Written by David Tebbutt in April 2005

I read somewhere that only about ten percent of the useful information in an organisation is stored within its content management systems. The claim is probably anecdotal but, even if the figure were double that, why are companies so triumphal about managing it? Perhaps, more to the point, how come software sellers get away with flogging expensive systems with such a puny impact on the business?

Part of the answer lies with what the LSE's professor of information systems, Ian Angell, calls methodolics. These are managers who dare not think for themselves. They are slaves to the outpourings of whatever business intelligence and decision support systems they can lay their hands on.

The other part of the answer lies in their mistrust of people lower down the corporate hierarchy. Staff need to be controlled, their thoughts need to be captured and made searchable and explicit. Over the decades, through Artificial Intelligence, Expert Systems, Groupware, Knowledge Management, Content Management and Portals, people have become mere extensions of the computer system. They've become little more than slaves tethered by digital chains and driven by workflow software and an unappreciative management.

They've had their moments, of course. Remember when the PC arrived on the scene? Suddenly people could do their own thing, free of the company shackles. They learned to type, to use spreadsheets, word processors and even desktop publishing. Heady stuff, for a while. But how many employees are allowed to use freestanding personal computers now? Of course not. Synchronisation with the office system is part of the daily ritual, the shackles were reattached.

The next great attempt at freedom, of sorts anyway, was the internet. Or, more accurately, the World Wide Web (thank you very much Tim Berners-Lee). Suddenly anyone could create a website, be themselves, be a free spirit. Along with that came email. Suddenly anyone could write to anyone, providing they could locate an email address. The hierarchies were crumbling. Not for long though. Companies slapped web front-ends on their own systems and reattached staff through the intranet and its carefully personalised portals.

Now we have blogs and social software. Is this it? Are we going to be unshackled at last? I wonder. Just as we had our glimpses of freedom in the past, so we shall have them for a while, until the company figures out how to either stamp on our liberty or find a way to turn it to its own advantage. Companies, after all, are companies. They're there to make a profit and satisfy their shareholders.

But maybe, just maybe, things are different this time around. The Cluetrain Manifesto, written about six years ago, spotted something new. It noticed that conversations could spring up all over the place, between people who would not normally have anything to do with each other. Developers were talking to customers, employees sidestepping their immediate line of command and talking to the president, customers finding other users of the most obscure products and comparing notes. We find ourselves in a much less ordered and less controllable world. Customers have a collective voice. Staff have a voice. The company can't ring-fence or direct the dialogue any more.

Some organisations are in panic mode. They cannot envisage placing enough trust in their staff to allow this to happen. But it's happening. Some companies are keeping the dialogue strictly internal, some are reaching out to business partners, others are reaching out to customers. The process is not only bringing humanity back into business processes, it is also capturing, in perpetuity, the information, knowledge and insights which can lead to a genuine business edge.