I wonder when social media is going to change job descriptions in the corporate world. Not just adding new ones, like community managers. I mean changing the job descriptions we’ve had and held onto for generations. The true functions of the people that run the business.

So many other things are starting to change, not the least of which is the tearing down of silos within corporations. The path to the CEO’s door is more open than it has been before (and sometimes whether they want it to be or not). Technology has allowed – and in some cases forced – paths of communication between departments and disciplines that haven’t previously existed.

The trifecta?

Social media surfaces the potential of a hybrid job description that’s part communications, part business development, part customer or client service. It’s not to say that each of these areas doesn’t have a set of skills that go along with them. (And please don’t yell at me if you’re a specialist in one area and think I’m diminishing your expertise, I’m not. I’ve been in all these roles and appreciate their distinctions).

But rather than valuing the textbook definitions of what makes a communicator or a salesperson, I think social media is encouraging us to take the best of these roles and integrate them into a multi-dimensional role while jettisoning the outdated practices.

For example, the sales “cycle” I was taught in early days of fundraising and business development was linear. But with so many touchpoints to a business relationship now, linear doesn’t work. You don’t just shove them to the next phase of your predetermined relationship management process. The customer is equally involved in deciding what’s next for them and how they want to move through your business.

And wouldn’t a marketer sometimes benefit from getting their data from the mouths of the people they’re talking to? I know I would have in former lives.

Customers Aren’t Departmental.

If I’m a patron of a business, I don’t view my relationship with them in terms of the varied elements of my transactions. I don’t have a marketing relationship with them that’s separate from my sales relationship or even my technological or customer service one. I’m their customer, and I expect to have a holistic, end-to-end experience.

Much like we plugged-in folk get frustrated that we don’t have a universal profile that we can cart with us from site to social network and back again, clients ought not be a different person depending on which department they’re talking to within a company. Why do we sometimes make it so hard for them?

Jacks of All Trades, Masters of Many

I refuse to believe that people only have one set of skills, even if some are more dominant than others. And we’ve long valued academic disciplines over more creative ones (See Sir Ken Robinson’s mindblowing TED Talk about this subject for more). But I think social media is forcing our hand in this regard. It’s demanding that we blend soft skills into business in even more ways than we could have imagined, intertwining them and blurring the lines between aptitude and raw talent. Mining human-based skills that may not even yet have labels.

We have to not only harness both sides of the brain in individuals, but we need to be building coalitions inside companies. Teams that are the jacks of all trades and the masters of many, so that we can give our customers and clients a 360-degree experience without forcing them to jump over some invisible departmental line to get there. Startups within companies. Not task forces riddled with “action plans” and paperwork, but nimble, adaptive coalitions focused on the end game: better customer relationships. Period.

I don’t have the answer. Yet.

So what’s the definition of this new role, this new coalition? Is this really just customer relationship management 2.whatever? Is a community manager sufficient, or is it a new generation, a version of the all-around gymnast who can perform in several disciplines?

And an update in response to Ken Burbary: How about if it’s not one person (and I doubt it can be) but redefining how these roles bleed into each other in teams? Groups?

We’ve talked a great deal about how social media is transforming the conduit between company and customer, but how about what it’s doing to us within our own walls?

What do you think?