Knowledge of a thing – true knowledge – is a mix of experience, related skills, and both the theoretical and practical understanding of it. It’s multifaceted. And studying something, as we’re all doing with the emergence of social media and social business, involves a few different facets.
Prescription
Much of what you’ll read about social media is intensely prescriptive these days. Likewise with personal growth stuff, or professional development, or any number of things.
Prescription is the establishment and normalization of rules. In other words, there’s a lot of writing about what to do. What the rules are, or elimination of things that don’t fit the bill (proscription). You could say that my upcoming book is prescriptive; outlining some of the frameworks for what I believe works in a social business context. I’m hopeful that there are plenty of ways to arrive at your own conclusions as well, but more or less, we wanted to write a handbook of sorts for businesses trying to find some clear steps in the social media world.
And in many ways, when you’re starting something new, that’s exactly what you want. The what and the how. Some understanding of what the established and familiar rules are, some guideposts to meter your own activities and behavior, and some reassurance that you’re headed in the “right” direction, or at least one that makes sense to you.
But when it comes to comprehension, there’s more than just the instructive side of the equation. There’s also understanding.
Description
We may have some relatively consistent philosophies and tenets around social, whether we can easily define them or not. We feel, at a gut level, what this stuff “ought to be” to us, hence the instruction and guidance we proffer. The rules or the guiding principles we’re putting forward serve to help us form somewhat of a group identity; by asserting them, repeating them, and sharing them, we’re signaling to others how we see ourselves, and the sorts of people and businesses with which we’d like to align.
That’s all a wonderful thing, and is part of the study of a discipline or an industry or idea, whatever you’d like to call “social”. But what we’re beginning to need more and more of is the ability to be descriptive about the world around us and the social context. In other words, understanding social’s potential means also articulating and sharing things as they actually are, not just the ideals we’d like to see.
Why? Because the path from our current state to a more ideal one is only clear when we understand where we’re starting from, and the many possible paths that can emerge from that place. The choices about where we go from here are deeply rooted in how we view our relationships with each other today. Good prescription and instruction for what’s next can only come once we’ve adequately described where we are now. And I’m not sure we fully understand that yet, or perhaps we’re not content to spend more time on that as the temptation is too great to design the future instead of illustrate the present.
In Defense of Theory
Some will vilify theory in the context of social media exploration, claiming that it’s devoid of concreteness or something actionable. That we need to move past the introspection and into action. Don’t just think, do. We eschew it at our conferences and events, instead asserting that we want practical and actionable.
I’ve probably railed against an overabundance of theory myself, even as I’m laying out some right here in this post.
But mapping uncharted territory requires a bit of philosophy, and ongoing at that. As long as that’s not the only thing you do when seeking to accomplish something, theorizing – or hypothesizing, if you want to get scientific – is very needed, and a key part of the path to knowledge. You develop ideas with theory, then you test them with practice, evaluate what happened, amend the theory, and so on. In the terms I’m discussing above, we need theory in both describing our current state and in charting our future one. In both seeing things as they are, and as we hope them to be.
While having something tangible to consider can be helpful or empowering, pronouncing something solely in the language of “should” can be limiting at best, alienating and divisive at worst. It’s an incredibly fine line, but one that perhaps we (including me) need to walk more carefully in the coming months and years.
I’m really pondering this. Do you think there’s enough balance between understanding where we are now and telling each other where we ought to go next? Are we helping each other understand possibility and share perspective enough rather than battling for the best definitive answer? Can theory be discussed and shared in a spirit of increased collective knowledge, and what’s its role in our current social business evolution?
Help me think through this some more, won’t you?
Theory can be really helpful for informing someone digging into a new space, and I agree we need to stop “should”ing all over ourselves. However; there’s absolutely a place for prescription as part of description.
I’ve met folks who are capable of authoring books, but fail miserably at writing blog entries. The art’s different, even if the tools are the same. It’s similar to what happens in Toastmasters, or in some martial arts, where the lowest level is absolutely not the theory – it’s the firm, tenacious practice. Building muscle memory of the most basic components can be highly informative to the perspective we any of us take on the theory we back up more complex skills with.
It’s a touch hair to split – theory first or practice first is very chicken and egg. I think there needs to be both – and absolutely agree there’s a lot of practical advice, without the backup of theoretical discourse lately.
That’s just it – there’s a place for both. What you’re touching on however is interesting: where they fit in the order of things. By nature, many approach theory as a foundation, then practice as built upon same. But can you start with pragmatic components and *then* move onto the why to build on that? That’s an interesting question to ponder. When do you need to consider the “why”? I’ll have to think on that some more.
