Competing Employees Inhibit Social Growth

pillars_smallOne of the pillars of a social business is the sharing of knowledge. This is supported by the free flow of information (a second pillar) and transparency (a third pillar).

We need these pillars in order to be successful in our mission to socialize a business. But, what if our organised and planned disruption gets disrupted by ever increasing competition among employees.

A study done by Tempo-Team (Dutch text) in the Netherlands showed that, according to one in three employees, the tension and individual competition was worse than in 2012.

Crisis

The perpetuating financial crisis in Europe is cited as the main cause for this negative disruption.

Employees face a greater workload and greater job insecurity. This, inevitably leads to more stress and competition. The personal crisis doesn’t end when the employee leaves work either, the stress is brought home where it gets a chance to build up.

This leads, in some cases, to people taking sick days, or worse, burn outs. Which can be very costly for employers.

Vicious Cycle

Because the employees are more pessimistic about their future they tend to view their colleagues as rivals, instead of collaborators or peers. The company doesn’t see this, because its focus lies elsewhere (survival?).

The chain reaction which is set off by this behaviour is devastating for a company and the individual employee.

Here’s the cycle:

  • Bad times leads to higher work pressure
  • Higher work pressure leads to stress (and sickness)
  • Chance of being laid off leads to (negative) employee competition
  • Employee competition leads to:
    • Hoarding of knowledge
    • Withholding expertise
    • Office politics
    • Less communication

You can imagine this doesn’t end well.
For the company all this means:

  • More sick days
  • No problem solution
  • No innovation
  • No constructive discussions
  • No flexibility
  • Top employees leaving (bad employee retention)

It’s undeniable that one thing leads to another. And when negatives are reinforced, the downward spiral becomes bigger and stronger.

You hear that Mr. Anderson?… That is the sound of inevitability… It is the sound of your death… Goodbye, Mr. Anderson…
– Agent Smith –

Turn It Around

Now!

When a crisis hits, some companies dig a trench, put on a helmet and hope for the best. Ride out the storm. Others invest, take the opportunity to change for the better.

It’s the latter you want to be. And for that to happen you need the support of your employees. Their commitment to your company will make the difference between success and failure. Competing employees only leaves you with small enclaves of knowledge, stuck on a thumb drive or in somebody’s head.

Becoming a social business can prevent you from making tough decisions during a crisis. Instead of competing employees, you will have co-operating employees.

The Hive

It may sound Utopian or maybe scary (Borgian), but the collective mind of a company will always know more than any individual (including top management).

A collective can also be more flexible, more intuitive, more aware and more responsive to critical questions from management.

Let’s face it, when a company is in dire straits, the chances of finding solutions within the company hive-mind are far greater than finding outside help or any individual within the company.

Just Ask

The difficulty lies in the beginning. We don’t want to change unless we are forced to change. The current crisis is a good example for a reason to change. And yet, many companies do not.

You can turn things around without to much pain. Just ask your employees what to do, or what they’re willing to do and under what conditions are they’re willing to do it.

If you don’t ask, you don’t know. It might look weak, but good leaders ask for as much input as they can get.

In a solid social business environment you don’t even have to ask. Issues will get noticed and reported somewhere down the line. Then, co-operating colleagues might find a solution before the issue becomes a problem. Preventing that problem from becoming a crisis.

Just think about it.., it makes sense.

The Ten Tenets of Social Business

I want to share with you the The Ten Tenets, as put on paper by Dion Hinchcliffe and Peter Kim, in their book “Social Business by Design”, both authors are well seasoned in Social Business and working at Dachis Group (so, all credit goes to them).

The Ten Tenets of Social Business

…the code is more what you’d call “guidelines” than actual rules.
– Captain Barbossa

You can find these tenets in the appendices of the book, which makes sense, but to me they were so profound and provided so much clarity that I needed to put them front and centre. I also wanted to elaborate on them, to take each tenet and explain why they make so much sense.

The Ten Tenets

“[These] tenets represent a fundamentally open, participative, scalable, and rich way of living, working, and otherwise connecting and engaging with the world.”

