2 posts tagged “susan+scrupski”

Zero.

Implementing social media systems in a business will only add value with adoption and usage. JP asks: "Does it make sense to have asymmetric information within the firm? Once we start acting as if information has value by and of itself, it is only a matter of time before people start using this information to gain personal advantage within the firm."

That is why social media in just about all its forms requires openness, transparency and trust. But, for all their protestations, that's not how businesses typically function. So I'm a little surprised that Martin Koser is stressed by the fact that "Management is supposed to be [a] people business, it is inherently social by all accounts."

Management is, but business is not. Business is mainly about the bottom line. And that is why Susan Scrupski points out that many businesses think 'social' equals productivity drag.

But collaboration using social media can help the bottom line if it is in the flow, a part of the every day, part of the nature of a business. Rob Paterson asks, hypothetically I think: "Isn’t an underlying principle of 2.0 that it uses nature’s rules and hence should make everything a lot easier?"

For early adopters of social media, social media already is part of everyday life. The SF Web2.0 Expo is not the first to use live audience participation (this time through Twitter), and sometime soon many company staff events will follow suit - a trojan mouse if ever there was one.

Unlocking the ability of a business to collaborate, to activate a virtuous circle able to create new knowledge is where the value of social media in the business lies. As JP concludes:

"We should concentrate on providing good service and good product, concentrate on providing that service honestly and diligently. And the money will flow. Not by hoarding information, but by freeing it up. Collaborating with each other, within the firm, with our customers, with our partners, with our markets. Even with our competitors."

There’s a growing shift in the conversation around E2.0 away from the technologies and on to the culture change that will unlock the value of social/networking systems.

You would think that persuading the Board about the merits of a more open, transparent culture isn’t too uphill a task, especially when you consider the alternative and the negative impact on the bottom line. Ross Dawson writes in Trends in the Living Network of networked organisations, in which being more effective at ad-hoc communiation and collaboration underpins organisatinoal performance.

Susan Scrupski's post Corporate Antisocial Behaviour: the Enemy is Us refers to five reasons why projects fail, and notes: "The technologies we had prior to web 2.0 would enable employees to 'speak up.' Email, telephones, even notes passed under the door could have prevented huge cost overruns and errors, but technology – old or new – won’t fix these problems."

Whether it is inside or outside the enterprise, one message does not fit all anymore. So should internal communicators use the new web to lead a cultural revolution, or to feed an effort to make the company more open that rides on the coat-tails of another project?

It depends. Assuming you accept the need to change your culture, then a corporate rebranding effort would provide a great opportunity to kick-start what Susan calls 'social process re-engineering'. But rebrandings do not happen often.

For a more likely opportunity, any significant project that requires upfront change management and/or communication input - and to the converted, that would be all of them - could be used by internal communicators as a trojan mouse.

Andrew Keen writes, "We all now know [Web2.0's] technological strengths and weaknesses, its cultural accomplishments and failures, its economic appearance and reality." Lead or feed doesn't matter as long as efforts are made to change people's day-to-day views on the value of effective communication, and corporate communicators should by now have an idea of the what the new we means for them, their role and, crucially, their company culture.