Getting buy-in from senior management from John Failla of Eze Castle Integrations

How difficult/easy was it to get buy-in from senior management to use social media?

Introducing social media in any organization is a change management initiative, and must be part of a change management process. Any change in process within an organization must:
a) fit into the general growth strategy, and;
b) have senior management buy-in.
Any organization will have plenty of social media users, but it has been my experience that these users are usually the rank-and-file and middle management. The exceptions being of a few Social Corp pioneers such as Tony Hsieh (CEO of Zappos), Michael Dell (CEO of Dell), IBM, Sun Microsystems, Proctor and Gamble, etc., most of the senior management team is somewhat removed from the social media movement. Getting their buy-in in social media is the same as getting their buy-in with any change management initiative.

The first step is to go through some basic education with your senior management team and get them to understand the “W” questions (who, what, where, when, and why). Supplying the benefits along with a little education will go a long way in gaining their support. Fortunately, the company I’m working for now is accepting and opened to the social media trend, but I have not always been that lucky. There are many organizations out there, for one reason or another, are concerned about their employees misrepresenting their message, brands and products. For those who are experiencing this challenge, it is important to leverage proof (just Google: “Unhappy employees/customers + social media and you’ll have plenty of evidence) that there is little to do to suppress a misrepresentation from employees (and customers too).

Incorporating a social media culture within an organization is about trust and transparency. Relationships between your company and your customers, senior management and employees, and the industry you are operating in and the rest of the world. If trust and transparency are a big issue with your organization, getting buy-in from senior management might be a real challenge if not impossible. So, when you are having lots of difficulty with senior management buy-in, you might want to focus on taking some risk and ask for forgiveness instead of permission.

Here are a few of the benefits that I have used with some of my senior management discussions/presentations:

1. Unfettered access to all types of information – consumer/client buying habits, brand recognition, ‘what’s the competition doing’, (product) support issues, etc.
2. A renewed awareness of the company brand and its perception – Can you think of anything better than a continuous discussion on the brand?
3. 360° Engagement with every aspect of the organization – clients, employees, vendors, partners, etc.
4. Collaboration – online message boards, wikis, microblogging, etc. These are a wonderful way to enhance all collaboration efforts. An excellent example of this is Dell’s IdeaStorm, (http://www.ideastorm.com/) which enables Dell to gauge which ideas are most important and relevant to their customers and the general public.
5. Better control over the company’s marketing message.
6. Internally, social media tools can leverage status information, training, best practices and other silo-eliminating benefits.
7. Promote a thought leadership position within your industry.

Getting buy-in from your senior management on using Social Media, should be addressed like any other change management initiative. Briefly educate your company leaders, show them the benefits with tangible and intangible ROI and articulate the risks. By following this model, you will be able to generate interest and hopefully a healthy dialogue with your senior management team about embracing the social media culture.

See John speak at http://www.iqpc.com/Event.aspx?id=178794

How employees are responding to social media in the workplace

We asked Avi Singer, Director of OD for Undertone Networks, his thoughts on how employees are responding to social media in the workplace?

Well, this may be result of the the fact that I have worked in organizations with a relatively young employee base, but I find that the employees I work with love the use of social media in the workplace. Innovation is something that they have grown up with and appreciate the fact that their work tools mimic the tools they use in their own social lives. In the same way that they could not imagine working without email or instant messaging they are perfectly comfortable using Linkedin to enhance their personal brands and presence, using blogs as a way of sharing knowledge or even using Twitter.

The other great aspect of their comfort level with social media is their willingness to "play in the sandbox" and help us test out new tools that may, or may not, become useful in the workplace. They're not afraid to try almost anything and give frank feedback about how they feel about the tools.

I imagine that there are work environments that are not as comfortable with the use of social media as a part of the work "toolkit", but they are probably the same companies that were late email adopters or are still trying to figure out whether or not employees should be able to use IM. They need to move past their own insecurities and realize that they are only holding themselves back. The upside of embracing social media heavily outways the potential downside.

See Avi speak at http://www.iqpc.com/Event.aspx?id=178794

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Scientists warn of Twitter dangers

From CNN.com - http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/ptech/04/14/twitter.study/index.html

Rapid-fire TV news bulletins or getting updates via social-networking tools such as Twitter could numb our sense of morality and make us indifferent to human suffering, scientists say.

New findings show that the streams of information provided by social networking sites are too fast for the brain's "moral compass" to process and could harm young people's emotional development.

Before the brain can fully digest the anguish and suffering of a story, it is being bombarded by the next news bulletin or the latest Twitter update, according to a University of Southern California study.

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Considering that Twitter isn't set up to do live updates as Facebook now does, not sure how this really might affect someone. Are people going to just rely on Twitter updates for news feeds? I highly doubt it.

Hi and welcome to our blog!

Social Learning is fast becoming recognized as a valuable way of supporting formal learning and enabling informal learning within an organization. The use of online communities and networks, where employees are encouraged to co-create content, collaborate, share knowledge and fully participate in their own learning, is helping to create far more enduring learning experiences.

As the recession bites, organizations will continuously be cutting costs, but it will be important to look back and learn from the lessons of the past; that is, not to revert to a content-centric view of e-learning, but to move forward and embrace the new web tools to create a more collaborative, flexible, social learning environment and, at the same time, do more with less.

Now is the time to be even more creative with managing talent. Look for ways to continue to improve the skills of employees. Keep up on the latest tips, technologies, and trends.