The basic Web 2.0 applications (social networking, blogs, wikis, tagging, “twittering,” RSS) and underlying technologies (collaborative filtering, social network and link analysis, data mining, mashups and plug-ins) continue to add to and support the collaborative capability in organizations. But, as we know, inside organizations the critical factor is not how the technologies and applications will be deployed and (most importantly) integrated, but how will managers guide the adoption to achieve maximum effectiveness (or, as some say, the ROI).

Enabling adoption is a complex mix of providing motivation and incentives, using a focused pilot process to generate success stories and pull from early adopters, integrating (there’s that word again) the tools and technologies into critical business processes. Since the early days of knowledge management, we (myself, my colleagues, and the legions of practitioners) have lobbied HR organizations to add “knowledge sharing” components to annual performance reviews. (I once, in a past life, participated in revamping criteria for promotion of senior technical people to an elite, consulting, status, by adding in requirements that candidates had demonstrated knowledge sharing by virtue of — among other things — being available and accessible.)

Consider that such a move is one way of putting a boundary around behaviors and that as it beings to shift the culture can move to other domains. The U.S. intelligence community began the culture shift from “need to know” to “need to share” by implementing just such a performance review component. According to a recent story in Government Executive, the current program manager for the Information Sharing Environment (a job established by the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Protection Act), Thomas McNamara, is now calling for all federal and state and local agencies to adopt similar criteria.

Sharing in government agencies, particularly the intelligence community and military, is hampered by the levels of classified systems and information. Similarly, state and municipal law enforcement and other local agencies have their own distinguishing needs to protect sensitive information. Enabling the right level of sharing across currently rigid boundaries will take time, but the pressure is on.

What I have not seen addressed, and what may become perplexing to organizations adopting Enterprise 2.0 practices is, “what constitutes sharing?” Will the performance review reflect data captured from the volumes of information accumulated about both explicit and implicit content contributions? I suspect not, as such measures only encourage gaming the system (as we have seen in some knowledge management implementations) to get higher participation scores without producing contributions that are actually useful. But the performance review process — which ought ultimately to be a conversation about learning and development — can provide an individual with data leading to insight into how social tools can improve their performance and access to more interesting work and promotions.