Category: Work & Org Culture

  • Social + Scale = #fail ?

    Remember the post on Social Media Explorer titled ‘Is Content Marketing the new Advertising?’ I had linked to earlier, while on the subject of content, media and distribution?

    To me, content marketing will indeed be a key player in a brand’s strategy – communication and otherwise, because with the explosion of content across various internet and even other delivery platforms, and the increasing number of stimuli that the typical consumer is subject to, sheer volume might be needed, in addition to context, and relevance.

    So, the thought then moved on to the creation of content. There are constraints to what UGC can achieve, and all brands may not have that luxury. So, what would be a good way to generate this in-house?  That’s when I looked at it from the perspective of last week’s post – on the evolution of ‘social’ as a concept and the software it entails, and the subject of how social media will scale?

    And not surprisingly, I arrived at culture. And a rewiring that will include changing roles in the various functions of the organisation. The two that come prominently to mind? HR, to not just use the tools at their disposal and hire people who have innate passion for the organisation’s domain, but also in being the torchbearer of the organisation’s new culture. Marketing, to harness this in-house talent, surface their creations – product or content or service processes, and see how it can be scaled and communicated. This would not only connect people with a common interest  internally but also empower them, make them feel responsible and enable them to communicate this to an external crowd using their own networks.

    These are only a couple of thoughts in a couple of functions, but even getting the rest of the organisation aligned around these might be a good start. More importantly, when this happens, the organisation might be then better equipped to engage with the crowd, culturally and operationally. ‘Social’ could then aim to scale.

    until next time, multiply and rule 🙂

    For those interested in the subject

    Gautham’s post on social and scale

    Social Induction, my post last week on social software and the larger purpose.

    My last few posts on social and scale – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

  • Social Induction

    ‘Disparate’ perhaps wouldn’t describe it best, but definitely 3 different posts in terms of scope and point of focus, but which I thought were in their own way, circling one of this blog’s favourite topics – how organisations can fundamentally become more social – not just from a usage of tools across its ‘silos’ but more from an ‘adding meaning to the individual and society’ perspective.

    Stowe Boyd’s post titled ‘Are you ready for social software‘ not only gave me perspectives on the subject of the post, and title – social software, but also gave me a way to connect these three posts. He starts of with challenging the belief that Sherlock Holmes used deduction to solve the mysteries.

    It turns out he (or better, Arthur Conan Doyle) was using induction, which is, according to Webster’s, “the act or process of reasoning from a part to a whole, from particulars to generals, or from the individual to the universal.” In working from a paltry collection of clues to a full understanding of the actions and motives of the butler and his victim, Holmes/Doyle was, basically, developing a picture of the universe surrounding the crime from a few hints.

    He goes on to distinguish social software from software built for several purposes taken to mean ‘social’.

    Social software is based on supporting the desire of individuals to affiliate, their desire to be pulled into groups to achieve their personal goals. Contrast that with the groupware approach to things where people are placed into groups defined organizationally or functionally…..Traditional groupware puts the group, the organization or the project first, and individuals second….. Social software reflects the “juice” that arises from people’s personal interactions. It’s not about control, it’s about co-evolution: people in personal contact, interacting towards their own ends, influencing each other.

    Its a fascinating read and he quotes Kenneth Boulding, the economist, humanist and social scientist,“We make our tools, and then they shape us.” I thought that was an amazing way to look at it, and if you think for a moment on how tools have changed the way you behave, interact, consume, I’m sure you’ll appreciate it too.

    Amazingly, even without getting into software or technology, I saw an application of this thought process in Tom Fishburne’s Wiki Wall, a symbol of organisational creativity that could prove more useful than the traditional ‘brainstorm’. The wiki wall (a real whiteboard/surface)  allows ideas to be shared, collaborated on, and evolve over a period of time beyond the silos that the organisation might have. Shared belief systems and thoughts around which people could group together.

    Which then brings us to the ‘larger purpose’ that an organisation exists for. This purpose is something that has popped up here many times in the recent past, the last being ‘A Social Culture‘. I found it expressed extremely well in Umair Haque’s post on the way ‘social’ needs to evolve.

