“Barcelona is the first Social 2.0 football club. Why? Because it’s owned and run by the fans.”
This call-out as part of the opening Keynote at the Social Business Forum definitely made me proud to be in the right Camp. It is humbling to think that a club of such glorious magnitude can be run by an association of supporters. My highlight of the ‘On the Shoulders of Giants’ Opening Keynote though, had to be a quote attributed to Marshal McLuhan; “The most human thing about us is our technology”. I won’t try and dissect the many facets of this statement, but one has to be that technology is a mechanism for making our human lives easier.
One of the most popular words of the event had to be ‘community’. Many of the people that I spoke to were trying understand “how do we set up communities?” or “why should we give Social Networking a try?”. While there is definitely a need for community championship and oversight, that doesn’t always mean that each community has to start with a full-time community manager at the helm. In an internal community context, this can come across as a daunting overhead, which could be perceived as a barrier to adopting an Enterprise Social Network. Of course, there needs to be an internal champion, someone who makes sure that everyone is aligned and working from a common set of best practices; however, you don’t need to assume the overhead of a full-time person from Day One. On a handful of occasions at the Social Business Forum, I think this point could have done with some clarification to allow customers looking for answers a simpler solution.
According to the McKinsey’s December 2010 Quarterly report, “the imperative for business leaders is clear: falling behind in creating internal and external networks could be a critical mistake”. Contrast this message that your CxO is hearing with the suggestion that you need a dedicated FTE for every internal community to be set up and maintained. Any ESN solutions that put a hurdle in place of expediency are doomed to an uphill struggle in convincing business leaders looking at ESN, because they make the notion of business value harder to determine. There are enough barriers to adoption already: naysayers stuck in an email-only world, IT departments unwilling to cede control, command and control structures built into the organisational hierarchy, complexity of some ESN tools. Add to this creating additional headcount for every internal community and you’re in for a struggle. We have an opportunity here to pilot things and build in the governance and control as you go along. Ride on the momentum already in the network rather than build in complexity at the start.
‘Quantum’ was my favourite word of the day and Keith Swenson pieced together a good mission statement for what we are in the process of doing. Quantum organisations need to be able to adapt to the unpredictable and turbulent environment. Tools should be easily accessible, and people should be able to pilot the new medium. There is definitely a time for putting in the measures and metrics, but to labour on these from the outset will mean you get left behind.
A recent customer contribution of Juha Krapinoja to this topic in Yammer’s Customer Network highlighted community structure really well albeit in a Yammer context:
Caption for the image above: “A recommendation of 1 Community Manager per 10,000 employees seems more appropriate to meeting business goals, including the obvious one of return on investment.” Source: Yammer Customer Network.
Enterprise Social networking is here and the value should be transparent to those signing the cheque. If a football team can be organised by its fans, so can your business. The chants of fans echo through Nou Camp and beyond as Guardiola’s magic unfolds on the pitch. These fans aren’t just mere spectators, they’re engaged participants. Business is changing too, and I look forward seeing how at next year’s Social Business Forum.
