While it’s true that I’m an unabashed advocate for social technologies as tools for transforming organizations, there are lots of reasons why we’d want social technologies in our workplaces and ‘together places’. Social technologies help increase engagement and make organizational democracy easier — just to name the top two reasons.

But the biggest reason to like social technologies? They can help us keep the big picture in mind, even as we pursue our own local goals and tasks.

My personal favorite bit of social technology is the social intranet– a socially enabled organizational commons, where people can find the resources they need to get their work done. I like social intranets because they help build community and connection from the organization’s core, allowing everyone (not just a few early adopting departments) to get a taste of active connecting to the community.

From a social psychological perspective, there’s a lot about a social intranet that facilitates collective behavior. The social commons that is the intranet helps us keep our eyes on the community’s purpose, helps us see progress being made, helps us see our contribution to the whole, and give us a useful and relevant place to add our voice.

Social technologies do this ‘instrumentally’, in that they have features designed to accomplish these goals, and they do this psychologically, by triggering cognitive and emotional responses that in turn nudge collectively-oriented behavior.

Psychological Mechanisms Triggered by Social Intranets

We attribute a large part of the shift to collectively-oriented behavior to a prominent social psychological mechanism — social identity.

When individuals are made aware of the larger organization– say, by seeing the larger entity represented on their social intranet screen in the form of logos, icons, and visuals — their identity as a member of that larger entity becomes more salient, leads them to think first of themselves as a member, leads them to think that their interests and the organization’s interests are the same, and leads them to act in the organization’s interest. Voila, triggering social identity triggers collectively-oriented behavior.

An odd bit of research suggests another subtle but valuable way that a social intranet can lead to collectively-oriented behavior by shifting individuals to be biased towards “global processing” instead of “local processing”.

[Global processing bias is usually a good thing in groups. It's assumed to reflect a more open mind, and to be somewhat more conducive to creativity. ]

This new research suggests that individuals can be nudged to think more of the whole than of the details, if they are exposed to an ‘urban’ environment. An urban environment is more populated, more full, more active, and more energized.

So here’s the conceptual leap:

If the social technologies we use in the workplace function as our ‘environment’, an “urban” technological environment could trigger individuals to think more holistically. It could trigger us to focus on the big picture, and to think first of the global issues over specific details.

I know, this is a superbly nerdy post. But don’t you think the concept is intriguing?

The cognitive mechanism for triggering a global bias is shorter than the mechanisms of social identity. And, it bypasses the self-concept (always so complex), and just works on shifting cognitive perspective. Shorter doesn’t mean better, but sometimes more automatic processes are so subtle we miss them.

It’s intriguing to think of the myriad of ways that our technology influences our most ‘automatic’ psychological processes. If we are looking to ‘sell’ the value of social technologies in the workplace, or even better to tweak them until they bias us towards ‘good’ and not just ‘different’, we need to keep wondering how they are working to shift the ways we think.

Notes:
Hat tip to the Research Digest of the British Psychological Association: Do urban environments trigger a mindset that’s focused on the bigger picture?

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

Social Media systems inside organizations should not be designed just to support tasks.  Social business systems should also be designed to support the emotional elements of interpersonal relationships, since these build momentum by helping us feel more meaningful and valuable as we work together.

Often, people assume that digital social systems inside organizations should help us move specific, particular tasks forward. “If these systems help us edit documents, send updates, check information, and find resources,” we think, “they’ll help us get work done better and faster. But if these systems make the social, emotional, personal/collective experience of doing those tasks more pleasant, that’s a side benefit. It’s not critical.”

That view couldn’t be more wrong.

Our social business systems should help us capture and share positive socio-emotional feelings related to doing work tasks, since these emotions are critical for generating productive momentum.

Generating Productive Momentum

I just cracked open a new book, The Progress Principle: Using small wins to ignite joy, engagement, and creativity at work, by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer. The Progress Principle gives us a different way to identify what generates productive momentum and to make sure we’re designing systems that support all the elements that matter to productivity.

According to The Progress Principle, there are two forces that make productive momentum possible: “catalysts” and “nourishers”.

(I wish their labels sounded more like actions or tools and less like personality types, but I’ll stick with their labels for now.)