  1. Anyone can participate.
  2. Create shared value by default.
  3. While participation is self-organising, the focus is on business outcomes.
  4. Enlist a large enough community to derive the desired result.
  5. Engage the right community for the business purpose.
  6. Participation can take any direction. Be prepared for it, and take advantage of it.
  7. Eliminate all potential barriers to participation. Ease of use is essential.
  8. Listen to and engage continuously with all relevant social business conversations.
  9. The tone and language of social business are most effective when they’re casual and human.
  10. The effective social business activities are deeply integrated into the flow of work.

I agree, this does look a lot like The Ten Commandments and yes, it might read a bit presumptuous, stating these rules to abide by.

However, I ‘believe’ these tenets, or rules, or fundamentals can be a strong guide for a successful implementation.

Let us dissect them.

1) Anyone can participate

The base (foundation) of Social Business is social. There is no (pre)appointed elite.
The system (community) itself will make the distinction between those who are very active and those who are not, or those who add great value and those who do not.

The influencers need to earn their place. It is not given.

All are welcome, and it’s a safe environment to share your thoughts or to ask questions.

2) Create shared value by default

As far as rules (or guidelines) go, this one is a bit special, because it focuses on content creation. This can be in the form of a white paper, a manual, but also a question or answer can have great added value.

When you consider that anything you create and add to the community creates value, even if it’s just a comment, then the combined effort of the community becomes priceless real quick.

3) While participation is self-organising, the focus is on business outcomes

We don’t want to police the platform. This would inhibit the free flow of information and knowledge.
Providing a transparent platform regulates the use of the platform, there is always social control. Anybody stepping to far out of line will be noticed.

Keeping in mind that the platform is there to serve the business, creating any content reflecting this notion eliminates a certain frivolous attitude found on the public platforms.

4) Enlist a large enough community to derive the desired result

When you want to win the election, you need the majority.
When you want to start a revolution, you need critical mass.

It takes time to reach significant volume. Starting out with Social Business means finding your champions and start somewhere. But, when reached, the community will propel itself.

5) Engage the right community for the business purpose

Relevancy is crucial to building a valuable community that suits your business purposes, or goals.
Only when the right community is engaged will content be created and can critical mass be achieved.

6) Participation can take any direction. Be prepared for it, and take advantage of it

This is a very scary notion. It also separates the winners from the losers.
Providing this transparent platform where anybody can participate invariably leads to a freedom that most have not experienced before.

It can leave them with a need to innovate, to learn, to create forward thinking groups and solution driven debates. This is your advantage. Learning to distinguish between meaningless chatter and constructive ideas.

When point 1 through 5 are adhered to, good things are bound to happen from “letting go”.

7) Eliminate all potential barriers to participation. Ease of use is essential

You need participation, from as many people (employees, customers, partners) as possible.
Be sure the platform you use is as easy to learn and use as anything people are already using. Over complicating things repels the ones who hesitate to join. Your dedicated platform also eliminates as many distractions as possible.

Educate people in the use of the platform.

8) Listen to and engage continuously with all relevant social business conversations

In order to create momentum you need to engage. This is especially relevant for executives. Listening gives unprecedented access to the hearts and minds of your employees, which is, by its nature, your most valuable asset and a bottomless source of innovation.
By engaging in these conversations you can guide the discussion towards a certain outcome, maybe more in line with business objectives.

You can lead through engagement, one comment can entice users to be more engaged, think more about the direction of the conversation or more towards a solution.

9) The tone and language of social business are most effective when they’re casual and human

This seems so obvious, but it’s harder to achieve than you might think, especially for executives who are trained in conversing in a particular manner.
But, this also goes for employees when suddenly confronted with a comment or question from the top floor. They too need to maintain their “normal” tone of conversation in order to convey whatever it is they’re thinking of.

10) The effective social business activities are deeply integrated into the flow of work

The long term concept of Social Business shines through here. A fundamental approach is a necessary step to integrate Social Business throughout the whole company, to make it business as usual.

A critical idea which shapes the whole philosophy of Social Business.

CMO’s, Get Your Social Media Rocks On, Here’s How.

