As many have written on this blog, user generated content and transparency are two of the key features of Web 2.0. User generated content has come a long ways in the last few years, especially outside the work place in the new web. In the original web most content came from organizations to serve passive readers and how the vast majority of content comes from active individuals. There are many new tools and approaches to entice this engagement and participation but inside the work place I think it remains a greater challenge to get people engaged than on the broader web. Here is a brief true story about the people side of user generated content that had a positive ending.

Many years ago in the dark ages of the early 90s there was a property casualty insurance company in deep trouble, especially in their commercial lines. On average they paid out far more than they took in so simply getting more customers was not the solution. One of the troubles was the inability to effectively underwrite the many niche markets in small and midsize businesses (e.g, movie theaters, laundry mats, etc.). They tend to just price, attracting the bad risks and losing the good ones to people who were smarter at assessing risk.

The IT system that “supported” the underwriters was developed by IT so the home office people could keep track of what was happening in the field. The underwriters saw no value in using it and avoided it whenever possible. They tended to not be careful or complete when they did use the system. Home office often operated on bad data. However, there was one IT system that everyone did use. That was the rumor mill, aka the email system. The people felt they had some control here and rumors spread around the enterprise in nanoseconds. Everyone stayed engaged and current with the rumor mill and frequently contributed content.

The firm decided that big changes were needed or this business might close. One of the changes was to instill a sense of underwriting discipline and a careful underwriting process. They engaged some of their best underwriters to conceive the process and developed an IT system to align with the new process. They asked many people in the field for feedback on the process and made adjustments.

They also asked the field about what type of IT system would help those in the field and what features would be useful. This approach was new, as the people had never been asked this question. It generated a lot of excitement and hope. News of the new approach spread quickly through the rumor mill and the new IT system got a lot of good press.

Underwriters wanted access to best practices in areas they were not familiar with and access to experts in those areas. They wanted this information aligned with the steps in the new underwriting process. They wanted to get the information they needed to make intelligent underwriting decisions. They did not want an automated system telling then what to do. The IT developers and senior management listened and these positive developments continued to spread through the rumor mill.

Underwriters used the system and they contributed their experiences into the “shared learnings” database for others to benefit from their experiences.

Many things happen to turn the company around but one was the ability of the firm to more effectively underwrite. Progress was also made on the claims side through a similar transformation of the IT system from a top down imposition to a bottom up support and shared learning system. User generated content went from few contributions and poor quality to pervasive input and good quality. People took the first step. They now actually used the system.

However, the system still required a lot of additional work to make the experiences and reflections on transactions available to others. This practice, aka knowledge management, has met with varying degrees of success in other firms. The successes generally were aligned with specific business processes, like this example. They involved the user in developing the system and took time to persuade them of its value, like this system. And their success was measured by how it impacted specific functional business measures, like this system. This was one of those knowledge management successes for these reasons. The failures in knowledge management tend to be simply databases of content where the emphasis is on management and software, not people and process.

The transparency possible in Enterprise 2.0 applications could make the aggregated experiences of others available as a byproduct of simply working with these new and more open tools. This has happen already in places like the MIT Sloan School where the IT department uses blogs as project dashboards so everyone can see what everyone else is doing, they can subscribe to updates to selected projects through RSS, and an easily accessible record builds up over time. Other firms like Novell use wikis in a similar way. Access to useful knowledge becomes a byproduct of using the Web 2.0 tools.

But how we have a new people issue. We have to go beyond simply getting a commitment to using the system to now allowing for greater transparency into everyone’s work. There will be aspects of work that people will find useful to be transparent and there will be other aspects that will cause concern if these bits are too transparent. The best way to resolve this issue is not to have the smart managers in central office impose those decisions on the field and not let software rule decisions. That plan will put the system right back where we started this story. People will avoid the system and only partially use it, at best. Bad data could be the norm again. Instead, we should ask the users the transparency that will help, work to overcome any concerns, and have them spread their support through the rumor mill.

I shared this story today at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in a session titled, 90% people and 10% technology organized by Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps of NetAge, Inc. Jessica said that they got the idea form the title since most people who are implementing technology all say that it is really 90% people and 10% technology. However, the investment patterns generally still run exactly the opposite by these same people.

As an aside, outside the firewall one of the ways that Web 2.0 sites have promoted increased participation and exposure has been to more formally incorporate the rumor mill through such features as “email this item to a friend.” Enterprise 2.0 applications should look at YouTube and other such sites and study these features.