    Social is significance. The real promise of social tools is societal, not just relational; is significance, not just attention. You’ve got to get the first right before you tackle the second — and that means not just investing in “gamification,” a Twitter account, or a Facebook group. It means thinking more carefully how to utilize those tools to get a tiny bit (or a heckuva lot) more significant, and starting to mean something in enduring terms.

    For now, most organisations are looking at social tools (including software) to meet their business ends, and not looking to make the business’ ‘reason for existence’ itself something people – both employees and consumers- would associate with. Hopefully, by the time they deduct the importance of this, it won’t be too late.

    until next time, elementary? 🙂

  • A social culture?

    Even as I write this, Titan is looming on the horizon – not Saturn’s moon, but Facebook’s purported mail service, which can (potentially) stake claim on another front that Google has made much advances in, though its still only #3. And so the thoughts from last week’s post continue – on whether culture is the key differentiator that sets apart the dominant player in an era and everything else from superior technology to better marketing evolves from it.

    The two posts I had linked to last time remain relevant in a Google vs Facebook  discussion – “Google’s real problem – GTD” at GigaOm and “Facebook and Google” at Piaw’s blog. Meanwhile, Robert Scoble wrote an excellent post last week titled ‘Why Google can’t build Instagram‘, which brought out a whole lot of other perspectives on what prevents Google from innovating at a rapid pace (also probably the reason why Facebook is stealing its thunder regularly) – organisational size (something we keep discussing here), controlling the scope of products/services, an infrastructure that’s not built for a smaller social scale, the necessity to support all platforms (because they’re Google, that’s expected of them, thought this holds true for FB too), the inability to use a competitor’s graph (in this case, Facebook), the need to ship a product/service that’s near perfect (because they’re Google!) and so on. Scoble also throws in a few pointers on how Google could still innovate, and I thought some of Android’s success could be attributed to one of those – sending it out and allowing developers to build on top of it. You can get another interesting perspective on Google and scale here. (via Mahendra)

    The other understanding I developed was that with scale, even the organisation’s vision could change, (though the reverse is what we see regularly) and that would affect everything from competitor landscape to culture. So the challenge is to keep people hooked on – employees and users.

    I’ve come across excellent posts on both these. The organisational aspect is the core theme of Gautam’s blog, and so its not surprising that I’ve seen two posts in the recent past that tackle this subject – Inspiring People, and Making Work Meaningful. The other must read in this context is the 2010 Shift Index, specifically the ‘Passion and Performance’ part. From a consumer perspective, few people can articulate it better (especially since a toon is usually more popular than a 1000 words) than Tom Fishburne, and again, two relevant posts – App  of dreams (as a devout Angry Birds player, I identify completely) and The Antisocial Network.

    Despite approaching it from two different sets of stakeholders, the common thread is easy to spot – that brands/organisations need to figure out a reason for existence that goes beyond their business mission and balance sheets. This would then help them identify the ‘something’ that people – both employees and consumers  can identify with and would want to belong to. Coincidentally, this is the drawing I got on my Gaping Void subscription today. 🙂

    (Hugh credits Mark Earls for first voicing this thought)

    Not very long ago, Google spearheaded a revolution of sorts, by creating an algorithm that connected a web user with the information he sought. The only thing that topped it was the business model they built on it. Many have attempted it before and after them, but there was only one Google. The world changing mojo seems to have been transferred to Facebook these days, and even to Twitter to a certain extent, as, in different ways, they connect us to people we know/want to know in various contexts. Information sharing then becomes one of the applications of this connection. This phenomenon is called (by) many names, including social media. 😀

    Perhaps brands and organisations fail to understand the philosophy of social platforms/interaction and get lost in the applications. A bit like wanting to build a social layer on top of everything you have created so far and meanwhile, firing an employee for telling the world he got a bonus and raise 😉

    until next time, titanic shifts 🙂

    Bonus read: The Heart of Innovation via Dina

  • The path to transparency

    Google Me is already showing great results, even before its launch. Maybe its the fear of whatever-it-is-going-to-be that has made Facebook release a couple of tools a few days back. 😉

