Losing the Soul of Social

Technology can extend the human condition but it can also work to dehumanize, transforming the sincere ideals of community and relationships into exploitable resources. The vendor marketing machines have lots of money and content marketing is their new effort to turn spin doctors into gurus as they work to convince you they are not selling but educating. Let the buyer beware. Some "though leaders" in this space are really after mind control and in many ways I think it's working. For example I sat in a conference session recently which was a bit alarming. The discussion was centered on community building but was framed around tools. No discussion of trust and time and shared values or support. Rather it was a conversation about things like how to use gamification to get people to share! Or this recent post titled How to Master Social Marketing Quickly and Effectively which is chock full of advice like Automate It, Know Your Numbers, Get Followers. More likely than not some of the approaches in this article work in the short-term but are quite devoid of anything resembling sincerity or human relationship building.

Technology is seductive. I underestimated its power at my previous organization. I had leadership on board that improving transparency and collaboration would help in reducing redundancy and increase innovation; a huge win. Within days a team formed to assess social technology options! I was dismayed but also being new I figured it was best to tentatively support this as I naively believed that I could simultaneously explore technology solutions and also assess how we were currently collaborating and communicating throughout the organization. I carried on looking for where the pockets of healthy teams, departments and interactions were. I sought out conversations that informed me of barriers as well identified ambassadors or nodes in our already existing networks. I deepened my understanding of the business and culture. While I looked at business problems the tech train was gaining strength. My slow roll out was ultimately compromised by a need to justify the expense of a chosen solution. How ridiculous of me to a think we would leave a Porsche parked in the garage when it looked so sunny outside. The platform was on the table too soon and too many were letting tech take the wheel.  In the end the technology rolled out before the needs of the organization were really defined. Not quite a failure but definitely a struggle that was unnecessary as adoption became the goal not adaptation where real business value was.

"Money is in technology focus, but effect is in people focus." - James Tyer

Human history is littered with examples of where technology temporarily blinded us with devastating results to body and mind. The Industrial Revolution made people mere appendages of the machines and child labor was a widely accepted practice.  More recently (and far less cruel) Learning Management System spin has misled people into believing a formal course is how and where learning takes place and that access, completions and scores equate to learning - wasting time, money and reducing morale. The former was ultimately defeated through the birth of labor unions and progressive legislation and today, the LMS is under attack by progressive minds using data to help people see where learning is actually happening and change mindsets.  Eventually, as history shows, we do come to our senses. However, if we sit passively allowing the voices of deception to coexist with the sincere, the longer it will take us to realize the true benefits of social - benefits gained as we move through the machine not within it

We Don't Do Social Here

Implement, Do, Start, Launch, are all terms that indicate a program or project is underway. It's the language of the business initiative. But when these words precede the action of "Social", it's a bit perplexing.  

We don't "do" social, we are social. 

Being social is just connecting, communicating, and sharing usually with the key action of conversing. Don't let anyone tell you different. We should know too that being social is not purely positive. People can connect for the wrong reasons, communicate inappropriately, or share way, way too much. Therefore being social is neither something exclusively good or bad, it is just the essence of being human. To say things like "we are going to start doing social in our organization" is like saying "we are going to start doing breathing." This comparison is equally similar and different. Similar in that both actions, social and breathing are naturally occurring and required (in an organization or otherwise), and different in that breathing is not something that can ever be consciously done poorly or insincerely.

You can encourage people to increase their social connections, expand their networks, start more meaningful conversations and share ideas. But make no mistake, your organization is already social, it just may not be healthy enough to transform the work that's being done or make the environment less toxic, or draw people to connect with your service or products.

So if you're still thinking about "doing" social in your organization, maybe start by "being" a better organization, leader, employee, peer. Somethings you just can't project manage. 

The "Working" Culture and the Struggles of Social Business

Tim Kastelle recently shared his excellent post about flat management efforts at Zappos and how they paid about 210 people to leave if they didn't like the direction of the organization. He went on to point out that in the past 12 days over 15,000 people were laid off in various industries (which can be seen on a site that tracks daily layoffs) as an exclamation point about the ridiculous attention Zappos is receiving. What happens next is anyone's guess. Hopefully the 15,000 land quickly on their feet, hopefully they left on good terms. But I doubt it. Many may had been blindsided, many will struggle, many will be bitter. And when they do return to the world of work they will carry this memory with them. It will taint their perspective, attitudes and sense of trust.

Today much of the Future of Work conversation refers to organizational culture, the idea that in the confines of a single business people behave a certain way. Although this is true, I do think it overlooks a significantly larger culture, the Working Culture - a culture of workers ironically created by cumulative actions of all business.

Culture is an emergent property of the many practices that happen every day. Change the practices and a new culture will emerge. - Harold Jarche

Each worker's experience contributes to the present Working Culture's understanding, beliefs and practices. The Working Culture permeates organizations but isn't easily diffused by an individual organization's culture. So no matter what an organization's efforts at "engagement" are, most employees are skeptical and will remain so.

