by Jevon MacDonald
January 13, 2009 at 1:43 pm
· Filed under Enterprise 2.0
Peter Kim had a coming-out post of sorts today. As one of the well known names in Social Media, his opinion matters a lot to that community. So, I was as surprised as anyone when I saw his post today in which he puts his foot down and says that Social Media needs “a bigger goal”.
I could not agree more.
Peter points out that a large amount of what takes place in the world of Social Media is simply an echo of what someone else in the community has said. It is just too much of the same old stuff.
The larger conversation about using Social Software to transform the enterprise is one we have been having here on the FastForwardBlog for over 3 years now (can you believe that?). I like to think that while the world of Social Media Consultants have been out there giving eachother back rubs, the Enterprise Social Software community has been hard at work. Progress has been slow, but we are starting to see value emerge.
“Value” is an important factor here, and something that should not be ignored. What most people fail to understand is that Value is different from “ROI”, “conversations” and “engagement”. The measure of Value is brutal because unlike many other measures, Value has to be created. ROI is earned (row the boat) but value has to be shaped and made real.
Once you can create real value however, you are able to produce and scale. Learning how to generate simple returns just means that you have to keep working harder to keep returns coming.
And there is the difference for me. There is still a lot of work ahead, years of it probably, but once we start to solve the problems of creating an organization that is built on Social principals, we will have created something new, not simply incremental. This is not Marketing with “Social Media” tagged on the front of it, this is not “Change Management” using Web 2.0 tools. This is something completely new, yet unknown but with the promise of real change and real value.
You can get the President of the United States on twitter (I have no doubt he will be there) and you can have the marketing department of Exxon blogging all day long, but you have not changed the beast, she simply has a nice dress. He has put on some Manolos.
From Social Media to Social Enterprise
I believe that a lot of people who have cut their teeth in the world of Social Media will start to turn their energy in to the transformative work of creating the Social Enterprise and I am happy about it. The problem is so big, and the payoff so large that we need more brains on this thing.
It is, I have no doubt, how governments will change, how Army’s will be more effective, it will save Car Manufacturer’s and it will make life inside the corporation rewarding for everyone from the Chairman to the Cashier.
Nobody cares about how the Industrial Revolution changed marketing, we care about how it made our world (the western world) a better, richer, place. Nobody will care about how Social Media sold 50,000 Whoppers for Burger King, they will care about how it saved us from an unsustainable model in which people are worked as if slaved, indentured to a master and on a leash we call the Blackberry. Buzzing, beeping and screaming: we are ready for this.
Peter says “It is time to transform”. I agree. Do something that really matters. Do something that makes people happier and gives them fulfillment. Give people a chance to create, give them real control, not just a chance to consume — even if it is in a more personal way.
Permalink
Bravo Jevon
At the heart of SM is its potential to release the human spirit – if we are to restore ourselves and our planet – SM has the power to help us do this – and now is surely the time
Great article and there is much to be hopeful about that companies will latch onto social media. But I also think that customers, as we are now, will simply move ahead using whatever social media means at their disposal to create new and different ways of interacting with each other and with companies. Co-incidentally, blogged along similar lines a bit earlier today, about companies needing to take part and the opportunities open to those who are willing and brave enough perhaps to take part – http://bit.ly/2nEl
Would concur in that much of what’s publishd is ‘look what I just read somewhere else’. So the challenge is to encourage/ reward analytical behaviour – the ability to understand, contextualise, articulate another view.
I think also we now have a situation – because of data overload etc. – whereby people are reading widely, are generally interested but may lack the focus/ knowledge to be able to add a lot of value. It’s a little like the difference between the sports progam host on television and the commentators who have actually played football, golf – whatever is the actual focus of the program.
Rgds
Barry
that is right .. and the leadership on this will not come from techmeme, techcrunch, silicon valley, they are already old-paradigm …
but, and a big “but” …. social media does NOT have the power to increase wisdom … no more than the telephone did …. and after people stopped talking about how cool the phone was, and simply used it, the same old gossip and crap spread at an accelerated rate ….
when people stop talking about the medium, and use it, the velocity of hysteria and shallow hype actually speeds up ….
and wisdom goes at the same old pace ..
so you and mr. kim’s intentions are correct, but are not deep enough ..
enjoy, gregory lent
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AmritaJanuary 13th, 2009 at 8:52 pm |
I consider Social Media to be a tool rather than movement. The tools can be transformative but the transformation starts with individuals & moves on to collectives. Saying social media needs a goal seems to fall short of what is required to really transform our companies & communities. We need PEOPLE to have goals, and use social media to achieve them.
Social Media will not save us from being slaves anymore than any other technology did. It may quicken the pace in which people can connect & communicate, but until people feel the spark & urgency to make a change in their own lives & the lives of others, nothing will change, no matter how progressive the technology.
So perhaps we’ve hit a lull?
Has the grand momentum we’ve enjoyed the last year(s) suddenly given away to quick promotions, stunts, and repetitive messages?
Perhaps. But isn’t this part of learning curve. From what I’ve heard and read – the rules for this social media beast have yet to be written. Maybe we are writing them now.
Who knows. I will say that as an observer and glorified fence sitter – I have seen the playground of social media and its first inhabitants enjoying the exploration of the tool they helped create. Now we are entering the mainstream era and the building boards and skyscrapers are popping up…
Taking the time to stop and say, hey what happened? – is the best decision to make right now. So I thank you and Peter Kim for reminding us to take a moment and breathe. If its time for social media to grow up as you suggest – I’m sure the next wave of users will thank us for taking the time to change our diapers.
