Organizations Don't Tweet, People Do: A Manager's Guide to the Social Web

WE ALL NEED TO GROW UP

We are used to thinking of the world in terms of mass. Big things like nation states, religions, society, the media. We are used to expecting those big things to look after us and protect us. But the Internet splits those up and breaks them apart. It is made up of networks of individuals, each with their own voice. If we are going to survive the changes we need to see in our institutions we need to help them find that voice. We need to help them grow up.

There is something inherently personal about the social tools we will be talking about in this book. From the early days of blogging, when there was much talk of authenticity and finding your voice, to the amazing openness and transparency being exhibited in Facebook by unbelievable numbers of people, the emphasis has been on the individual and their particular take on the world around them. This is the first time that we have each had our own capacity to broadcast our ideas on a global scale in this way and for virtually no cost.

The patterns we are seeing in our use of the Internet are all part of the ongoing and inevitable ebb and flow of power between the individual and society. Whether it is the state, or the multinational corporation, or the churches of our major religions – between which there are more similarities than most people like to admit – how we relate to the large and powerful bodies that influence so much of our lives is what is at stake here. Your IT department is locking down access to Facebook and the state attempting to legislate to protect us from ourselves. There is a seemingly inevitable tendency for those in power to want to close things down and wield authority to maintain the status quo. At the same time individuals, of whatever political or even religious persuasion, embrace the ability the web gives them to have a voice.

There has been nothing like this since the printing press and its impact will be on a similar scale. The printing press, and the easy access to ideas that it enabled, fuelled the Reformation in Europe and this was driven by the desire to be able to read the Bible in languages other than the official Latin. The church went to the extreme of burning people in their attempts to resist this process so we can be pretty sure it was as much about power as it was about piety. The courage of those who embraced this new freedom to think for themselves ultimately led to the Enlightenment and to our modern world view. If, as many of us believe, the web is taking us on the next step in this journey of self-expression and self-determination, where we are even cutting out the publishers of our words, it’s likely that it will have the same profound long-term effect on our culture and our philosophies as did the printing press.

The alternatives to maintaining the familiar structures and behaviours of modern society are portrayed as beyond the pale. Words like chaos and anarchy are used to create the impression that without the grown-ups looking after us catastrophe would inevitably ensue. In the world of work, fitting in with corporate culture is seen as necessary and anyone straying too far from the norm is soon pulled back. Thinking too much is seen as a bad thing in many workplaces and having ideas above your station a frequent admonishment. I am not pretending that people don’t behave badly or that companies don’t have to manage their relationships with customers and stakeholders carefully, but in doing so they severely limit what is possible. Will chaos really ensue if we don’t keep a lid on things? Is this only true because we have been trained to act like children and expect others to make our decisions for us?

There is always a tendency to blame the sins of the previous generation on the behaviour of the new one. Whether it is television, rock and roll, or the Internet, it is all too easy to demonize the new and unfamiliar and to blame it for society’s ills. Those in authority are prone to knee-jerk reactions when things go wrong – to blame what is only understood by a minority and to prey on the fears of the majority. We see this in corporations’ paranoia about Facebook and governments blaming social tools for upheavals in society. But they are all just tools. Tools used by people to do things they care about. If we are not happy with what we are using those tools for then we need to think hard about what we deem important.

We will only be able to take full advantage of the networked world if we grow up, think for ourselves, and take responsibility for our lives and our actions. I am not naïve. I know that, at least to begin with, truly thinking for yourself and saying what you think with any degree of authenticity is a big ask. It may never happen for many people. There may just be too much at stake and too much to take into account for a politician or someone in a corporate setting to really be authentic. But I am hopeful. There are enough examples already where people have managed to tread that line. Managed to be real, to have a personality, and yet at the same time acknowledge the fact that they are representing a sector of society or a multinational corporation. It can be done.

Things to remember:

Social tools are personal. They rely on individuals like you and me finding our voice.

The Internet, like the printing press, is part of the ongoing process of humanity growing up.

Power is shifting from institutions and corporations to networks and individuals.

Chaos needn’t be the only alternative to our current ways of controlling society.

We need to grow up and take responsibility for our views and their impact.

