The power of the ecology of Social Media and the reclaiming of the Power over the use of them

In earlier post the Social Networking Technologies for v 3.0 of Knowledge Management were addressed. SNTs fills the gap that the others didn't quite accomplish: connecting people, creating a low-barrier, informal channel for connecting and adding a richer experience of communicating (thus making it easier to build trust, relationships, share knowledge etc).
As many organisation acknowledge the value of using of social media, blogs, social networking and generally user-generated content spaces/technologies, many have embraced the technologies and implemented tools, encouraged employees to use them and share.

Research backs up the fact that the organisation needs some kind of guidance and central governance to know what is to be shared/how the tools are to be used for an efficient goal-oriented and safe environment for knowledge based- and institution-based trust. But it is also acknowledged that "knowledge workers" do not like to be controlled, need autonomy in their work of knowledge production and that governance and control kills creativity.
One aspect that has seen to be succeeded for the management of knowledge intensive workers, is to work on forming the culture of the organisation. The "culture" is in some way today's "governance" mechanism that managers use to control the somewhat "chaotic" need of organisations today. As the balance between chaos and order has been important, the culture of the organisation has been seen as the answer to managers prayers to win back some kind of control in a company that "should not be controlled". Culture can be the composition of shared norms, values, rituals and the "how we do it here", which has been absolutely legit to people - not to be mixed with control... erm..

As a digression to "building a culture"; Creating an ownership to the culture is key for employees to feel that it is not a top down approach - which we all know, from a change management perspective, creates resistance. The "ownership" is often created through the involvement of employees, very often in workshops, where employees can share their personal thoughts and to participate in the development. It is very often facilitated by an outside "neutral" facilitator which has been hired by top management to incorporate a culture (most often a culture initiated from the top). And more creative ways to avoid resistance and build a strong culture (adopt behaviour that is wanted by top management) has been developed and legitimised. Behavioural psychology has been exploited in change management (Lewin and Schein), and positive psychology (Appreciative inquiry) has been used strategically to make it easier to avoid resistance (e.g. BBC). So- it seems like we are living in the belief that we are not being controlled.. its just the new fancy way for management to do it. But hey- we all need to be managed somehow - it is just aout finding the right way people like to be managed...

As seen on FastCompany's website, the ongoing discussion about social media policies in business has put the control perspective back into play (new risks linked to the concepts are seeing the light of day). The fear of losing control of the blurred boundary between professional and personal sphere and the use of these technologies which stems from the latter, has created a new day for policy development. As employees are encouraged to share and contribute, they are also restricted by policies - central governance to "how we use social media in our organisation". Security issues and risk of getting a bad reputation - has been the other side of the coin to the forces of social media use in business. Risking that people communicate their personal opinions "on behalf of" the organisation. Since employees can contribute on building the image in user-generated content websites, they can also risk to destroying it. The habit of central branding department that will build the image of the organisation as a brand has been distributed to the employees of the organisation.

As CNN senior editor of Middle Eastern affairs, Octavia Nasrwas shown to the door early this month after sending a tweet that expressed respect for the Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah. CNN have clear, strict central guidelines/policies to how the employees shall represent themselves in social media. That is just amongst one of many examples of people that had to leave as a result of their participation in social media.
What will be next?
How can business take advantage of these powerful technologies without this kind of control?

Social networking technologies in business

The recognition of the value of knowledge in the organisation has increased the focus on how to leverage the knowledge workers, how to create a shared knowledge base throughout the firm as a learning organisation and how knowledge workers can work together to create extended value through collaborative problemsolving to create a competitive advantage through growth and innnovation. This knowledge creation depends on a firm's ability to facilitate communication and organisational learning through firm-specific routines and culture.

The firm is composed by multiple knowledge workers with each their expertise. Managers have been seeking to make this knowledge shared and available to all, and through ICT this has become possible. Much of earlier knowledge management has been criticised of being data- or information management, as the focus has been on effectively manage, store, retrieve, and exploit intellectual properties. ICT especially enabled organisations to store this information and share it across the organisation. The new type of knowledge management, focus on knowledge as something that they do rather than knowledge that a person has. This way of working requires the organisations to be what Blackler (1995) calls "Communication-Intensive". The dynamic process of knowing requires more of ICT than just being an information repository, and this have fostered the managerial interest in new ways of sharing knowledge and collaborating across the organisation.

