The trigger has been the wilder than earlier predicted adoption of
social media websites, applications and mobile apps by all age groups across
geographies and social strata. Every new innovation, fad or me-too has caught
the fancy of not just consumers, but also investors. After denial and
prohibition came the acceptance within the enterprise and experiments on how to
use it to the benefit of the company. Thus we see a new trend emerging that now
has many players vying for attention; the corporatization of social media.
I am not referring to the numerous models that have been attempted to
measure return on investment or to convert “Likes” into hard cash (fortunately not
by selling personal details of customers). Many will point out a few popular
success stories where a brand or product found exponential growth driven by
social media campaigns; this number has not grown much in subsequent years. I
am alluding to the attempt by companies to setup internal portals and sites
that mimic behavior of the popular social media sites.
CXOs blessed this and agreed that while we prevent our employees from
the internet on corporate devices let us give them a way to spend their energy
on similar sites internally with each other. Let them channelize their time
towards being more productive. CIOs with help from vendors cloned most of the
functionality and put it on the intranet and waited for employees to start
using it. Some did, they posted stuff here and there and then went away very
quickly. How can I put up my private life on display inside the company ?
Managers attempted to create collaboration use cases; success was
measured by number of people active or the number of posts. Structures around
groups helped them find behavioral and psychological insights. Soon these
became case studies and best practices to be touted by vendors and consultants.
Within boundaries these worked adding to the momentum which forced almost every
respectable CXO to leniency. All along employees continued to put on display
their private lives on non-corporate social media via their BYOD smartphones.
Is corporate social media really a tool that can transform the way
enterprises and employees collaborate ? Can it imitate the viral effect seen in
private lives ? If we discount the generation X/Y who are just entering the
workforce, are the 30 and 40 something employees going to embrace getting on
internal social media to post their feelings and share brainwaves ? In a
hypercompetitive and paranoid professional world, will the existence of a
platform with adequate catalysts be the trigger that breaks the barriers ?
Social media fatigue is already setting in; the multitude of options
from 140 characters to pin boards and friendly sites only confuses rather than
compartmentalize the use. People realize the time demands in an ever connected
world which expects instant responses to emails, tweets, SMS, chat messages,
posts and whatever mode of socializing they engage in. Souring relationships
due to or because of the face down thumb happy posture is changing the way we
engage with each other. Peer pressure keeps some going, the rest follow the
herd.
Coming back to corporate social media, there are opportunities if used
well; any foray requires capturing the ethos of the company, department or
group which will determine the character of the site and engagement. It
requires a team of enthusiastic believers who infect everyone they come in
contact with their exuberance and create an urge to try. The team needs no
boundaries or censorship for engagement; let there be self-imposed discipline
on what the group is willing to accept. Monitor you may, don’t be the police.
In a recent interview a journalist asked me the question “What is the
future of corporate social media ?” I believe that there will be pockets of
excellence from which people will learn only to fail until they are able to
create the cultural ecosystem in which sharing can thrive without fear of
retribution or rebuke. We need freedom to communicate, disagree, and be
ourselves the way we are outside the workplace. Leaders and Managers have to
walk this talk for it to work. Until then there will be case studies that we
read and wonder why it does not work for us !
No comments:
Post a Comment