Scenes from a Social Enterprise
What are Social Media evangelists looking to accomplish?
We talk a whole lot about humanizing the corporation, but when we do so, we tend to think in terms of Customer Service and Marketing. Is that all there is to it?
These questions came to mind during a recent dinner hosted by Jeff Dachis, former head of Razorfish and now founding father of Dachis Corp., which has attracted stars like Peter Kim and David Armano (whom I sat next to during the meal; the dude is not only smart but fairly hilarious).
Dachis Corp. is talking about “social business design” as its core concept: “the future of business lies in the intentional creation of a dynamic business culture that empowers all of its constituents to better exchange value.”
But this post is not about Dachis Corp. Although we jokingly asked him to, Jeff did not unroll a magic scroll to describe the Dachis Corp. vision or project list. So these questions are being spurred by my own unsated curiosity about the future of corporate organization.
Think about a corporation that fully embraced Social Media WITHIN the four walls.
What will happen when a corporation is empowered to view which employees are the most prolific ideamakers, the most connected across hierarchies?
What happens when it’s discovered that “Josh, in Accounting,” has the most re-tweets by his co-workers? Does this impact his performance review? Does it mean he’s best at finding valuable nuggets on the web, or that he is brilliant, or that he’s better suited to a different department? Is Josh wasting time on the web — or is he more valuable than anyone realized?
What happens when a world-changing brainstorm happens, unbidden, thanks to a blog post published on the intranet by “Connie, in Customer Service?” What happens if Connie decides to post about “tricks to decrease customer hold-times,” but also reveals that these tricks do nothing to boost customer satisfaction? Is she going to be lauded for great thinking, or condemned for whistle-blowing? Empowered to effect changes based on her observations — or fired?
What happens when “Linda, the Hot Girl from the Scranton office” realizes that she has the most internal Twitter/Yammer followers largely because of her racy avatar? Can her employer suggest a more appropriate pic? Can she sue for harassment — for either reason?
What happens when the best ideas rise to the top regardless of authorship? Will transparency lead to a more egalitarian meritocracy? Will one-hit-wonders be detected more quickly? Will “seniority” fade in importance? Or will the current Powers-That-Be find ways to protect their fiefdoms? Will they become the offical “vetters” of these unrefined ideas? Will they have the power to tamp down a bottom-up revolution in information sharing?
Forget for a moment about how to measure ROI of Social Media Marketing. Think instead about how Social Media Thinking will impact the greater whole of the company.
A wild ride ahead, for Dachis Corp. and for us all.
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Sign me up! I’m ready to move and work for that company that allows and encourages a bottom-up revolution with social media thinking. I’m there!
Nice Todd, love it.
Very interesting. Thanks.
What you’re describing is already there. It’s already possible for corp to see their employee profiles and activity in Blogs, LinkedIn and Twitter. It’s heavily used in recruitment.
I think the biggest challenge is that the 4 walls are more subtle than they use to be.
When we talk about crowd sourcing ideas for product generation or tapping consumer conversations for social media powered market research, we’re desintermediating a significant number of people in the entreprises.
J Chambers did an interview at Fast Magazine with great insights on “what will happen”: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/131/revolution-in-san-jose.html?page=0%2C0
CEO will arbitrate between paying for market research and organizing listening into communities and between adding R&D resources or mastering crowdsourcing.
I concur with the “What happens when the best ideas rise to the top regardless of authorship? Will transparency lead to a more egalitarian meritocracy?”
I think there are many good ideas within a company’s human resources (its people), but they don’t share them because of fear of retribution; fear of sounding ‘dumb’; no sufficient channels; or a mix. This is a beginning (though not the end) to strip some of that away.
Social Media from school perspective invites parents to be continually present/involved. How are other schools using SM?
This is a very interesting, timely, and valid discussion.
I have been writing lately about the paradigm shift that is happening in our society that is making this approach interesting to consider by corporations.
We are moving away from the individual consumer to the social consumer. We are seeing the power of communities grow more and more, and consumers leveraging their many communities to become smarter, better consumers. We see this happening through social networks more and more everyday.
And we see corporations caught unprepared to handle that. The rise of the social consumer is driven by the up-and-coming presence of the millennial generation in the consumer role. Their attitude about technology, social networks, and consumerism is what will drive the corporations to change their systems to a social-driven model.
And we are not that far from it, which is probably why Dichson is closer than you may think to be able to disclose the vision in more detail.
Great post, very timely
Todd – you’ve vignetted where we’re going with social business design. Certainly the path to getting there isn’t paved with gold – there are a lot of potholes, forks, and bad drivers along the way.
I think external social media is easy. Like traditional campaigns, if things don’t work, they evaporate from our consciousness soon enough. Yes, even Dell Hell is fading from our arsenal. However, social business is difficult, maybe near impossible. It requires changing the fundamental way things work.
We need to harness Josh’s activity and realize that he’s communicating as work, not for work. Thanks to Connie, we know what doesn’t work and can collaborate to drive solutions that do work. Linda and her manager need policy and guidelines to inform good decision making.
Social business isn’t going to be an overnight coup or breathless 140-character revolution. It is going to be how business evolves over the next decade.
You and I are lucky. We have relatively small, new companies and can adapt well ahead of others. For others…
Well, that last point hit a nerve, Peter. Even in our agency of 85-100 people, it can be hard to get this stuff right. Multiply that by 1000’s of employees! A big, hairy, audacious challenge.
“What happens when it’s discovered that “Josh, in Accounting,” has the most re-tweets by his co-workers? ”
What happens if Josh, an active participant in the company’s innovation community comes up with a new method for keeping track of expenses and crowdsources the development using feedback from other ecosystem participants, ultimately creating a better way to manage company dollars, saving the company over 75 million a year by the time he’s done. What then?
Well, umm, that’d be good!
Todd,
yes. maybe. for sure. yes. perhaps. possibily. no. yes. absolutely. yes. no. no. for sure. could happen. yes. no. yes. yes. without a doubt. yes. and yes.
I’m not sure if I got all of the questions there, the point is I didn’t try. If we overthink every single idea, we will sit in coffee shops and Twitter for the rest of our days locked in theory.
This type of environment is worth a shot. We spend much too much time deliberating over this perfect idea or that politically correct action. We will upset people no matter what we do, not everyone will like us or our ideas. And why should we care?
If you can build an encouraging co-creative right brain leaning environment, me likes your chances. That alone can be your USP.
As BJ Bueno of Cult Branding says: few companies build brands people will LOVE. Most build brands people won’t hate.
Perhaps time to do that – as you say – WITHIN the walls of our companies – where people spend an average of 2,000 hours a year?
@knealemann
http://onemann.blogspot.com/2009/07/inspiration-moves-mountains.html