The Social Organization

Social Media's Pull: People Want Comfort More Than Food

We don't often like to compare ourselves to children or monkeys but the truth is that we're not that different.  As adults, we often hide our needs, desires, and disappointments but when looking to understand the behavior of adults, it is useful to watch children and animals because they have no artifice masking their instincts.  One of the most powerful and heartbreaking experiments ever done was by Harry Harlow on how baby monkeys form attachments and how important comfort was to their existence.  The video below shows that baby monkeys will take comfort over food - in effect starving themselves in order to feel OK.

I can hardly watch the video but the point is that animals and people (we're not biologically all that different after all) will choose something comforting over a more obvious need like food.  To me, this gets at the heart of why the social interactions facilitated by social media and social software can make such a big difference to the individuals that interact with organizations.  Individuals will flock to organizations that offer comfort (personalized attention) even if the 'food' - i.e. salary, product cost, partnering costs - does not make economic sense for the individual. 

For organizations, this has a couple of implications:

• Resources and time spent on effective personalized experiences with employees and customers will see the returns in the form of higher margins, lower operating costs, and increased retention rates.
• The recent conversation about applying business process and integrating 'social' into existing processes should be very carefully pursued.  If the social element becomes just as standardized as current processes, it won't have much impact.  The business processes themselves must become more flexible and adaptable to individuals which is now possible because social software reduces the cost to support that flexibility.

The issue many of us have is responding to requests to quantify how much comfort is enough. In essence, we are being asked to put a dollar amount on feelings. If you have any suggestions on how to do that, I'm all ears. In the absence of being able to do that, each organization will need to experiment (which, I'm sorry to say, will cost some money) and turn the dial up and down until they find what balance of 'comfort' and 'food' works best for them given their unique market and the unique constraints of their organization.

Keeping Social Initiatives Simple

Part of the reason social media and software has taken off is its simplicity.  Twitter was about the simplest conversation interface possible. People contact organizations on their blogs, Facebook Pages, and Twitter because the existing mechanisms are too complex and have been so over-engineered that they are no longer humane (i.e. 'dial 5 for account information').  This has led me to worry about social methods becoming too BPMized (business process management) - because if it does, it likely becomes no better than the broken process it replaced. I've often asked people to think about why @ComcastCares is so popular (I am a big fan BTW). It's because, in general, existing support channels at Comcast are so bad.  If existing support procedures worked well for customers, they would not need to seek out support on Twitter.  All of us working in the 'social' space need to guard against over-complication for this reason.

Given that thinking, a recent blog post by Clay Shirky The Collapse of Complex Business Models really hit me hard. We are driven to increasing complexity yet that is the very thing that gets in the way of the value over time.  I've noticed this with both blogging and Twitter - they were both very, very simple when I started. Over time they have gotten very complex with plug-ins, application ecosystems, feeds, aggregation points, etc.  They are far more intimidating to use for people starting out today then they were when I started.  In the intervening time I've seen things like the large decline in teen blogging. Is it just that they have different tools like Facebook to use or has the complexity of blogging outstripped their interest and ability?

For those of us investigating the use of social technologies and techniques in a business context, it is worth giving a lot of thought to complexity. Simplicity is what is attractive and increases participation but our organizational cultures and structures often pull us toward complexity so that our efforts mesh better with existing processes. We often add complexity at our peril.

Inability to track ROI Does Not Absolve You from Measuring

David Meerman Scott had an Epic ROI Rant and because he threw in some chatter about putting on pants in the morning and paying your lawn service, I feel like a lot of people missed a bigger point that he was making.  Some people in the comments section of David's post were very eager to jump in and agree wholeheartedly that calculating the ROI of social marketing was like putting pants on in the morning.  Mm... OK. But here's the thing - just because you can't calculate ROI is DOES NOT absolve you of the responsibility to measure your performance and try to improve it.

