Do Social Media Nightmares Encourage Adoption? The Answer Might Surprise You!

 
Photo by TCMHitchHiker

At last weekend's Transparency Camp West,  Ellen Miller from the Sunlight Foundation asked me a great question.   "What are the characteristics of nonprofits that have successfully adopted social media?"  

I think it is culture.  But what is in the DNA of these nonprofit organizations that allows for them to embrace social media and use it successfully?

Perhaps it looks like this:

Leadership

• Organizational leaders are curious, not scared by social media
• Organizational leaders are willing to be uncomfortable in order to understand why and then invest

Style of Working

• Departments do not work in silos, systems, policies, and work processes support this
• Organization can easily collaborate, connect, and reach out to others beyond the firewall
• There is trust that employees and stakeholders will represent the organization without creating command and control policies and policing them

(The work style comes from developing social media guidelines/policy)

Learning Culture

• Culture of learning through making mistakes or taking calculated risks, not a Martha Stewart culture of perfection
• Ability to slay organizational myths – “We’ve always done it this way” by having discussion
• Does not equate informality or personality with a lack of quality
• Not always moving forward faster than the speed of light, driven by deadlines, but also reflects
• Takes a try it, fix it approach
• Has a culture of rapid response – can address problems or complaints quickly without getting bogged down by endless approval process.
• Evaluates current processes and systems on a regular basis and updates them as needed on an incremental basis

Am I missing anything?

So, what if these qualities don't describe your organization's culture?  How do you change?

I came across an article by Rosabeth Moss Kanter (no relation) from the Harvard Business School called "To Master Change, First Dread It"   She describes the stress and feelings of lost control that change in organizations engenders.   She goes on to say that the stress leads to paralysis.   She offers a counter-intuitive tip for moving past it:

A counter-intuitive tip for mastering change is to start by wallowing in the feelings of dread it arouses. The sheer nail-biting horror of it all. Get in touch with every negative aspect, all the things that could go wrong. Then figure out a way to get that negative force on your side. In short, "Dream your worst nightmare and invest in it."

I think this is the key to adoption and social media success.  To create your social media guidelines, examine the worst possible scenario, ask what if questions, wallow in all your fears, etc.  I call this putting a smiley face on the screamer.

What's your nonprofit's worst social media nightmare? 

Comments

[Carol]

Hi Beth, I found the information on your blog very intersting and helpful! I'm writing a thesis on the implementation of social networks in non-profits and I was wondering if you know (a source where I can find) an estimate how much such a project would cost. I would really appreciate your help! Thank you very much! Carolin

[Holly Hight]

Hi Beth, My organization has about 130 people on staff with 1 central office and 8 regional offices. The majority of staff work from our central office - 100 people. All the people who make important strategic decisions for our organization work out of the main office. When I consider our social media strategy (we don't have one), it's difficult to be on the same page with those who make decisions in the main office. I don't see those people every day and I'm not at a level of leadership within the organization to greatly impact change. I try to be proactive by sending my supervisors and director level staff resources for creating social media guidelines and encouraging them to be present on FB, etc. Our organization is very slow to adopt any change, so I'm strategizing with other staff about how to move us forward with our goals for online media. I've been asked to do a training for my department on social media - not "What is Twitter?" but a training to get the "creative juices flowing." I am still clarifying my goals for this training. I will look to your site as helpful resource in designing the training. Would you mind looking over my outline and goals once it's put together?

[Donna Childress]

Thanks, Beth - this is an interesting piece. I work with a nonprofit that is building online communities in which its members can share info. While the nonprofit itself is ready to make the move, the challenge is the audience. Many of the members are not familiar with social media. While they seem to understand the benefits of being able to share online and are game to try, many have difficulty understanding how to post, what listserv etiquette is, etc. We have done Webinars and some in-person trainings, prepared documents complete with screenshots, and posted how-to reminders on the listserv, with limited success.

As such, our nightmare was emailpalooza, when people got confused about how the listserv works and began replying to the entire list, generating 50 or so e-mails in a single afternoon and many angry people. There are also the folks who are too intimidated to post at all.

We have the "learn as you go" thing down pat, still trying new approaches (next trying educating people one-on-one and enlisting member champions), but it's a slow process. I'm wondering if others have experienced this and have any advice.