Opposite to the many gurus who proclaim the Internet to be of force of Enlightenment, there are some influential voices claiming that the digital revolution is making us more stupid rather than less. The verdict is still out, but that should not stop one from reading the thought-provoking articles of Nicholas Carr.

We don’t know yet whether the Internet is making each of us smarter. What we do know is that the Internet is excellent at creating transparency. What we could hide from public scrutiny is now remorselessly exposed. Snippets of private life casually tossed on the web do not disintegrate in the digital ocean, but remain easily traceable. Whether we like or not, we live in a shop window with spotlights accentuating our less flattering sides.

Companies have called transparency either a necessity or a virtue. The constant scrutinizing by stakeholders, the calls for accountability on behalf of customers have forced companies to open up. Most often, a communications office would ‘manage’ openness by spinning the press and framing encounters with representatives of various constituencies. Transparency did not entail any spontaneity and therefore did not represent any substantial risk. Now the web has opened the door to a superior and far less accommodating kind of transparency.

Visionary executives embrace transparency 2.0 as a wedge to change an inward corporate culture oblivious to outside impulses. They enthusiastically launch forums, blogs and platforms to boost openness among employees and outside audiences. To their grief, they often encounter passive resistance from many corners. Apparently many people do no hail social technology as a boon for corporate prosperity. Why? The reasons often stated are a management system driven by hierarchy and information monopoly, a low-trust culture, deeply ingrained habits defying deviation and experimentation and simply the lack of time.

These are all true. We encounter these obstacles in every project and some prove to be very tenacious to overcome. But there is one obstacle that often remains unmentioned. Mediocrity. Let’s face it. Many companies have been able to thrive thanks to their sheer size and distribution and marketing power. In fact their performance standards barely made the mark, but they were able to stumble along because customers did not see any strong competitive difference or felt dissuaded to explore these. As long as companies kept reaping huge profits, there was little incentive to change.

As companies turn the spotlights on their own organization, the weak spots will surface. Company veterans have learnt how to distract attention and create fog around their under-performing projects. With thousands of eyeballs, escaping scrutiny becomes much harder. Transparency 2.0 turns mediocre performance from a nagging suspicion into a public fact. A legacy of mediocrity will spawn tactical behavior by those expecting to be held accountable. They participate sporadically in the social discourse, air their skepticism about open engagement (“we are not ready for this”) and drag their feet when asked to help implement suggestions for improvement (“we are already choked with stuff that needs to be done”). You might expect others to publicly reproach these renegades, but in a culture characterized by face-saving and conformity, this does not happen.

I am not passing judgment on the supposed laxity of the human character. Mediocrity may arise for numerous reasons, some of which are related to the social context, some of which have to do with personal drive and skills. Be it as it may, the result is the same: The objective of transparency as a lever for flexibility and cross-fertilization runs up against a collective fear of being exposed as the weak link in the chain.

Massive adoption of social tech can make us collectively smarter. There is no doubt about that. But before we can tap into our collective wisdom, we need to weed out the seeds of mediocrity. Technology in itself will not solve this. This is not a call for massive skimming of your workforce, but for a sensible, integral approach to bolster both open accountability and open trust. Meanwhile, expect to see many cases of mediocrity 2.0….