"IT in organizations is going through the hugest change since the introduction of the Internet - we have to put the future of IT into the hands of people who use it."

I am following an interesting panel discussion at the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin. It is about the future of organizational change and how new technologies will have a deep impact on organizations (Panelists: Brady Forrest, O'Reilly Media; Laurent Gasser, Revevol; Sam Lawrence, Jive Software; Lee Bryant, Director, Headshift).

Think of how much e-mail and the rise of the Internet change. The difference in the first and the second Internet revolution is that the early revolution was first about technology and the about behaviour. Now, the sequence has changed - it is first about behaviour, people and collaboration. Technology is secondary because there are many technological solutions available.

Tim O'Reilly, the "father" of the Web 2.0 idea says that this revolution is about collective intelligence – doing things together we can’t do alone.

The challenge in many large organizations will be to work with the resistance that exists against the introduction of new tools that allow for more collaboration such as wikis, blogs, syndication, short messaging, etc. There is, for example, the IT department, which usually is responsible for implementation of new software. IT departments are not necessarily the most flexible parts of an organization (that's ironic, isn't it). They have their established procedures and slow innovation cycle. Another issue is that IT departments are usually very conversative about opening firewalls for outside-in communication which is required for many external social networking applications.

Today's networks are not congruent with a company - they are crossing organizational borders. Next issue: If you want people contributing to the network's joint knowledge, you have to give them a direct benefit. A tool for this is to enrich their profile in the network.

The future leaders will be today's networkers. Then,there is the issue of leadership. We are talking about enabling self-organization powered by new technologies. This is huge threat to traditional institutional hierarchies.

What's the trade-off? I strongly believe that productivity will sharply rise in companies that succeed in utilizing the joint body of knowledge. People in organizations can find ideas to approaching complex problems. But - as one participant in the organization pointed out: Knowledge is Power. It is interesting again for me that worlds are converging: the world of Web 2.0 and the world of Change Facilitation have now the same philosophy about change in organization. Lot of things to do for us...