SPAM your Boss

Go ahead. Be rude! Nothing is stopping you.

You can send an email to your boss with a long list of things that drive you nuts about work right now. You can complain about the long hours, that guy in IT's haircut, or the shoes Mary wore last week. Just type it out and press send.

And yet you don't. Why?

The reason is accountability. You're email isn't anonymous. I'm simply suggesting that it's not technology that usually limits our poor behaviour in the work place, it's social responsibility.

This concept is critical in understanding why social collaboration within the work place is emerging as the better way to conduct group communications and project work online. When every user within your Enterprise 2.0 work environment (perhaps you call it your intranet) can only gain access via their unique identity then all their actions are not anonymous. It's important to make these ques very visible as well. Make sure that when a user signs in that their landing page is their personal profile. It should look like a personal homepage which they can customize with the RSS feeds and information that is important to them. Allow your users to create an intimate work environment that reinforces the fact that they are indeed acting as a person within the system. This will foster positive working relationships founded on trust and responsible behaviour. Your online work environment will become an online social center for your workplace where people communicate and work together.

It will be a place where work gets done.

Of course there are times when technology is needed to restrict access to private and confidential information, but for most work environments the pursuit of group goals is best achieved through technology that empowers the work force instead of restricting it.