How do we get and keep more women in technology-related careers?
How do we increase the number of women creators, makers, designers, and coders?

Why not just add more women to the mix, and go from there? 

When all we do is “add women and stir”, without simultaneously and deliberately changing that system, we aren’t going to succeed. This tactic leaves untouched the cultural and structural parts of the system that continue to sustain gender bias.

“Add Women and Stir”

The “add women and stir” tactic works on the logic that simply adding more women to a particular event, school, company, or profession, will ultimately lead to a higher number of women staying on that career path.

We see this tactic at almost every point of the career “pipeline“. Well-meaning people aim to increase the output of the pipeline by increasing the input to the pipeline.

But the data show, over and over, that “add women and stir” doesn’t change the output of the system.

“Add Women and Stir” at Etsy-Hacker School 

The “add women and stir” tactic is the main element of a joint initiative by Hacker School and Etsy to increase the presence of women in the New York tech community.

Hacker School runs a series of three-month “coders retreats” to accelerate participants’ coding skills.  Hacker School’s summer 2012 session, sponsored and housed at Etsy, aims to create a gender-balanced class of 50% men, 50% women.

The initiative has gotten a lot of positive press, since people inside and outside the tech community are excited to see a concrete commitment to addressing gender bias in the world of software making. This initiative should be praised, since the Hacker School- Etsy goal of a coder class evenly split between male and female coders is a win.

But while the Etsy – Hacker School initiative adds more women to a key professional development process, it doesn’t address the systemic issues that ultimately squeeze women out of tech.

However, with a few significant design tweets and a fuller, more articulated commitment to changing gender bias in the system, the Etsy-Hacker School initiative could dramatically expand its impact.

Here’s how:

Why “Add Women and Stir” is Limited

At face value, there is nothing wrong with  efforts to increase the number of women. We’re simply not going to get an equal number of women and men into any particular career, or even keep the same proportion of women at the end as at the beginning, unless we get more women into professional development opportunities like Hacker School.

But increasing the representation of women in software engineering, or anywhere else, doesn’t really depend on changing the number of women hired, trained, and developed. Getting women to be normal, commonplace, and influential in these careers depends on changing the implicit and explicit gender bias in the events, communities, institutions and professions themselves.

It’s not the number of inputs we need to change. It’s the system.

“But if we get more women into the system, won’t the women change it?”

With the add women and stir tactic, some presume that once women get in the door, these women will be able to fight gender bias and change the system themselves.

To some degree, that’s true. There are always women (like the ones I studied my dissertation) who will take on the extra work — and the extra career risk — of advocating to end gender bias and connected discrimination. These women, and men with a similar commitment, will work to change the system from within.*

“But if we get more women into the system, won’t the system change?”

Unfortunately, individual enlightenment doesn’t automatically transform the system.

And, ‘change from within’ and ‘change from below’ are not enough. We need changes in the system, designed and led by people in charge of the system.

Leaders and Program Designers Can Change the Bias in the System

Leaders, and the people who design the classes, the programs, the businesses, and the professional structures that should be without gender bias are the folks with the greatest leverage to make system change.

It’s a leader’s role and a program designer’s role to eliminate gender bias in the behaviors, processes, and systems under their control that reinforce gender bias. Any initiative to increase the number of women in technology needs leaders and designers who will re-code the system.

How can Etsy & Hacker School Design Their Program to Reduce Gender Bias?

Hacker School and Etsy have already made some program design decisions to address bias. For example,

• Having 50% women and 50% men means that there will be enough women in the class that no one woman will be tokenized as the representative woman. The posse approach for adding minority group members goes beyond the Rule of 3 to ensure that there is a variety of types of “women coders” who can each be more of her individual self.

• Offering a $5,000 housing scholarships to women in the program (the program itself is free to participants) addresses the financial challenge that might keep women from participating. While there’s no reason stated that women (and not men) might need scholarships, scholarships might address the effects of a gender-based wage gap.

2. With participants, Etsy and Hacker School could:

• Ask male and female participants whether they are on board with the anti-gender bias agenda
• Ask participants whether they are willing to contribute to changing gender bias, perhaps by opening themselves up to personal change

3. With their own organizations, Etsy and Hacker School could:

• Ask whether they are open to questioning their own practices, norms and outcomes
• Ask whether they are open to adapting their own culture, to design norms, processes (like meetings) and work structures (like project assignments) that confront, reduce or circumvent gender bias

With the program content, Etsy and Hacker School could:

• Add some explicit learning –analysis, reflection, and skill building – to address negative gender dynamics in the coding community
• Address how gender-bias hurts not only female coders, but also male coders and the coding profession

Perhaps the most important program-design questions are:

• What activities will they design into the three month program to create different and better gender dynamics, to create supportive, nonsexist professional relationships among the men and women, and to build a more inclusive culture?

• Will any of these participants leave having become not only better coders but also better advocates for equality?

If Hacker School delivers the very same program for a group that’s 50% women as they have done in the past for groups that were 95% men, we can expect that the very design of the program will have some (unintentional) gendered issues.

You can’t deliver to women a program designed for men and hope that both men and women will benefit equally. That’s like designing a menu for pescatarians and just assuming that everyone will find it satisfying.

5. Geek Feminists and Women In Technology Allies are Ready To Help

 I hope that Hacker School and Etsy will reach out to the women in tech/ geek feminist community  – if they haven’t already – so that they can draw in more resources and more program ideas designed specific to address gender bias in the software-making community.

For example,

–  Organizations like the Ada Initiative make themselves available to do workshops about addressing sexism in the codersphere. And,

– The Geek Feminism wiki has entries on how to help allies (e.g., men) learn to fight gender-bias.

Of course, we understand that neither Hacker School nor Etsy sees itself as an organization primarily dedicated to gender equality in software engineering. The mission of Hacker School is to build a stronger community of open source coders by helping coders grow their skills. And, Etsy’s focus with this initiative is to boost the skills of the New York coding community, and maybe get its hands on some of up-and-coming coding talent.

Still, they both see a way that their own organizations can make a difference. As Marc Hedlund of Etsy explains:

Last September, three out of 96 employees in Engineering and Operations at Etsy were women, and none of them were managers. Talking this over with others here, we thought that Etsy — which supports the businesses of hundreds of thousands of female entrepreneurs through our marketplace, which sells a majority of all items to women, and which already has many talented and amazing women working for the company — should be one of the single easiest Internet companies at which to correct this problem.

