The reason that social business is struggling to take hold in these early days has nothing to do with the mechanisms of social media, the tools, the information, the lack of precedent or the inability to consistently articulate things like ROI or best practices. It has nothing to do, at a fundamental level, with our failures of tactical level execution.
Those are surface level problems that matter, but they’re definitively the carts before the proverbial horses.
Our most fundamental systems and practices, quite simply, are not set up to consistently invest in or reward some of the softer skills and practices and processes that are actually vital to forming a solid foundation upon which to actually build a social business.
We talk a lot about collaboration, but we grant it surface level treatment. We throw up a wiki or some real-time chat thing on our intranet and call it collaboration. And while those tools might help spark or facilitate collaboration, they are not the substance of the thing itself. Collaborative work is a value that requires us to articulate it and bake it into the structure of why we do business, not just how.
We pay lip service to innovation and disruption, mostly because they sound awesome on our marketing materials. But true investment in those things requires a high tolerance for discomfort and even risk, because successful innovation and reshaping of our businesses leaves a lot on the cutting room floor. Ideas, money, sometimes even people. If you really want to walk a new path, the trick is that the way is not on the existing map. So you’re going to hit dead ends much more often than not while you find your way.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t know a whole lot of companies that have learned to reward and learn from the attempt rather than the triumphant result. (If your company is one of them, please correct me. I want to hear about you.).
In part, my hypothesis is that we simply don’t teach these skills individually, nor do we help businesses define and implement models that encourage them.
We don’t teach people to work together – even when we encourage group work – because ultimately our reward systems are still based on individual achievement and skills. We don’t share a grade amongst our entire class. We’re held accountable for our individual contribution and effort. Working together and contributing to a group is not the same as sharing in a collective result.
Things like innovation have become a tick-box on our strategic plans, too, because building the structures for defining it, encouraging it, rewarding it and refining it isn’t typically a priority. When innovation becomes a task or a meaningless buzzword instead of a mindset or a core, shared value, people will treat it as such. The process of iterating on something includes incorrect assumptions, frustration, failed experiments, and underwhelming results. We spend reams of virtual paper espousing the virtues of failure, but in practice, our tolerance for same is remarkably small.
Otherwise, wouldn’t we be crawling all over ourselves to showcase the almighty ROI of failure? Write a case study about how we failed and what it gave to us? Would we not find ways to not only encourage it, but to reward the smart application of it if we believed so vehemently that it was the critical counterpoint to success?
There’s a bit of chicken-egg syndrome happening here, too. We can’t really create more social businesses – truly – until we encourage, internalize, and reward the behaviors and characteristics that make it social. But in order to find the wherewithal to change the systems we’re accustomed to in order to accomplish just that, we need to embrace those social characteristics of collaboration, positive disruption, and an intelligent tolerance for risk.
So which comes first?
It’s quite the paradox, really. The bedrock we need to build on in order to create the next era of business doesn’t come cheaply or easily, and it looks quite a bit different than where we stand today. But in order to fix our own fractured foundations, we really need to put new values and practices in place – and the people that will bring them to light – before we really know how they’ll work. We have to paint the stripes on the car while we drive it.
Will the winners be the ones that are willing to take a leap of faith and build without plans? Will the difference be made by those who wait for someone else to break and remake the system because they’re the ones that will then test it and scale it? Do we need both?
I don’t have all the answers yet. But the difficulty in social isn’t in the top few layers of what we do. It’s in the deep roots of why and how we do it, the ones that we very rarely are willing to touch or question. I think it’s going to get messier before it gets neater, and I’m still not convinced we’re asking the right questions of ourselves in order to achieve what we say we want.
Those that are willing to try and take an uncomfortable look at what sacred cows they’re not willing to kill? That are willing to really evaluate what can become their intelligent risks but risks just the same?
I think they might just have a pretty remarkable head start.
Great article. I think the part about people not being taught to be truly collaborative is so true. I just left a job where there was so much in-fighting, with people trying to enforce what they wanted on the group, instead of approaching it like, “What’s the end goal and how can we best work together to get there?” It’s so disappointing to me.
It’s a skill that’s very undercultivated in business. People think they do it naturally when truthfully, people need to be taught how more often than not.
It’s a skill that’s very undercultivated in business. People think they do it naturally when truthfully, people need to be taught how more often than not.
Cool beans. You are so right. We need to build more collaboration muscle if we are going to transform anything. Your point is relevant not only for social businesses but for all business models. Tweaks won’t do it. We need to learn how to experiment with new business models while we pedal the bicycles of our current one. Collaborating across silos, sectors and disciplines is the key enabler for business model and social system transformation. Let’s get going. Sign me up because a decade is a terrible thing to waste.
Saul Kaplan
Founder and Chief Catalyst
Business Innovation Factory.
You’ve got that right, Saul. My context is social, but so true about learning to cultivate new business models in parallel. We keep waiting to be able to just throw the switch to something new, but we have to build it. Which takes far more resources than many companies thus far are willing to commit. Thanks for the comment!
You’ve got that right, Saul. My context is social, but so true about learning to cultivate new business models in parallel. We keep waiting to be able to just throw the switch to something new, but we have to build it. Which takes far more resources than many companies thus far are willing to commit. Thanks for the comment!
“Early days?” …ummmm, you mean late adopters 🙂
Actually no, no I don’t. Our perspective on business model adaptation is very skewed in our bubble.
Actually no, no I don’t. Our perspective on business model adaptation is very skewed in our bubble.