“Catalysts” are actions that directly support the work on the project. Catalysts include firm goals, operational autonomy, action steps, access to resources, and clear progress indicators. These features are usually built right into knowledge management, enterprise, and collaboration software. They’re what many people imagine when they think of digital work systems.

“Nourishers” are interpersonal communications that share feelings and reflect the qualities of our work relationships. Nourishers lift our spirits, encourage us, and support us socially & emotionally as we work. Amabile and Kramer highlight nourishers like demonstrating respect, offering encouragement, offering emotional support, and developing a sense of affiliation. Actions that affirm identity, link activity to purpose, and offer chances to contribute from one’s unique knowledge set also nourish momentum.

Social Media systems of engagement can support both catalysts and nourishers.

Catalysts: Social media systems help us generate productive momentum simply by making work easier to do. In addition to helping us do the actual work, social media helps us see the progress of our work, by surfacing, recording, tracking and aggregating the actions that move the tasks along.

Nourishers: Social media systems can also help us generate productive momentum by supporting the social & emotional experiences that keep us engaged in our work. Features that support our day-to-day relational work, and features that allow us to share our moods, remind us to send thanks, prompt us to broadcast accolades, and maintain an ambient feeling of being ‘with’ others working digitally alongside us, can support and sustain positive relationship experiences.

Tools that help us surface, recognize, savor and celebrate positive interactions generate momentum by making work personally and collectively meaningful.

Catalysts are productivity generators that software designers, IT managers, and project managers are most likely to pay attention to. But nourishers are productivity generators that leaders pay attention to.

Leaders who want to generate momentum:

• When you think about the systems you are building for your organizations, are you supporting not only catalyzing actions but also nourishing actions?

• Are you paying attention to how your tools could provide socio-emotional support that builds individual and group momentum?

• Are you helping to learn and to teach others how to use the tools you have to convey both task information and positive social information?

For individuals and collectives actually to be productive, both the tasks and the positive social experience of doing these tasks must be supported. Social media systems should be designed so that we have tools to capture, record, and convey when we experience ourselves, our colleagues, and our work activities in positive ways.

Thanks to Terri Griffith for the head’s up about The Progress Principle.

See also:
How Social Media Reveals Invisible Work
Rearranging Chairs as an Act of Leadership

What will it really take to get organizations to adopt social media tools inside the enterprise?

Mere numbers won’t compel us, so don’t count on ROI. The shiny object syndrome won’t hold our attention, so back off with the bells and whistles. And, please, don’t work on us with peer pressure. We’re above trying to keep up with the herd.

Want to drive social tool adoption? Give us a compelling use case. Even better,

Give us a Killer App.

Needs drive successful technology adoption.

No technology gets adopted unless we think we need it. The more obviously a tool helps us solve a pressing business/organizational issue, the more enthusiastically we’ll adopt the tool. Consider, for example, how enthusiastically social listening technologies have been adopted by organizations who are uptight about managing their public reputations.

But what’s even better than a specific, pressing business need for driving adoption is a “killer app”.  A killer app is an “irrevocable marriage between a technology and its application“. It’s that one, great, thing that we never really imagined we’d be able to do, and so we can’t resist it when the technology appears that helps us do it.

Show us how social media can help us achieve our collective purpose, and you’ll show us the Killer App.

Purpose as the Killer App

Every organization has a purpose. Every organization needs its purpose, to simply exist.

Even when an organization’s purpose is unclear, under-communicated, or misunderstood, an organization drives towards its purpose. Because our need for purpose is so great, we long for tools that might help us clarify, communicate and understand our collective purpose.

In addition to communicating our purpose, we also want to move towards it. Tangibly, deliberately, assuredly.

Thus, we long for tools that will propel us towards our collective purpose, that will make achieving our purpose easier and more likely.  As soon as someone can explain clearly and comprehensively how enterprise social media can support our collective purpose, we’ll be driven – impelled even — to adopt social media throughout our organizations.

Why Purpose is Important

An organization’s purpose is the inspirational, non-instrumental glue that binds us to an organization and to each other in that organization. As Simon Sinek describes it, shared purpose is what inspires us to to work with each other and to give of ourselves to the (organizational) collective.

Yesterday morning, I had the chance to hear Simon describe the role of purpose for individuals and organizations.  Simon’s book “Start With Why” is a ‘must read’, because of  the way that Simon has taken the ancient and evergreen wisdom about the role of purpose and shaped it with a simple, relevant, and compelling framework.

