Yesterday I had the good fortune to participate in the IBM round table on The Future of Business Collaboration in Singapore. Several interesting people from government, business and academia shared the table and there were plenty of insights around challenges and opportunities associated with the use of social computing tools in small and large organisations. In the coming weeks there will be associated articles in The Straits Times as well as an IBM-hosted blog to continue the discussion online.
An interesting point was made by Harish Pillay from Red Hat about the necessary corporate governance of the use of social computing tools. In Red Hat, they've boiled it down to two simple rules:
1. Freedom: Everyone in the organisation has the right to say and publish whatever they want (the entire website is a wiki, anyone in the company can change any page)
2. Accountability: Everyone in the organisation is held accountable for their statements online.
And thats it - no rules about sensitive corporate information or disparaging competitors - it is all left up to common sense. Wonderful.
Reminded me of another friend who set up a software business. When hiring took numbers of staff beyond the small team where rules suddenly needed to be made explicit, he came up with a single rule for an expense policy: "Don't embarrass me or you." ie don't claim any expenses which could be reasonably considered excessive and therefore require rejection ...
Comments (2)
New staff joining the primary school of which I was principal would often ask:
"What are we allowed to do here?" I would respond that they should:
1. Always act in in the best interests of your students
2. Don't embarrass themselves or your students, their families or your colleagues.
I can see now that the second includes the first. And it worked. In organizations (including schools) people's actions need to be effective (1. above) and ethical (2.above). People need to be responsible for their actions, and this requires judgement. Making these requirements explicit at the beginning of the staff member's work in the school saved a lot time and effort. It also seemed to promote collaboration perhaps because it immediately related the new staff member to all other members of the school community.
Ivan
Posted by Ivan Webb | August 29, 2007 12:36 AM
Posted on August 29, 2007 00:36
Thanks Ivan. I like the way the ethical guidelines are boiled down to one rule that treats the staff as adults! Makes a mockery of these organisation with detailed ethical guidelines, that seem to fall all over themselves with the fine print of what is and isn't allowed ...
I've been subjected to the ethical tests that are now required by Sarbanes-Oxley, and you are forced to consider questions like "should you take bribes from suppliers?". The problem is that most people don't ever face these ethical dilemmas ... real dilemmas are problems like, "do you put the interests of your company or your customers first?" ...
These are the kinds of problems for which there is no black and white answer, and the only way to help people through them is to give them simple guidelines and let them use their judgement.
Posted by Steve Bealing | August 29, 2007 1:11 AM
Posted on August 29, 2007 01:11