Presenting a challenge to hierarchies of past business structures, wirearchy sets a new precedence for how businesses should run. With the hunger for information and the ready accessibility of it online, there is no longer a necessity to wait for responses to request for information. Anyone can use Goggle, Bing or any other resource to discover what may have taken, by committee, several hours to determine, discover or define. And this is just on the business side. When the customer can do the same, it makes the old hierarchy of information disbursement seem archaic. And embarassing. There is nothing like your customer being more informed about your business than you, especially when the source of their information is outside of your business structure.
I believe that one component that plays a part in this change is the freedom with which information is readily shared. In the past, the hierarchy (of any organization) had a way of retaining information so that only certain individuals had access. Those who had access dared not to share the information with anyone else. And felt privileged for knowing. Now, there is no sense which requires the perceived guarding of information. Information is designed to assist others in the acquiring of knowledge for necessary processes. The sharing of information now is designed to have all affected parties involved in the conversation regarding it. This means the end-user has as much power and influence as the creator. Hopefully, this will also mean a greater respect for those who are the end-users as they are often the ones who discover the nuances and idiosycrecies of the product or ideas.
Mae,
ReplyDeleteExcellent post. I agree that the way knowledge is shared has really impacted the way organizations function. Before, like you said, only a handful of people were given information and told to guard it with their lives. Now, organizations are seeing the value of sharing information with all.