His admonition, “Start With Why” makes it easy for folks to see again why purpose is so critical to an organization’s success.

Linking Purpose and Social Media

Simon’s talk was sponsored by Open Text, a social collaboration software vendor. [From what I can see from the outside,] Open Text is aiming to distinguish itself from other social collaboration software vendors by addressing the question of “Why” social collaboration tools matter.

Deb Lavoy and her team at Open Text are trying to excavate the link between purpose and internal social media. Of course, they’d like to sell more social collaboration systems (they are a software vendor after all). But Lavoy and her team have a more comprehensive goal– they want to influence the big picture of how we think about social media and why it’s useful.

What I like about Open Text’s approach is not (just) the marketing savvy that it suggests, but rather that they are elevating the conversation about adoption by focusing us on some profound and basic organizational wisdom.

[Note: Image is from Open Text]

Lavoy and her team are organizing a series of presentations across the US that will feature speakers who, from one direction or another, are working to link social media technology, collaboration, and organizational purpose.

(You can find the schedule for the Open Text Social Workplace series, and sign up to attend a (free) talk, at their website.)

Each of these presentations should help us understand, bit by bit, how social media can make a difference in organizations.

How exactly does Social Media support Purpose?

Why should your organization adopt social collaboration tools? Because these tools will help your group, team, and organization achieve your collective purpose.

How exactly will that happen? We’re starting to figure that out. And honestly, we haven’t gotten very far.

Building the case that purpose is amplified, strengthened and supported in unique ways by social media will take many small insights. Insights, for example, like recognizing that

(1) any time a user explains a task, goal or tool online,
(2) s/he creates new meaning
(3) that can be captured, aggregated and shared by social media, and
(4) thus added to the organization’s active store of self-interpretation.

Yeah, I know that’s kind of complicated, but it is also real.

This micro-creation of meaning is one of many ways that social media-mediated activity is helping us see and support purpose-oriented behavior.

If we know anything about successful technology adoption, it is that a compelling use case really matters.

If there is no direct promise that a tool will add value, people will resist learning how to use it.  They won’t figure out how to integrate the tools into their work flow, and they’ll fail to experience even the basic benefits of the tool. Instead, they’ll use social tools like your granddad uses AOL — with the dial-up modem, and with all the frustration, constraint and resistance that entails.

Why should we let social media tools die that death, when they could instead be used to help organizations flourish?

Building the Case for Social Media-Supported Purpose

Because every organization and organization member longs for collective meaning and purpose, I believe that organizational purpose could be the killer app for enterprise social media.

I want to see social media adopted as part of a larger strategy of engagement in purpose, and not just for reasons of task efficiency and collaboration effectiveness.

Along with Deb Lavoy, Anne Marie McEwan, and many others, we’ll chip away at it until we excavate the links between social technology and organizational purpose. Together, we’ll build the super-powered use case that is organizational purpose.

In the meantime, we’ll all continue the conversation about “being more social” inside the organization. While we continue to recognize and reinforce how social media tools support tasks, we’ll need to learn to recognize how social media tools support meaning.

The more we (re)learn about how social media helps us be more human and helps our organizations be more people-centric, the more we’ll learn about how social media can support collective purpose.  And, the more we embrace the idea that it’s purpose and not effectiveness that makes organizations sustainably successful, the more we’ll learn about how to clarify purpose and how to understand our local work tasks as part of a larger, meaningful, collective project.

Instead of being bass-ackwards, and adapting the organization to be “more social” in response to the new tools, let’s use the new tools to build the bigger picture for each other.

Let’s use the tools to amplify and accelerate our purpose-oriented interactions, so that our work together is more meaningful.

See also:
The Pursuit of (Organizational) Purpose by Deb Lavoy

How Social Media Create Organizational Meaning
How to Design Social Business Systems For Engaged, Social Organizations

Enterprise Collaboration Adoption Strategies – 10 Key Steps and Best Practices by Karthik Chakkarapan

Technology has a way of sucking the humanity right out of us.

Consider how we describe, design and deploy ‘enterprise 2.0′ and work system technologies in our organizations:

– When we talk about technology systems, we talk about machines, platforms, inputs and outputs.  We forget about values, emotion, flourishing, meaning and purpose.