We measure what we do in life for a lot of reasons. We measure our children's height at regular intervals to track their progress and often compare that with their doctors' charts to make sure there is nothing wrong. We measure our weight to make sure we didn't overdue ourselves during the holidays.  We track our investments to make sure we don't live in poverty later in life. We score games so we know who has won - what fun would a football game be if there weren't goals?!?  It would just be a bunch of heavy guys running around in a lot of padding, beating each other up. Measurement is used for a variety of purposes - to:

• Understand
• Experiment
• Align expectations
• Improve
• Track progress
• Assess fit
• Compare
• Win

If we don't measure - we are just a bunch of football players without a way to score... running about aimlessly. And while that may be fun for a bit, it leaves us a bit dissatisfied over time.  In organizations it is disastrous because measurement is used to communicate what we are striving toward, understand when we've succeeded, and ensure we are making progress - collectively.

There are all sorts of measurements that are not financial that can be used to track progress and performance but the enduring fact of business and life also remains: we cannot spend more than we make over a period of time so... financial measurements must be part of the mix.  How you track financial measures and over what period depends on how direct or indirect you expect the results of your business initiative are. 

The Social Organization & Womenomics

I read two interesting articles in The Economist over the holiday break - "We Did It" and "Womenomics".  In some ways these articles covered some old ground; women are outpacing men in education and now in employment rates. There is even research to indicate that companies with more women in senior management positions are more profitable. Yet, women still make up a very small fraction of corporate and organizational leadership... it begs a lot of questions.

What the articles did address that I found more interesting is how societies are dealing with having women share equally in the working world. As it turns out - the U.S. is not dealing with the social implications of this very well at all. There are very few structural accommodations for all the things that women used to do when they stayed home: child care, elder care, food preparation, community management, house keeping, etc.  Sure we can pay for all of those things but if families do, most will spend more than one person's salary to do so... so only the richest can afford to fully staff their personal/family needs.  What happens instead?  We do laundry at 11pm, we frantically reschedule business meetings when children get sick and can't go to daycare, we trust strangers with keys to our homes so they they are somewhat clean, we eat crap, and we are all very stressed.  I don't think this is a women's issue any more.  Most of the people in my generation are strung out.  Looking at national demographic data we are also getting fatter, experiencing a rise in childhood mental issues, don't know our neighbors, and have faltering real-world community institutions...

I don't know about the rest of Gen X but I'm a little bothered by being hung out to dry and left to figure out how to deal with all of these issues for myself. My peers have handled this in a variety of ways:

• One person drops out of the workforce or significantly changes their career path when children arrive
• Many people stay single and bury themselves in jobs that take 50+ hours of their time (not sure if this is the chicken or the egg)
• Couples don't have children
• Couples limit themselves to one child because day-care and logistics are simply too hard to deal with otherwise
• Couples hire nannies and both have high powered jobs to support that
• Couples try to juggle two average jobs with daycare
• One parent typically finds a watered-down part-time position to try and keep one foot in the adult and working while spending some time with their children
• One member of the couple 'consults' and is left to a vagaries and loneliness of working alone.
• People are forced to put parents in nursing home or get 24-hour care because they can't live on their own but need someone around more than in the evenings

I know a few exceptional women who simply gave up interesting and challenging careers because they wanted a family but found the trade-offs too much to keep their careers.  Rather than take a dreary part-time job that offered no intellectual challenge or take on the unstable world of part-time consulting, they gave up work entirely. Personally I worked at a management consulting firm in my 20s and I loved the colleagues and the job - and they were going to pay for me to go to business school in exchange for returning there to work. From a career perspective, what could be better?  But I could not possibly see a future where I had to travel 4 days a week, every week. I had the opportunity to get into product management which has a less drastic lifestyle associated with it, so I choose that path. I don't regret that now - I learned a hell of a lot which is very handy now - but it definitely made my career bumpier.

Now I don't have children but my husband and I both work a lot and even without children I'm having a hard time juggling food shopping/cooking, laundry, cleaning, home maintenance, doctor's visits, caring for sick parents, etc. This situation frustrates me, makes me sad, and makes me think of all the amazing skills and experience that organizations are leaving on the table... simply because they cannot figure out how to create positions for people that don't look like what they always have.

