Yesterday was just another busy day. But it wasn’t. For some reason, the Nobel Peace Foundation decided that Brand Obama was the person most responsible for peace in 2009. Whether you like the direction the Obama administration is heading or not, awarding prizes for peace that may or may not happen is plain silly.
Former President of Poland and Nobel Prize winner Lech Walesa actually said what everyone else was thinking: “Who? What? So Fast?” He went on to say, “well, there hasn’t been any contribution to peace yet. He’s proposing things, he’s initiating things, but he is yet to deliver.”
Worse, the Obama administration now feels like they need to live up to the Peace Prize’s expectation. All decisions will consciously or unconsciously be filtered by the pre-award so that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Whether it’s good for America or not, Obama will feel obligated to apply a peace filter to his foreign policy decision making.
So what lessons can the Enterprise 2.0 crowd learn from this situation? For one, let’s show some real wins in the Enterprise before we declare it the new era in business. Second, let’s turn the business promises into proven ROI and efficiency gains. Let’s continue to capture them in case studies and promote the benefits.
No, we’re not going to declare Enterprise 2.0 the recession savior. Yet.
Thanks, but let’s deliver results first.
(Cross-posted @ Seek Omega)