– When we design technology systems, we think about control, architecture, scripts, modularity, and proxies. We forget about comfort, warmth, touch, and beauty.

– When we use technology, we automate, codify, record and retrieve. We forget about expressing, feeling, creating, and giving.

Too many work technologies are systems of extraction.

We keep upgrading to technology systems that extract more work from us, while giving back less and less to us.

So who can blame us if we’re not all enthusiastic about Enterprise 2.0 and Social Business initiatives? Once the shine wears off the new tools, we’re left wondering — What’s in this for me? What’s in this for you? What’s in this for us?

You’ve heard me say before that the Enterprise 2.0- digital- social- business- system- industry-complex seems to be running on the wrong rails. Too many technology products are designed, positioned, and ‘sold’ to us as ways to streamline and enhance collective tasks so that we improve bottom line business results.

There’s nothing wrong with that goal, except that it’s so narrow, so limiting, and so shareholder-centered. It’s just not about being human.

We need to talk about how digital social media enterprise business systems can help us, the users, be more of who we are individually and together.

We need to figure out how to transform these systems of extraction these digital-social-media-enterprise-business systems into systems of engagement. We need to build technology systems that help us to be more fully social human as we work together.

5 Needs for Full, Social, Human-ness

When we human people work with other human people, there are five human needs that have to be met in order for us to be our full social selves.

These are our needs for:

1. Identity
2. Voice
3. Agency
4. Community
5. Purpose

Currently, in too many organizations, we are controlled, constrained, muted, forbidden, or discouraged from being fully human, because the work systems  make it hard for us to meet these 5 needs.

However, as work systems for enterprise coordination, knowledge management, work process flow, and customer relationship management become more social, they are also creating new opportunities for us to be more human while we work together.

5 Ways That Systems of Engagement Bring Out Our Full Social Selves

1. Systems of Engagement Enable Identity

We humans want to be who we are. We want to bring our full selves to work and into our interactions with colleagues, while we are are making and doing things. When we are able to be who we are in specific, descriptive, textured, multiple ways, we can be ‘more fully there’ at work.

Systems of engagement let us define who we are, help us be seen for who we are, and help us be known for who we are allow us to contribute our full selves. They help us connect who we are, what we have to offer, and what needs to be done, helping us find and create personal meaning.

2. Systems of Engagement Foster Voice

Voice is our ability to say in our own way what we think needs to be said and to be heard when we say it. Voice is the full expression of who we are, what we think, and how we feel. When we have voice, we are able to offer ideas, share insights, and offer feedback.

Systems of engagement create ways for us to speak, to spread our words, to be heard by others, and to be listened to by others. They allow us to use our voice to collaborate and to contribute.

3. Systems of Engagement Activate Agency

Agency is our ability to act, to get things done, and to cause things to happen. Agency is our ability to make choices and to enact those choices. When we have agency we are makers, doers, creators, innovators. We get stuff done.

Systems of engagement create opportunities for agency because they give us more places in which we can act. Systems of engagement also give us the autonomy, responsibility and accountability that agency requires. We are able to decide, to engage, and to act.

4. Systems of Engagement Cohere Communities

Communities are our connections with other people — not just dyadic connections, but also networked connections. We yearn to be connected with people who know us, who like us, and who need us. When we have  a community, we have a slew of direct and indirect relationships in which we can be supportive, helpful, and influential. We matter to others.

Systems of engagement help us find the people we need and who need us. These systems help us create and sustain connections through which we and others form collectives, collectives that have capability beyond the sum of members’ individual ability.

5. Systems of Engagement Catalyze Purpose

Purpose is our reason for being. Purpose is the cause outside ourselves that focuses our contributions to our community. When we have a purpose we can have commitment, vision, motivation, collaboration, and accomplishment. Our (work) lives have meaning.

Systems of engagement help us channel our attention and our efforts towards our purpose. They link us and our work to important tasks, and link our individual work to the work of others. They accumulate, organize, synthesize, and amplify our individual and collective efforts to help us achieve our purpose.

Identity, Voice, Agency, Community, and Purpose are not focus of social media technologies in organizations, but they should be.

Systems of engagement can certainly help us meet business needs. And they can do so much more. Systems of engagement can help us transform how we work together, by enabling identity, fostering voice, activating agency, cohering communities and catalyzing purpose so that we meet our human needs as much if not more than business needs.

