Kevin Gamble who reads more feeds than I do tweeted about this blog post by Stow Boyd. It is really bizarre, but this afternoon I've been struggling with the notion about the connection between individual adoption and organizational adoption of social media tools like Facebook or others. Now, this post comes bubbling up from my network and it is exactly what I want to chew on.
This is post is a response to Ken Newsome's post about newest flap about Facebook costing corporations millions in lost productivity (see /Message: Facebook Is Bankrupting Our Business! Shut It Down! Shut It Down!). Let's looke at the general observations about change and adoption of new technologies:
What I said was that corporations have a tendency to distrust new communication technologies when they appear. It has happened every time: telephones, email, IM, the Web. Whatever. Corporate types resist the adoption of these technologies, and then, subsequently embrace them.
I think it is the same in nonprofits, although the mistrust is more about the concern around how to invest very limited resources (money, time, and skills) wisely.
Individuals, notably, adopt them for their own purposes. This is the Social = Me First meme, I have spoken on widely. The gist of the idea is that people adopt social tools, initially, for some highly personal reasons, but stick with them for the social connectedness that they gain from them. This is because people can only discover themselves, can only realize their potential, through relatedness with others.
I've been promoter of the idea of "jump in as individual first" although there are some tensions there --
Eric Eckle pointed out in a recent discussion about Facebook's policy of not allowing organizations to set up profiles, only individuals. (See Free Ranger Rick). "Institutional spokespeople
who cultivate a useful reputation within a community like Facebook while acting on behalf of their employer are building a very
personal equity. They can't just hand it over to their replacement when
they move on to greener pastures, even if they wanted to."
Stow Boyd goes on to observe that most "enlightened" corporate management supports personal development.
Important to the corporation is the degree to which our striving for personal awareness and self-discover overlaps with business goals. It is only the most narrow-mind and short-sighted of management that actively ignores the primary motivations of human aspiration. Anything like enlightened management will actively support personal development to the degree that it does nothing destructive, and it should, within limits, be willing to bear the apparent costs incurred. This is why companies allow employees to make personal phone calls, why they underwrite education and training, and invest to create pleasant environments. These costs are real, but accepted.
In nonprofit environments, there is less tolerance of "personal professional development" because of a culture of training versus culture of learning. There is some great thinking about how social media can be used in nonprofits for personal development. Read more on this topic by Michele Martin and Rosetta Thurman at Perspectives from the Pipeline about blogging as low-cost professional development and her comes a follow-up post.
Boyd goes into the specific issues related to adoption of Facebook at the organizational level.
People adopt Facebook for some personal motivation: to stay connected with an online network of interesting people, let's say. This is much like the motivation that drove instant messaging adoption: another trend that conventional business logic tried to stamp out. Only later did it become obvious that networked connection was a productivity enhancer, and companies now accept it as routine.
So, the same will prove true for Facebook and whatever other social streaming applications emerge. It is the far-sighted companies that will accept the time loss as the inevitable investment in employee connectedness, and realize that the basis for future competitive advantage will not be blind, grinding efficiency but the highest degree of connectedness.
And I don't think that this is naïve, although it might be idealistic and forward-looking. In a few years, when 'workstreaming' has become the norm in business, it will become the conventional wisdom to support it. Today, it smacks of faddishness. So did blogging a few years ago, but now corporate types get tattooed in business school with the phrase "markets are conversations." That has become dogma.
With limited resources, nonprofits try to steer clear of fads. Technology providers also try to avoid getting seduced by the hype cycles. As Jon Stahl notes, in reaction to the recent Overbook Foundation Report,
I wonder how much of this anxiety is the product of nonprofit sector consultants and pundits hyping Web 2.0 tool after Web 2.0 tool.
How short was the hype cycle of MySpace? Of Flickr? Of YouTube? Of Facebook? Of Second Life? Are all of these important? Equally? Should all nonprofits be doing all of these things, plus blogging, social bookmarking, IM, screencasting, user-generated content, etc. etc. etc.?