Beyond Adding Women, Leaders Must Change the Biased System

Adding more women to the pipeline, especially by including women in professional development processes, will move women in the coding world forward by a few steps. But, this tactic alone will not change the organizational or professional realities these women (and anti-bias men) face. Focusing on inputs to increase outputs just isn’t enough.

• We can only improve women’s career opportunities by improving women’s and men’s career development systems.
• We can only reduce gender bias by changing gender-biased systems in our professions and organizations.
• We can only get more women into tech, and keep talented women and men in tech, by changing the systems that create the tech community.

The Etsy Hacker School initiative to add more women is a positive contribution to change and a sign of commitment from both organizations. It would be even better to see them take the suggestions above, as well as the recommendations of the Women in Tech & Geek Feminist community, to make a bigger and longer lasting contribution by changing systems too.

See also:

An Interview With Etsy and Hacker School About the Etsy Hacker School Grants, at GeekMom

Why Do Meritocracies Hurt Women?
Why Women DON’T Rule the Internet
Want More Women on Tech & TED Panels? Reject Meritocracy and Embrace Curation

*Note: With both of these assumptions, the burden of making change happen falls on the women participants themselves. I shouldn’t need to mention that it’s wrong to make the subordinated group shoulder the bulk of the change advocacy.

Image: Faucet from StuartD42 , Faucet from Joe Shlabotnik, Faucet from Benurs – Learning and learning… Well….WELL
from MadeOnMercury

What level of change do you really want from social business?

Do you want a little bit, or a whole lot?

Do you want process improvement? Or,

Do you want organizational transformation?

Social technology means organizational change.

Social Business and social technologies are indeed bringing changes into your organization. That we know.

But what we don’t know is–what kind of change will ‘social’ bring? What are the people in charge of social technology in your organization looking for?

Social technology can drive different levels of organizational change.

The confusing and sometimes contradictory advice about employing social technology within the organization starts to make more sense, once you separate advocates by the level of change that they seek.

Do the advocates you’re listening to want:

• Level I Change: Incremental, local improvement in a current process (e.g., “social” CRM) in the organization?

• Level 2 Change: Incremental and systemic process improvement, from end to end in a particular value change (e.g., building social back from ‘customer facing’ employees to the internal employees and customer-specific systems)? Or,

• Level 3 Change: Systemic, significant transformation throughout the entire organizational ecosystem? Changing how we think about what we do together, as well changing how we act together?

When we disagree with a social technology advocate or when her or his advice doesn’t ring true, knowing which level of change s/he is looking for can help us identify whether the difference is in the end vision or instead in the tactics. Then, we can figure out if that person’s advice seems helpful and wise.

Choose your level of organizational change

So, before you start evaluating some social business advocate’s advice, first ask yourself:

– What kind of organizational change do we seek?
– What kind of organizational change is this person presuming?

Then, go on to the tactics and ask:

– What’s the best way to get to our goal?
– Can this person’s advice help us get there?

I’m sure that asking that first question — What level of change do they seek? — will help me step back from conversations where what I have to offer isn’t relevant. It will also help me step towards conversations where people are looking for the same level of change as me.

Deploy, build, and use social technology designed for your change goals.

The kind of change I’m seeking, change that creates a truly “social” organization, can only come from Level 3 change.  Level 3 Change involves new technologies, new processes, and new relationships. It requires that we think deliberately not only about ‘adopting technology’, but also about the deep, difficult, meaningful work of organizational change.

Despite the fact that social technologies have built into them more democratic assumptions about how people should communicate, the defaults of these systems can’t drive Level 3 Change alone.

What also has to change is how we think about people, about relationships, about each other, about the role of our organization in its larger community, and about the purpose of the organization itself.

To drive Level 3 Change with social technology, we need more than savvy marketers focused on customer engagement and super-competent CTOs who can integrate data streams and enterprise applications. We need change agents. We need open, trustworthy, generative, courageous, purpose-driven people.

Truth is, although technology-driven change intrigues me on its own, I’m not interested in social technology by itself.  I’m interested in social technology as a way to achieve more human organizations.

So, I’m looking for insights and tactics to help use social technology to

“Build the change we want to see in the world”.

See also:

Growing Social: 4 Different Paths to Social Organization
When will “Social Business” Become “Social Change Business”?
Social Media for Social Change — Inside the Organization?
7 Ways That Social Business Advice is Wrong for Your Organization

If Social Business is the Answer, What Is the Question? by Deb Lavoy

hat tip to @desireeadaway and @socialchgdiva
Image: Blue vintage china tiered tea stand Some rights reserved by highteaforalice

Why doesn’t every piece of cake come with two forks?

There’s no fixed reason why the cake can only come with one fork. But, having only one fork is an obstacle to sharing, even for the most generous of potential dessert-sharers.

Why not bring me a second fork, to make it easy for me to share?

Even better, why not serve every piece of cake with two forks?

Why not make it easy for everyone to make sharing their default behavior?

Design decisions drive our behaviors more than we realize. Design decisions intentionally make some behaviors difficult to do, while making other behaviors easy.  Some behaviors occur by deliberately-designed ‘default’.

And, if we change the defaults, we change our behaviors.

This is true for individuals, and it’s true for organizations.

In organizations, deliberate changes to the defaults in our systems can lead to changes in our collective behaviors.

You know how this works– when your organization requires you to use a photo id to get into your building, people eventually start clipping those id’s on their belts. And soon enough, everyone’s wearing a name-tag. Those name-tags make it easier to refer to a person by name when you strike up a conversation in the elevator.

If we want to help our organizations thrive – to become truly social in ways that engage members in positive interactive behaviors– we need to change our systems of social interaction.

One great place to start is with our digital social networks. Here’s how that might work:

Dash off a list of some of the interpersonal behaviors that would make your organization more social, more positive, if only these behaviors could be increased in number. Think of behaviors like:

• Thanking
• Affirming
• Sharing
• Celebrating
• Listening

Can you imagine ways that you could deliberately design your collective activity streaming, your data requests, your emails, and even your group meeting scheduler so that these activities invited people to thank each other, recognize each other, or share with each other?