As Matt (@techguerilla) said last night via tweet – keeping a hard and fast linear timeline for these things might be part of some of our problems. In a lot of cases, it comes down to the learner, not the instructor. However, it’s the job of the instructor to make sure they can deliver on many styles of learning, isn’t it?
There needs to be more theory, hands down. But I worry that the theory we develop might become unrealistic, that it might be seen as more flash-in-the-pan buzz work.
I think that one can can have knowledge of a thing without any experience, but to have a true understanding of that thing requires experience. That’s the problem with a lot of things in business, social included. There are people with an abundance of knowledge but lack practical experience.
It’s the old academic vs real world experience debate. Who is better to run a business, someone with a business degree, or practical experience? The answer is ALMOST always someone with both academic knowledge (wherever it is obtained) and real world experience. The order of importance depends on how the individual learns.
I like to understand the why then the how. I have worked with many who are the opposite. They say that they don’t care about theory, only how to do (tactics). I have found however, that through performing the tasks necessary to achieve their goals, questions are asked and theoretical understanding takes place. It’s after obtaining a balance of both theoretical and tactical understanding that the real momentum starts.
The paradox, of course, is that when something is new, the balance is shifted heavily in favor of postulation because there’s simply not enough experience to be had. That’s still valuable. And that’s why I talk about description vs. prescription. Describing something and understanding it in its current state is vital to being able to *have* or *get* experience. Practical experience isn’t always possible at the dawn of something new, so we *need* to explore the knowledge side of the equation.
My feeling is that we’re sharply focused on how-tos and get-there-faster stuff right now instead of getting comfortable in exploration and understanding. But maybe that’s just me.
I’m a big fan of theory – cultural, literal, social – but it has its place in the conversation, just as specifically actionable items do. Critically exploring the ‘why’ may not yield easily incorporated ‘bits’ into a communication strategy, but having a working competency with that knowledge sphere makes for exciting possibilities, new methodologies, paradigms, etc.
Jason, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Each have their place. In my current experience, I see a strong quest for the actionable and almost a distaste for the theoretical, and that bothers me. Theory isn’t just fluff unless that’s all you ever do.
Theory is not academic. EVERYONE is operating on a theory, whether they realize and admit it or not. The power of theory, as you begin to describe, it making yours explicit so you can test and revise it.
Theory is simply a method we use to describe what matters and then understand why it matters. The power of theory is in the “why”, not the what. Those that don’t focus on the why will be left copying what others have already done. That’s a recipe for competitive parity. Those that struggle to understand why have an opportunity to create a unique future for themselves and their business, leaving competitors to copy them. That’s a recipe for sustainable competitive advantage.
Bret
Bret, that’s absolutely so. We *have* to create theories – or hypotheses – in order to guide our own actions. I like your points about copying, too. Something that’s purely prescriptive will give you steps to follow. But exploration of the current state as well as a bit of conjecture and theory will help people discover and create their OWN steps. And I think we need more of that.
Not just to create their own steps, but to adjust to changing conditions. The ability to predict and adjust to conditions is simply not possible if all you have is a recipe you’re following. Understanding why something works (or not) allows you to see similarities in other circumstances and say “if it worked for that, maybe it’ll work for this” without having to try EVERYTHING.
Look at the Wright brothers. They wanted to build something that flew, so they studied the birds so see WHY birds were able to fly, then they developed the method suitable for what materials they had available. They didn’t try to flap their wings like birds, or put feathers on their plane. Flapping is HOW birds flew but not WHY.
Understanding the why of flight allowed others to build and adapt different designs very quickly; so quickly, in fact, that within 50 years (less than 2 generations!) we had supersonic flight, whereas we weren’t even able to get off the ground for thousands of years before that.
The WHY is absolutely crucial for growth but as others have said, the order of WHY and WHAT is not always the same.
I’m a big fan of theory – cultural, literal, social – but it has its place in the conversation, just as specifically actionable items do. Critically exploring the ‘why’ may not yield easily incorporated ‘bits’ into a communication strategy, but having a working competency with that knowledge sphere makes for exciting possibilities, new methodologies, paradigms, etc.
Dead on. When I meet with clients, this is why I first insist on a session where we go over things like: how social media works, why it works, why individuals use social media sites in the first place. Unless we first understand why people are there, we can’t relate to them properly. Those who don’t understand the theory will approach social media from a purely traditional marketing stance. They are the ones who do nothing but hawk their own wares and talk about themselves. If you first understand that individuals are there to be social, not to be sold to, you’ll save yourself a lot of frustration.
If my prospective clients don’t agree to this, then I won’t work with them, because I don’t need the headache down the line of them telling me, “It didn’t work!”.
