Wednesday 20 April 2011

When Social Networking isn't Social Networking

A previous Salem article featured thoughts on the plethora of consulting companies jumping on the social networking bandwagon. This article is more specifically focused on social networking within organisations and typically when the topic crops up regarding SharePoint implementations.

Let us start by trying to define what we mean by social networking in this context. Well, social typically means personal, in other words, nothing to do with performing the business of the day. Every company has social networks, visits to the bar on a Friday after work for gossip, office romances, office divorces, scandals, the social aspects of office politics, gossip about anything and everything. It doesn't matter how much a company tries to keep chatter under control, it simply disappears underground, but it remains. We cannot count the amount of times that a company will say they wish to be seen as a collaborative organisation but would not consider fabulous services such as Microsoft Lync because people 'will chat and waste time too much'. Believe us, people will talk no matter what, even over the water cooler and at break times, in the canteen, in the toilets, in the bar, on the phone, indeed anywhere. So why not harness real time collaboration and conversation as part of the intrinsic culture of the organisation rather than trying to repel it?

Okay so we also hear CEO's occasionally saying they would like to have their company have a 'Facebook style culture'. Well what they mean is real time conversation, collaboration and sharing, what they don't mean is social networking in the social way we have just defined it. And even if they do mean that they will not be able to cope with the HR governance and policy issues that follow when Dave from Accounts publishes the fact that he has just split up from Sue in Sales and is now seeing Fiona in Finance. Only once have we encountered a large organisation that has embraced social networking at the core of its collaborative ethos and this was presented by way of an intranet home page dedicated to an open discussion board where just about anything and everything could, and was, discussed. The bottom line for most larger organisations is that they will not achieve a Facebook culture in the office as corporations are risk-averse.

The issue with the concept of social networking within business environments is that, unlike personal social networks, there is nothing in it for the end user. Why would a business user start to publish personal and private details about themselves unless they were trying to make friends or were a newcomer to a company. They have already established their own social network in the office and its relativel;y low risk. As most people accept, knowledge is power, and the longer someone has been in post, the more they entrench themselves via what they know and what they have learned. Sharing personal thoughts and social aspects of themselves in a  corporate environment not only worries HR deeply, but also exposes the end user to a degree of professional risk. Expose the wrong information, say the wrong thing and that elusive promotion may go straight out of the window. Comment in an inappropriate way and one may be disciplined. Say what is on one's mind and one may find ones self being shown the door.

If this is true, then why are there so many consulting companies using the term 'social networking' to corporations? Well as per our other article, there is a degree of trendy bandwagon jumping going on, and using the latest terms to an older generation of business leaders makes them think they are missing out on something important and assisting in generating consulting revenue.

The reality is that we are not dealing with social networking within organisations (save for the ambitiously-thinking minority), what we are really dealing with are social networking techniques applied for business scenarios, which is somewhat different. Techniques and technologies such as user-centric My Sites, subscription-based news feeds, RSS subscriptions, Office Talk business 'tweeting', status updates, discussion forums, instant messaging, presence awareness, ratings and comments are all part of the technology set that has become fashionable and effective in social networks that translates perfectly to business environments. But rarely is there anything social about it in truth.

Therefore by applying the techniques and psychology from social networks we can indeed look at how effective knowledge and skill-based networks can be employed by organisations that which to be progressively more interactive, open, collaborative and how business adoption and buy-in can be obtained and maintained.

However for the majority, the term social networking without any form of clarification, in our view, represents a populist phrase that has no depth or substance or value for a business environment, and is currently particularly abused within the consulting industry. Dave may still be dating Fiona in Finance, but frankly, it's none of our business.