Heads up! Read Albrycht on Web 2.0

Elizabeth Albrycht has posted a recent speech she gave about Web 2.0. Great insights, and I can only imagine the discussion afterwards.

With all due respect to Elizabeth, she started down an interesting path, only to draw back just as the "gettin' was good":

"... In order for our messages to be received with some degree of credibility and trust, in today's questioning, distrustful atmosphere, we need to move away from the message delivered as a fait accompli, but embrace communications as something to be tested, then provide the instructions and/or information needed to make those tests.  You could even call this process a conversation.

So, what would transparent corporate communications look like?  The questions we as professional communicators have to ask ourselves is what information do we need to provide so that others can reconstruct our decisions.  Everything from minutes to meetings to interviews with the participants could be made available.  They might not agree with the decision we took, but they will at least understand the reasoning, which might buy some goodwill, for one.

We also need to decide  when to provide it and how to provide it. Is it only made available when a problem arises?   Is it easily searchable on the website and available via a link? Or does the person inquiring have to jump through a variety of hoops?   

At its most basic level, our job as professional communicators is to provide information so that people can make decisions.  With the exponentially increasing number of sources of information, knowing what and whom to believe and what and whom to distrust is becoming a critical need among all audiences.

Learning how to make decisions in this environment is perhaps our number one need right now as consumers and citizens.  Recognizing this difficulty, organizations should seek to help people make decisions by giving them the information they need to do so.  It requires rethinking the old command-control relationship we have had with our consumers.

What I am proposing is a different way of practicing communications, which can transform it into a tool for consumer or citizen decision making. This type of decision making is not based not on one source or reputation, but is rather a product of many sources, a triangulation, if you will, of positions. Perhaps most importantly, it not not likely to be a final truth, but a flexible position.  It also means that organizations need to enter into long-term conversations with a broad network of people connected to their organization, both tightly and loosely, in order to be successful in the coming cyberage."

If I read Elizabeth correctly (and I may not be), she's arguing that corporations should not only make their decisions public, but the thinking behind the decisions. I'm all for it. But I'm thinking into which C-level suites I can bring that idea  and not get thrown out.

I wish she had pushed the idea further (and perhaps it was in the discussion to follow).

Still, it's a powerful article, and I highly recommend it.

Posted by Allan Jenkins on May 16, 2006 at 08:04 PM in Social Tools, Writing I Enjoy | Permalink

Comments

Maybe the way is to look at what motivates the Execs. So offer some PR on how they have embraced this new technology,press articles, trade talks and how they are at the forefront of engaging people - many love the attention. Or incentivise them on employee survey results, idea generation, turnover of key people etc....with many people who are not natural sharers of info, money talks.

Posted by: Anna | May 17, 2006 10:44:11 AM

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