by cv harquail on March 2, 2010
The challenge of being authentic on social media can be scary.
Many organizations are afraid of being ‘on’ social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, where they (or their representatives) are accessible and active in real time. They worry that participating in real time on social media platforms will expose them as unthinking, out of touch or inauthentic.
Organizations worry how to find and translate their ‘corporate voice’ into an interactive human presence.
When organizations take their first steps onto these social media platforms, they consider their various strategies, and how they could be represented by Brandividuals, celebrity CEOs, tweeting teams, or even their corporate brand mascots.
Brand Mascots on Twitter
Compared to the human alternatives, corporate mascots can look quite appealing. Many organizations already have brand mascots that represent their important products and/or their organization. These characters already have name recognition, brand equity, and the ability to trigger an emotional connection with their customer community.
Moreover, these corporate mascots can ’speak’ in a way that reflects the desired image of the brand, since there is no actual person or thing that it (also) needs to represent. As fake as we know they are, corporate mascots can create a very authentic organizational voice.
And, an added benefit is that these corporate characters and brand mascots never do anything embarrassing (like insider trading, or infidelity, or sock puppetry) that might besmirch the corporate brand. Thus, we have the Andrex Puppy, Travelocity’s RoamingGnome, and comparethemarket.com’s meerkat Alexsandr Orlove (pictured at left).
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by cv harquail on January 19, 2010
This headline could be puzzling… What could possible make Work-Life Fit and Enterprise 2.0 relevant to each other? After all, one is a challenge of the modern workplace, and the other is a challenge to the modern workplace.
They come together because both concepts ask us to redesign our organizations.
Although Enterprise 2.0 and Work-Life Fit strategies do not share all of the same goals, the two initiatives are complementary. Both aim to help us manage an ‘always on’ environment, where resources are used efficiently and effectively, in ways that sustain rather than drain an organization’s capacity. But currently, only work-life fit strategies intend to make work life better for us people.
Quick overview: Enterprise 2.0
Enterprise 2.0 is technology-initiated organizational change centered on ‘emergent social software programs’ that facilitate networked communication within and across organizations. Enterprise 2.0 is conventionally and initially a technology-focused strategy, but it can (and should) encompass more.
Like all technological changes, Enterprise 2.0 will shape and be shaped by organizational culture and change. Even if your organization currently uses Enterprise 2.0 software and approaches in limited ways, chances are E2.0 technologies will permeate and reshape your organization and your work life sooner rather than later.
Enterprise 2.0 strategies start with tools to connect employees and make information gathering, sharing and using easier. Among many other benefits, Enterprise 2.0 approaches promise to make work more efficient by removing unnecessary barriers and building in flexibility so that resources move more fluidly to where they are needed, when they are needed. This should mean that better results are achieved with with less wasted effort and less effort overall.
The downside of this technology enabled flexibility reach is that the technology makes it convenient and normal to expect individuals to participate wherever and whenever they are ‘needed’, even when they are not at work. You probably already experience the incremental incursion of work technology into your non-work life.
Quick overview: Work-life Fit
Work-Life Fit is the strategic organizational initiative centered on building organizations that can adapt and respond to the changing needs and commitments of individual employees and members. You’ve been hearing about work-life fit since the dawn of the industrial revolution. You may have heard of it as work-family balance, or duel career dilemmas (highlighting the two most prominent forms of work-life misfit). The problems existed before the entry of women into management, but the increasing numbers of women managers and the feminist movement have worked together to raise our consciousness.
We now understand as we haven’t before how much the structure of our work organizations and the jobs within them precludes prevents us from staying authentic, present, and nourished in our lives outside work.
Put these ideas together
Work-Life Fit is a problem caused by how we design our organizations and the jobs within them. Enterprise 2.0 is a strategy about redesigning our organizations so that we use technology to improve how we work together.
So my recommendation is:
Let’s redesign organizations to maximize the potential of Enterprise 2.0 approaches. Let’s make organizations more networked. Let’s become more collaborative, more innovate and more flexible, in ways that let us find a healthy, authentic fit between work and the rest of life.
Let’s approach Enterprise 2.0 in a way that embraces the needs of the whole employee and the human organization so we no longer work in organizations that squeeze the life out of us.
Is there anything, really, that prevents us from doing both at once?
He squeezed into the hole in the…from Laura Mary on Flickr
I am an organizational identity and reputation scholar with a PhD in leadership & organizations. I research, write, teach and consult with organizations about the relationships between organizational identity, actions, and purpose. See the 