ICT and the internet has enabled organisations to leverage knowledge from dispersed sources, and also collaboration across geographically dispersed locations as well as across organisationall boundaries. Tools are continuously developing to fit the nature of dynamic collaborative work, addressing the challenges of virtuality and also creating advanced ways of collaborating through technologies that has not been possible in traditional approaches.

As mentioned, earlier approaches that has been critisesed of being information and data-repositories as managers have seeked to tap the knowledge workers for their knowledge to be retreieved by the whole organisation as collective knowledge. But as many scholars and practitioners have acknowledged - the ineffable dimension of knowledge cannot be retrieved in symbols, information is highly contextual and knowledge is best transferred through the practice in which the knowledge is embedded. Moreover, it is difficult to get employees to write reports and document their knowledge as it has not been a part of their everyday work practices, and as it has not given more value back to their main task and objective in the organisation. And the knowledge captured at one point might be outdated the other. In order to benefit of and support the dynamics of knowing in the organisation and the multiplied value of social capital, dynamic and flexible technologies are needed. The capturing and retrieveing of knowledge is still essential in Knowledge Manegement Systems in collaborative working but an extra layer is added to it to complement each other: connecting people.

Many concepts come from the social sphere, such as forums, chats, blogs and the concept of presence to mention some. These have emerged from the social concepts of the web; forums for sharing of common interests such as baking or computing, chats to get to know people with common interests and blogs to share and publish personal or professional information, presence as to letting people within your network know if your online, available or busy. The technolgogies which enables the user to connect to people and manage its social network we put under the umbrella term Social Networking Technologies (SNTs). These technologies are moving into the business sphere as they've become a part of how people naturally communicate and collaborate. In this sense the boundary between work and non-work is becoming blurred and the social culture of communication is coming into the business world resulting in business communcation becoming more informal. The concepts are getting more aggregated into one common platform enabling the employees to collaborate using the same habitual concepts of communication. These technologies as lowered the barrier of connecting and sharing and have also proven to be effecient ways of filling the social gap in the nature of collaboration (to connect).

Businesses must embrace these technologies now as the generation entering the job market are expecting the web 2.0 technologies to be a part of the collaboration environment. By embracing these technologies I mean: aligning the organisational strategy for collaboration with the IT strategy, looking at tools/concepts that can fit the goals of collaboration. Technologies is nothing without people using them. They are tools to support people in the way they work so including the organisation in the process is key. A culture for sharing and collaborating and making the use of collaborative technologies is built through a shared ethic of interdependent contribution and formalised set of norms of interdependent process management.

The Miracle of Change....and success.... or maybe not

I want to recap on what Jim Collins wrote in his best-selling book Good to Great. One of his passages is still something we must keep on reminding people of. And the media keeps ranting about this miraculous moment of when that change happened. The secret behind Facebook for example. But hey- there is no sudden miracle- there is an evolution..and some highly motivated people behind it. Let's take a moment to recap:

How change doesn't happen
Picture an egg. Day after day, it sits there. No one pays attention to it. No one notices it. Certainly no one takes a picture of it or puts it on the cover of a celebrity-focused business magazine. Then one day, the shell cracks and out jumps a chicken.All of a sudden, the major magazines and newspapers jump on the story: “Stunning Turnaround at Egg!” and “The Chick Who Led the Breakthrough at Egg!” From the outside, the story always reads like an overnight sensation—as if the egg had suddenly and radically altered itself into a chicken.

Now picture the egg from the chicken's point of view.
While the outside world was ignoring this seemingly dormant egg, the chicken within was evolving, growing, developing—changing. From the chicken’s point of view, the moment of breakthrough, of cracking the egg, was simply one more step in a long chain of steps that had led to that moment. Granted, it was a big step—but it was hardly the radical transformation that it looked like from the outside.

It’s a silly analogy, but then our conventional way of looking at change is no less silly. Everyone looks for the “miracle moment” when “change happens.” But ask the good-to-great executives when change happened. They cannot pinpoint a single key event that exemplified their successful transition.

Cloud Culture: The future of global cultural relations

As cloud computing has caught its attention, the implications and the ideas around the emerging concept of distributed, virtual, powerful means to share and publish, has been examined further by the British Council commissioned Charles Leadbeater in his report Cloud Culture: the future of global cultural relations. He shed light on the cultural implications of "cloud computing"- the network of global relations.