This is not such a weird idea. Everyone on Facebook has seen this in action, with birthday greetings.

On Facebook, friends are flooded with online happy wishes on their birthdays. You might even have sent a few birthday wishes yourself. Why does this happen?

That flood of positive behavior doesn’t happen because you care more about that individual than you do about others.

And, that flood of positive behavior certainly doesn’t happen because everyone on Facebook went to some corporate meeting where they were urged to recognize people’s birthdays.

That flood of good wishes happens because Facebook’s systems have a built in reminder on the top right of your page: “Hey, His/Her birthday is tomorrow!”

Similarly, Gmail also has some built- in reminders to be more social. One tool recommends other people who might be added to the address field. Another tool reminds you to upload a document if the body of your email includes the words ‘attach’ or ‘attachment’.

Already, some enterprise-wide social recognition platforms have these positive triggers designed right in, so that they nudge us to change our behaviors towards the positive.

We can design in more positive behaviors, for example by designing  online employee profiles that recommend people to connect with, based on work role, project area, and even personal interests. We can import social platforms like Contactually to invite employees to design into their own email habits some regular invitations to reconnect with email contacts & colleagues.

Added 3/22: Here’s another example, from the new gmail interface Fluent.io => Fluent.io’s  formatting highlights the sender’s visual avatar, to “remind you that there’s an actual human being on the other end of the message, not just some infernal robot trying to waste your time.” A simple design change builds in the [ositive behavior of affirming the person

In each of these examples, positive social behavior isn’t required; it’s merely prompted. But sometimes, all we need is a prompt to share, or a reminder to recognize and celebrate someone’s contribution, to actually take that positive step.

Image how this could work in an organization, if the social tools that everyone uses had positive behavior triggers built right in!

If we change the default behaviors that are built into our social technologies, we can change how people interact across these systems. And, these online changes can even infect our offline behavior, making that more positive too.

Of course, there is a fine line between nudges and requirements. And, there’s a fine line between controlling these nudges ourselves and having the organization’s systems ‘big brother’ us with automatic suggestions.

• But why not start thinking more deliberately about the positive behaviors we want?
• Why not starting thinking more deliberately about the positive behavioral norms that we want to establish?

We’ve already predisposed certain behaviors and reinforced certain norms — less social ones — by designing systems without triggers for sharing, without triggers for remembering, and without triggers for thanking each other.

We’ve got communication systems and work flow systems that give us the equivalent of only one fork. If we want to encourage sharing, we need to design systems that give us that second fork. Or even a third one.

When tools make it easy to share, and defaults make it likely we’ll share, our behavior will become more generous — by design.

That way, we can have our cake, and so can you.

see also:

Images: Bigger than your head Some rights reserved by gregoryperez on Flickr
Two Forks Some rights reserved by mmahaffie

Social Technologies — all those different tools we talk about as ‘social media’ — are creating the opportunity for
a social change trifecta.

Social technologies are making it possible for us to transform how individuals, organizations and economics interact with each other, in ways that can help all three thrive.

Social technologies make rich, complex, widespread, accessible communication possible. That’s exactly the kind of communication we need to really free ourselves of the constraints of previous models of organizing and working together.

We often forget that the constraints we pushing up against now, constraints like disengagement, organizational silos, and competition without cooperation, all result from ‘obstructed’ communication.

When communication is obstructed, people and organizations have unequal access to the knowledge, the allies and the influence they need to make sure they thrive.

Individuals can’t share themselves fully, organizations can’t coordinate effectively, and commercial communities can’t negotiate fairly because we can’t get everyone to the table, get everyone talking, and get everyone listening well enough to act in ways that benefit all.

Social Technologies create the opportunity for change at all three levels of productive participation.

• At the Individual level, social technologies give us tools for self-expression, self-affirmation, voice and agency. They give us places to participate and actual things to do that can make a difference.

• At the Organizational level, social technologies connect us and coordinate us through communication networks and locations. They let us find the information and the colleagues we need, when we need them. They let us share resources so that we work more efficiently, and share ideas so that we work more effectively. They let us collaborate to pursue shared purpose.

• At the Economic level, social technologies help organizations rethink their relationships with their stakeholders. They let organizations align and negotiate with stakeholders across both similarities and differences.

Social technologies make it possible for organizations to connect with other organizations and actors to create communities that surpass the functionality of markets.  These communities of commerce can create new types of economic opportunity for organizations large and small, because they offer different terms for conducting commerce. These communities have the social and technical structures to let us distribute the total value generated by our interdependent work in a way that is more fair.

Social Technologies work because they subvert and circumvent the kinds of power dynamics that organizations depended on when communication was more constrained.

Social Technologies Make Democratic Participation Possible

These technologies can make real the dream of democratic participation by individuals in organizations, of democracy as a guiding process in organizations, and of democratic negation within the economy for a more just distribution of net value.

A bonus opportunity is that social technologies make it possible for changes at any level to stimulate, support and power change at other levels. By design, social technologies integrate individual communication with group communication with stakeholder communication. Shift one level of communication and you nudge them all.

For example, digital collaborative work systems organize colleagues around shared goals and shared purpose while simultaneously making it possible for individuals to contribute to work projects that are personally meaningful. While both collaborative work and individual opportunity for meaningful work have always been potentially linked, social technology tools that routinize collaboration make personal connection the default option, not the occasional benefit.

We need leaders who can see the Trifecta of Possibility

As promising as they are, social technologies create only the possibility of these interacting opportunities for change. Social technologies still require ‘leadership’ from managers and engaged participation by most members before these opportunities can lead to real change.

Before we can really take advantage of social technologies for liberating us as individuals, organizations and economies, we need to recognize that change at one level requires change at all levels.

Social business advocates who talk about how technology can transform organizations also must address:

• How will these same social technologies create opportunity for individuals?

• When social technologies put pressure on an organization’s relationships with other organizations, how can we use this pressure to transform inter-organizational (economic) relationships?

Leaders must think bigger. They can’t just focus on transforming their particular work organization. Leaders must also have a vision of how the individuals who compose the organization will transform, and how the economic communities these organizations participate in should be transformed.

