McKinsey’s corporate best practices for Web 2.0, with insight for the social sector
Written by Noah Flower on Thursday, February 19th, 2009
Filed under Network tradecraft, News
Corporate experimentation with Web 2.0 tools is still in its early stages, and many of the lessons that companies are learning can be directly applied to social-sector organizations that operate at a similar scale. A major question has been whether these tools are simply the latest technological fad or whether they can offer significant benefits to an organization’s efficiency and effectiveness. The latest McKinsey article on the topic, “Six ways to make Web 2.0 work,” contends that they absolutely can, arguing that they may even deliver benefits that exceed the 1990s’ corporate adoption of information systems for running their core operations (the now-familiar enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, and supply chain management). They found that the most widely used participatory technologies are blogs, wikis, podcasts, information tagging, prediction markets, and social networks. But the devil is always in the details, and in this case the details of how managers puts these tools to use. They highlight the following six principles, which echo many of the recommendations that we’ve been seeing here focused on social sector applications:
- The transformation to a bottom-up culture needs help from the top.
- The best uses come from users—but they require help to scale.
- What’s in the workflow is what gets used.
- Appeal to the participants’ egos and needs—not just their wallets.
- The right solution comes from the right participants.
- Balance the top-down and self-management of risk.
(I highly recommend reading the article in full, especially for its thoughtfully-constructed infographics. For more detail about how companies are using specific tools, check out “Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise,” the June 2008 report on the results of McKinsey’s second-annual survey.)
How have you seen social software being used in large organizations? Have you come across any examples of best (or not-as-great) management practices?
2 Comments to McKinsey’s corporate best practices for Web 2.0, with insight for the social sector
Thanks for pointing us to this article
Those are excellent points and I think they apply also technology adoption for all other types of adoption. Especially the point about the workflow.
This really resonates with some ideas that I’ve been exploring about the best implementation approach that encourages adoption. It’s called “Listen, Learn, and Adapt” —
February 24, 2009
What comes to mind for me is my experience with US healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente and it’s groundbreaking partnership with 8 international unions and 30-something locals. The nature of the partnership (a very inter-related web of organizations and interests) required new tools and ways of working. In my capacity as Ops Mgr for the partnership we tried using the web-based One Page Business Plan for our joint planning, monitoring and evaluation for 8 Regions of 120,000 employees at 400 sites with various management and union org/network structures. You almost had to be there to believe it, but the One Page Plan, especially the web-based version, got us all on the same page, forced simplicity, and had built in ways to measure and give input from various input points. I won’t lie and say it was perfect or that there wasn’t resistance or faulty approaches to roll-out and readiness – but I will say it was one of the best virtual planning processes I’ve participated in (I can’t even tell you whether I was leading or following at times).
What also comes to mind is how Kaiser works with it’s 8 million members to provide on-line healthcare. The stats are remarkable. It speaks to how folks use these social media or internet tools when there is a clear interest, value and return – whether it be social, economic and/or about one’s own healthcare. Kaiser members don’t only connect to their doctors on-line with questions, they can connect with other Kaiser members or the broader world with health questions.
February 20, 2009