Changing corporate culture
by Miki SaxonImage credit: bob923
In April David Kirkpatrick, a Fortune senior editor, wrote about what it takes for adults to find value in Facebook; less than two months later comes a story about how recently hired Serena Software CEO Jeremy Burton is using Facebook to change the company’s corporate culture.
Serena isn’t a hot growth company, but a profitable 25-year-old company building mainframe software and Burton isn’t a kick-ass Millennial, but rather a 40-year-old veteran of Oracle and Veritas, who says “We’ve got to be relevant to the future. So we instituted Facebook Friday,” and dared his people to participate and learn about each other—to date all 800 of Serena’s 900 employees have accounts. But the real message was “Guys – the world is a different place and if we’re going to stay relevant we’re going to have to wake up.”
He’s also using it to evangelize the software-as-a-service business model he believes is necessary for the company to thrive in the future.
Burton says, “I think we gain rather than lose productivity this way. We have a theme, but I leave it up to them to choose what to do.”
Millennials and many Web 2.0 proponents believe that the most important thing is to incorporate the technology because it’s there, but, as Burton shows, it works better to bring it in with a specific goal in mind. He understands that people worry about, and often fear, change, so wrapping change in a palatable way works faster.
The great lesson to take away from this isn’t about Facebook; it’s a reminder that “a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.”
Do you think that sugar-coating change is good or bad?
Your comments-priceless
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June 17th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Sugar-coating change is absolutely necessary. The only times it isn’t is when there is no other choice, but to change.
Of course, change comes in many different flavors.
While I was in college “they” decided to implement the Angel web-based learning system (it’s an online control system many colleges use to help with academic exchanges) and it was essentially a flop in the year or so I was exposed to it. Mostly because it was more difficult to use than normal email and a simple shared folder of class items. But there were lots of other tools the Angel software had available. I talked to a few people who were still around after I graduated and as the Profs learned to sugar-coat the system (and Angel made some updates to glaring annoyances/errors) then the system was wonderful to use. I can only imagine what it’s like now with that system as nearly every student will have started their freshman year with the system in place.
So finding a reason to roll out the technology and giving everyone a good (useful) reason to use it is a good sugar coating.
June 17th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Hi Luke, Actually, I think fun trumps usefulness every time when implementing new technology or anything else, for that matter. Usefulness smacks of ‘take it, it’s good for you’, whereas fun is sweeter, which makes it a forbidden treat.