He summarizes the report accordingly:

The internet, our relationship with it, and our culture is about to undergo a change as profound and unsettling as the development of Web 2.0 in the last decade, which saw Google and YouTube, Facebook and Twitter become mass, world-wide phenomena. Over the next ten years, the rise of cloud computing will not only accelerate the global battle for control of the digital landscape, but will almost certainly recast the very ways in which we exercise our creativity and forge relationships across the world’s cultures. Yet even in its infancy, the extraordinary potential of cloud culture is threatened on all sides – by vested interests, new monopolists and governments, all intent on reasserting their authority over the web.
In this ground-breaking report, Charles Leadbeater argues that we are faced with the greatest challenge of our time: the clash of cloud culture and cloud capitalism. Who will own the cloud? How can we keep it open and reap its vast benefits? And how can it empower the world’s poorest people?

The distributed powerful tool enacts across roles and normative power frames, and are shaping and will continue to shape a the culture of how we see the world and how we relate. This will shape the way we organise and exercice power. The more we see that the Internet is influencing our way of life, the more concerns and threats are seen to emerge with it. Leadbeater put forward the Governmental concerns of the cloud computing and its influence (rather comic to see how the stereotypic nationality shines through;) seeing them as threats to national culture (the French response); threats to security (the Chinese response) or threats to competition (the response of the US department of justice).

Management's dirty little secret

Recently the "Global Workforce Servey" was published, showing results of employees lack of engagement to their work. Gary Hamel sums up the results and puts it in a shocking perspective. Clever!

How would you feel about a physician who killed more patients than he helped? What about a police detective who committed more murders than he solved? Or a teacher whose students were more likely to get dumber than smarter as the school year progressed? And what if you discovered that these perverse outcomes were more the rule than the exception—that they were characteristic of most doctors, policemen and professors? You’d be more than perplexed. You’d be incensed, outraged. You’d demand that something must be done!

Given this, why are we complacent when confronted with data that suggest most managers are more likely to douse the flames of employee enthusiasm than fan them, and are more likely to frustrate extraordinary accomplishment than to foster it?

Consider the recent "Global Workforce Survey” conducted by Towers Perrin, an HR consultancy. In an attempt to measure the extent of employee engagement around the world, the company polled more than 90,000 workers in 18 countries. The survey covered many of the key factors that determine workplace engagement, including: the ability to participate in decision-making, the encouragement given for innovative thinking, the availability of skill-enhancing job assignments and the interest shown by senior executives in employee well-being.

Here’s what the researchers discovered: barely one-fifth (21%) of employees are truly engaged in their work, in the sense that they would “go the extra mile” for their employer. Nearly four out of ten (38%) are mostly or entirely disengaged, while the rest are in the tepid middle. There’s no way to sugarcoat it—this data represents a stinging indictment of the legacy management practices found in most companies.

Strategy to Decision making in Organizations today

Even though we have moved forward, from the times when development was seen as a linear process and where the road ahead was uncertain but calculable, managers still tend to seek the rational decision making models when making a strategy. In rational decision making, the “economic man” (Simon, 1952) has gained experience, knowledge and skills in the field in which the decision is being made . With this it is assumed that it is possible to make a rational decision. Elbing (1978) argues that past experience in decision - making is no guarantee that we have learnt from the past experiences. Furthermore, what we learn from past experience is limited as we find ourselves in complex and new situations, never experienced before and we will have to take a decision. He stresses that the new situations require insights and understanding not already developed from past experiences. These past experiences can be a limit to the decision-making, as we sometimes base our new decisions on past experiences, which is not applicable to the new context. For instance, when disappointing results in primary and secondary schools in Norway were presented, the government would search for solutions. From past experience, when approaching this problem the solution would be to improve the quality of teaching by getting better teachers into teaching by e.g. raising the salaries of teachers. This solution might be feasible, but by basing new decisions on experience, the innovative solutions, which are required in new and complex situations, will be left out. Teach First for instance as a solution to the problem would not be considered.

Now, more focus has been directed towards change when making big decisions in organizations. The fact that change need for creativity; thinking in new ways is challenging the rational decision making process which focus on the future as a linear road ahead, which it is not (Peters: 2006, Hamel, Hammer, Gibson: 1998). Prahalad stresses; “if you want to escape gravitational pull of the past, you have to be willing to challenge your own orthodoxies. To regenerate your core strategies and rethink your most fundamental assumptions about how you are going to compete” (1998: p.7).