Ken, I’ll take you one step further: I don’t think we – as yet – really HAVE a grasp on why social media works or why people are here. That’s part of my point about description and theory; we’re rushing headlong into “do it this way” when I think we could do more to understand the context in which we’re currently operating.
It’s not just about whether you’re selling or not (I’d argue that has a place and time too). It’s a matter of being willing to invest in some understanding of your own first before you set out on a path of steps, and throughout your work. Maybe I just feel like we’re in too big of a hurry?
I think we’re in agreement, Amber. My point was that social media spaces, let’s say Facebook, existed before marketers came in. People join for the purpose of being “social”. As such, there is some rather interesting theory and research out there that actually takes us back to how we functioned as groups in the pre-broadcast era which is eerily similar to what we are seeing in the digital realm.
I think many businesses approach the social realm just assuming that people are there waiting to be sold to, and act accordingly. Certainly there is a time to sell, or none of us would be in this business.
Deep questions. The best definitive answer can be #fine in one context and #fail in another. Better than battling about who or what or which theory is right, is ______ ?
Nope, I do not have a pat answer. Experiment. Know or find your big why and go for it. “Big Why” inspired by Chuck Blakeman.
Experimentation is vital in business. I believe that deeply. But the social media realm (and perhaps others) aren’t so open to embracing that as we might say we are. We’re quick to throw a #fail on something that didn’t go the way we thought it “should have”. Or to dissect an effort and presume we understood the reasons and goals and all of that.
On a larger scale, perhaps what I’m wanting is a bit of acceptance that exploration, evaluation, speculation isn’t a BAD thing. There are bunches of posts and statements out there now about “getting beyond theory” and I’m not so sure we really want to do that.
Once the novelty factor wears off social media, I deeply believe we will move on with a few verified theories and leave the discussion about the media itself behind. As with the telephone long ago, I figure we may find social media is just more ways to connect more people, farther away, with fewer time boundaries and at lower cost. We meet in our virtual town squares, learn to recognize each other from digital cues, chat, make appointments and solve problems together. Or trade, or celebrate, and so on.
As for balance between understanding where we are now and telling each other where we ought to go next – I tend to follow not who tells me where to go, but who shows and goes ahead and cares to share what works, for them. I still need to experiment and verify for my own context, but can do that more swiftly, building on the work of others. Sometimes slowing down a lot to take it all in, as in Science beyond Reductionism by Monica Anderson. (Video)
I’m not sure it’s the media themselves that warrant discussion for the long term, but rather the motivations, behaviors, and patterns that surround their use. To use your analogy, discussing the phone has limited usefulness. But discussing *why* people use a phone and the myriad things it can empower is a different thing altogether, as are the cultural upheavals that are and were created by its emergence.
So in short it’s not the thing that needs so much explanation as the circumstances and attitudes that surround and are affected by the thing. That’s what fascinates me.
… Which brings us right up to present time. Using the new media technology of a blog, for example, we co-author an emergent book here, and it is already published and to some degree, read. We can show, not tell. The joy of immediacy and goodwill are fascinating, indeed.
Deep questions. The best definitive answer can be #fine in one context and #fail in another. Better than battling about who or what or which theory is right, is ______ ?
Nope, I do not have a pat answer. Experiment. Know or find your big why and go for it. “Big Why” inspired by Chuck Blakeman.
Without providing a good answer to “why,” the community will see little reason to participate.
Frank, that’s definitely part of it. But even from an introspective place, understanding why helps shape the path of how. We’re eager for someone to map out the steps for us, but taking the time to ask “ok, why is this a better step than something else” can, I think, better help us choose following actions that aren’t just practical but that line up with our values and intent.
Without providing a good answer to “why,” the community will see little reason to participate.
I would say that you don’t have a full understanding of social media and social business until you understand the THEORY behind it. As you and several other commenters mentioned, you have to dig and find the answers to the HOW and the WHY. Why is this the right fit for the company or client? How are we going to craft our strategy to best reach our target audience? That’s something that will vary from case to case. It can’t be learned by simply reading and mimicing case studies. Many companies try to mimic other companies’ successes and get frustrated when they see poor results. There’s no-size-fits-all solution for how to conduct “social business.” That’s why professionals need to have a firm grasp on the theory behind it.
Mimicry of what others are doing also helps insulate us from failure. We say “well they did it and it worked so we had a reasonable presumption that it would for us too”. Which is probably true. But sometimes I think businesses and individuals will choose to follow a prescribed path vs. a created one simply because in our minds, it mitigates risk, and removes a portion of effort.
