This week in links - week 34, 2009

"Gary Hamel on Enterprise 2.0 and the Post-Establishment Age" by Hutch Carpenter:

The point Gary Hamel drives home is that our business and economic environment has irrevocably shifted toward higher volatility and accelerated change. The sundering of companies from healthy industry positions to crisis mode in relatively short order demonstrates the need for updating management philosophies.

What can modern companies do to manage in this new environment?

Gary Hamel prescribes two strategies for companies in the post-establishment age:

• Increased organizational adaptability
• Pushing innovation and decision-making out to employees

Adaptability is a critical strategy. It means that companies pivot as they learn new information about their markets, competitors and changes in customer behaviors.

The cornerstones of Enterprise 2.0 include greater information visibility, tapping the emergent knowledge of employees and increased collaboration. Those are the foundational elements. Use them to create a company of higher adaptability and distributed innovation and decision-making.

"IT Security: Context is King" by Oliver Marks:

One of the big blockers for enterprise collaboration uptake is ediscovery and compliance - and depending on the business entity the familiarity, processes and confidence in dealing with legal issues.

A fundamental point in the Information Week report is that security starts with policy, people and processes. Get this right and the long tail of disasters will shrink significantly, and also help broader solutions to be applied in context and not as a band aid. Applying team thinking around strategy and tactics will ultimately result in overall victory through a cohesive collaborative network approach which embraces all of the above in a balanced in-context, holistic way.

"Proofpoint: Email Still #1 Source of Corporate Data Leaks" by Stewart Mader:

Marisa Taylor writes in the Wall Street Journal that email is still the number one source for leaks of sensitive information, according to a new survey:

"In a survey of some 220 companies, Proofpoint found that email is still the No. 1 offender when it comes to data leaks. About 43% of respondents had investigated an email-based security breach during the past year. Nearly one-third of the companies surveyed had fired an employee for violating email confidentiality policies, a 26 percent increase from 2008."

This just furthers the argument for sensitive information to be housed in a wiki where the appropriate people can be given access permissions, and greater effort is required to either intentionally or accidentally leak information.