As if social media didn’t have a hard enough time getting off the ground in corporations, the repercussions of the WikiLeaks drama will certainly put a damper on organizations thinking in terms of internal correspondences. First people might confuse all wikis with something like WikiLeaks which is not the case. Wiki is just the name of a web site that is fast and easy to update. Second, and more importantly, social media might get painted in an unflattering light based on the actions of one web site.
However, I think social media is actually the answer to helping to prevent and organization becoming a target for WikiLeaks.
Unfortunately, anytime there is a large organization, anomalies or “bad actors” are bound to pop up. You can argue all you want about whether or not it is human nature or rogue individuals with a vendetta but, either way, people do things in their own self interest at the expense of others and the health of their organization. The goal of the leaders of the organization is not to attempt to squash that out—impossible—but, instead, for an organization to quickly recognize inappropriate behavior and address them and correct them before they become informal policy or a standard method of operation. To have a record of identifying and addressing individual inappropriate behavior before it becomes a pattern at an institutional level is a good thing.
This is the whole idea of sexual harassment lawsuits when they talk about a “culture of harassment.” Organizations can foster inappropriate actions hidden within one division or at various levels but the dots never being connected until a lawsuit arrives on the front door. Often inappropriate behaviors and actions occur without everyone being fully aware until, of course, the internal emails are subpoenaed or someone like WikiLeaks comes along and exposes what a select few knew all along.
One unlikely solution is social media. Social media makes all things transparent. If someone is doing something inappropriate in an organization and posts that idea or concept on a site that can be viewed by others or in a tweet, it can immediately be flagged as inappropriate and the offender can be reprimanded appropriately. Conversations within social media can be seen and reacted to by others. The very nature of bringing inappropriate discussions to the surface will identify the few bad actors and address the issue visibly in the organization’s sphere of social media.
So one solution to possible leaks outside of the organization is to stop inappropriate behavior, actions and messages as quickly as possible with social media by bringing inappropriate comments to the surface . It might seem counter intuitive but social media will actually cut down on inappropriate conversations and force more employees to walk the straight and narrow. It will also make it less sensational if something is leaked.
