More dramatic possibilities for business productivity
Continuing the previous list of possibilities, here are steps, in increasing order of complexity, which only a senior executive team can lead. That team must be fully aware of the design, the value, the risks, and risk mitigation. Leadership by HR, L&D, or IT will almost guarantee a self-inflicted career change. Senior business leaders MUST take responsibility. Social media is a disruptive technology, not yet fully understood (as the Web was not fully understood for commerce at first), that will affect how we accomplish business in the future.
- Business change. Change management suffers from being a second cousin to project management. Projects continue to fail at an extraordinary rate, despite years of project manager training, certification, methodologies, and etc. Most research tends to point to people issues in, and around, a project. These issues involve trust, experience, confidence, and an inability to deliver bad news. A possible social network application is to insert such a tool directly into the project execution process. Rather than treating change management under the principles of project management, allow a peer, cross-functional, cross-hierarchical discussion to begin. I admit that this amounts to a clear loss of control of both internal and external project communication, and that this is absolutely against the grain of all project management. However, consider that “the grain” of project management has been delivering failed projects 65-85% of the time, depending on whose research you read. The goal is to increase problem discussion, identify the roadblock issues, initiate a solution discussion, and begin to gain trust and confidence in the changes that management desires and the project needs. Get emerging project issues on the table and under discussion early, so that later you don’t have to, as so many projects do, “declare success and move on.” Of course, within an open discussion network, you can identify people who are aggressively opposing the project or strategic change. How you handle this issue will determine whether open discussion of different points of view builds organizational trust, or derails projects with dissension.
- Hive-mind / Collective Intelligence. A hyper-hybrid of peer learning and knowledge access where thousands of social media participants can work to solve complex problems. I encourage you to Google “I love bees,” and its experiment with collective intelligence to solve complex problems involving thousands of people. Sure, it was a marketing gimmick, designed as an alternate reality game, but once there is a network of employees wired together in an open culture, we could explore new ways to solve the problems of strategy and tactics by tapping the collective intelligence of the whole organization.
- Employee – Partner – Customer networks. Less radical than collective intelligence, but more dangerous because the social media network loosely flows through corporate boundaries to directly bring the voice of the customer and supplier into the daily operation of your organization. Being a two-way conversation, it could increase the efficiency of the total system. While we’d all cheer the possibility of tying a customer closer to us, there is danger that sensitive information could potentially make its way to the competition through intertwined networks. Technology and innovative design may yet come up with a formal secure solution, but the essence of this network already exists in public social networks; from professional groups and conferences (in real life,) to LinkedIn, Facebook, and even Twitter, where information may already be passing inadvertently across corporate boundaries.
- The Killer App. There isn’t one – yet. But it we will discover or create it. Its characteristic will be support for the business process. In fact, it may become the business process, one that would not be possible to execute otherwise in a productive and cost-effective way. This will be the source of the real value of online social networks for business. To make this discovery will require a peer collaboration of a diverse and broad set of next-generation technologists, sociologists, management, and business experts. It will be a group that probably hasn’t worked together much as true peers in the past, thinking beyond conventional ideas about organization, structure, boundaries, management, and leadership.
Barriers to consider
There is enough evidence of value that early adopters and visionaries will proceed with experiments; but they are experienced in mitigating unanticipated risks and issues during implementation. Early adopters also work in cultures where prudent risk, even if it fails, is rewarded. Learning comes in many forms. In taking this kind of risk, the reward of learning often comes attached to other consequences.
The role of HR and learning
Because these solutions are tied up in the intangibles of a firm (the “soft” areas), the responsibility in most companies will undoubtedly try to land on the desk of either HR or L&D. But because online social media can create a monumental shift in communications and power within the firm, it’s not at all obvious that HR or Learning should accept this responsibility. A business leader must lay a foundation to create a cross-functional approach focused on delivering a specific, measurable, “business” (i.e., not “learning”) value. This may not be easy. Most firms have the “hard” systems basics down – management structures, business processes, technology, and physical infrastructure. But the “soft” aspects of business and talent are a bit more esoteric, and we generally remove them from discussion of direct business value. There is increasing evidence that culture is precisely where we can find competitive advantage. Business processes integrated with culture create best practices that cannot be copied, which is why simply bringing in external best practices doesn’t always work. With the advent of social network tools, “soft” culture shifts and “hard” business change will become inseparable; but today, organizational responsibility for talent and business results are separate – and at times at odds.