Bringing in creativity, such as in scenario workshops, you bring in the whole of the human being and its emotions in order to look beyond the existing and achieve thinking “outside the box”. In this process of being creative you also look beyond logic in order to identify new opportunities. This opens up decision making to a greater dimension and needs new methods to reach the “best” possible decision. Scenarios workshops can be such process. Peterson (2003) argues that scenarios help compensate for the usual errors of decision making- overconfidence and tunnel vision” (p.359).

Better understanding of the purpose of decision-making must be considered when choosing an approach. Decision-making is just one step in a bigger context of mobilizing action (Brunsson: Quinn, 1989) and is therefore an organizational process to get people to commit. Commitment comes from motivation to go in that particular direction. If the decision should be made to be successful, it is about mobilizing action and then get people to be motivated and mobilize. It is key that the need of managers today is to approach the decisions as it emerges (in a quicker way than before, with no time for a rational decision-making process) and need to base the decision on information gathered before the problem emerges.

Effort is put into preparing for it as a proactive approach rather than starting a decision making process when the problem is defined (diagnosed as done in traditional rational decision making approaches).

In order to be competitive in an ever changing society, managers need new ways of approaching decision- making, legitimizing creativity and thinking “unlogical” as a part of the decision making process.

Lønner det seg å være snill?

Anfo stilte spørsmålet "CSR- Lønner det seg?" og hadde konferanse rundt temaet den 19.februar. Er det et spørsmål å stille seg i dag?
Vi har vært så opptatt av å utnytte ressurser, utnytte mennesker og maskiner på mest kostnadseffektiv måte for å gjøre god business spesielt siden industrialismen. Tankemønsteret ser ut til å være hard å vende for mange- derfor må dette spørsmålet taes opp gang på gang: Om det lønner seg å være snill.

De raske industrielle teknologiske fremskrittene som har skjedd det siste århundret har ledet til mange gjennombrudd men har også ført oss til å stå ovenfor en uviss framtid. Med virkelige miljøtrusler og økonomiske fall, forferdelige sykdommer, overpopulasjon, krig, terrorisme og truende nye former for våpen, har vi mye å overvinne. Eksempelvis besto i 2003, kloden vår av 6.3 milliarder mennesker, og av disse led 1 milliard av underernæring samtidig som en lik mengde mennesker ikke hadde tilgang til vann.
Dette har ført til utvikling av en rekke ulike innovative metoder å forbedre bærekraftighet og samfunnsutvikling på, fra både internasjonale myndigheter, nasjonale myndigheter, bedrifter, frivillige organisasjoner og enkeltpersoner.

CSR
Da miljøspørsmålene vokste fram i 1970-årene, ble begrepet CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) kjent. Det ble større fokus på etikk i bedriftene da de så hvilken påvirkning de hadde på miljø- og samfunnsutviklingen. Forsøk fra regjeringer og institusjoner verden over, har vist utilstrekkelighet til å vende om de ødeleggende trendene.

Makten og ansvaret til MNS´ene
“I was having a drink with the CEO of one of the largest oil companies in the world and he admitted, 'Yes, I'm concerned. You are absolutely right. This world is going to pieces.' And then he said, 'But, hey, what can I do?'

Utviklingen av MultiNasjonale Selskaper (MNS) betyr en ny form av politikk og prioriteringer; det utfordrer gamle former av internasjonal politikk. Wal- Mart for eksempel, hadde en omsetning større enn Tyrkias, Danmarks, Sør Afrikas og andre lands bruttonasjonalprodukt. 200 av MNS’ene produserer 50% av verdens industriproduksjon. Det vil si at de multinasjonale selskapene har en enorm innflytelse på samfunnsutviklingen, og gir dem igjen økt ansvar for å være med på å utvikle verden til det positive. Det er ikke lengre slik at statslederne våre er de med mest makt til å skape endringer, det er selskapene selv som må ta tak, for å sikre en positiv utvikling, og vende om de ødeleggende trendene.