We’ve talked about how making organizations “social” requires leadership as well as technology. But in fact, what social organizations really require is for people — not just managers but all members — to think bigger about the kinds of changes social technologies can support for us.

Social organizations will thrive has members are freed to become more human, and as stakeholder communities are pressed to become more just.

If we choose to be truly visionary, social technology can drive all three forms of change, so that we all thrive.

Must see also:

If Social Business is the Answer, What is the Question? 3 Driving Forces, by Deb Lavoy at CMSWire.com

Factories: The Original Social Businesses by Anne McEwan, Phd The Smart Work Company

When will “Social Business” Become “Social Change Business”?

Image: WinPlaceShow Some rights reserved by Professor of Death

Is there a “best way” for organizations to ‘go social’?

More specifically, is there a best way to ‘grow social’, so that the organization incorporates social tools and processes so that change is generative and authentic?

Because I’ve been critical of arguments for Social Business and felt unengaged by arguments from the world of technology, I’ve been wondering what the alternatives are for advocating that organizations become more social. I’ve identified four arguments for moving towards social organizations.. Each of these paths tells us to adopt enterprise social media to become more social. But, each of these paths serves a different set of purposes and a different world view.

4 Paths to Social Organization

We can get to social organization on 4 basic paths:

            1. Technology
            2. Social Business
            3. Collective Values
            4. “Product” Resonance

Two of these paths get a lot of attention, and two of them are under-appreciated. Can you guess which two will lead to the most positive transformation?

1. Technology

The Technology path is the classic model, where the availability of technology leads to the desirability of that technology which leads to implementing that technology. Social media tools exists, we like them, we are able to add them to our enterprise 2.0 systems and so we do. Besides, they’ll make work more efficient, reduce waste, increase speed, etc.

Technology-driven ‘social’ seems most prominent in the Enterprise 2.0 / Knowledge Management / Collaborations systems conversation. And, the Technology path is usually promoted by IT experts.

2. Social Business

The path with the largest cheering section is the “social business” path. Originating in Customer Relations Management (CRM) and Marketing disciples, the social business path starts with parts of the organization deploying social media as a way to link the customer community and the organization’s outward facing / front line employees.

When marketers realized that it would take more than social listening and a few brandividuals to serve customers’ needs, they advocated that the organization transform into a ‘social business’ to support these externally-oriented programs with internal changes. These internal changes seem to be concentrated in areas where other organization functions (outside of marketing) can serve back information or solutions for customers. (Lateral social connections within the organization are still largely an afterthought, if included at all.) The Social Business path is usually promoted by marketing experts.

3. Collective Values

The Collective Values path is often derided as the ‘kumbaya’ approach. This path is pursued, where organizational leaders realize that enterprise social media can support the values of the organization by facilitating new kinds of coordination, communication and collaboration behavior. Values like “community”, openness, full participation, engagement, and the like can be brought alive through the behaviors that enterprise social media supports.

The Collective Values path is promoted by a diverse assortment of business unit leaders, HR professionals, organizational change agents, management scholars, and organizationally-committed employees.

4. “Product” Resonance

The Product Resonance path is so rare that it doesn’t even have a good name. I’ve thought about it as the “Progressive” path and the “Movement” path, but neither of those names captures the intent that drives organizations down this path. So let me try to explain in a few extra words.

Organizations follow the Product Resonance path when they realize that the product, service or issue that they produce suggests a certain set of values, and they also realize that these product values demand to be demonstrated through more ‘social’ organizational practices.

For example, an organization that sells recycling services might see that the community participation their product advocates and depends on can also be expressed through specifically social work & organizational practices, like community forums to discuss the organization’s next quarter targets.

For another example, a community health collective adopts enterprise social media because the very premise of community, health, and collective demand transparency, openness, and inclusiveness — all values that cam be demonstrated in enterprise social media. The employees of these organizations use social media with each other to practice what they preach.

Motives Matter

The path that any organization takes to go social matters, because each path carries with it the potential downsides of the perspective it comes from — the Tech path can seem un-human, the Social Business path too profit-driven, the Collective Values path too woo-woo, and the Resonance path too uptight about appearances.

Only two paths towards social organization
engage the core of who the organization is and what it stands for.

Only Collective Values and Product Resonance paths
engage the organization’s identity as an engine for growth.

Even though the Resonance path and the Collective Values path both are driven by values, there’s a subtle difference between the two. The Collective Values path is driven by self-reflection, a push for authenticity, or other self-expressive motivations. It gets its momentum from the inside.

In contrast, the Resonance path is driven by the organization reflecting on what its external presentations say, and then using any discrepancies or opportunities to drive organizational change. For this path, the trigger for change is external. The Resonance path would be pursued when an organization make connections between external projections — its sustainability goals, its CSR goals, its products, services, political commitments — and the way it organizes itself.

What is Growing Social really about?

Technology is about being more efficient, Social Business is about being more profitable, but Collective Values and Resonance are about creating and aligning meaning. And, both Collective Values and Resonance are all about changing the organization to benefit people first, with concomitant benefits for products, processes and profits. Finally, both paths will lead to deploying social media to create systems of engagement.

This is what I’ve come up with so far — I’d love to hear what you think about these 4 paths, the distinctions between them, and how they might matter.

See also:

Social Media for Social Change — Inside the Organization?
CSR that Improves the World But Leaves Your Damaging Business Model Intact: Authentic or not?
Is your organization flourishing or withering?

Image:
Resonate Some rights reserved by theloushe, Resonate Some rights reserved by Attrill

You can make the process of becoming a Social Organization a little easier if you start by socializing your intranet. Why? Because the shared, cohering nature of your intranet makes ‘social’ change efforts more comprehensive, more democratic, less scary, and more reinforcing of collective identity.

In my previous post, I argue that we should develop Social Organizations from the Inside Out, starting first with the organization’s intranet. 

Your organization’s intranet is the network of digital systems that reinforce the organization’s structure, processes and culture. Changing these systems to become more social (aka Socializing the Intranet) will help to make the organization’s structure, processes and culture more social.

Socializing your intranet is a great way to introduce significant organizational change, because intranets are broad-based, protected, visible and core to who your organization is.

Plus, these features of your intranet actually make organizational change easier.

