Change the culture before implementing the technology
by Miki SaxonWhat country springs to mind as having some of the most rigid and closed corporate cultures in the industrialized world? Many people would say Germany, but more and more frequently, I find a German company as the poster child for open communications and four-star culture, e.g., BMW.
So I found it interesting that some of them most salient comments I’ve heard regarding how to incorporate Web 2.0 technology into a corporate culture came from a German.
Sharon Gaudin attended the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston and posted this at InformationWeek.
In response to a debate by two academics,
“Willms Buhse, executive director of CoreMedia, a software company based in Germany, stood up and said that changing the corporate culture is more important than changing the technology. The cultural shift — from the traditional hierarchy of follow-the-leader to an open exchange of ideas — needs to come before even the coolest new technologies can make a real difference.”
I really appreciate Sharon, because she followed up and talked with Buhse after the debate. Here are a couple of very salient points he made,
“For us, the organization was the important thing. It’s about the corporate culture.”
“I would rather have a negative comment on my Web site, rather than people talking about it without us knowing it.”
I suggest that you take a minute to read the entire post because Buhse talks about what/how CoreMedia did/is doing (it’s a multi-year process) it. The post is short and well worth your time.