Most organizations don't take much.
"Not our corporate culture."
"People would quit."
"How do you enforce that!"
These excuses are lame.
Worse, they are profit suckers.
Considering information is the genesis of profits, it is hard to fathom laissez faire attitudes. Employees want to be part of a successful, cool, winning organization. They want their company to be profitable. To them it means job security, better salaries and prestige.
All they need is leadership.
"Prove it," I hear you say.
via The New York Times...
Apple is one of the world’s coolest companies. But there is one cool-company trend it has rejected: chatting with the world through blogs and dropping tidbits of information about its inner workings.
Few companies, indeed, are more secretive than Apple, or as punitive to those who dare violate the company’s rules on keeping tight control over information. Employees have been fired for leaking news tidbits to outsiders, and the company has been known to spread disinformation about product plans to its own workers.“They make everyone super, super paranoid about security,” said Mark Hamblin, who worked on the touch-screen technology for the iPhone and left Apple last year. “I have never seen anything else like it at another company.”...
Secrecy at Apple is not just the prevailing communications strategy; it is baked into the corporate culture. Employees working on top-secret projects must pass through a maze of security doors, swiping their badges again and again and finally entering a numeric code to reach their offices, according to one former employee who worked in such areas...
...the culture of secrecy had its origin in the release of the first Macintosh, which competitors like Microsoft and Sony knew about before it was unveiled. (more)
There is a lesson here.
On September 25, 1981 Apple stock traded at $1.78; today, $139.86.
This doesn't happen by letting someone pick your intellectual pockets.
Be proactive. Create a strong information secuity program.
Your employees will love it, and respect you for it.
