The first day of the 2008 KM Australia conference in Melbourne has been thought provoking and beneficial.
The conference is dealing with issues surrounding Web 2.0 technologies, and some great examples were given today of just what Web 2.0 is, and places it has been implemented effectively.
The first speaker was perhaps the best of the day: Hideo Yamazaki of the Nomura Research Centre who spoke on ‘Utilising Intranet-based Social Networks’. This is of particular interest, as I think that more social networking would be useful in my workplace, but the argument needs to be made of why/how it could be beneficial.
Hideo Yamazaki at KM Australia 2008
Hideo spoke of the “usefulness of the useless”. The ‘useless’ is the commonly perceived problem with social networking at work – that it is little more than staff wasting time on Facebook.
Yet in Japanese culture, much of that nation’s post-WWII industrial success stemmed from the culture of social inclusiveness that all companies encouraged in their employees. Hideo recounted that companies maintained holiday facilities for the use of employees, company outings were common, and at company athletic meetings the employee’s families were encouraged to participate.
What this led to was an inclusive, human-centric culture that formed a wider community beyond just basic employee/boss/job relationships.
The benefit of staff interacting socially like this is that trust is built (“Oh, I saw on your profile that you like the same music I do… ”), and from trust grows emotionally-based knowledge sharing (the emotional component – liking someone – is vital, as we react much faster to emotional responses than logical ones, letting us share much more, much faster, and feel much better about it afterwards!).
Once this kind of sharing can permeate a business, it resolves common questions that staff often ask of the workplace:
- what is my workplace identity
- Why am I here?
- What is the role of myself in life and within this company?
If social networking in the office can help resolve these esteem issues, then it can encourage staff members to begin actualizing themselves as professionals.
Hideo put this in an elegant way: there must be professional ‘communities of practice’, but this is best facilitated by first creating ‘communities of joy’.
I think if Web 2.0 technologies can do anything to accelerate this, then it is well worth giving a very good try-out.
I’ll post more from the conference later…