2

TEN STEPS TO SUCCESS WITH TECHNOLOGY

The focus of this book is deliberately not on technology. What we are talking about is much more important than that. But there is a technological basis for what is happening and one of the biggest challenges is to approach this new and unfamiliar set of tools in the most productive way. This chapter lays out a few principles and ten practical steps you can take to make your use of technology more productive and less painful.

For several reasons I have deliberately avoided talking too much about technology in this book. Firstly, it is too easy to dismiss what is happening as technological – to label it digital – and to miss the real point – the changes we are seeing are cultural. Cultural changes that were happening anyway and the web has simply helped to speed them up. This isn’t a technological revolution followed by social change, but a social revolution made easier by technological change. People’s attitudes to work and their employers were changing anyway. The stability of the permanent contract and the job for life was broken by the organizations themselves. People becoming less loyal was due to a growing lack of trust and increased need for independence – not people having access to Facebook! We can no longer rely on security of employment and more of us are aware of the possibility of taking responsibility for our own destinies. These changes were not brought about by technology – they came about as a result of the cracks appearing in the corporate mindset and our increased willingness to see the world differently.

The second reason for not talking more about technology is that it is a distraction. It is easy to get drawn into, and ground down by, endless conversations about this or that technological widget or to be seduced by yet another vendor promising you the earth. If you end up chasing the next shiny thing, or fixing the tarnished last one, you will have less energy and attention to focus on what really matters, which is the culture change and people. For many of us, using these tools will become an intrinsic part of everything we do and seeing it as alien or even novel means people haven’t really got it yet. In fact it has become a warning sign to me when people say Oh yes we do digital because the word digital connotes other. It is not me who does it but others, or it is not really what we do but an add-on.

The final reason not to be drawn into too much focus on tools is to keep things out of the hands of technologists as much as possible. Some of them aren’t so bad, and some of them are re-inventing themselves, but most of those responsible for technology in most organizations have little experience of the tools that we are talking about and even less interest in what they enable. The goal of conventional IT has been to manage information in structured ways that reflect the business models of their organizations. The loose, networked, unpredictable environment generated by social tools is a considerable challenge to them. Indeed if there is a single biggest block to making social media happen encountered by my clients in large organizations it is their IT department.

So with those caveats in mind here are ten ideas about the tools that are worth keeping in mind as you begin to introduce them.

1. Have a variety of tools rather than a single system. Not everyone sees the world the same way or has the same needs so mixing up different tools with different strengths allows people to find one that works for them. Avoid single platforms like the plague.

2. Don’t have a clear idea where you are headed. The more fixed you are in your aspirations for your ecology the less likely you are to achieve them. Be prepared to go where people’s use of the tools takes you and enjoy the ride.

3. Follow the energy. Watch where the energy in the system is and try to copy the factors that generated it. Get others interested in why energy emerges and they will want some of it themselves.

4. Be strategically tactical. You can have an overall strategy of behaving in certain ways depending on how your ecology develops. It is possible to sell this as a strategy to those who need strategies.

5. Keep moving, stay in touch, and head for the high ground. Keep doing things, keep talking about what you are doing and why, and have a rough idea of where the high ground is.

6. Build networks of people who care. Don’t try to manage your ecology by committee but cultivate communication and trust between those who care that it works and have the commitment to do something about it – whoever they are and whatever their role.

7. Be obsessively interested. Notice everything that happens and consider why. Tell great stories about what you are observing.

8. Use the tools to manage the tools. Blog about what is going on with your corporate blogging, ask questions in your forum about security, tweet when something is changing in your ecology and ask people why it is interesting.

9. Laugh when things go wrong. If you are pushing limits and exploring new territory things will occasionally blow up in your face. Having a sense of humour and enjoyment of the absurd will help you stay sane.

10. Unleash Trojan Mice. Don’t do big things or spend loads of money. Set small, nimble things running and see where they head.

I want to make one last comment on technology that is going to sound a little contradictory. While what is happening is not about the tools, it is about the underlying characteristics of the Internet and the web. The power of what is happening is based on the humble hyperlink – the ability to write a bit of code that allows one bit of text to link to another. I often think that what all these tools are really about is teaching people to use this link. Whether it is pointing in a forum to the thing that worked last time, linking in Facebook to the person we consider worth talking to, or blogging about the latest great bit of information on the web – we all use the humble link to point to things we think are important and worthy of note.

