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Even Among the Tech Savviest, Social Media Starts ‘Underground’

by Joe McKendrick

August 5, 2009 at 9:34 am · Filed under Enterprise 2.0, Social Media, Social Networking

In a new study released this week found that many of the most successful social media initiatives on company intranets start as underground, grassroots efforts led by front-line workers, and which later are officially sanctioned by the enterprise.

The study, published by Nielsen Norman Group, concludes that “social software technologies are exposing the holes in corporate communication and collaboration and at times filling them before the enterprise can fully grasp and control the flow.”

It’s clear the tide has turned in favor of social media in the enterprise. My colleague Bill Ives just posted details of a study conducted by Prescient Digital Media, based on 561 organizations, which finds rapid adoption of social media on the corporate intranet in the past year.

The Nielsen Norman Group study was more qualitative than quantitative, based on interviews and analyses of the experiences of 14 companies, including Agilent Technologies, Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development, IBM, Telecom New Zealand Limited and Sun Microsystems.

What’s especially notable about these companies is that they are perhaps among the tech-savviest anywhere. Yet, social media adoption still emerged from the ranks in an informal fashion — not as an enterprise initiative.

Key findings in the study include the following:

Underground efforts yield big results: “Companies are turning a blind eye to underground social software efforts until they prove their worth, after which they integrate them more thoroughly.”

Front-line employees are driving the vision: “Many senior managers still consider social tools something their teenagers use. Young workers, who do not need to be taught or convinced to use these tools, expect them in the workplace.”

The business need is the big driver: “Social software is not about the tools, it is about what the tools enable the users to do and about the business problems the tools address.”

Communities are self-policing: “When left to their own devices, communities within enterprise intranets police themselves. Workers tend to retain their professional identities, leaving little need for the organization to institute controls.”

Organizations must cede power: “As companies have been learning from using Web 2.0 technologies to communicate with their customers, they can no longer fully control their message. This is true, too, when Web 2.0 tools are used in internal communications.”

The last point, that organizations must give up control of their communications and messaging, is going to be the hardest pill to swallow. Perhaps that may help to explain why social media tends not to be “officially” sanctioned so quickly, even among the tech-savviest of the tech-savviest.

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Paula ThorntonAugust 5th, 2009 at 9:48 am

Great stuff Joe (and by inference as well, Bill). I’ve shared this with someone already.

Rick LaddAugust 5th, 2009 at 9:58 am

Thanks for this, Joe (and Paula for the tweet that brought me here). I work for a very hierarchical company that is experiencing this transition. Our first truly social computing capability has been in place for almost seven years, yet was never embraced by IT, only a few of the early adopters in the engineering community (we’re a company of mostly rocket scientists).

Thanks to a new, fairly young President (and lots of behind-the-scenes cajoling, not to mention a transformative business climate), the change is taking place. The bitter pill to swallow for management, including executive management (maybe esp.) is your last point. We’ve just taken the first step in that direction and the excitement in a substantial portion of the population is palpable. Thanks again.

Joe McKendrickAugust 6th, 2009 at 8:35 am

Thanks Rick, and Paula, for your feedback. It’s interesting to hear how a company that may be perhaps a bit rigid in its ways is getting enthusiastic about Enterprise 2.0. It’s noteworthy that it took a young president to start shaking things up to get adoption moving. I’ve seen this in the world of service oriented architecture — the catalyst for SOA efforts tends to be the arrival of a new CIO or CEO.