their employees. One extreme is to mandate the CIO to block access to social networking sites (as the management believes that it results in precious time being frittered away). On the other hand, the balancers are defining policy for staff on the dos and don’ts of how to engage on social networking sites. These policies are expected to act as deterrents towards moderating use. However, IT organizations tend to bypass these policies for their own kin, thereby rendering the effectiveness suspect. I have not come across any organization having an open access policy with no restrictions on content, or the way it is used.

The two stances detailed above are divergent from each other. In the first case, the organization seeks to leverage social networking towards creating a business benefit, while on the other hand it restricts its own staff from participating. Every staff member is also a consumer of merchandise and services; companies would like to leverage the insights that can be created by understanding behavior. So if a similar stance is adopted by every business unit, the end result will be akin to companies creating retail stores, but preventing their employees from shopping.

Is the CXO’s disconnect due to the inability to understand the impact or control the behavior of the consumers? Or is it a generation gap between the digital natives (the new workforce) and digital immigrants (the policy makers)?

Under the guise of corporate security, the restrictions constrain natural desire to reach out in the digital world. CIOs should recognize these trends within the enterprise based on demographic undercurrents, and leverage the internal consumer’s voice before reaching out to external consumers using the digital media. These same employees will help you find ways to tap this latent source if aligned to the initiative. Else they are likely to be disruptive, since they want the freedom—because they can!