For me this is a larger issue than figuring it out for myself - I can do that... it's annoying and I'll make some mistakes but I'll stumble along. However, this is an issue at the heart of being a 'social' organization.  Being 'social' means accommodating variety - including a variety of employee needs.  And it's not just because that is the right thing for the people who work in organizations - it's because people will give their right arm in commitment back to the organizations that give them interesting, challenging work to do in a structure that also allows them to have some semblance of personal sanity.  I'm betting the commitment that results will drive profitability improvements.

There's a lot of talk about how 'social' is transforming customer support and 2010 is the age of customer service... I don't disagree but until employees feel like they have some stability and sanity, there is only so far they are going to go to serve the organization's customer. 

What if organizations had a variety of positions at all levels (yes, executive too) - some of which were 20 hours a week, some 30, some 40, some 50, and some 60... it would not only allow people to decide how many hours they could work it would recognize those that now regularly spend over 40 hours a week working that are somehow just 'expected' to without necessarily getting commensurate recognition for doing so.  What if there were campuses for large and small organizations that had centralized and at-cost day care and elder care?  Some big companies do this today but it is very inconsistent; small & medium size companies only very sporadically offer these types of services.  More often than not, companies rent office space in vast complexes interspersed with parking lots - without any additional services to be had. I bet however, it would be a real competitive differentiator to either offer services as a company or locate in a complex that has a day care, elder care, dry cleaner, gym, grocery store, etc. (office park developers... are you listening?!?) I know a company that offered me challenging work with flexibility and easy to use/economical services would keep me much longer than any of my other employers have.

If you are in the business of figuring out how to make your organization more social and you don't have this issue on your list of things to address... it's time to start thinking about it.

Help Others, Help Others Help You... But Don't Help Yourself

I sometimes wonder what parents teach their children - or not. Why? Recently I've seen a lot of people promote qualitative assessments of themselves.   People seem un-abashed at calling themselves talented, great thinkers, gurus, experts, pretty, funny, charming, etc.  I am a bit baffled by it because aren't all of those qualitative assessments in the eye of the beholder? I was told often as a child that it's not polite to brag or talk about yourself. It's also contextual - one person may think you are hysterically funny and to someone else you are just rude.... so those qualities are not fixed. But then I've always had a problem with the term self-promotion and the Me 2.0 meme so maybe I'm the odd one out.

However, what I've found is that regardless of whether it is OK to publicly self-assess... it is far, far more powerful to have others do it.  So the real question is - if you really want to be recognized in a particular way or for having a particular trait - who is the best person you know to validate and promote that in a way that will turn heads?

If I were running for a federal office as a Democrat, I would want President Obama supporting and promoting me.

If I wanted to be known for my fashion, Anna Wintour is the one I would want proclaiming it to the world.

Those are extreme examples but there are influencers of opinion all around us, some more influential in certain areas than others.  There is also a network from which those very influential people get their opinions... often people who are relatively quiet or unknown. Demonstrate to them why and how you are smart, fashionable, knowledgeable - whatever it is for which you wish to be known. They will do a much, much better job of making that perspective generally understood than you ever can. And - if you let them do it instead of trying to do it yourself - you look a lot less like a schmuck.  Leading enterprise software vendors... I'm thinking of you here. Adding unnecessary qualitative adjectives is also poor writing (of which I am often to blame). The analog advice is that all that time that you might otherwise spend talking about yourself... spend that time promoting others.  If they feel the same way about you, they are likely to return the favor. This is pretty well understood by a lot of taste-makers at an individual level but what I haven't seen much of is companies who spend time and resources to promote others that are not directly affiliated with their business.

You want to know who I think is interesting?  Check my blogroll, my Twitter Lists, or my People category.  For me, it's all about the company I keep and I trust that company to represent me much better than I can myself.  So if you want to know what I'm good at... don't ask me, ask them.

What's New in 'Social"

I was on a panel this morning with Mike Lewis and David Armano for Social Media Breakfast NYC titled Business is Social, Now What? (Thanks to Selina McCusker for organizing).  Maybe it is that we are at the end of conference season and I've been hearing a lot about social media, social software, E2.0, and social business lately and I'm a bit jaded (and yes, I've been contributing my fair share to this general conversation). But I struggled with what to say that would really cause the audience to think differently or provide inspiration that hasn't been said before.