This skepticism has developed over the past 25 years or so due to factors such as globalization, a focus on short-term results, systematic turnover (as noted in Tim's post), contractual and temporary work, the demise of unions, automation, and outsourcing, etc.  Due to these factors loyalty is non-existent on both sides; employer and employees have disconnected from that part of the working relationship. A good lagging indicator of today's Working Culture can be seen in the less than stellar adoption rates of enterprise social network platforms (ESN) and their failed promise of corporate-wide collaboration and cooperation. In an interview style post, Sahana Chattopadhyay elaborated on the nature of collaboration in work environments saying:

"In many instances, [collaboration] takes place only at the team and project levels and does not radiate or percolate to other divisions." 

I agree but would argue that this lack of adoption is found in MOST instances not just many.

When the work doesn't "percolate", it's less about the tools that make the invisible visible and more about people just not caring enough about the work happening outside of their own areas. Care and trust are very intertwined and is happening at the point of work and not easily advancing beyond. Lack of leadership involvement and leadership style can be a barrier for sure, but so too is a workforce with an expectation of intentionally short tenures. Grow and go attitudes seem to dominate the Working Culture resulting in employees staying a mere 18-24 months (a far cry from the 20+ in generations past). Can that really be enough time to build trust and a level of community beyond the point of the work? The trust issue therefore is bigger than within an individual organizations, this is about trust of business as a whole and it is our social tools helping us to see this condition more clearly, not necessarily improving it.

Change happens one conversation at at time and those conversations can change organizations. But until a critical mass of organizations changes, the Working Culture will generally remain one that is jaded, suspicious and distant. "Change the practices and a new culture will emerge..."

Community as the Cornerstone

There is a rush to social everything today. Organizations who rush to connect their workforce often painfully find out their big efforts fail.  I must say, that the idea of a completely connected workforce sharing and collaborating with knowledge flowing freely through Wirearchies is very enticing and frankly the right goal to strive for.  I want to be there too …but I am willing to move somewhat slower as I fear that what is being lost is the fact that social media, in its simplest definition, is a tool.

The social media tools we have today are useful for building up community, increasing collaboration and for sharing. If you have a business problem that can be addressed by one of these three, then social media should be explored and as success is achieved, expansion can be the next logical step.  Maybe if we target smaller problems first through a "Trojan Mice" approach as Euan Semple speaks of, we will change our organization's collective belief about "social" and ultimately change the culture... one collaborative practice at a time. 

"Culture is an emergent property of the many practices that happen every day. Change the practices and a new culture will emerge." - Harold Jarche

An area I had the opportunity to target with a social solution was Employee On boarding.

The two high level goals of on boarding are: 

1.  To make new employees feel welcome and comfortable in their new surrounding.
2.  Minimize the time before new employees are productive members of their new team.


The reality is that most on boarding efforts fall quite short of meeting each of these goals. A 2011 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) revealed some very sobering data:

• Most on boarding lasts less than 8 days.
• Only 8% of organizations surveyed do extensive monitoring of their formal on boarding programs.
• Only 15% of organizations surveyed conduct an extensive evaluation of their on boarding program's effectiveness.

Of significance also is that only 57% of surveyed organizations provided new hires a personal mentor and 35% engaged the employees in any significant socialization efforts with their new work group. Yet 94% said these two activities are critical!

The biggest culprits noted:

Lack of time, Lack of resources, Lack of management support, and Lack of financial support

In the end, 6% of organizations surveyed reported that on boarding is longer in duration than it was 5 years ago with less responsibility given to newcomers to "figure things out for themselves." Well intentioned I'm sure but is the right direction one that provides for less autonomy when organizations are clearly struggling to provide an effective formal on boarding program?

It would appear that most on boarding efforts are top heavy, top down formal approaches. And frankly... formal is failing.  The truth is most organizations I fear focus on goal 2 (job skill development), for good reason but unfortunately they completely neglect goal 1 (socialization).

The Business Problem:

I was presented with a business problem related to on boarding new employees for a single department and I wondered openly about the current approaches in this area and what role social media could play in this effort. The head of recruitment intended to more than double the size of his recruitment team (9-20). He expressed that he needed help getting them up to speed on the company and the various roles they need to hire for (i.e. Dentists) These folks were experienced recruiters but not experienced in our industry. He hoped I could develop a training plan for them. Though he expressed that it wasn't ideal to bring them in for training as they would lose productive time in the field. On a secondary note he was tired of answering the same questions over and over in 1:1 calls and emails with his current group as this was taking him away from more strategic activities.

I believed the answer to his business problem was not a formal approach but in flipping the focus and getting the new employees to productivity by placing community (Goal 1) as the cornerstone and build knowledge through this community rather than begin with formal training programs detached from the job (Goal 2). 


