Change is often hard work and success is not at all guaranteed. Fortunately help is coming our way. Social media have become much more accepted and can now be brought inside corporate boundaries to “collaborate change” – slashing throughput time and taking involvement to the next level.
Many established corporations face a change challenge. If globalization, fragmenting value chains, new technologies were not enough, the global financial and economical crisis has redrawn many business rules over the last years. All best practices regarding effectuating change will have to thrown in therefore to make this change happen. However, history has taught us that such practices are by no means a guarantee that change will be achieved effectively and with the desired results.

Fortunately there is a new kid on the block that can come to the rescue. A new change paradigm that take our ability to effectuate change to the next level. This new kid is collectively referred to as social media, or Web 2.0. As a phenomena (think of facebook, wikipedia, community sites such as dpreview, slideshare, MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft, etcetera), social media is well established outside company boundaries. Many people spend substantial time participating in various virtual communities outside working hours.

Many companies are now actively exploring how such social media can have real business value. Open Innovation enabled with technology is increasingly practiced for example. Also customer led innovation and business optimization is gaining ground (often referred to as co-creation). The next use could very well be effectuating collaborative change. Instead of the traditional sequential and cascading change efforts, employees can become a driving and shaping force in change efforts. Obviously this slashes through put time and eliminates the need for communication programs – the employees are after all totally involved in designing and bringing about change.

Read more: “Transformation 2.0: Turning the change process inside out”  EA – Transformation 2.0 – Andy Cook, Anne Deering, Gillis Jonk, Anne van Hall, A.T. Kearney Executive Agenda Volume XI, number 1 2008