Restricted use of technology
Now, about 15 years into the use of the Web and Web applications for business, many firms restrict access to the Internet, e-mail servers, social media, instant messaging, particular Websites, and in some cases even Google. In many firms, ignoring these company rules leads to termination. The two reasons for these rules are worry about security (loss of sensitive information, or vulnerability to external attacks), and concern for productivity (doing something other than being focused on your work-at-hand costs the firm money). From a “soft” perspective, the underlying issue is a lack of trust of employees. These restrictions have encouraged tech-savvy employees to work more from home. Employees with well-developed social networks routinely use them to poll peers on issues, questions, and access to knowledge. But to use their networks, they must work from home in order to access the world of knowledge as they see fit. Besides, the technology at home may be better too.
Transparency in business
Imagine open communication, contrasting dialog, and honest assessments of business direction and individuals. Yes, this sounds too good to be true. Numerous organizational development movements have striven in the past to achieve just that. With online social network technologies, a strong push toward that environment may actually be unavoidable. While it’s unclear whether we can predict the cultural reactions, a poorly facilitated implementation could generate several negative possibilities. For example:
- Open critique and discussion of leadership, peers, mission, values, products, and direction can create a rich place to Google for lawsuits for product liability, anti-trust, harassment, discrimination … and we thought keeping e-mail clean was hard!
- The opportunity to enhance 360º performance evaluations could better support the, “why you’re not getting the raise you expected,” message.
- Support for evolution of a democracy in business means opportunities to bring about some revolutionary spirit. Most business management today runs on a philosophy based in military hierarchy – control, focus, efficiency, and execution. Democratic debate is messy, takes a lot of time, diverts energy and focus from short-term value activity, and challenges the leadership – constantly. Could this mean that business leaders will evolve into politicians?
- The freedom to take time out of the workday to read, consider, respond, and create social media entries and commentary. I wonder when and how some of my Facebook friends get any work done. If all of us were that intense – would the world stop?
- The more narcissistic among us will dominate the medium, not that this doesn’t already happen in real life. In social media it’s just more invasive and pervasive.
- Any attempts by management to control messaging or shaping of the new environment may be treated cynically, eroding trust.
Critical success factors
Regardless of the risk and barriers, it is important to proceed to explore the business benefits of this new portfolio of technologies. The way that business is accomplished will inevitably shift as a result. Expect new business models, and a new approach to business management. The only question is how the changes will manifest in any particular firm, and whether they can turn into a competitive advantage.
While social media have the capability to cross every traditional boundary in business, initial limitations on their reach are advisable. For now, focus exploration internally on areas that require close cross-functional coordination. Carefully measure the business-value impact of a barrier-free, open, communication channel.
Successful implementations require a culture of increasing trust. Discussions of trust and culture may get muddied in organizational development ideology, but increasing trust would permit a pilot in social media, and should produce upticks in “hard” productivity and employee satisfaction measures.
The concept of lifetime employment at a firm has virtually disappeared. Even though, in this economy, we are in an employment seller’s market, corporations will have to have greater respect for individuals and their networks. Primarily due to Internet applications, including social networks, employees know more about what is going on in other firms, in greater detail than ever before. Think of your employees as treating their employment with you as their current project. Their real long-term loyalty is to themselves, their source of stability is outside your firm, and their network is the enabler.
An interesting analog to consider: corporations used networks to blast through the physical boundaries of the world’s countries. Employees are using social networks to blast through corporate boundaries. How did countries react?
Where to start?
Perhaps the best place to begin is where there already is a cultural challenge, such as a merger. A portion of the firm may just need to be heard — perhaps where people are feeling powerless, such as in manufacturing in a marketing-driven organization. Or there may be a place where gaining some mutual respect would increase productivity and cooperation.
Being mindful of all the unintended consequences, a good place to explore early applications would be in peer learning, and the subsequent growth of a searchable database of knowledge. At least, in the beginning, there would need to be some control in place to moderate, and to edit, really faulty or illegal information. It will be necessary to learn to manage with a new conscious balance of control and freedom.
What technology to use? For internal use, it would be necessary to use one of the publicly-available technology platforms, licensed for internal use, and perhaps modified to fit your technology infrastructure and run inside the firewall. For piloting purposes, using the commercially available public platforms may well be feasible with some restrictions, security, and technology access provisions.
The promise of social media in business in slowly becoming clearer, but it is surrounded by risk. It is a culture change enabled not by “hard” analysis of business redesign, a merger, or an acquisition. It is a culture change driven by the personally integrated technologies of the next-generation workforce. What is missing, but required, is a solid business case, presentable to the executive team, board, and shareholders.
Social networking in business may not happen in its current consumer form, but it will happen. The value of integrated knowledge management (knowledge access), the ability to elicit almost instant contribution of multiple minds, including a possible seamless integration with partners and customers, is too seductive. This change is inevitable; the question is how gracefully we will complete the transformation.
