Whilst social media is still predominantly an external set of tools used for engaging with customers and other stakeholders, there does appear to finally be a sea change whereby social media is being used to empower the entire organisation.
You sense that as soon as the business schools and big consultancy firms jump on the bandwagon that the business world could be getting the message. A couple of articles appeared in my rss reader over the weekend that suggest that this is very much the case.
Firstly we have McKinsey reporting that social technologies are extending the organisation. They report that the biggest benefit of utilising social media technologies internally is improving the spread of knowledge. However the number of companies doing so remains very small.
MIT then add to the debate with a discussion with Anthony Bradley and Mark McDonald, authors of The Social Organization: How to Use Social Media to Tap the Collective Genius of Your Customers and Employees.
“Seeing what leading edge companies were doing with social media really convinced us that the potential is huge.”
Finally you have a nice video of Andrew McAfee talking to Management Innovation Exchange (MIX) about how enterprises are using social tools.
So it seems clear that there is a growing number of organisations that are grasping the potential for social media to fundamentally change how their organisations do business. They're grasping that these tools can empower collaboration and innovation on a scale never before seen. For someone in the industry these are indeed exciting times.
How are you using social media tools in your organisation?
It's certainly happening more and more, and with the younger generation entering the workforce demanding these tools it seems an inevitable change.
And here's HBR with their take on it too.
http://blogs.hbr.org/ideacast/2011/11/social-medi…
Adi, this is a powerful topic. What do you think about adding your thoughts on how companies should actually do it. Does it help decentralizing control, creating technical competence, or achieving clarity of purpose? I'd like to repost on leader-leader.
Yes, that's a very good point David, and probably one for its own article. I'll have a go at putting something together today. In the meantime, here's another piece that I came across last week based on some Forrester research.
http://gigaom.com/collaboration/forrester-enterpr… http://www.forrester.co.uk/rb/Research/enterprise…
"28 percent of workers use social software at least monthly."
We don't do any of that here. We use social media a fair bit externally, but there's no use of it for internal comms. I think to be honest HR are scared that people will just use it as a platform for moaning. There isn't really a culture of honest and frank exchange of views.
That's a shame Nigel. Suffice to say employees need to feel comfortable that they can be safe in airing their views without fear of repercussion. And lets face it, just as companies need to know if a customer has issues, it's equally important for companies to know if employees are as well. You can't fix things you don't know about.