Why Socializing Your Intranet Makes Organizational Change Easier

1. Socializing your Intranet demonstrates a company-wide commitment to new social behaviors and systems, making it easier for members to choose to change.

Going social on your intranet demonstrates the organization’s commitment to the global concept of changing how everybody interacts with everybody else.

When an organization integrates social media tools into its existing intranet or when it adopts new social intranet technology, the organization invests both financial and attentional resources.  Rather than focusing this investment on one department or function, the organization invests across the board. It’s not some ‘skunk works’ or ‘demonstration project’, but a full on collective commitment.

 This perceived commitment helps members trust that changing — becoming more social– actually matters to the organization. Thus, organization members will be more likely to put in the effort and take the risks to learn more social systems & behaviors.

2. Socializing your Intranet creates an opportunity for every member to get involved at the same time, making it easier for everyone to learn, share and support each other’s changes.

Intranet-based social innovations create an opportunity for more democratic, more broadly-shared participation in becoming a social organization.

No one department, level or function gets the new tools ‘first’. There is no implicit hierarchy of “who is and who isn’t important to social business”. Instead, social tools are introduced on the common platform, and everyone learns together, from the ground up.

When everyone is involved in the change effort, what any member learns about using the tools is broadly relevant to other members.  Members can support each other as they experiment, and build change momentum across the entire organization.

3. Socializing your Intranet creates a protected space for learning how to be social with each other, making it easier to learn without punishment.

On a social intranet, members can experiment, experience, practice, explore and learn how to be more social as individual contributors and as members of the organization, in a relatively safe environment.

An intranet is a comparatively protected space for interaction — the firewall that keeps the intranet internal makes it nearly impossible for a member’s participation to damage the organization’s relationships with external stakeholders or to damage the organization’s reputation. Members can learn to be social without putting the organization at risk.

And, since much of the activity on a social intranet is organization-related, and not work-task related, members’ participation on intranet social tools won’t be evaluated as part of their work performance. For example, participating in a conversation about possible changes to the cafeteria menu, or HR procedures, or the organization’s new logo won’t be evaluated as part of that member’s “work”.

Conversation on the social intranet can make an organization feel smaller and more cosy, and in that way more welcoming to members’ participation. A social intranet can provide a secure base for individuals and departments who really need to take risks and extend themselves to become more social.

4. Socializing your Intranet creates a rich display and constant reinforcement of “who” your organization is, making it easier to create ‘new’ social behaviors that are authenticity.

A salient, visible, constant sense of your organization’s identity makes it easier for members to figure out how to use social tools in ways that are appropriate and authentic to that particular organization.

Your organization’s collective identity is created, expressed and reinforced through interaction among members. [This interaction can be direct (IRL), psychological (e.g., in the mind) and tech-social (on social media).]

Members’ online interaction with social tools works to translate and express the organization’s identity into the digital form & space of the intranet. In other words, members figure out how to express their organization’s norms, values and character in their digital communication. Doing this on a shared intranet helps members create their organization’s signature ways of expressing values and purpose, “socially”.

Not only is a clear identity important for sustaining authentic interactions internally, it is also a prerequisite for authentic interactions across the organization’s boundary.

Organization members need to be (relatively) secure with “who the organization is” so that they can behave as a reliable and trustworthy social partner to other stakeholders. When the organization is confident and secure in who it is, it doesn’t give up too much of itself in an effort to accommodate and please external stakeholders. And, it behaves consistently and reliably, generating the confidence and trust of stakeholders.

Inside-Out Change Isn’t Easy

I’m not suggesting that going social from the inside out is easy. It is not.

For most organizations, becoming more social will require challenging deeply-held beliefs about the socio-political arrangements of workers, managers and the organization. This means that becoming more social will require a profound cultural shift by your organization and its members.

But, this organizational change towards a more social organization can be made a little easier.

— When the organization demonstrates a commitment to change,
– When all members take small steps together,
– When members learn to change in a relatively safe environment, and
– When the change activity recreates and reinforces the organization’s sense of self,

the whole organization can move forward from its core.

Take advantage of the ways that your central, collective, prosaic intranet can support your members’ move towards more social online interaction.

Become a more social organization by working from the inside-out.

See also:
Making social networking work inside the firewall by @eileenb
The True Nature of a Social Intranet by Oscar Berg on CMSWire
Building a Social Intranet by Toby Ward (@tobyward)
Why your intranet is not strategic by Gerry McGovern

Social Intranet Design and Organizational Identity: Design for functionality and character
Social Media for Social Change — Inside the Organization?
Re-creating Reputation Through Authentic Interaction: Using Social Media to Connect with Individual Stakeholders

Image Lantern  Some rights reserved by HeyNixt

What’s the best strategy for making your organization more social?

Where do you start to transform your systems, so that you can transform your organization?

Many social media experts suggest that you work from the outside-in.

They encourage organizations to start with one function and one stakeholder group, and ‘get social’ by linking CRM (customer relationship management) systems to the organizational groups involved in customer support.

The smarter way to change is for the organization to get social from the inside-out.

Why? Because comprehensive change requires addressing the core of the organization itself.

The core of your organization’s digital systems is your organization’s intranet.

That’s why we should focus on intranets as we strive to make our organizations more social.

The Intranet as Your Organization’s Digital Core

As traditionally designed, intranets are a combination of portals and repositories, functioning in the background of your day to day activity. Your intranet is where all kinds of ‘managed content’ are located. It’s the place you go for reference materials, bulletins, request forms, employee directories and maybe a white label email system.

If your organization has an intranet you probably use it every day, several times a day, without paying much attention to it. Intranets are “stealth applications”, used regularly but pervasively in the background of your work.

If you work in a smaller organization, you might not have an official intranet. Instead you use an intranet proxy to access the resources of your organization. This proxy might be an external email system (like Outlook or Gmail), a file-sharing & collaboration system (like early Sharepoint) or your organization’s website.

A Common Center that Represents “The Organization”

Whether it’s a formal intranet or an intranet proxy, this place where you start your digital work day provides a common organization-focused center for all members. Thus, intranets should be the starting point for any system of organizational engagement.

Even more important, as the digital starting point of your work, the intranet actually represents your organization to you, and to every other member using it.

