Sunday 24 June 2007

Social Media and organisational culture

LONDON -- As I type up the notes this weekend, there are a few things that strike me as worth a further, longer conversation.

One in particular is the need to change organisational culture to do this stuff right.

Many of your on the course last week seemed caught up with that. The interesting thing was that some of you seemed to be leaving saying:

"Right. I am off to change the company culture. That way this stuff is sure to succeed."

While others were thinking:

"There's no way our company will change. Better people than me have tried and failed. I had better scale down my ambitions, and try to win friends one at a time."

And I can relate to both.

What worried me is the chance that both sets of people will end up disappointed.

Organisational culture, as a concept, is enough to set the most soft-hearted executive against you. Most people in business tend to find the idea of a company having a culture quite frightening. And on many days I kind of agree with them.

So, how can you talk about it -- and do it -- without alienating people?

Talk about "the way we do things around here."

There are many different ways of looking at company culture. We use an 8-dimensional model. (No, seriously, we do.) But as you are starting out why not focus on three simple things:

1) Your media -- the channels you manage. How can they mirror (not direct) the culture change that you want to achieve?

2) Processes -- the systems and infrastructure that your company uses. One example a colleague brought to the session was the fact that all the social media sites are blocked at their workplace. That's a big message passed on to employees by a system or process. What others do we have?

3) Leadership -- these are the most important 'culture makers'. Not just the CEO, but line managers and mid-level execs. Heck, even the guys and girls in the post-room or the smoking hut. How can they start to do things that show changes to "the way we do things around here"?

Worth a thought.

What do you think?

/df

Saturday 23 June 2007

In the shadow of our workshop

LONDON -- It's early Saturday morning and there has been little activity on the wiki that we set up.

I wondered about that for about a day. And then I realised that the settings were wrong. So try again and see if you can add and subtract ideas. Com'on. Do it!

There was a lot to cover in the two days. I felt like we almost got to all of it.

  • The business case
  • Social media for external and internal comms
  • Social networking sites (including your favourite Second Life)
  • IM (including Twitter)
  • Blogs
  • Podcasts
  • Vblogs (looking good Lee Hopkins)
  • Online video
  • Wikis
  • Adding Social Media to you business strategy

What did you think?

How have the conversations been going back home?

/df