What does this (enterprise 2.0) mean for middle managers?
If you’re a middle manager who essentially views your job as one of gate keeping or refereeing information flows, you should be pretty frightened by these technologies, because they’re going to greatly reduce your ability to do that. They’re going to reduce your ability to filter what goes up in the organization and what comes down in the organization. And they’re going to greatly reduce your ability to curtail who your people can interact with, talk with, and receive information from. So if you’re inherently a gatekeeper, this is a real problem for you.
If you’re someone who sees your job as managing people and fundamentally getting the human elements right that will lead your part of the organization to succeed, these technologies are not at all harmful to you. One of the things that we’ve learned is that there’s no technology—even these great new social technologies—that’s a substitute for face time, a substitute for understanding the human situation in your organization and trying to mold that situation to the best advantage. So if you’re fundamentally a human-centric manager, these tools are not going to put you out of a job, are not going to reduce your influence at all.
If you have another view of yourself, which is that you’re someone who’s responsible for output, you’re someone who’s responsible for making good things happen in your team, then these tools should be your best friend. Because all the evidence we have suggests that Enterprise 2.0 helps you turn out more and better products and actually is not a vehicle for time wasting or for chipping away at what you’re supposed to be doing throughout the day.
- Andrew McAfee
Mckinsey Quarterly How Web 2.0 is changing the way we work: An interview with MIT’s Andrew McAfee