Intranets are the digital communications systems that cohere and construct organizations.

I know, intranets are old news. Many intranets are boring, underfunded, decoupled from business strategy, and lacking in tech-sex appeal.

Worse, we take intranets for granted, as the “always there”, “always on”, and nearly invisible.

But, because they are the shared backbone of your organization’s digital communication,

Intranets are the digital social scaffolding of the organization’s structure, processes and culture.

If you want to change your customer relationships and your brands to make them social, by all means start with boundary-crossing systems like CRM and work you way inside to support these changes.

But, if you want a more social organization, one that can support engagement among external and internal stakeholders, then you need to address the structure, processes and culture at your organization’s core.

Go social from the inside-out, and start by socializing your intranet.

See also: Social Intranet Design and Organizational Identity: Design for functionality and character

Images: Tiny Apple and Tiny Apple Core, on Flickr Some rights reserved by me and the sysop

The move of social business systems into work organizations exacerbates a tension that’s built into every idea-intensive workplace.

Idea-intensive workplaces ask employees to contribute not just the work of their bodies, but also the work of their minds and their hearts. These workplaces set up a tension between asking people to give of themselves as employees and to give of themselves as persons.

Social business systems, because they are implemented to increase employees’ intellectual and emotional contributions to social business work, rachet up the demand on employees to give of themselves.

Social business systems are designed to extract from employees rather than to contribute to employees’ larger selves.

Social business work systems are social media platforms and architectures brought inside the work organization. They look like and operate much like the social networks we already know– like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and Ning, for example. And, like social networks, they succeed only when individuals invest their selves – their personalities, their emotions, their relational styles, and their personal connections — as they use these networks.

However, compared to social networks, social business systems are designed for a different purpose.

While social networks are built to support and increase our contributions of self into the community, social business systems are built to extract the most from us and from our participation.

Social Systems Support the Experience of Contribution

Socializing and social networks in “real life” (aka outside of work) run on social, personal, personality-driven, personal-interest driven interaction. We interact with people we like and love, around things we care about and find meaningful. We participate in communities because participating gives us a chance to contribute to something meaningful and to people who are important to us, and because participating feels good. We participate because we want to.

Online, social networks and digital communities operate with these same motives. We use these digital tools to support and expand communities we care about, and support and expand our selves as social beings. The dominant verbs in these activities are “giving”, “helping”, and “sharing”. Participating in these social networks adds value to our lives as individuals, families and communities.

Social Business Systems Support the Experience of Extraction

When we’re inside organizations and ‘at work’, the systems we use — intranets, knowledge-management systems, content management systems, enterprise resources systems and other systems of engagement— are designed for a different purpose. These work systems are designed to get us members & employees to do more work— different kinds of work, such as creative work, relational work, and emotional work — but work nonetheless.

Notwithstanding that many of us enjoy our work, have pro-social motivations to do our work well, and may contribute above and beyond expectations because we like to, social business systems assume that we will contribute to them in the same ways that we contribute to our (non-work) social networks. Social business systems depend on the same spirit of giving, helping and sharing that motivate us in our social networks.

Social business systems ask us to use our relationship skills, our friendships, our personal interests, our unique voices, our creativity, our mindshare, and our personality flair, to move work along. This work extracts value from us, like social capital and intellectual capital, that we may or may not be compensated for.  This work that may or may not fulfill us as people, and this work that may or may not contribute to our larger life purpose.

Social Business systems extract value from us as employees.

Can they genuinely add value to us as persons?

Despite raising these dystopic concerns, I’m all for the idea that we should use systems of engagement in organizations to do our collective and individual work more effectively.

What I get hung up on is the idea that social business takes our generosity, our personality, and our loving spirit for granted. I’m concerned that our generosity, our personality and our loving spirit will be extracted from us, to become ‘work’ rather than a freely-made generous contribution to life and the world around us.

I’m concerned that our social, personality and caring efforts will be judged in our performance evaluations (for example, through social scoring), that our generosity will become the property of the organization, and that being a good, full, authentic person will become another way for a company to make some money.

This concern may sound awful to some of you. Like, what is she thinking? Is it really so horrible to “engage” using social business systems?

I felt a similar recoil when I was working at the soap plant, introducing high performance work systems. There, the technicians resisted taking “ownership” for scheduling, team assignments, and quality control.

“Even if you pay us more”, they said, “that’s not responsibility that we want. That’s not where we want to put our energy.”

I recall being shocked— isn’t having more responsibility a good thing? And today, isn’t it a good thing to be more fully human, more relational, more social, and more creative at work?

Yes, but also no. There are current examples that show us how social business systems are too focused on extraction.

Look at the dilemmas faced by organization members who’ve taken the lead on using social media to extend the organization to customers. Through their personality and their relationships, brandividuals generate value for the organization. But, they also find it hard if not impossible to take that part of that value with them when they move into other job roles.

This is not just a white collar, professional issue either. Hourly workers who get involved in extra-role customer service though social media get engaged emotionally and want to contribute. But companies don’t want to pay them for this work.

So the challenge is—

Can we recreate social business systems so that they nurture a spirit of contribution? Can we move away from the conventional experience of extraction?

Can can we structure, convene, facilitate, and use our social networks so that people experience participating not simply as a contribution to the organization, but also as a contribution to their colleagues, their own values, and their own selves?

Possible options

A straightforward way of dealing with the extractive bias of internal social networks might be to build in rewards. I don’t mean superficial things like cute badges and game points, but meaningful rewards like recognition, celebration, and related personal development opportunities. Building in some genuine goodies might balance out the extractive bias of these social work systems.

[ Note, this is the basic assumption of ‘for purpose’ businesses— that our participation in the purpose creates the contribution experience to balance out the extraction experience.]

Another strategy would be to change the basic terms of employee contribution itself, perhaps through changes in the ownership structure of the organization. Systems might feel less extractive if the (economic and other forms of) value they created was shared across contributors in a way that felt commensurate with our increased and diversified contributions.

Which adoption strategy will we choose?

Whenever we adopt a new technology, we have two strategic options. We can choose to fit the technology into the organization to make things more efficient, or we can choose to change the organization using the technology as a catalyst.

