I frequently read Janet Clarey’s blog and was interested in what she had to say in her recent post about social learning in small and medium businesses.
I was particularly struck by her conclusion:
If you don’t have a supportive culture of openness and sharing you are screwed. Need to do the work there first.
This reminded me of a recent conversation I had with a Vice President at a medium-sized retail company. The topic of Twitter came up, and he had an opinion that is typical for those who are skeptical of social media. He asked, point blank, “what good would it possibly do for [CEO Name] to be on Twitter?”
Unfortunately, I didn’t have a great response at the time. I mumbled a few catch-phrases about being in touch with customers, getting rapid feedback, etc. but I had difficulty making a specific case for the CEO at his organization getting involved in social media.
Later that evening, I realized why it was difficult for me to give a concise explanation as to why the organization would benefit from having its CEO on twitter. The company was not a social organization to begin with. From what I know about the company, they have a very process-oriented culture that is focused on the “push” side of marketing –concentrating on how products get from vendor to customer instead of focusing on the “pull” of whether that product is indeed what the customer wants.
In addition to the organization’s focus on the process instead of the customer, I suspected that the organization also had a similar attitude toward its internal communications. I chatted with folks in the organization, and found that my hunch was correct: communication was process-oriented, and rarely involved input from employees. Not only were there no organizational blogs, forums, or wikis, but there was very little cross-department collaboration and communication.
Eureka! It seems that I have found the problem. If you are not a social organization, then social tools are of little value to you. My friend, the vice president, was right in assuming that the CEO would not get much from tweeting. There is no organizational framework for sharing information to begin with, so just having a tool for sharing information would not make much difference at all.