Sometimes the on-line world just amazes me. I’m up to my ears in on-line social networks, have followers around the globe, am building significant and lasting relationships and keep in touch with friends on an almost daily basis.

Then there are people who say to me, “I don’t get that whole internet thing”. That’s okay, no worries. Usually these are people who do not need a (strong) on-line presence. They live in an “old school” neighbourhood where they’ve lived all their lives and have all the social interaction and connections they need.

CMO's, Get Your Social Media Rocks On, Here's How.And then you come across a blogpost about CMO’s (Chief Marketing Officers) and their utter lack of presence on Social Media. Now that makes me go, hmmmmm…. Didn’t we get the memo? Don’t we know by now that Social Media is rather huge, and very much expected from some people?

Well.., turns out there is a memo (albeit a very recent one), and we know SoMe isn’t going anywhere. So, isn’t it time to get going?

Granted, for some, it’s just not interesting. SoMe is a far away land where people share their lunches. And it might be true. Not that everybody shares what they eat, but that some people really don’t need it.

But, for CMO’s we can agree that you need to work on your personal brand. And, by the way, this goes for a lot of professionals, especially those having to do anything with tech, marketing, content creation, HR, PR, IT… well, you get the idea.

If you have anything more then 5 years to go in your career, then this concerns you.

First, Ask for Help!

Chances are, your company is already active on Social Media (if not, you have bigger fish to fry then your personal presence). But, assuming there are people working on-line, get them in a room and ask them what they’re up to. As a CMO you should know. However, we’re assuming (again), that your focus lies with ‘traditional’ media and any Social Media efforts are delegated (and left alone).

Let’s face it, the situation above is pretty common, so nothing to be ashamed of.

Anyway, get these Tweeple to help you getting set up. I’m sure they’d be very happy to get you going, help you create the necessary accounts and walk you through their basic use. Also, whenever you get stuck, get s/he in your office (or better yet, walk down to their desk), and ask for a helping hand.

Remember, it’s all about Social.

Browse the platforms

Once you have your accounts set up you can look around. Search for the name of the company or co-workers, see what pops up. It will give you a different view of the company and its employees. It could actually be a very fun thing to do. And I’m sure you can make some time to have some fun (it’s OK to have some fun).

It’s the difference between walking a route or travelling it in a hot air balloon, it’s the same route, but a completely different perspective.

Connect

And don’t forget to connect with co-workers, as many as you can (i.e. all of them).

Social Media is nothing without us humans actually connecting, talking and sharing with each other. People are the engine.

If you are a CMO of a strong brand, then finding connections should not be a huge problem. In fact, judging from the lack of CMO’s who’re socially settled, it shouldn’t be a big problem at all. If you start now, you’d still be among the first batch.

Converse

And last, but certainly not least. Start a conversation.

After connection you start to build relationships. This you do by talking to people, share their content and let them know what you think (especially when it’s good stuff).

Especially concerning employees, you can engage in an informal manner with them, opening up and getting to know your company in a new way, a better way. Employees will appreciate this to no end. Your reputation will grow quickly, simply because of your position.

Connect and talk to peers too, they give you insights and idea’s to work with. Especially when they blog.

Platforms

You might have noticed I didn’t mention any platforms you should join. That’s in part up to you, and in essence, the connect and converse part is the same for all. But, for sake of completeness, here’s a list in order of importance:

  1. LinkedIn
  2. Twitter
  3. Quora

Yes, only three. Facebook is not worth it, not professionally. And you don’t want to many. Time is, of course, precious.

Blogging

I just have to mention this. Blogging is a great way to build a reputation. You can share knowledge (yes, that’s OK), and help others with whatever issue they might face in your field of expertise.

Getting your network to share your (personal) story and views can be quite satisfying.

Adding your precious content to the corporate blog is also a good idea. Align it with current business and marketing objectives to make sure the content is marketable and worth the effort.

Added Value

The added value to your brand can be significant. Having a strong personal brand, combined with being a Subject Matter Expert makes you a highly valuable brand ambassador. Somebody who can influence customers with just a Tweet.

Trust me.., it is possible.