Making Effective Enterprise Blogging Evolve

Evolution is one of the most powerful phenomena known to man. Through evolution (adapting to their environment), single-celled organisms have turned into birds (flyers), fish (swimmers), and human beings (thinkers!).

The cheapest, quickest, and easiest way for a company to promote blogging and other knowledge-sharing practices is to transform itself into an environment that induces an evolutionary process of knowledge sharing.

Now let’s see what an environment that induces evolution is.

Evolution rewards small changes

The single-celled organism didn’t just wake up one morning as a bird. It began by dividing into two cells.

Multicellular organisms proved to be better adapted to certain environments than single-celled ones. Multicellular organisms, therefore, got a better chance to evolve.

Similarly, an employee won’t become a master blogger overnight.

To create effective employee bloggers (information sharers), a company should notice every small step an employee makes toward knowledge sharing. The company should reward the employee while taking into account all those steps. If an employee starts blogging, notice it. If he blogs a lot, notice it. If he blogs on subjects that are important to the company, notice it. If a lot of other employees read his blog, notice it. If he helps spread ideas created by other employees, notice it.

But noticing isn’t enough. The company must let the employee know that his actions have been noticed. It must reward him. Without feedback and reward, there is no evolution.

Evolution handsomely rewards ‘good changes’

Not all changes are of equal value. The prehistoric bird that developed wings that were strong enough to propel it through the air was much better rewarded than the bird that grew a fourth toe on its feet. The benefits that birds got from flying were powerful enough to make flying birds dominate the class. Eventually we were left mostly with flying birds.

Similarly, when an enterprise blogger comes up with great ideas, finds a way to make or save the company money, or acts as a channel to spread knowledge throughout the company, he should be handsomely rewarded.

Handsomely rewarding effective bloggers will greatly speed up the evolution of effective blogging and knowledge sharing in the enterprise.

The problem with the evolutionary approach

The biggest problem with using an evolutionary approach to induce effective enterprise blogging is defining the reward structure. If the company counts and rewards the wrong things, strange and unexpected blogging behavior will occur. For instance, if the company puts too much weight on the number of posts a blogger writes, bloggers will blog a lot about unimportant (and potentially distracting) matters.

Rewarding the right actions, setting the correct reward for each action, and determining when and how to reward corporate bloggers are crucial to creating the right environment in which knowledge sharing will emerge.

If creating the reward structure is so tough, then why do it?

Why you should use the evolutionary approach

When the reward structure is exactly right, effective enterprise blogging and information sharing will emerge quickly, and with amazing results.

This is the third article in the Enterprise 2.0 series.

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Posted on February 27, 2007 by Yoav Ezer 
Filed Under Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Methodology, Office 2.0, Web 2.0

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