Implications of Opening the Communication Floodgates

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In the New York Times’ weekly Corner Office column, the January 16th interviewee was Cristobal Conde of Fortune 500 company, SunGard. He spoke to the collaborative management methodologies that had been instilled at his company and how they altered their day-to-day workflow. Among other tactics, Conde mentions cutting back on micromanaging and using Yammer, a Twitter-like service for enterprise, meant for internal communication. Conde points out that while this is superior to top-down management techniques, it’s really about time – these days everybody has identical access to information, therefore everyone should, essentially, have a say.

In response to these ideas, Enterprise 2.0 pioneer and MIT Principal Research Analyst, Andrew McAfee, took to his blog to highlight some parts that really stuck with him. Andy’s synthesized version of the article really spoke to us and the ideas that we find valuable at Crowdcast. Andy highlighted a couple of values that we think are essential to smart business: breaking down hierarchies to unclog communication and fostering collaboration through peer effects, which allow people to get recognized by their peers for what they do rather than by their organizational rank.

Companies are beginning to understand the importance of communication within the ranks of their organization, not only to improve workflow, but also to improve access to employee intelligence. From there, managers can start to really monitor the pulse of their company. Ultimately, harvesting wisdom and gleaning well rounded insight is a competitive advantage – a very timely and relevant conversation to have as companies look ahead into 2010.