What is really new? Over the last year - in terms of concepts - not much actually. We are at a different phase of the market right now. The phase of the market where the rubber hits the road. The phase where people are taking the concepts and applying them, tweaking how they apply them, and figuring out what works for them. Those use cases are not particularly generalizable because every business has its own strategy, culture, imperatives, etc. This phase of the market is full of hard work, not 'new'. Part of the challenge for event organizers is finding companies willing to share their 'experiments' - very few companies are confident that they are doing things right... or they've figured out something that works phenomenally well and consider it a differentiator that they don't particularly care to share.

Are conference and panels still useful?  Yes - they help give us encouragement, spark a slightly different way to think about or communicate an issue or opportunity, and give us critical access to others who are working on the same issues. If you are looking for the next new, new thing though you will probably be disappointed. Good business is about getting the fundamentals of a discipline right - making strategic decisions, creating plans, testing, re-working, negotiating, training, and project management. It's no different in the 'social' space. So dig in, this is not going to be something that passes quickly - and start looking for specific, tactical take-aways that you can get from events, not big A Ha ideas.

Thinking about Deaths, Endings, & Beginnings

My husband is in the news business - in New England - which means we were up early this morning on news that Senator Kennedy had passed. Interestingly he passed away late last night, on the anniversary of the death of my father from the same type of cancer.  Both were great men - Sen. Kennedy nationally and my father on a local level - and also flawed men (like us all - some just hide it better than others). It's a sad day. Whether you like his politics or not, Senator Kennedy cared deeply about ensuring everyone in our society had access and opportunity and spent his life dedicated to making our society a better place.

I've given a lot of thought to the process of dying over the years mostly thanks to the way my father handled his own mortality. While he underwent treatment, when it was clear that he had an aggressive form of cancer, he accepted that gracefully and spent the limited time he did have on the business of life and relationships, not on fighting.  He died gently and with dignity at home. Even in that final stage, he taught me about how to end things - and that sometimes we need to accept the end so that it is dignified and allows for those left behind to move on securely, if sadly.   After his death, I also realized some other things:

• By knowing him, we could continue to know him and 'be' with him - I still wonder what he would think about some things but in many situations, I'm pretty sure I know and that knowledge can still make me smile or cause me frustration. Ending something doesn't mean it has to leave you.
• My father lives on through the lives of people he knew.  He continues to have influence over how many people think and act - and with that, his life's work continues.
• The end of his day-to-day influence, which was strong, has given me the space and opportunity to become my own person. Part of that means that I've made choices that he may not have made for me, but are good choices for me - and I may not have made while he was alive because I did not want to face his disappointment or disagreement.
• The vacuum of his death in his community forced people to re-assess what they valued and whether they would step up and fill part of that vacuum. It empowered others.

How does all of this relate to our organizations and how we work together?  Well, I don't think we are particularly good at dealing with the death of a person, an initiative, or an entire organization.  More often than not, we resist the dying and force extreme measures so that we can hold on for just a little longer. The reaction to the suggestion that everyone should have end of life counseling being called 'death panels' is just one of many examples of this.  In our organizations, the problem is even greater. It is really hard to kill a dying business model, an initiative/product to which a few senior people are highly committed but is clearly not working, or indeed to say goodbye to staff that just are not a good fit. The suggestion that we end something is pretty horrifying to many people.

The problem is, we ignore the whole concept of ending things often because we feel it reflects our own failure, but everything ends whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. And because we don't often plan for the end, they are often highly disruptive, prolonged, and aching.  It takes a lot of courage to put an end to things but often the pay-off is huge - it can save time, money, churn, dissonance, confusion, prolonged anxiety - and it allows for the celebration of the thing that is ending, before it has withered to a shell of its former self and people have forgotten its benefits.

I'm going to spend part of my day today thinking about things that I'm doing that may need to end. It will give me the time and space for more productive and interesting things to take their place. It may be sad and it may be hard - but it's critical to evolution.