I think the message that nonprofits are getting from us “yes, and wait until you see what we’re excited about next!” I’ve seen a lot more enthusiasm for these tools than reflective analysis of their real-world value in organizations with scarce resources. And I think that’s what’s creating a lot of anxiety.
Stow Boyd points to this piece by Brian Solas and concludes with:
I believe that companies will directly benefit from individuals building their reputation in their markets and industries through social means, as provided by Facebook and others. In the final analysis, Facebook and its cousins are inevitably going to be business tools, because business people are too smart to not adopt better technologies to help them get their work done. In a hyperconnected world, getting things done increasingly means harnessing the network, not just doing piecework.
Again, the companies that get wise to this fastest will be the first to benefit; and those that wait will lose.
Does this translate to nonprofits?
Beth, what a meaty post with so much to chew on. I have thoughts percolating around exactly this issue of the intersection between the individual and the organizational after reading your earlier post on the Overbrook Foundation report. I'm hoping to get them crystallized for a post soon and what you have here gives me more food for thought.
In response to your final question, I do think that network effects will impact nonprofits as well. Almost a year ago I wrote a whole series of posts on nonprofit networking and at the time I was really intrigued by how poorly most nonprofits actually implement networks--lots of reasons for it, the biggest being that they usually form networks or partnerships in response to a grant opportunity. But if nonprofits start to have networks developing as a natural part of doing business in this kind of networked world, I think that the NPOs that figure that out will leapfrog over everyone else. Could be wrong, but I think that's the case. We'll see though.
Thanks for the great info!
Posted by: Michele Martin | September 13, 2007 at 05:05 AM
Thank you for the mention and the good read. Stowe has been on a terror of late, and I very much enjoyed your analysis.
I have had the same thoughts about the higher education community as you surface on the non-profits. We're all struggling to figure it out.
Posted by: Kevin Gamble | September 13, 2007 at 06:25 PM
Beth,
Thanks for connecting all of these ideas! What Boyd points out about hyperconnectedness actually being a tool for increased productivity really grabbed me. While nonprofits are so concerned with putting the time commitment into social networks, we also don't realize the value they could add to getting our work done faster and easier in the long run.
Posted by: Rosetta Thurman | September 14, 2007 at 10:11 AM
Terrific, thought-provoking post. Smart employers have always valued employees' connections and invested in helping them develop their professional networks by sending them to conferences, etc...
But there's something about digital connections that established organizations (rightly, I think) perceive as threatening. With online social networking, the individuals assume a higher profile vis a vis their employer than in the past. That undermines traditional notions of brand. Also, individuals most likely to take advantage of these opportunities tend to be younger -- and perhaps more prone to indiscreet or inappropriate activity under the "banner" of their employer. I understand why this keeps senior management at high profile organizations up at night.
But while I sympathize with established organization's reluctance to just let it rip, there's no putting the genie back in the bottle and they're going to have to adapt.
And while they struggle to figure this out, the upstarts in the long tail will continue to nibble away their once-unassailable dominance.
Posted by: Eric | September 14, 2007 at 02:34 PM
Beth,
Thanks for the great posts, and links. Although I am, of course, still a bit curmudgeonly on web 2.0 (getting a bit less so over time,) what came to mind about how this might translate to nonprofits is success stories. Find the concrete stories of the use of social media tools, and I think folks will begin to see how to put the pieces together.
That's one of the issues about open source software - people need to hear how other organizations have used these tools, and used them well. That will start making a difference, and also ease the anxiety factor a lot.
Posted by: Michelle Murrain | September 14, 2007 at 04:05 PM
Great ideas. Eric, I'm struck by your rallying cry and I wonder if it would convince a senior management type or would they resist with a counter argument. If the latter, what would that argument be?
Given these adoption issues, do you think there is any low-hanging fruit to be picked with the use of social networking sites like Facebook?
Posted by: Beth Kanter | September 14, 2007 at 05:25 PM
truly the productivity of a firm will be effected as in Australia, if their workers keep on working on these platforms
Posted by: social media consultant | September 22, 2007 at 07:37 PM