Laughing at Misconceptions

Misconceptions abound in every industry, but we have to be able to laugh at ourselves, right? I saw this cartoon on Content Management Connection. In the blogger circle, the cartoon is actually courtesy of Geek and Poke and was inspired by Dion Hinchcliffe's article "14 Reasons Why Enterprise 2.0 Projects Fail."

Do some people position enterprise 2.0 as the panacea for all enterprise ills? Well, not really. But certainly that's how some evangelism is perceived. And yes, there are enterprise 2.0 failures alongside of tremendous success stories. We have to try to understand perceptions and be realistic in our evangelism to help create realistic expectations about what enterprise 2.0 applications and software can help companies to accomplish. Because they are just tools; tools that are only as strong as the people who use them. As Dion Hinchiffe writes: "....this seems to mean Enterprise 2.0 projects are more likely to fail due to seeming larger than usual lack of alignment and organizational backing."

If companies expect to launch an application or software that will magically cure all their collaboration and knowledge management challenges, well then...Abracadabra!