Investeringstrender skaper store ringvirkninger
Våre statsledere kan sette et rammeverk gjennom lovgivning, for å vise retning, men er ikke den største bidragsyteren med sin kapital, sammenliknet med MNS´ene. Det den norske stat bidrar i, med tanke på sin kapital, er å investere med oljefondet, eller pensjonsfondet med en overordnet strategi om å ikke investere i de selskapene som ikke opptrer sosialt ansvarlig. Selskap som Storebrand har vist seg dyktige i sin investeringsstrategi, ved å ha en kontrollavdeling som sikrer at investeringene kun går til selskaper som bidrar selv til positiv utvikling (dvs; ikke bryter med menneskerettighetene, forurenser minimalt og som ikke bidrar til korrupsjon). Denne investeringstrenden har ført til at flere selskaper velger å opptre etter disse ”reglene”, for å være et godt investeringsobjekt.

Delte syn på Sosial Ansvarlighet/ CSR
”The social responsibility of business is to increase profit”. Friedman kommer fra den dogmatiske skole hvor en bedrift yter maksimal ansvarlighet ved å maksimere dens overskudd. Det er mange bedrifter som har dette utgangspunkt når de gjør et sosialt ansvarlig initiativ for å bedre deres image, bedre til en utvikling lokalt som vil gagne bedriften i det lange løp eller andre strategiske valg. Noen ser på disse typer holdninger til investeringene som egoistiske og utspekulert måte å drive CSR. Andre mener det er helt nødvendig for en bedrift, for å overleve i markedet i dag. Å bidra i det sosiale er nødvendig for å selv dra nytte av resultatene. Et godt eksempel er å bygge skoler i området bedriften er etablert for å øke kunnskapsnivået til egen fremtidige arbeidskraft som blant annet Telenor gjør i Pakistan.

Jeg mener ingen utgangspunkt for CSR er feil. Vi bør ønske alle bidrag velkomne med åpne armer, om de er et strategisk, utspekulert tiltak for å danne seg et godt image, eller om de er en del av kjernevirksomheten til bedriften. De er alle med på å bidra til en positiv utvikling, om CSR tiltaket utføres på rett vis. Man kan risikere, i mangel på kulturforståelse eller andre komplekse utfordringer, at man gjør samfunnet en bjørnetjeneste (siste tiltak til Bennetton).

Velferdsstaten er død
Under industrisamfunnnets fremvekst i det 20.århundret ble den sterke stat med sentralstyring toneangivende for den sosiale utviklingen i de skandinaviske land. Mennesker har sett på det som statens oppgave å ta seg av sosial omsorg og bistå med den støtte som individer måtte trenge. De klassiske sårbare sosiale gruppene i industrisamfunnet, er ikke lengre de eneste som trenger sosial stønad. Utvikling i samfunnet er med på å utvikle nye grupper mennesker/enkeltidivider med særegne behov som ikke blir dekket av tiltakene satt i gang fra maktelitens hold. Velferdsstaten byråkrati er tilsynelatende et effektivt apparat for kontroll, produksjon og fordeling basert på industrisamfunnets behov, men er ikke tilpasset utvikling til følge av endrede forhold i den omkringliggende verden. Sentralt dirigert omsorg passer ikke alle og overgangen til tjenestesamfunnet krever sine løsninger.

Sosialt entreprenørskap kan være en metode å bruke for å tilnærme seg en løsning på den tilsynelatende umettelige og stadig ekspansivt voksende etterspørsel av menneskers behov for hjelp og trøst som de tradisjonelle aktører ikke formår å imøtekomme på en god og tilfredstillende måte.

Det er den norske stat sin rolle å sørge for at det er tilrettelagt for en grobunn for utvikling innenfor CSR og sosial innovasjon. Jo flere individuelle initiativ fra personer, bedrifter, organisasjoner og grupper det er for å jobbe med sosial ansvarlighet, jo mer letter man fra statens skuldre. ”Velferdsstaten er død” . Vi kan ikke lengre regne med at staten kan dekke alle behov som rammer oss. Vi avhenger av ildsjeler som brenner for å skape forbedringer, sloss for rettferdighet og en bedre verden. En av disse ildsjelene forandret den økonomiske utviklingen til tusener ekstremt fattige landsbyer ved å etablere Grameen Bank ved å gi lån til mer enn 2,4 millioner microcreditkunder i Bangladesh og Afghanistan. Det staten kan, er å støtte opp om dem, bringe dem fram og tilrettelegge for å selv bli hjulpet av sosiale entreprenører som bringer inn systemiske endringer ved å påvirke sosial oppførsel til det gode, på en global målestokk.
”With Social entrepeneurship, we´re talking nothing less than the democratization of power”.

Eller som Apeland sa på Anfos konferanse: It is nice to be important but even more important to be nice.