I found it… what’s the right word… puzzling when I worked at DaVita how I was approached on several occasions to remove, or alter information I had put on my blog about DaVita. It was nothing that exposed trade secrets, competitive advantages, or strategic initiatives. One time, it was simply the fact that I had the word DaVita in the blog post that somehow triggered a red flag, and I was instructed to redact it.

Now that I no longer work at DaVita and for Smith Micro, the company, while it doesn’t embrace social media, certainly isn’t completely ignorant of its power and possibilities. In a recent issue of Harvard Business Review, I very much enjoyed reading an article with interviews from senior people at large companies discussing how they are handling the social media beast.

Yes, all of them mentioned how security and leaking is an issue, but the companies who made online expression part of their corporate culture – rather than blocking all possible access by every employee – found that their teams went out of their way to responsibly share information when communicating online.

DaVita was a great company at managing, nurturing and supporting the local social interactions of people all across the company, but seemed clueless when it came to the online extension of those relationships.

I wonder how many companies out there are truly making an effort to embrace the future rather than sticking their heads in the sand and pretending that the change isn’t happening. Of course, there are some organization that simply cannot risk their teams having the ability to share information online while they are work – I understand that. However, it also appears that some companies hide behind this visage of “oh we’re working on far too important stuff to risk some stupid employee telling everyone about it” when they manufacture paper clips, or build medical devices, when the truth is that they simply don’t understand how to manage it.

Fear and ignorance are powerful motivators.