I’ve already noted that the corporatized conversation around “Social Business” seems oblivious to concerns about how these digitally-facilitated higher expectations change the psychological contract between persons, organizations, and work. And, I’m very encouraged by the emerging community of thought leaders who are examining our assumptions about ‘social business’ and the broader concept of ‘social work organizations’.

There is an opportunity here to change the world of work and make it better, by using social networks and systems of engagement across organizations.

Right now, though, it seems like nature and motives of social networks will be squeezed to fit into organizations that are themselves designed for extraction.

I would rather see adoption follow a different dynamic. I’d rather help us use the expansively human nature of social networks to push the boundaries of how we think about working together, and to change organizations themselves.

How can we shift the conversation about Social Busineess, so that we use social media and networks to help change our organizations for the better?

See also:

Systems of Engagement: Technology for Social Organizations
Social Media for Social Change — Inside the Organization?
What’s your personal ROI as a Brandividual?
Networks and the Myth that Flatter Organizations are Better

A Vision of the Social Organization, by Rachel Happe

Non-exempt Social Business by Peter Kim

“Systems of engagement.”

Isn’t that an evocative term?

The minute I read it, I knew that the term “systems of engagement” captured something important–but what? I searched the web, I even consulted Quora, but I found no definition of “systems of engagement” that incorporates all that the term evokes for me. So at the end of this post, I’ll propose a definition.

But first let me tell you why the concept of “systems of engagement” is useful.

The term “systems of engagement” evokes complexity, dynamism, a sense of purpose, and a set of values about stakeholder interaction.

As a term:

• “Systems of engagement” includes any kind of tool or medium that focuses on engaging any stakeholder–internal or external.

• “Systems of engagement” encompasses all forms of “social media”, but they aren’t limited to the activity of the organization connecting outward to external stakeholders.

• “Systems of engagement” highlights the complex, recursive, dynamic nature of the tools and the processes that they support. Explicitly, the term takes us away from any notion of broadcasting.

• “Systems of engagement” focuses on the goal, the reason for being, behind these tools & processes: Engagement. These tools are built and used explicitly to facilitate people getting involved in the interpersonal, communicative and creative elements of the work that they do.

“Systems of engagement” invokes a perspective on technology that captures how we need to think differently about technology, when we want to use this technology in a social organization.

“Systems of engagement” is a term that will –I hope– be used to describe all manner of interactive, digital, communication oriented systems, used by organizations, to support engagement among stakeholders.

Where did the term “Systems of Engagement” come from?

Geoffrey Moore coined the term “systems of engagement” (though I cannot find a citation) and contrasted them to “systems of record”. Moore offers a simple definition of systems of engagement, calling them

“social business systems designed to dramatically improve the productivity of middle tier knowledge workers. … (they) enhance the ability of knowledge workers to quickly cooperate with each other in order to improve operating flexibility and customer engagement.”

That definition is a good start, but it really doesn’t embrace all that the term implies, and all that the actual systems mean to an organization.

The term popped into my awareness with the Jan 2011 AIIM report “Systems of Engagement and the Future of Enterprise IT”. It has been discussed somewhat by process management specialist Jacob Ukelson and by CRM/eCommerce specialist Richard Hughes, both of whom bring an IT/Content management perspective to it. Michel Bauwens has created a Wikipedia page for the term. And, JP Rangaswami has elaborated on the concept of Systems of Engagement, especially drawing in some history of the evolution of these sorts of social systems.

But no one, as yet, has directly addressed the organizational, cultural, and leadership issues related to systems of engagement. (Richard Veryard, I’m with you in this concern.)

Consider just this one direction:

When we think about systems of engagement, we are triggered to think about engagement as a concept, and as a process, as it has been understood and facilitated by organization development and change agents since before the dawn of the human relations movement.

We are triggered to remember, for example, that engagement requires a commitment to four organizational principles:

1. widening the circle of involvement
2. connecting people to each other, to ideas, and to emotions
3. creating communities of action
4. embracing democracy

When we think about these underlying principles of engagement, and consider how they need to be built into digital tools to support stakeholder interaction, we explicitly create the bridge from a tech focus (like Enterprise 2.0) to a social focus on individual and organizational flourishing (e.g., social organization, wirearchy).

Let’s Co-Opt the Term “Systems of Engagement”

I want to co-opt this term, popularize it, and promote it in conversations about social media, social business, and social organizations.

“Systems of engagement” reminds us that we need to step beyond customer relationship management– we need to include more than just customers, and to focus on processes in addition to “management”. Even when we talk about constituent relationship management, we’re still talking about a view where the organization controls the medium and controls the engagement for its own purposes–not necessarily for maximizing the value that’s exchanged between and among stakeholders.

When we think of systems of engagement, not just ‘social media inside organizations’, we invite ourselves to think differently, more expansively, and more creatively about what we need to do to support the engagement of all organizational stakeholders.

The term suggests, maybe even reminds us, that these tools are attached to values, norms, and a worldview about users, managers, leaders, and those whom these systems will serve.

As a term, “systems of engagement” solves a problem for us.

The term creates room for our imagination, for us to create additional systems that support and facilitate stakeholder engagement. It also triggers us to think about the organizational context that will support, and use these systems.

Old Wall, New Coat of Paint?

Craig Rhinehart, an enterprise content specialist, believes that “systems of engagement” is really just a clever label for systems we have been using all along, a “proven idea with a fresh coat of paint”.

He’s right, I think, in recognizing that tools such as email and instant messaging were used to facilitate engagement long before “social media” etc. were created. It is a proven idea that engagement needs tech system support.

But we haven’t yet fully explored and explained how systems of engagement are attached to values, norms, and a worldview about users, managers, leaders, and those whom these systems will serve. There is still a lot we can do to understand how a class of systems, engagement systems, can be fit in next to old(er) paradigms of digital technology, and older paradigms of leadership and organizations.

So here’s what I propose:

If the term “systems of engagement” feels useful to you, let’s hear how. Let’s just co-opt the term, and work together to define it. Where do you want to start?

[ Note: I use social organization instead of social business to include nonprofits and other organizational forms as well as businesses.] More links to follow but I’m out of time for now…

images: Complex Beauty – Liatris …from 1Sock The Complex Plane from Garrett Crawford Williamsville Water Mill Complex from johncpiercy

I’m getting a bit weary of talking about “women” and having some people assume that I’m only talking about “women”.