“Early days?” …ummmm, you mean late adopters 🙂
I love social media precisely because it highlights what’s been broken for years.
Over the last 2 1/2 years more and more of my client work has been focused on internal alignment, strategies and processes. And over the last year it’s started to move higher and higher up the food chain. Companies jumped into social media because they felt they had to and maybe even believed in it and as it’s proven it’s value clients have started to realize the faulty foundation on their own, even if they don’t realize the extent.
On the flip side you have reports of the fortune 500 abandoning social media or decreasing their investment. I think it’s because these companies can’t align their efforts with their processes and instead of coming to grips with what’s broken, they’re choosing the short term easier approach of dropping social media.
These companies are making a huge, long term error. These flaws are fatal and they need to fix them.
You nailed it, Tac. And that’s what’s so exhilarating and also so frustrating when I see companies a) getting poor guidance and b) giving up because they’re expecting a surface level solution to fix a fundamental problem. As I’m fond of saying these days, lasting change runs deep. And social has this ripple effect that looks superficial to start with, but starts exposing all sorts of other (often more daunting) weaknesses that need to be fixed before it can truly take hold. Writing about that on Monday a bit.
Thanks for commenting. Always appreciate your perspective.
Amber, this is one of my favorite posts you’ve ever written. I read your blog, sometimes commenting, but I had to give my wholehearted endorsement of what this post stands for; an unapologetic stance in favor of softer skills that are a foundation for creating a truly social business.
It is refreshing to see someone call it like it is, reality vs buzzwords. We hear so many of the same terms used over and over but how often do people truly understand what the buzzwords were originally intended to mean?
Thanks so much for writing this, I am excited to share this with my various networks.
Thanks so much, Jeff. I appreciate the support, but more importantly, that there are other people who believe in this stuff. Together we might just make some progress.
110%. My whole goal in creating my company was to help companies transform into social businesses. It’s not just about paying lip service to concepts, it’s about harnessing the full power of the ideas.
Companies won’t just get there by themselves, it’s too grand of a departure from what they know, and only a small number of people truly embrace change. I believe that what you are talking about in this post is several levels deeper than what most entrenched businesses can even comprehend.
I echo your sentiment back at you. Your post makes me feel less like I’m taking on the world by myself and more like I’m part of a movement of people that “get it.”
Well said. Most obviously, American businesses continue to tie the ROI anchor around the neck of innovation, drowning it for lack of bottom line proof in advance of implementation. Defining ROI for every action before it happens, by definition, precludes innovation because it demands that there is an existing model on which to base the ROI projection. That means you are already copying what another has done in the past.
Not that this is the forum to solve the country’s ills, but I believe our cultural lack of creativity – and acceptance of creativity – is based on a declining educational system that ties $$ to standardized test scores. Kids are rehearsed to take tests, not to innovate.
The old joke is sad but true: “You’re a totally unique individual, just like everyone else.”
Brian Courtney
Schubert Communications
@bcourtney:twitter
I’m going to invoke an awesome article by Saul Kaplan (commenter above) on why companies fail to innovate. His points about the ROI discussion are absolutely dead on. It’s not that asking for value return is invalid, but asking for the *same* kind of value return that you do for long-established business practices necessarily puts innovation at a disadvantage.
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/10/five_reasons_companies_fail_at.html
Great post Amber! You have hit the nail on the head as far as the tension between needing to be truly innovative, collaborative to take SM where it needs to go, but not having the models to do so. We are nowhere near that uncomfortable place you need to be at when you are truly at the cutting edge. (In public policy development, sometimes you need to pose the positively outlandish as a starting point).
One interesting reflection I had on your point about existing systems that reward excellence — we do have a couple of models of collaborative systems at work: one is the military (for all its flaws, often overlooked as a system model); and the other is the family business – there is actually a network for family-run businesses to share ideas, as their value systems are quite different from that of the average publically traded company.
Some good examples, Janice. The distinction for me is the ecosystem point: understanding that true collaboration is about creating an interconnected network of people and ideas that in turn feeds a decision and practice cycle, which rounds back to spark the innovation cycle and on we go. Looking at it that way is NOT easy by any stretch, and I think many companies find it daunting to either implement that model if they’re small enough to be building, or to reverse engineer it if they’re an established company that has been doing things a different way.
Loved this piece Amber,
I’m the first to recognize what I don’t know and often rely on common sense, testing, and analyzing as a method to finding best practices. I lean on professionals who have done it longer and are constantly sharing great content to learn from, as you often do.
As a society, we often expect and receive immediate rewards for short term successes yet don’t have much of a reward system in place for those who are laying the foundation for months and years to come. As a consultant on my own, I’m constantly pressed to demonstrate short term sustainable results without their willingess to do the heavy lifting to create proper systems in place that give sustainable positive results a chance.
That’s the balance, isn’t it? Finding a few short term, incremental wins to point to and celebrate that are in turn still valuable parts of the big picture. It’s tough to do, there’s no question. It really takes a patient guide who is adept at breaking complex problems into their component parts, and a willing participant who understands that change is a process (and an iterative one at that) rather than a finite event.
Amber – I share your theory that businesses have been slow to invest in new models and approaches that will build social currency. That said, I believe that the greater problem is about lack of insight to drive evolution as opposed to lack of education. The current practice is to employ archiac models that were designed to deliver a monolgue to their customers as opposed to engaging in a dialogue. The insight that businesses seek lies within conversations. I think once businesses solve this challenge, transformation will be greatly excellerated.