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Hard to work inside an organisation - the escape plan

I've previously talked about it seems to be harder to find information (and therefore work) inside an organisation than outside of it. For example, my Dad can find more relevant information quicker than I can ... and he's not being paid, or using dedicated systems designed (!) to give me the information I need to do my job.

Accenture recognised this issue and seem to be working towards brining in the experience being used by my Dad and the rest of the consumer world into their organisation, namely tagging, online collaboration and social networking.
And not just bringing in the functionality but emulating the experience - it has to be as easy, nice and as quick as it is on the whole of the Internet - don't make me think!?!?

Extract courtesy of Julian on Software via my del.iciou.s network received in my reader this morning - that's how easy it should be find information:
Accenture also has visual, context-assisted search capabilities already up and running. Rippert looked at YouTube and wondered why a teenager can find a an amateur video on the site quickly and easily, but finding a video of a corporate presentation in a business’s archives is next to impossible if you don’t know the exact title of the file. He picked up on the idea of allowing every user to tag content as the De.licio.us web site does, thus creating a co-operative way of classifying material that benefits all users.


And my escape plan for you in an organisation - get courageous and demand from your IT Department for the tools* that:
  • work the way YOU do
  • integrate information the way YOU do
  • are available when you want
The tools DO exist, don't let them put you off. They are available right now, again don't let them put you off. The tools are working on the Web and a lot of 'start up' companies (and my Dad) are using them to run their businesses effectively, efficiently and with a greatly reduced IT cost.

As an example I will reiterate how I found the supporting article.
It was generated by a person in the USA (Julian) and published for his audience (in this case the whole world but that's up to the author). He did this using a tool called a blog. The information held within the open environment was discovered by another (Niall Cook) and added to his bookmarks on del.icio.us. I have addedNiall ("subscribed") to my del.icio.us network as I share a common outlook on knowledge and how to engender it within organisations. To ensure I was notified of new bookmarks I add my del.icio.us feed ("RSS") to my Google Reader.
This morning it went 'ping' and the information from Julian in the US appeared in my head in Wellington, New Zealand. As Scott Adams would say, "How fickin' cool is that"

* Tools = Software on your computer is only a tool designed (sometimes) to help you do your job. They are, in fact, the least important of tools you use and despite me spending my working life upon them they are not that good ... yet.

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