by Bill Ives
May 17, 2007 at 12:14 pm
· Filed under Enterprise 2.0
There are many sides to transparency. Here is a tool, ETelemetry Metron EBA, that is addressed to those who want to monitor “anomalous employee behavior that may represent a threat to the company.” It can provide “business and IT executives with a map of who talks to whom in the organization and via what communications method — for instance, e-mail, instant message or Internet.”
You knew this was coming. I wonder what will be the effect on employee communication behavior on organizations that adopt this tool. Will they switch to other, less transparent, communication forms knowing that what they say is being monitored? Will there only be official “corporate speak” in the transparent forms that are being in monitored?
Of course this analysis could be used for good reasons as we frequently mentioned on this blog. But the pitch here seems less friendly. Thanks to Valdis Krebs for pointing it out.
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Bill, you don’t need a tool like that to kill open discussion in many organisations. There are plenty of forces already at work, like wondering what the boss will think about what I write.
Simon
Simon - You are certainly correct. But I also know of some situations where participants in collaborative work activites actually got more invested in conversations when they knew that their boss was listening in via the openness of enterprise 2.0 tools. It can work both ways depending on the culture.
There have been concerns about this issue since SNA began to gain purchase four or five years ago. I remember a site (no longer exists) by the name of leadership.com (Trilogy Software) offering an integrated software suite of modules that mapped social networks, took “readings” of employees’ “moods” or the organizational climate, identified communications bottlenecks and so on .. alll rolled up into dashboards for use at the senior management / executive level.
The potential for abusing the greater transparency social network mapping and analysis enable has always been there … one can imagine that (people being people) the additional information offered by the exposed activities and relatonships can as easily be put to manipulative or vituperative purposes by a (say) aggressive or vindictive or neurotic higher-up as it could be used to enhance productivity, efficiency, responsiveness or culture change by a senior manager or executive dedicated to continuous improvement, learning and a vibrant organizational culture.
This stuff sharpens the game for everyone .. including the higher-ups. It makes effective or excellent leadership (at all levels) even more of a challenge than it has historically been … IMO.
Thanks for this, Bill. I agree it looks dark (on the face of it) and deserves criticism. To complement above discussion, I would add that measuring produces anxiety even if the boss doesn’t pay attention. It’s a tradeoff we are always making, usually on the side of measuring more.
Interestingly, someone from that company contacted me last January to get my opinion on the Metron tool (based on hearing of my work and presentations on social capital - networks, norms, and trust). In my comments I directly addressed the issues of becoming “Big Brother” and “Who polices the policemen?” My concerns revolved around the fact that even though MetronONA as a tool makes no assumptions about what is “appropriate” network usage, by placing an actual number onto a previously intangible concept, the questions must be asked by each customer, “What is appropriate usage in our company? Do we set a line and punish if it is crossed?”. I pointed out my belief that creating a tool doesn’t fully absolve you of the obligation to address those dilemmas (even if they aren’t ultimately responsible for the tool’s usage).In other words, if you teach a man to fish, you are obligated to guide them on the impact that overfishing may cause.
Their answer to these concerns were as follows:
‘You raise compelling points – and we’ve been called “big brother” already in the press. As you stated above, we are a tool and leave the policy making associated with its information up to the corporation’s executive. Many companies already have statements upon log-in and in employee policy manuals about use of company IT resources. Trust can also be bolstered by making personnel decisions less subjective and rewarding positive behaviors based on objective vs anecdotal information. We try to look at the positive side.’
Does this answer address the issue? Is looking “at the positive side” enough? Maybe if your underlying concern is profit, but not if you’re concerned about the real facets of social networks and the trust they require to function.
Brian - Thanks for this record of your interaction with the firm. They do seem to be selling to a policing mentality as their own words say, Metron allows managers to “Track time spent surfing and chatting by person or department…. (and) Capture all of an individual’s Internet traffic.” “The Employee Activity and Gateway Anomaly Detection Dashboards featured in Metron EBA provide employee contact information with time-series charts and graphs that show a broad spectrum of employee network activity, including points of contact internally and externally, surf habits, and the establishment of secure sessions. IT managers and business executives can leverage this capability to identify communication patterns between individuals and departments, better utilize peripheral personnel, and identify network anomalies that may be indicative of malicious employee behavior.” The same analysis could be positioned differently.
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