On the 'Echo Chamber', 'Thought Leaders' & 'Experts'

I tripped across this post "Do Thought Leaders Need to Be Practitioners" about a conversation between @schneidermike and @adamkmiec. This debate reminds me a lot of the chatter about 'getting out of the echo chamber' and 'who is really a social media expert'. 

I've got a slightly different take on this whole meme... which is this:  Why is it so important to define or decide who is/isn't/etc.?  For one, we all have different and unique perspectives and experiences. Sometimes that is useful to others and sometimes it is not. Everyone is at a different place on the ramp when it comes to understanding new disciplines, including how to effectively operate on the social web. Sometimes it is helpful to speak with someone who is really enthusiastic, using tools in a personal way to do interesting things. Sometimes it is more helpful to speak with someone who has a lot of experience with really large organizations because the decision-making and operational flow are so different. Sometimes theory is interesting. Sometimes specifics are.

One thing that I do know is that it is extremely hard to have a macro and a micro view of things at the same time - or an experienced view and a new perspective on something.  I've been an analyst and in that role you see more technology and companies than anyone in an operational role ever could. See my older post on my perspective on what an analyst does.  I've run product groups and been head down for months on end and in those roles you dig in and really understand the ins and outs of customer need and functionality around very specific things... but it is really hard to transition to thinking about theory and the latest greatest thing going on in the market.  What I've seen managing groups is that it is extremely helpful to have a combination of experience and newbies - they feed off of each other- the newer people with questions forcing the experienced people to look at things differently or to articulate their thoughts better and the more experienced people guiding the newer people to ask the right questions.

I think we need all sorts of people, in all sorts of roles, to help us figure out how each of our organizations will approach the social web. It is not an either or equation. People who think so are feeling in some way threatened by the emergence of a different perspective or voice. And what about the echo chamber? To me, regurgitation is a form of learning... new people coming into the conversation and rolling the concepts around for themselves - saying very similar things but in slightly different ways. Each of us has the option to decide for ourselves who we  listen to - if you don't find someone's perspective useful, there are plenty of ways to stop listening but I for one think we could spend more time trying to understand each other.

What Women Know and How it Drives Profitability

Forget about what women want - women may want a lot of things that have nothing to do with running a business (oh that cute pink handbag!). But let's discuss what women tend (and I say tend because nothing is absolute when discussing gender roles) to know and you can start to see why businesses with more women in senior leadership positions are more profitable and innovative.

In my experience, here's how what women know translates into business performance:

• Women know high risk comes with high potential upsides and high potential downsides. We tend not to get overly excited about what could be and focus on what can be today. That focus means we we more likely translate current market needs into solutions that will pay off today but we may not be as likely to go for the long shot ventures.

• Women know relationships and know that the more open and transparent we are, the closer the relationships are that we can foster. This allows us to form really persistent relationships with employees, partners, and customers - and not through the use of money and rewards - which is more profitable and less vulnerable. See Diane Hessan's excellent example of Return on Openness.

• Women know how valuable communication is - at all levels. That means a lot of us are chatty (it's been proven) but it also means the people around us are never left in doubt of what is going on. That means there is less distrust and gives others the chance to bring up any issues they see.

• Women know how to navigate emotional conflict better and interestingly have an easier time discussing deep rooted differences of opinion between colleagues in a more collegial fashion. This allows for conflict resolution before things escalate into business problems.

• Women know how to identify subtle social queues and can identify whether or not someone is being open with us - whether we choose to acknowledge that or not. This allows women to more accurately assess relationships with customers and others.

• Women know that telling people what to do is not the most effective way to lead. Showing by example and using Socratic methods of mentoring often facilitates the response we desire without the negative side affects of the other party feeling controlled.

• Women know complexity. We can never focus on just work, or just money, or just family. It is always about the best decision for everyone rather than the best decision for any one constituent. This gives us a balanced perspective of a business and keeps us from maximizing revenue in the short term if it damages relationships in the long term - thus preserving sustainability and long term profits.

