This past February, I shared a glimpse of a newly emerging democracy — one taking root in a culture that has in the past been known to have a strong autocratic leader.
Seated in an office cubicle somewhere inside a 43-story building, Mike Wing, IBM's vice president, worldwide intranet strategy and programs, has taken on the persona of a social scientist as he peers into an on-line gabfest designed to accommodate IBM's 60,000-member consulting workforce.
"What we're witnessing is the birth of community-validated ideas. Here's where the individual has the opportunity to have real-world impact and influence business," explains Wing, who expects the 72-hour forum, known as Consulting Jam, to yield more valuable data for the services giant than a year's worth of focus groups.
But clearly Wing and others view Consulting Jam as something more than a venue for data gathering — as well they should. On the eve of the forum, certain IBM executives still harbored fears that the Consulting Jam could turn into a global gripe session. But such voices were the minority within IBM, claims Wing, who views the giant chat-a-thon and its powers of democratization as one of the services vendor's powerful strategic levers — one that is vital to IBM's grand ambition of giving birth to a new consulting model, and thus opening a new chapter for the profession.
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