We also crave shortcuts. Desperately. We want it faster, better, cheaper, easier. And all of those things simply don’t exist together. I’m not sure yet how to continue to make the case to businesses to slow the hell down, especially when at the same time, I believe the speed of business is exponentially faster than it’s ever been. Quite the conundrum.
You nailed it, Amber. Some businesses are so afraid of taking risks, so they try to take the easy way out by following on the coattails of others’ success. The problem is that social business doesn’t always work that way. While they may have some initial success, soon or later, the training wheels have to come off and the business will need to understand the theory behind it and analyze everything they are doing to fine-tune their own strategies.
I actually wrote about this in my blog. The companies that haven’t fully embraced the power of social business may have the biggest advantage in 2011 and 2012. http://www.blog.jessicamalnik.com/2010/12/my-aha-social-media-moment/
Mimicry of what others are doing also helps insulate us from failure. We say “well they did it and it worked so we had a reasonable presumption that it would for us too”. Which is probably true. But sometimes I think businesses and individuals will choose to follow a prescribed path vs. a created one simply because in our minds, it mitigates risk, and removes a portion of effort.
We also crave shortcuts. Desperately. We want it faster, better, cheaper, easier. And all of those things simply don’t exist together. I’m not sure yet how to continue to make the case to businesses to slow the hell down, especially when at the same time, I believe the speed of business is exponentially faster than it’s ever been. Quite the conundrum.
Theory is great, tactics are necessary. Strategy is essential but it’s your philosophy that drives them all. Your philosophy is what starts the process.
We all have access to vast amounts of knowledge now, we have massive amounts of information at our fingertips. The issue with knowledge only is that I can possess all of the knowledge in the world but if it’s the wrong knowledge, outdated knowledge, or impractical knowledge then it’s more detrimental than beneficial.
I think a good mix of practical, theoretical, experiential, and academic coupled with a solid philosophy are the best bet for success whether we’re talking social media, business, or otherwise.
Ah, one of my favorite vagaries: “a good mix”. I think you’re right about needing a bit of everything – hence the approach of this post. But it has me wondering about what that mix looks like, or if there’s even a concrete answer to that. How do you know when you’ve got a balance?
That’s the thing, it is vague. Everyone’s approach is going to be different. No two will look the same.
I don’t believe there is a concrete answer, I think we need to remain pliable so we can adapt and adopt as needed.
How do you know when you’ve got balance? When you’re rolling and when your adjustments are few and far between. I think it’s something you judge by feel. I could be wrong though, I often am.
Oops, I was still logged into this account when I replied the first time.
I just finished reading a fascinating book — http://t.co/EblD2tj — which walks through the whole of human history and ends with a chapter on what the lessons of the past show us about the future. According to the book, the future is a battle between the Singularity and Nightfall. Will we transcend biology and become a whole new type of interconnected intelligence or will we destroy civilization in all out nuclear war?
Ruminate on that for a little while and then go and check your Twitter stream. Trivial, mindless, self serving inanity, isn’t it?
Looks like an interesting read; will check it out. Though I’ll say that Twitter *can* be trivial and mindless, it’s also what we make of it. I have some brilliant people in my little circles that push me and challenge me too. It’s not all inane, it’s just a set of tubes. What we get out of it is as good as what we put in.
From back in my preaching and teaching days, I found that folks sitting in a church conference would hear the pastors speak, fill the auditorium with “amens!” and feel like they had gained knowledge and had actually done whatever was being preached on. But they hadn’t, and they weren’t ready yet to go through it – for the same reasons you posted above. And now they were inoculated to anything further because “we’ve heard that already” or “we’ve read that already” had kicked in. So not only were they not getting the foundational theory behind anything, they were also cutting themselves from practical matters by vicariously “experiencing” things through the message.
p.s. from your photo above – hope there’s nothing important in volume five. 🙂
Rick, brilliant and important observation. One that’s all around us, and I’m sure I’m guilty of it too. We read something and say “yep, I get it”, and then presume we’ve gleaned experience or understanding by osmosis. And then we’re so eager to move on to the next thing because we want to “hear something new”. When really, we’ve done jack with what we heard in the first place, and spent little time actually looking at it or applying it.
So glad you brought that up. Thanks.
