Corporate culture and social media
by Miki SaxonI ran into Len Devanna’s blog today and it had some interesting insight on introducing social media into corporate culture. He quotes Bob Lord, President of AARF, who cites four basics,
Experiment – Just try it. There’s no penalty if you don’t hit perfection on the first try. This is new ground. If you’re trying to break into the enterprise with social media – you’re a pioneer – period. There’s no play book, yet.
Simple – Don’t over complicate things out of the gate… There’s plenty of time for that later. Start small, build an initial offering, perhaps providing the raw basics, and let it evolve.
Be Global – Not in the geographic sense, but rather organizationally. Don’t work in a silo – reach out across groups, find partners to help participate and evangelize your effort.
Social – Be sure to tap into the social network itself… Shape the culture through the voice of the community. It’s what it’s all about.
Excellent concepts, but just as retail stores’ policies are designed to prevent shoplifting by a few, but when implemented negatively impact the majority of honest shoppers, so do HR and legal departments look on the sharing innate in social media with fear and loathing.
This is nothing new, one or the other or these groups are often at the bottom of information control attitudes (especially legal). They want the company to run on a strict need-to-know basis, yet still expect employees to be interested, motivated and vest their future with the company. But it doesn’t work that way. While we are seeing more enlightened HR, legal doesn’t seem to be changing at all.
As Len says, “The truth is, social media is not all that different from email. Recall the concern in the early 90’s as we took hours of training on the proper use of email. Fifteen years later and we’ve managed to survive.”
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