Given its importance we need to learn at least the basics of why this works the way it does. Tinker and be curious. Lift the lid on a web page and work out how it was constructed. Copy bits of it you like and use them yourself. Roll your sleeves up and get your hands dirty. Even if you do end up getting someone else to do your technology for you, you still need to know enough to know what you are buying from them. I see so many people getting charged large sums of money to have web tools set up or built for them when they could do the work themselves for practically nothing. It is important for everyone to have a grasp of some of the underlying principles that are enabling this revolution. Increasingly the code that underlies tools like Google and Facebook affects what we can and can’t do with our lives. Read Larry Lessig’s wonderful book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace to appreciate why this all matters and why you should understand it. Code is about knowledge and knowledge is the source of power. If the real knowledge of how all of this works is in the hands of too small a group of people – even if it is your IT department – then we won’t get the wonderful technological future that we deserve.

Things to remember:

What we are seeing is a cultural change rather than a technological one.

The Internet and the web are speeding up and enabling these cultural changes.

Don’t get drawn into too much detail, or too much expense, with the technology.

Conventional technologists can find the web challenging – don’t be too limited by their view of things.

Remember the ten points on how to deploy the tools.

Become interested in how links work, roll your sleeves up and tinker with code. Just enough to grasp what is going on!

3

THE ULTIMATE IN DEMOCRACY

We mostly run our businesses in a top down, centralized manner with a small group calling most of the shots. If the democratic process is deemed good enough for nation states why shouldn’t it offer a new approach to running our businesses?

Someone once called me an organizational anarchist and I have to admit I was quite chuffed at the description and took it as a compliment. Wikipedia’s entry on anarchy says:

Anarchy (from Greek: c03uf001 anarchí x101_MinionPro-Regular_11n_000100 , without ruler) may refer to any of several political states, and has been variously defined by sources. Most often, the term anarchy describes the simple absence of publicly recognized government or enforced political authority. When used in this sense, anarchy may or may not imply political disorder or lawlessness within a society. In another sense, anarchy may not refer to a complete lack of authority or political organization, but instead refer to a social state characterized by absolute direct democracy.

Sourced from Wikipedia.org at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)

This is a long way from the modern picture of anarchists in black hoodies rioting in our streets but considering democracy in business produces the same reaction of horror. What I am talking about here is not complete free reign for individuals – the extremes of libertarianism do as much damage as the extremes of anarchism. We can’t all look out for number one without any concern for our fellow man. What I am more interested in is the possibility of all of us taking full responsibility for ourselves and those around us – the ultimate in democracy, not the absence of it. Not chaos or man reverting to the status of beasts, but each person taking responsibility for their own thoughts and actions. Before thought. Without ideology or dogma. Having to work out what we think and what is right and wrong from scratch. From our own resources. This would be hard work. It would be harder work than doing what we are told to do or thinking what we are told to think. This is what I will be talking about throughout this book. Organizations don’t tweet, people do might as well be Organizations don’t think, people do.

No one is saying it is easy or without risk. You can’t just pull out of a system on which people have become dependent, on which you have made them dependent, without first giving them some support. Once, when I was talking at a conference in Denmark, I started my keynote in an unusual way in order to make this point. I arranged with the chairman that when he introduced me I would not come onto the stage as expected but would be sitting in the audience. When it came to the moment, he announced me with great fanfare, people clapped expectantly – and then nothing. There was an empty stage and silence. People started to look around to see what was happening and some of them looked annoyed. I then started talking into my lapel microphone, in my normal speaking voice and said That doesn’t feel very comfortable does it? Even more people looked around to see where this voice was coming from – who was this person behaving oddly? And even more of them looked even more annoyed. I then said This is how people are going to feel when those who manage them, who have been assumed would act a certain way, start to act very differently. As I was saying this I was walking towards the stage and people looked visibly relieved as I started to play the role that they had all expected of me.

We have long assumed that the military idea of command and control, where those in authority have direct control over the actions of those under them, is the way we should run our organizations. The trouble is that even the military have mostly given up this way of looking at the world with autonomous, self-directing teams being more the norm in modern warfare.

Giving up on these assumptions is not easy. When command and control managers stop commanding and controlling, it is very disconcerting and not a pleasant feeling at first. But it is what is already happening around us. More of us than ever before are questioning our