Designing A Space Suit for Mars

 
Photo by Thiago

"There is a tension with using social media to support your network.  On the one hand, you need to have a clear purpose of what you want to achieve and an understanding of your network members.   But, how can you choose the right tools and design your onspace if you haven't experienced those tools.  It's like designing a space suit to wear on mars when you haven't been there."  - Participant

Yesterday, I participated in an all-day working session on Network Effectiveness for Packard Foundation Grantees hosted by the Packard Foundation and the Monitor Institute.   Over the past two years, the Packard Foundation has worked in partnership with Monitor Institute to explore how networks were changing the social sector.  (If you want to get more context to this work,  read the paper "Working Wikily" and keep an eye out for the update of this paper in the near future.)

The session provided an overview of networks, introduction to different network types and typologies, an overview on network mapping techniques, and a diagnostic that helps those leading networks identify areas of strength and improvement.  The diagnostic tool includes 8 different areas:  membership, leadership, governance, purpose, strategy/structure, assessment, communications/technology, and resource management. 

The session was expertly facilitated by the Monitor Team which included David Sawyer, Diana Scearce, and Heather McLeod Grant.  I learned a lot from the material presented by Monitor and their facilitation processes as well as the insights shared by participants about their network effectiveness in general as well as their use of social media. 

I did a presentation on social media and nonprofits in the afternoon.  In preparation for the session, I took at look at the "social media footprints" of participants.   We also did a pre-survey to learn where they were in terms of using social media for external communications.  This was very helpful as always because I tend to incorporate participant examples in the materials as much as possible. 

The network effectiveness diagnostic tool included three desired attributes for use of technology for communications:

• Ample shared space, online and in-person, allowing members to easily connect with one another
• Communication tools are appropriate given member skills
• Communication tools are a good fit for types of interactions needed to meet the purpose

In reflecting on the desired attributes in the diagnostic tool, these are useful for assessing communications and use of technology for what I called "inward facing" groups or a bounded group where the members are known and the purpose might be for internal communications, coordination, collaboration, sharing resources, and learning.   And the choice of tools may not be focused on consumer-based social media tools and is much broader to include online collaboration tools.    This requires a different set of asessment, planning, and implementation steps than you might follow if you were creating a social media strategy for external communications. 

What are the desired attributes for network effectiveness and the use of technology for "outward facing" work?  Here's a stab:

• Network use of social media tools and strategies supports objectives in external communications plan
• Network use of social media tools and strategies is embraced and understood by network leaders and members
• Network use of social media tools and strategies incorporates metrics and ongoing learning experiments

Both attributes would also need a set of checklists, benchmarks, or more detailed assessments to unpack effective social media use both for inward facing and outward facing goals.

The latter, the area of my core expertise, is used for engagement, support, fundraising, outreach, and taking action.  The toolbox includes many different types of social media tools.    Here's a couple of visuals:

The participants represented a wide range of networks, disciplines, staff roles, and experience with using social media personally or for their organization.   We also had a wide range of attitudes about the use of social media - from healthy skepticism to excited practioner.    As a result, the questions and insights shared were rich and varied.   A couple of takeaways for me to tuck away for the future:

• It's hard to balance a wide diversity of experience and interest in social media in a training or working session.  If the session is not focused on technology, but just a small module in the day -you need to have a short brief high level overview and a separate deeper dive for those seeking practical, nitty tips and information.

• For those organizations/networks looking to select tools to support their work, there needs to be some exploratory, hands-on experience.  If this is their first foray into social media tools, they should seek out low-risk, simple experiments that are fun. 

• The following questions/issues emerged as it relates to use of social media tools to support Network Effectiveness: 

Outward Facing

Now that we have 5,000 Facebook friends, how we can get them to make a difference on the ground?  How can we activate the activsts in the real world?  (I put this question out on Twitter and summarize in the next blog post)

We created a network of fans who are remixing our context and spreading our message, how do we guide them effectively without controlling them?
Using social networks creates more information and touch points, how do you manage overload in a networked world? What are some simple "learning experiments" that use "first steps" that we can follow to get started?
How you balance your persona/professional presence with the organizational presence? 
Are there best practices?

Inward Facing

How can we best support our network's work online if some members have slower Internet connections?  How do we create a safe place (private) for discussions?
How we engage our members online when there is a lot of diversity, people are busy, and have lots of other things to do?
How do get to know the tools, but don't let the tools drive our choices?
How do work in a networked way and not get overloaded?
What are some simple ways to use technology to support working wikily?

Additional Resources from the workshop over at Working Wikily

Comments

[Sofia]

These are interesting post, it was nice feeling being aware of these things.

[The Jenzabar Foundation]

Great Article!

We think that social media is really important to non-profits generating awareness to their cause. So much so, that The Jenzabar Foundation is offering a $3,000 grant to one U.S.-based non-profit organization based on a blogger’s demonstration on how they are either effectively utilizing, or propose to utilize, social media to raise awareness and/or funds for their cause.

We encourage everyone to apply and continue to ride the social media wave towards bettering their causes.

Best,

- The Jenzabar Foundation

Homepage:
http://www.thejenzabarfoundation.org/ics

Blog (Social Media Award):
http://thejenzabarfoundationblog.com/

[Jeff Jackson]

Beth, your summary is very helpful for those of us who were not there and I especially liked your addition of the inward/outward-facing skillsets needed depending on the type of networking. Thanks.

Jeff