Amber: “Good prescription and instruction for what’s next can only come once we’ve adequately described where we are now. And I’m not sure we fully understand that yet, or perhaps we’re not content to spend more time on that as the temptation is too great to design the future instead of illustrate the present.”
mediasres: I am all one for theory, and am indeed a theorist more than anything else, but I’m not sure that it is necessarily the case that good prescription/instruction can only come from adequately describing where we are now. I do think that we are in a shortage of such understanding, and part of theorizing is making-up where we are (and where we could be). But there is also a sense in which good prescription involves returning to tried and true human rules of thumb, drawing on sometimes abandoned principles of interaction through analogy, without quite knowing where we are (yet). Perhaps this seems too fine a point, for largely I am in agreement with you here. It is only that I am also interested in how past social forms re-inhabit us and become resources in the face of what is new.
That’s an interesting perspective. And one I’ll have to consider some more. I think I can say that I don’t know that we *can* ever fully and truly understand where we are now; that’s part of the adventure. So we need theories for that as well. Is that the kind of thing you’re trying to express?
Amber,
I think that there are different kinds of theorizing, and that it is not always the case that in order to prescribe that we have get – or even invent – just where we are. I agree that such theorizing is part of the adventure, and sometimes that’s what makes it all worth while, but for me it’s when we don’t quite know where we are that finding resources other than Big Picture making (which quite often can be wrong or bullheaded in it’s vision) is also a remarkable adventure.
Here is an brief example of what I have in mind: http://bit.ly/gNCVhu . I believe for instance that small town values are being summoned and drawn upon not only because through analogy online communities are like small towns (indeed they are), but also because small town values also represent anchor points of assurance, tried and true throw backs amid rapid social/technological changes that otherwise destabilize us. We are going both forwards and back at the same time, and its worth keeping track of.
This is only an example though. I believe these kinds of resources are everywhere, often without the need or even the possibility of Big Picturing just where we are. They are our (sometimes) neglected past that suddenly makes the new relation much more rich, or much more potent.
I certainly am not saying that Big Picture thinking/imagining shouldn’t be done, only that prescription does not require it, so to speak. Really what is needed is often a combination of Big Picture theory, seeing the Progress of it all, and re-harvesting of past social forms.
Loved your post, and appreciate your writing.
There is a concept from the social sciences — the PARTICIPANT-OBSERVER — that may be useful here. Participant obervation is a research strategy that encompasses the duality you see. You act not just to act but to learn, and you reflect on both what your action produced and what you learn.
However, I would challenge you to this concept up a notch. Theory is only one form of intellectual exploration, and a very experimental/lab/science one. A theory abstracts from reality to produce knowledge. I am dubious about theory in this instance, but passionately interested in reflection and intellectual inquiry around the many ways that social media is upending business and culture.
Here’s an example of why I don’t think theory is the be-all and end-all of that quest. On @tom_peter’s recommendation, I read Songlines by Bruce Chatwin, the late travel writer. Chatwin was trying to understand Songlines, the Aboriginal strategy for marking paths and zones used in migration so that tribes could differentiate peaceful passage from warlike passage when strangers crossed their land. It’s a fascinating story of how humans did organize in the absence of large-scale institutions.
What this book did was open my curiosity about the hidden, human aspects of how we organize activity using online tools. I can’t say I have a deeper theory — but I do have a deeper recognition of how much social media provides a set of tools for “demassification” as we recovering futurists say, and are powerful vehicles for individual action. I “feel” the potential of these tools more since reading this book.
And relevant to my marketing and entrepreneurship work — I am more convinced that the past is not prologue and more able to convince others of the same. I “see” differently — less in packaged ways, and more as pioneers. Like those aborigines trying to use the tools they had (their knowledge of the territory and ability to create stories, we are trying to connect producers and consumers in new ways, writing new stories, and in the process, evolving the kind of culture we live in. Authenticity is increasingly valued. Immediacy whether appropriate or not is increasingly stimulated, and we need to evolve to make good judgments rather than just act.
So this circles back to your concern about the over-emphasis of action. Helping our clients evolve beyond reactive action to strategic action is to some extent what we consultants are responsible for. The creative possibilities are being written everyday by what we do.
Hi Susan – great comments here, thank you. While you’re correct that theory and hypothesis are largely derived from science, I definitely don’t discount creative possibility, not at all. In fact, I think it’s vital. I’m using the term theory to loosely describe the concept of formulating an idea that can then be explored. I think the human dynamics to which you refer are *quite* pivotal as all of this emerges, much of which isn’t tucked into neat and tidy postulates. So I don’ t think we disagree, but I definitely appreciate the emphasis on intellectual inquiry. Perhaps that’s the term I should be using instead?
“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
Is there really any more important thing than asking ourselves ‘why’ and then trying to answer?
I’m not sure, is there? And the follow on question: when do you stop asking why and move into how? Or is it a constant? I happen to believe that understanding “why” helps open up many versions of “how”, more so than we’d find if we simply followed a prescribed path.