Learning to share means empowering employees

Every company knows that the way to maintaining growth is by hiring smart people and trusting them to make decisions that define the business operations. As those people go about their jobs they will begin to create, modify and refine the tasks that fall under their ownership. Many times this process is a good thing as efficiencies are created  in the goal of streamlining.

But where the challenge comes in is uncovering the knowledge capital that is so vital. As is human nature employees at most organizations do not naturally think about documenting the details of their role or sharing what they know. Some see that information as a competitive edge while others will say they simply do not have the time in the day for stopping to write down details.

Despite the reasoning people will use for keeping information to themselves the real issue is organizations lack of empowering their workers to share. Managers need to take it upon themselves to make knowledge share as painless as possible and that is where technology comes in. Group project collaboration tools, company based social networks and corporate intranets that allow for thought sharing are great examples of capturing the collective know how for future data mining. While some of these solutions may be expensive there are others that can be started with small investment and little effort.

Here are some of my favorites:

• Yammer - Private social network
• MicroSoft SharePoint - enterprise web portal software
• Atlassian Confluence -a wiki platform that is part of the larger Atlassian toolkit

Obama on Facebook and Tweeting for Beer

These two diverse uses for social media caught my eye today - ironically posted next to each other in the same news feed.

President Obama will be hosting a town hall meeting on Facebook at their headquarters in Palo Alto on April 20th. It'll be interesting to see the role social media play for both the Democrats and the Republicans as we reel towards the next election.

While Obama chats politics on Facebook, one innovative vendor for the Seattle Mariners will be checking his tweets to see who needs beer. No need to yell for this beer man anymore. Just tweet him your seat location and he'll come find you.

Read more about them on Newser:
Obama on Facebook
Tweeting For Beer

Netflix goes in an interesting direction

Netflix subscribers will soon be able to watch CBS programs through their Netflix accounts. Seems like a great direction for Netflix to take and a natural extension of their "Watch Instantly" library. However, it'll be interesting to see how they compete with websites like Hulu.com.

They'll also soon be competing with the likes of CBS themselves, since they're planning to launch their first original series next year. (It's an American adaptation of House of Cards, starring Kevin Spacey and directed by David Fincher.)

All in all, it seems good for consumers. More content and more places to watch it.

Read the Netflix press release.