We don’t need “social business” technology to suck less of the humanity out of us.

We need technology-enabled social systems that invite us to engage our full selves in our work together.

We need systems of engagement.

How do we create systems of engagement that bring out our full selves?
See my related post: How to Design Social Business Systems For Engaged, Social Organizations

See also:

Social Organizations Care About Personal Development by Jamie Notter, SocialFish

How Social Media Create Organizational Meaning
Your Authentic Social Network: The Identity Graph
Make Distinctiveness Matter by Linking It To Organizational Purpose
Images from Flickr:
Blue from bartb_pt
Machine à répandre la chimie… from ‘ m x b c h r
Blue Network from ringwell

I bet you don’t think it does.

I bet you think that your social media policy, and your ‘create a blog for our business using other people’s user-generated content’- approach, is impervious to racism masked as business advice, as research findings, or as interesting content.

I bet that’s exactly what PsychologyToday.com thought, too.

They’ve got a stable of bloggers, most of them PhD psychologists and social psychologists, who supposedly are “qualified” to write for their site. These scientists generate content for them, so that PsychologyToday.com can draw traffic and sell advertising space.

But not all of these scientists practice a high quality of “science”. And one of these scientists, already notorious for the social bias in his “research” “findings”, recently published a post that was decidedly not scientific.

Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist who styles himself as “The Scientific Fundamentalist” published a post entitled “Why Are Black Women Rated Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?

This content was decidedly “off brand” for Psychology Today. It was a clear display of racism, masquerading as science.

Readers were offended, and the post was taken down by PsychololgyToday.com’s editors — but not until after a lot of damage was done.

Damaged were Psychology Today’s reputation, the reputations of PsychologyToday.com ‘s other contributors, the trust of PsychologyToday.com readers, and the support of social media influences who drive traffic to PsychologyToday.com.

Damaged were the Black community, people of color and white people who are working against racism.

Also damaged were the Black women whose beauty and social value was “scientifically” deemed inadequate.

Indeed, it’s hard to see that anyone benefited from PsychologyToday.com’s social media policy.

Except, of course, racists.

But PsychologyToday.com has some form of social media policy –

Someone over at PsychologyToday.com organized the post contribution system, where bloggers get access to PsychologyToday’s audience in exchange for publishing their individual content. Someone set up the digitized and interpersonal processes for gathering and vetting contributors. Someone permitted this particular “scientist “, a scientist with a suspect reputation, to publish his posts on PsychologyToday.com.

Someone did all of this without the help of a fully-considered social media policy.

Do you have a “someone” at your organization who’s in charge of putting content on your blogs? On your Facebook page? In your online community? On Twitter?

Does this “someone” use guidelines that specify who your business or organization brand is, what it believes in, and how it should be represented through this content? Does this someone have programs to teach contributors to uphold your standards?

Does your social media policy let contributors and your community know what you stand for, and what you won’t stand for?

Action Step: Sign this petition at Change.org Psychology Today: Stop Publishing Racist & Sexist Articles
The petition’s focus:

We demand that the Psychology Today editorial board publicly account for how and why this racist and sexist article was allowed to be published on the Psychology Today website, and take transparent steps to prevent this from happening in the future.

For great insights on the original article and reactions to it, see:

Why Black Women Rock! My Thoughts That Crazy Psychology Today Article By Dr. Phoenyx Austin on Curlynikki.com
A ‘Wow. Just. Wow’ article: ‘Why Are Black Women Rated Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women? by Pam Spaulding at PamsHouseBlend
Beauty May Be In Eye of Beholder But Eyes See What Culture Socializes by Mikhail Lyubansky, Ph.D. at PsychologyToday.com

Voices: The Satoshi Kanazawa Study & Repeat Offender: Satoshi Kanazawa’s Other Greatest Misses by Arturo R. Garcia at Racialicious

See also:

What Authenticity? Design Homophobia Out of the Organization

“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

Why does your organization exist?

• Was it created to meet the needs of some (external) community, constituency, or market segment? Or,

• Was it created to employ, utilize and engage your collective abilities?

Did your organization emerge because of “who you could be together” or because of what someone else needed some organization to be?

A Pair of Raisons d’Etre

In the best of situations, your organization’s raison d’etre should include both what you have and what they need. Your organization should exist because someone has a need that you collectively can fill, because of who you uniquely are.