Step 1: Buy-in 
Its more common than we want to admit but many present the solution before really knowing the problem. Digging deeper and having the executive articulate the real issues made it much easier to present a different approach and shake the training default mentality. It's nearly impossible to argue with ones own data.

Step 2: Partner with Your People 
On boarding should be a group effort. There are benefits for all involved to have the new hire succeed so all should play a role in making that happen. 

I suggested he ask his current experienced recruiters what the top questions Dentists interested in our organization ask during the recruitment process.  The group generated 85 unique questions! We placed these in a wiki and then had different recruiters answer each of the questions. The executive was able to review and was surprised at some of the inaccuracies but pleased that they were surfaced to be corrected. This short process provided a knowledge base immediately useful for new hires to draw upon.

Step 3: Social Media Introduction
My current use of Yammer in a small pilot within L&D made the tool selection easier. Plus, although it has many features, it is relatively simple to use and mirrors familiar personal tools like Facebook. Since the group was small I was able to take an opportunity to have all Recruiters in a 2hr discussion and overview of social media. The emphasis was on "why" not how.  I started by using a frame game I adapted from Thiagi, "Improved Solutions", where after being presented with an authentic problem the groups move through sessions where they generate, criticize, defend, collaborate and ultimately produce a viable new solution. I then collect all the papers, ripped them up and threw them in the garbage.  I remind them that this is what happens when we use email or phone calls to share and collaborate.  It resonated quite well and then we shifted to start playing with Yammer...yes, playing. Doing this together allowed more savvy folks to share with others on the "how to's" and I spent most of the time leading with phrases like "check this out." and "now you can ...". It was impactful because it was casual, experiential and meaningful to their work.  

Step 4: Encourage, Model, Acknowledge 
No training. The main ingredient is consistent leadership activity and my executive partner was more than willing (yes, maybe I was blessed or maybe it was due to step 1). Each email or call he received from one of his team members he asked that they post it on Yammer and get more heads around it - this took a major mind-shift  He was quick to jump into conversations and not give the answer but to stir up discussion and seek more voices. He used hash tags and shared them, he posted humorous material to show that it was OK to just chat and share. He leaned on me for advice and encouragement to stay the course early on and it paid off.

By January, only 8 months after launch the 24 member Yammer group generated over 1600 posts/comments.  We analyzed each and placed them into categories with the following percentages:   

Community: 34% - wit, wishes, jabs, and kudos

Collaboration: 36% - problem solving Q and A

Sharing: 30% - serendipitous offerings

The solution was small in scale: focused on a key group, and targeted results (rapid OTJ learning in work context). Social media could be leveraged to eliminate the need for out of work flow formal activities and allow the new hires to tap into the expertise of the veteran to find solutions, information and collaborate in real time. Furthermore it allowed the new folks to openly share their learned knowledge from previous organizations with the senior team members; adding value and with it a deeper sense of purpose to the community.

In the end the approach addressed many of the barriers to on boarding noted in the SHRM survey:

1. Limited monitoring and evaluating 
What could be easier and more transparent than using social media? Current efforts to monitor involve subjective feedback and delayed evaluations all well past the opportunity to impact those involved. Social media enables continuous monitoring and a sort of formative evaluation when adjustments can be made very quickly and benefit the new hire the most.

2. Lack of time
No longer was there a need to pull people out of production (HR, Training, etc) to support a new hire, they have a Community of Practice at their fingertips not only getting useful approaches and valuable information but gaining critical context from those within their work group, who really know the ins-n-outs of the job and the organization.

3. Lack of management support
When a solution calls for limited financial contribution and less drain on "human" resources it's a bit easier to gain agreement. CoPs with active community facilitation can guide a new hire to productivity quickly, efficiently and without all the unnecessary hand holding that is typically seen.

4. Lack of financial support
Our total monthly Yammer expense was 5.00 per person per month.  Small in comparison to using multiple professionals for training and material development, travel expenses, opportunity costs etc.  In the end, the on boarding project became a ongoing program reaping benefits far beyond ramping up a new employee. A community exists now that moved from basic knowledge and skill acquisition to collaborative innovation.

Start Small, Think Big, Go Fast!
It's time to rebuild on boarding programs around community and not control as the cornerstone of the new structure; we can't afford these any more. Moving away from formal designs, as social media charged networks offer a cost effective, resource relieving, transparent solution to the shortcomings inherent in formal on boarding programs. A slow growth strategy is one that if employed can strategically solve a specific problem in the short-term while working to create an collaborative culture in the long-term. 

Frankly, I don't believe organization wide social media platform adoption should be the terminal goal. The real goal is workers employing Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) skills in fertile networks both inside and outside the organization.  Platforms should then serve to support social initiatives and groups but should eventually exist as only a part of the workforce's overall network and tool set.

Below is my Webinar with Jane Hart from April 2012 which digs a bit deeper into my use of Social Media for learning approaches beyond this on boarding effort.