Communication, management, and the new world of business on the web
We had an interesting client meeting yesterday where we talked about the evolution of communication and, especially, the impact of social media on organizational structures and leadership. David said that authoritarian structures exist where the communication flow is not good, and our colleague Steve was talking about the military concept of commander’s intent and I mentioned power to the edges and the concept of emergent leadership that Joi Ito and I (et al) had discussed quite a bit when we were working on “Emergent Democracy.”
David noted that, when communications technology enables transparency as it has within the organization, you can’t have an authoritarian structure. David mentioned the Virgin Atlantic Facebook fiasco, about which Oliver Marks at ZDNet says
The public firing of staff around this brought a lot of negative publicity. It’s a great example of the power vacuum that happens in companies that don’t have coherent internal networks. There is a yinyang relationship between a well organized internal network (where the fired flight attendants should have been allowed to whine and grumble, and also been given guidance) and the outward facing social network, where Virgin’s high standards of customer service should apply to promptly commune with customer questions and concerns as well as enjoy the ‘fan’ status conferred on them by members of their group.
What David and I were discussing yesterday is that the communications environment we have today makes a different style of management, not just optional, but necessary. Ignore this at your peril. We believe that all business is moving onto the web, and helping businesses facilitate that change is our mission.
This morning David sent me a Buzzstream post by Paul May, “More Proof of the Small Business Social Media Advantage.” He talks about a guy who “tried to engage with his customers and was cut off at his knees by management,” referring to posts here and here on the subject by Chris Brogan. May says, and we agree, that “we’re in the middle of the single biggest shift in marketing since the advent of television,” but we would point out that it’s way beyond marketing – everything about the way we do business is changing. He also says that “few big companies are going to really embrace this in the near term.” Again, we agree, and that’s why we work with small to medium companies and nonprofits. Not only will “The Enterprise” be slow to adopt, it may very well fail to thrive in this new world.
Thanks for the mention. Your point that the shift I mentioned in my post goes way beyond marketing is spot on. Because our business is focused on word-of-mouth marketing, we tend to focus on that first. However, in the bigger picture view, we view social media as underlying infrastructure that supports communication and decision making across every discipline in the organization. Jason Falls at Social Media Explorer has two good case studies demonstrating how this plays out for a couple of small businesses. Here’s the link:
http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/2008/10/13/social-media-for-small-business/
Thanks for the link, Paul. We’re totally in sync about social media as infrastructure. Knowledge-creating social media for the new economy is like industrial tooling was for the old economy.
I hope you will believe me when I say that I very very rarely a link to something I have written in someone’s blog-comments section, but your assertion “What David and I were discussing yesterday is that the communications environment we have today makes a different style of management, not just optional, but necessary. Ignore this at your peril. We believe that all business is moving onto the web” moved me to do so.
I have been paying attention to the growing impact of the hyperlinked digital infrastructure on organisational structures and dynamics for some time now, and wrote this for the FASTForward blog just about a year ago.
“Will Enterprise 2.0 Drive Management Innovation ?”