Ideally, you want your organization to be able to link “who you are” with the needs being fulfilled, so that what you do together draws on your organization’s strengths and engages its full energy.

Driven by Uniqueness

Some organizations focus on what they have to offer and what makes them unique. They build significant strength and specific capacities, but they turn a deaf ear to the tune of the marketplace. They are out of step, and find that what they have to offer is irrelevant.

Driven by Market

More often, though, organizations are born purely out of a focus on meeting some customers’ needs. Someone sees a market opportunity and creates an organization to seize and serve that opportunity.

There’s nothing wrong with seizing a market opportunity. But in too many cases, the organization is built with people who have certain skill sets (especially, technical skills) but without a sense of clarity around what else the people in the organizations have to offer (individually and collectively). The overall combination of skills, people, design, and perspective end up being ill-suited to what needs to be done.

The organization needs to do more than just to meet the current market need; it also has to serve the market or the constituency over the longer term, with empathy, insight, and innovation. When an organization cannot draw on its own resources to stay in touch with or anticipate constituents’ needs, they can neither grow with nor lead their stakeholders.

Worse, when organizations dance to the tune of some marketplace, they can step too far away from their indigenous ability. They end up contorting themselves to be something that ‘the market’ wants, estranging themselves from what gives the organization coherence and meaning.

Without coupling who you are with what they need, your organization is either incapable or irrelevant.

Each situation is a bummer, and each is avoidable.

Balancing Your Reasons for Being

Look inside.

When I talk with organizations who are focussing too much on ‘marketing’, ‘branding’, and reputation, I encourage them to step back and clarify who they are deep inside, and to claim what makes them unique. Then, we can work on how to link this uniqueness with a market need so that the organization can create real value.

Look outside.

And, when I work with organizations that are all about themselves- how great they are, what a legacy they have, how terrific and appealing their brand is (to them) — I encourage them to consider why this matters, and to whom. I ask them to explore where this uniqueness can make a difference in the world, so that they can use who they are to extend themselves towards a client need in the way that no other organization can.

When an organization can draw on its own unique ability, to serve a real need, the organization and its members find that their work is both meaningful and sustainable. And, when the needs of clients, markets or constituents are served by an organization that is uniquely capable, the ways these needs are met is more skillful, more clever, and more lasting.

Connecting the market need with the organization’s uniqueness is what creates real value — for all stakeholders.

See also:

Is Authenticity the key to being “Meaningfully Different”?
Beyond Positioning: Establishing Authentic Optimal Distinctiveness
Can an organization be too different?: The Strategic Value of Optimal Distinctiveness

Images from Flickr:
Dancing Joey from FlyNutAA
Dancing! from JeanninePC99

The 2011 TED conference begins Tuesday in Long Beach CA. Of the 55 folks who will present “Ideas worth Spreading”, 15 of these speakers will be women.

That’s a whopping 27%… no improvement over previous years, and nowhere near gender parity.

To celebrate the 15 Women who will take the TED stage, and to encourage TED to #ChangeTheRatio so that a full half of TED presenters are women, I’m spending this week with the team at SheShouldTalkAtTED, advocating for #morevoices and gender parity on the TED stage.

Join us on Facebook, Twitter, the blogosphere, and in conversation, and in action.

What you can do:

• SHE Should Talk At TED: 5 Ways to Get Started

• Separate Still Isn’t Equal: Sexism among TED Conferences (at The Huffington Post)

• TEDWomen: Brilliant or Belittling?
  by Michelle Tripp at BrandForward

• Followup on the TEDWomen Conversation

• IS TEDWomen Sexist? Use the “Group Replacement Test” and tell us what you think

• Want More Women on Tech & TED Panels? Reject Meritocracy and Embrace Curation

• The Goal is Gender Parity — at TED and Beyond

• Advocating for Inclusion: A roundup of ideas from post-TEDx636 roundtable

• 15 Trailblazers Take The Stage (A Feminist’s Guide To TED 2011
  by Susan Mccaulay at Amazing Women Rock

• Building on TED & the TEDWomen Conference:
  How can _we_ make conferences more inclusive spaces?

• TEDWomen: Proving That Gender Does Not Determine Great Ideas
  By Linda Tarr-Whelen, at The Huffington Post