Me 2.0 and We 2.0 for the Enterprise 2.0

A keynote address by David Gurteen on People 2.0 last Wednesday at KM Asia emphasises the behaviours that we ought to have in the 2.0 world - behaviours that would encourage participation. I'd like to think about breaking People 2.0 into Me 2.0 and We 2.0. Me 2.0 is the use of social tools to fulfill personal needs while We 2.0 is the use of social tools for collective gains. I think this breakdown is necessary as motivation drives behaviour and I don't see how the reverse reflects natural tendencies.

The themes around Me 2.0 revolves around:

• Building influence, improving reputation, earning trust (Book: Trust Agents)
• Personal branding (Book: Me 2.0)
• Personal Knowledge Management (PKM)
• Giving freely and getting unexpectedly - Reciprocity?
  

... while the theme around We 2.0 is driven mainly from the point of participation, making the outcome better as a result of collaboration.

The question:

Given the prevalence of Me and We 2.0, how can we be successful in Enterprise 2.0 adoption?

We have been adapting what's work for the outside for the inside:

• The internet, than the intranet
• Web 2.0, than the Enterprise 2.0

I'm sure we can come out with a few more examples but I think we see the point, the inside is always one step slower than the outside and what works for the outside sometimes just fail badly when applied for the inside.

The most common reason for having closed doors Enterprise 2.0 is to prevent information leakage and protect intellectual property. If we try to apply 1.0 practices for 2.0, it will fail.

So... why can't we keep what works outside outside!

For the reasons of Me 2.0 and We 2.0, wouldn't we be better off with a wider audience and like-minded practitioners beyond the firewall?

The idea I have is to treat each employee as a capable knowledge worker and respect that knowledge comes from them. I'm stating the obvious here but what's more important are concrete actions we can take to support this premise. Here's a suggestion on what we can do:

1. Introduce to employees what the web 2.0 world offers for learning, sharing and self-improvement
   
2. Show them how to do it effectively
3. Encourage each of them to create a public blog, twitter and/or delicious account
4. Use Creative Commons to protect their good work, if needed
   
5. Tell the employees that if they wish to share their postings with the organisation, tag them with XYZOrganisation so that the RSS parsers can extract them for inside consumption. Using Yahoo Pipes is a good way for aggregating postings from various sources into a single RSS feed.
   
6. Find a way to identify and consolidate these accounts and postings. A probable way would be to update their account information on their staff profile page
7. Organise these aggregations and present them logically to employees

In doing these, we are shifting from a paradigm of compliance to a paradigm of freedom and trust. There are many benefits we can draw from this approach:

1. We are teaching employees how to fish, so that they continue to learn from the outside to benefit the inside
2. There is a higher motivation for them to generate quality ideas, gather insights and express their opinions for something that belongs to them, and not the organisation
3. When they move on to another organisation, they may still choose to share the relevant knowledge with the organisation since there are some like-minded people there. Kind of an alumni programme
   
4. They collaborate with external practitioners to bring in additional perspectives in the context of the organisation's work
5. They stay in touch with cutting edge practices and discussions that gets exposed to the organisation

So I'll remind myself of this:

Where would I post if I have my personal blog and a blog within the firewall?