This is not to say that women are better and that this is true for all women (or that men don't have these qualities) but bringing women into leadership positions will bring a diversity of approach, a different perspective, and some much needed skills to the board room. In a business environment where transparency and relationships are becoming core principals of business how can you afford not to bring more of those skills into your business?

From a personal perspective *not* having more of those qualities in companies is what has driven me to start my own. I don't want to work in an environment that doesn't understand balance, is driven to 'win' at all costs, and only values relationships while they result in revenue. It's not what I am about and the more senior I get, the more aligning my values with the businesses I associate with matter to me. Is that a zero sum rule? Of course not - women don't tend to view things that way and I certainly don't.

What do you think? Is this too generalized? Do you think this is a sexist perspective? Does it reflect the women leaders that you know?

Don't know the woman in the picture? That's Indra Nooyi wife of a former boss of mine (who was quite a smart cookie himself) and CEO of Pepsi - great to see!

Respect, Acceptance, & Patience

I've been thinking a lot lately about the difference between groups, communities, and mobs as well as our collective ability to respect each other - accepting each other for where we are instead of where we would all like to be. I don't quite know the answer but it has something to do with being organized - not necessarily in a hierarchical way. The other thing about communities is that they tend to be managed - again not necessarily by one person or in a direct way but they are definitely mediated. Lastly, people in groups and communities respect each other whereas people in mobs do not.

Respect is a complicated thing - and it is not really the same thing as doing what someone tells you to. Many people follow orders from superiors without respecting them at all - that is power dynamics, not respect. Respect interestingly often means we have more room to disagree and that we can be confrontational in a non-threatening way. True respect allows for honesty - with things that are both pleasant and things that may not be. Respect means taking someone at face value and trying to understand differences rather than judge them.

I was watching the Amazing Race the other night and they were in India - many of the contestants were horrified or upset by the poverty and trash they saw while racing through. I actually found that response a little patronizing because while it may not be our expectation of life, people in India seem to manage just fine. And it is not to say that there is not a lot of improvements that can be made - there is indeed way too much poverty in India - and elsewhere. However, even if you took the poverty away there would still be cows meandering around through traffic (they are sacred after all - you can't just tell them what to do!), traffic would still be chaotic (that's just how they roll), and there would be a lot of people. I actually found the cows quite funny while I was there - one had parallel parked itself in the middle of downtown New Delhi. But the reaction of one of the Amazing Race participants was to condemn how poorly the animals were treated because they were wandering about somewhat aimlessly instead of non-judgmentally wondering why. His intentions were right - to care - but he jumped to a conclusion without really understanding the situation.

Last night I went to Social Media Club Boston where the topic was Change Dot Gov and how government was using new social tools and communications methods.  I was a bit surprised how critical people were of government and media because there are a lot of efforts to move more information, data, and access online. Is it perfect? Hell no but who among us is a perfect citizen and ultimately the government is a reflection of what we collectively make it so we have no one to criticize but ourselves. Additionally, government needs to serve everyone and there is a large percentage of everyone that is not hyper-connected - or digitally connected at all for that matter. I am also amazed how people view journalism and that it should absolutely be free. We have certainly gotten used to it being free and I am not naive enough to believe the majority of newspapers can start charging but being an informed citizen is a cornerstone to making democracy work - and isn't that valuable enough to support? And goodness knows there is a lot of information that needs to be curated these days. How we do that needs to be figured out - but I believe that it is vitally important to do so.

A large part of being part of a healthy community is reserving judgment, working to understand each other, giving each other the benefit of the doubt, accepting each other as we are, and then trying to work together on the things we can agree on.  That was hard enough as a society when things worked at a slower pace but now that people are overwhelmed with information and things move at lightning speed it is so, so easy to judge quickly. I don't know quite how to solve the problem but one thing that was incredibly useful to me was living abroad as a teenager with a family pretty different from my own. I was surrounded by people who were different and that isolation forced me to understand them rather than thinking that they should understand me. It's useful to experience being in a situation where you are entirely different from everyone else - whether it is politically different, culturally different, technologically different. Try it some time - and don't take your iPhone/Blackberry/etc. with you. It may not be the most comfortable experience but it will make you a better cultural 'listener' and we could use more people like that in the world.