Recognize that when I use the term “women”, I am consciously talking about “women” on the far side of complexity.

The Far Side of Complexity

The “far side of complexity” is one of my favorite concepts. Contrasting “simplicity” with “simplicity on the far side of complexity” helps us recognize how we often use the same word to label two very different understandings of a category, variable, element, or system. And, it helps us recognize how easy it is to assume – wrongly – that someone is being simplistic and not complex in her thinking.

I find this problem of assuming the wrong side of complexity coming up again and again as I participate in online and face-to-face conversations about applying feminism to the business and social world.

Who do you assume “women” are?

Sometimes, when I use the word “women” on this blog, on other blogs, and in conversation, some people assume that I’m referring only to “women” who are white, able bodied, cisgendered, US-based, and upper-middle class. They assume that I am ignoring the racioethnic, class, orientation, ability, and other dimensions of human difference that also compose a sexist system.

Worse, when someone assumes that I’m using the term “women” simplistically, they also assume that I am coming from a blind, unacknowledged, place of unearned social privilege. They assume I am only in the feminist conversation to help myself and women just like me. Then, they pounce on me for being inauthentically feminist, and tell me to stop talking. At which point I want to say, WTF?

Was that feminist?

This dynamic is not just happening to me; I see it happening to other conversants too. But here let me just talk about my own experience. And, let me note that this doesn’t happen often– but when it does happen, it can be profoundly painful.

Presumptions and Assumptions

I expect that this assumption is made because I “present” as (or “look like”) a white, cis-gendered, upper middle class, able bodied woman. A woman with this kind of social & economic profile is just the type of woman who’d supposedly make the categorical mistake of taking her own experience as a woman to be representative of all women’s experience. (Indeed, this type of woman is the kind of woman who historically did make that mistake.)

But, if we assume that a woman, any woman or a woman of a certain type, is automatically sexist in a certain way simply because of the categories she seems to inhabit, that’s actually a form of (anti-feminist) stereotyping. And, it engenders a dynamic that stops feminist conversation and social change in its tracks.

“Gotcha” Feminism

Anti-feminist stereotyping of other women, and the presumption of their lack of feminist enlightenment, inspires a dynamic in feminist conversations that I think of as “gotcha feminism”.

Gotcha feminism is a conversational posture that’s focused on catching someone being wrong and then turning the conversation to focus on her wrongness and her lack of adequate feminist consciousness. It’s a conversational posture that is rarely instructive but always punitive. It is a dynamic that prevents connection, thwarts alliance building, and stops our collective progress.

Gotcha feminism is a ‘holier than thou’ dynamic that aims to tell some women that they are not good enough to participate in the feminist conversation.

“Not feminist enough”

The idea that someone is not feminist enough suggests two other assumptions that inhibit social change. The first assumption is that there are defined levels of feminism -- that there is some progression where you are a better person and more valuable to the conversation if you are somehow further along on your journey.

While there may be different “stages” of feminist consciousness, there is no single path through them that is more valid than other paths.

The second assumption is that everyone is starting from the same place. Each person starts from her or his own place in the world (or standpoint), and branches out from there. Some people will begin their journeys from concerns that aren’t explicitly about gender dynamics and sex-based distinctions. They may frame their social justice understanding in terms of racial injustice, ableism, colonialism, social class, or hetero-”normativity”, just to name a few.

However, it doesn’t matter where you begin, or where you are. It matters that you’ve begun and that you are still on the journey.

If we believe that a feminist perspective is something we learn, we must expect that different people will be at different places in their own authentic journeys.

Commitment, not category, is what matters.

I also notice that the people making this assumption, that a white, able-bodied, cisgendered, upper-middle class woman only thinks of “women” as including people like herself, are more often than not relatively new to their own feminist journey, and are also more likely than not younger than me. No offense intended to my younger, super-aware and firmly committed colleagues — it’s just a correlation, not a cause.

Personally, where the age thing matters is not where you are coming from but instead where you think I’m coming from. Don’t you think that after 40 plus years of identifying as a feminist, I might have learned a thing or two about feminism in general and my own privilege in particular? Or about who “women” are, in all our complexity?

At the very least, if I’m going to be stereotyped by what I look like or how I present, the visible indication of my age should trigger a different assumption about where I might be on my journey of social consciousness.

More importantly, though, is that we take each person’s entry into the conversation as an indication of their interest in – and maybe their commitment to – learning more about making our work, home and world more just.

• Instead of getting ready to pounce, we should be ready to support.
• Instead of being primed to criticize, we should be prepared to learn.

We should encourage everyone who genuinely wants to participate, not act like self-appointed arbiters of who’s good enough to play.

The Feminist Conversation is Changing

At one point in our US feminist history, the idea that “women” should refer to more than one subset of “women” was an ‘aha’ for a large & influential group of active self-identified feminists. These days, though, if you’ve spent any time in the feminist conversation, one of the first things you learn is that “women” is not just some small group of women who are all alike (and all like you or not like you). You get this lesson in Women Studies 101, by week two if not sooner.

I wonder if too many feminist conversants are mired in the past, taking our analysis of the wrongs of “first and second wave” feminism and re-inscribing these dynamics on a different current world. Even before the term “intersectionality” was coined in the late 1980s, the feminist conversation was moving to embrace the complexity of “women” — how women are different and what “women” share.

Now, we should enter our conversations with each other understanding that ‘women’ is a broad, meta-category — a category on a farther side of complexity.

This is not to say that everyone ‘gets it’ and uses the term “women” intentionally to refer to all “women”. And, it is not to say that we no longer need to learn how our own experience is neither universal nor exclusive. But it is to say–

Let’s put the Gotcha Feminism aside. Let’s start from a different place.

Extend a generous interpretation. Wait until some other (feminist) actually demonstrates racism, classism, parochialism, or some other form of blind or claimed privilege before you impute it to her.

There’s simplicity. And there’s simplicity of the far side of complexity.

Let’s stop assuming that “women” is used in a simplistic way. Let’s start giving each other credit for understanding the complexity of the work we are doing together.

“I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the far side of complexity.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

See also: The (Feminist) Business Bloggers’ Lament