Social media is going to change business AND culture the same way Television changed business AND culture, or the printing press changed business and culture. I, like you believe that companies are going to have to focus on value as opposed to softer measures around conversation etc. I recently write an extensive post outlining why I think companies are going to have to shift strategies to focus on value as opposed to growth:
http://experiencecurve.com/archives/my-2009-prediction-on-social-media-and-beyond-the-flight-from-growth-to-value
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KarlJanuary 14th, 2009 at 6:05 am |
complete agreement, now we get to the point "where's the beef" as it were.
Just a heads up to all that we're in the process of overhauling the comments system and will (hopefully) be restoring all old comments shortly.
I think by refocusing on Value is key but I also think many people are jumping the gun here. I agree with a lot of the points DaveMurr brought up, so what we hit a stand point now its because many users are just now getting their feet wet with SM, I too enjoy seeing the gradual success brought upon social media and I can’t wait to see the changes in the future.
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LLiuJanuary 14th, 2009 at 7:09 am |
Sure is taking a long while. I'm waiting anxiously for my comment from last night to show back up, so I can reference it on another blog's comment that I'm about to post. 
Social media is just a tool or set of tools. It does not describe a mindset, culture, or strategy, which are required for business transformation that leads to industry transformation and then world transformation.
I’ve seen Enterprise 2.0 and World 2.0 buzzwords used in 2008, but I didn’t see Industry 2.0 even though the pharma industry has been going through substantial transformation for the past couple of years. In 2009, the auto industry as well as the financial services industry will likely take some big steps towards transformation.
I’d posit that it’s “Community Centricity” in the form of business strategies (and models) that will have a transformative impact on businesses and industries in 2009 and beyond. Community Centricity is about thinking holistically and inclusively in a “people first” manner. No longer should customers/partners/employees be treated separately and differently with respectively distinctive “relationship management systems” because an employee can become a customer or partner or a customer can become a partner overnight.
Community Centricity is also about businesses playing a more benevolent role within their geographic and/or industry related communities by promoting a culture of charitable contributions and of community service and outreach.
There are other examples and factors, but I’ll save those for a blog entry. Anyway, as organizations start to take a community centric approach to planning and doing, little by little, the virtuous cycle builds up towards business transformation.
So, it’s not about social (media, network, computing, whatever). It’s about community. And quite frankly, since the dawn of humankind, it’s ALWAYS been about community.
Lawrence Liu
Director of Platform Strategy
Telligent
I agree that we've only just begun. Hey, remember that 16, 17 years ago we were still sitting on trees with regards to web technology use. It is always sobering to read again the Newsweek interview of Clifford Stoll from 1995 "The Internet? Bah! Hype alert: Why cyberspace isn't, and will never be, nirvana" (http://www.newsweek.com/id/106554).So, we just started to crawl and, BANG! there is SM as a new tool to connect, communicate, network and co-create. At least here in Europe, the majority of people in organization have not yet got the point. It is a bit like the period of 1995-1997 where many people said "Why would I need a website?" (the same people said a few years earlier "Why would I need a mobile phone?"). Now, the same people say "Why should I engage in social networks; it's a waste of time?" So, let's be patient. I predict that in 5 years SM will be part of our normal life (like now Internet shopping etc.). See my post from yesterday (http://www.change-management-blog.com/2009/01/web...
I come from the field of organizational change and here we had been talking about whole systems change for the last 10, 20 years and we had a couple of good tools like Open Space Technology, Appreciative Inquiry, World Café, Real Time Strategic Change etc. So for me SM is just a matter of scale. What we did in workshops with a couple of hundred or thousand folks before, we can now do with the whole world.
I also believe that hardware and software that support SM are not yet developed far enough to make participation in SM for the average technophobian person intuitive and easy to use. Also, most people have not yet comprehended that we are about to compose the orbituary of traditional organizations. Newspapers? Banks? Insurances? Do we still need them? Governments? Bah! I still wait for the first virtual government to emerge (or, at least, the first traditional government to fall because of SM).
Let's be patient, and, more important for those of us for whom living in cyberspace has become natural, let us continue explain the revolutionary and transformative potential of SM to the folks sitting next desk. And let us work on simplification of things.
@hnauheimer
The Change Management Blog
Re:
"I've seen Enterprise 2.0 and World 2.0 buzzwords used in 2008, but I didn't see Industry 2.0 even though the pharma industry has been going through substantial transformation for the past couple of years. In 2009, the auto industry as well as the financial services industry will likely take some big steps towards transformation.
… check out Umair Haque's blog at the Harvard Business School (and before that BubbleGeneration). He's been writing about what you might call Industry 2.0 for quite a while now.
And oh, re: social computing and the "pace of change" .. think of a determioned and ongoing effort to learn a new language, which usually involves bursts of effort and plateaus of capability, then a jumps to the next level, and so on. There's a "flow" that is accessible to most of us when we are a bit relaxed (i.e. your German improves greatly after two or three hours in a brew-haus during Oktoberfest 
Not that I am advocating that people should imbibe all day long whilst working in wannabe-Enterprise 2.0 org'ns, but as has been written ad infinitum, we do need to re-think the role(s) of control and policy and the de-rigidification of org'n culture and structure. Relax the control and let people gravitate to working in their own natural styles, constraints provided by a focus on 1) learning, and 2) delivering results. Think purpose-built and re-configurable teams that keep on changing around a relatively constant purpose.
Yes, we have lots left to learn, and do, yet.
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