A good, brief article in Advertising Age that argues that “collaboration can increase productivity and resistance is futile.” The five points are:
- Resistance is futile
- Don’t assume people won’t find other ways to waste time
- Social networks can actually make workers more productive
- You’ll miss great ideas
- Employees are much more trustworthy than companies think
Point five is absolutely critical — employees can be trusted. And trusting employees leads to higher performance. She adds: “If you can’t trust your employees, you have one of two problems: You are hiring the wrong people or you are not properly training the people you hire.”
Also, I think that point five overcomes point two — if you hire good people, they won’t waste time. Or, perhaps better, they will only waste time when doing so will lead to greater productivity overall.