    Facebook Live (via), a live video streaming facility, with features like a live feed, and ‘ask a question’. More interesting is the app that will allow regular Fan Page administrators to add this to their page and the embedding on other platforms – Twitter, Google Buzz etc. But what I’d really like is for Facebook to get into proper video distribution- create an app that will replicate what the Justin.tv and Ustream apps for Facebook achieve. So brands/organisations can stream everything from say, earning calls to new store openings to special brand ambassador promos and so on. Think of the engagement possibilities.

    Notes. I have never found Notes very interesting at all – maybe because I blog a lot. So, except for the occasional note, or using it to get the blog feed into Facebook, my usage has been limited. For long, I’ve been asking why Facebook doesn’t allow me to tag Pages that I need not necessarily have ‘Like’d (in the Facebook way) , but would want to still tag in a status. So I couldn’t do say, “visited the @Wrangler store” as a status unless I ‘Like’ the Wrangler Page. I still can’t, but now I can do this in Notes, and I can add photos too. As ‘Location’ looms, it’ll be interesting to see how brands deal with this.

    Even as the opportunities for brands to engage increase, I can’t help but feel that its also moving them to some inevitable levels of transparency. The good part about all this for brands, though Facebook may not be the ideal way to do it, is a certain accountability that it creates for people who create content and comment on the brand, thanks to identity.

    A few weeks back, Surekha, Mahendra and I had a good commenting session over ‘The Age of Transparency‘ on Reader, an article that talks about the implications of transparency on individuals, society, government, companies. While we’re still far away from a stage when transparency is a default and ubiquitous feature for people, brands and organisations, it might well be a reality in a few years. Like Surekha mentioned in her comment, it wouldn’t do any good for a brand to engage only because it can’t afford not to, but then the question is, will brands/organisations see the trends in the evolution of these tools and more importantly society in general, and be objective enough to start rewiring themselves? Or maybe the ‘forced’ presence and the opportunities that new tools provide will act as a good catalyst for the required change.

    until next time, anonymous comments are fine too 🙂

    Bonus Read: Kapil Ohri’s well researched article on Indian brands on Facebook, (and my earlier post on social media and the scale of organisations) 🙂

  • Wide Labels

    I ended last week’s post with the view that removal of labels and building in the intent and components of these labels into an organisation’s processes might result in structure better than one obtained by a piecemeal approach. I’m still thinking about Surekha’s last comment – on corporate governance, and wondering whether it does indeed encompass (enough) the social facet. Social, both in terms of implication on the larger society, as well as the social used in the context of say, social media.

    While I’m not expert enough to look at the first part comprehensively and offer the soundest of opinions, I think the latter is everyone’s playground 🙂 On that front, I don’t think corporate governance quite makes the cut. And that led me to keep searching for various models being discussed. I also brought into this search the perspective I’d shared earlier on a Dunbar’s number for brands/organisations, retaining the ‘soul of the brand’ (courtesy Chris Brogan) and scalability issues.

    And that’s how I came across the ‘Platform Organisation’ concept. The presentation below approaches the need for this from a communication perspective

    The Death Of Advertising: Omexpo Madrid 2010

    The larger organisational imperative can be read here. This worked for me because I thought it matched business and social needs.  The community would ensure the soul of the brand is intact and would also allow a ‘scaling up’ of the brand’s Dunbar number. But I did wonder whether this would work for large organisations that  have a legacy of systems and processes. Deciphering that would perhaps be the next logical step.

    As I’ve always maintained, the business structures we have built have a huge impact on how we live and consume as a society, and the lives we lead as individuals,(an old and favourite read discovered via Dina) and hence the extended interest on this topic stream. 🙂

    until next time, life’s work 🙂

    PS: While on the subject, a related good read via @vijaysankaran “The Definitive Guide to Scaling Social Enterprise“