Category: “Social” Orgs & Media
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Communities of Commerce: Where the Marketplace is also the Meaning Place
Networks of people and organizations are usually either “markets” or “communities”. It bothers us that networks fit one or the other model of working together, because we envision something more –something both market and community — in one network. We are often disappointed when markets don’t exhibit a commitment to any values other than maximizing…
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Do Social Technologies help organization members think more holistically?
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…
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Social Business News: Too Many Wrong Messages On Social Media? Try Leadership, Not Control.
In my first contribution to Social Business News, I’m reminding organizations that want to align their social media messages to focus their efforts on leadership. I find it pretty frustrating that so many social media advocates recommend “governance” or “policy” or “control” when an organization finds there are too many voices, not enough voices, or…
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Growing Social: 4 Different Paths to Social Organizations
Organizations can ‘grow social’ through 4 different paths, driven by technology, social business, collective values, and ‘product’ resonance. Two of these paths are more likely than the others to create organizations that are authentically social. Can you guess which two, and why?
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Is Gamification a Cure for Entitlement?
What value is all this talk about gamification? It’s one thing to deploy game-design tactics to turn your for-profit services (like Foursquare or Hashable) into games. By playing games, folks actually will train themselves to use these products. More troubling to me is the idea of using gamification to redesign work tasks. Gamification and Work…
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The “New” Crisis of Meaning?
What’s up with the word “new” in the phrase “meaning is the new motivator”? From all corners of the interwebz conversation about ‘business’, I see mention of this idea that meaning at work is something new, something that we have just begun to desire. Seriously. It seems to come as a surprise, or as a…
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Pay Attention to How Social Media Communities Create ‘the Organization’
Why do so many social business advocates overlook the organizational value of online communities? Too many people dismiss online communities for not being central to the organizations they serve. These critics dismiss communities for being merely social, just another way to chat or swap tips. Even when they acknowledge how communities can be critical for…
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4 Reasons Why Socializing Your Intranet Makes Organizational Change Easier
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…
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Social Organizations from the Inside Out: Start with Your Intranet
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…
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How Social Media Can Help Us Generate Productive Momentum
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…