S.M.A.R.T. Blog

Social Media and Employee Voice: The Current Landscape - A Research Report

Many people have been talking about the impact of social media on employee engagement and employee voice, but for time-constrained organizational leaders and human capital professionals who want to understand the connections, it's virtually impossible to find those conversations, let alone read and make sense of them. A recent report by Silverman Research can help. Commissioned by the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development (CIPD), it synthesizes the relevant literature and discusses its implications. This post provides a summary and links to the full (free) report.

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This is a guest post written by Laura Hillman, Research Manager at Silverman Research.

Many organisations, as part of their efforts to be an employer of choice and provide a better experience for their employees, are committed to enhancing employee engagement. A key aspect of this effort is the annual “employee engagement survey”. But in spite of their good intentions and sincere investments, employee engagement surveys often don’t provide the meaningful insights they claim to. What is advertised is an opportunity to speak up where all opinions are heard, but in reality what is conducted is a tick box exercise that is often tiresome for employees to complete. With the decline in response rates to engagement surveys, getting employees’ views seems more difficult than ever. This is contradictory to the ever increasing online presence people have where thoughts and feelings are shared willingly.

There is a mass of literature demonstrating the link between employee engagement and various organisational benefits. These include a more satisfied, trusting, cohesive and productive workforce. However, where there is an increased prominence of employee engagement, employee voice still remains in the shadows and in many organisations never gets beyond the annual employee survey. Apart from transitioning to the internet and some advances in analytical capabilities, the basic model of employee surveys has broadly stayed the same for the last 50 years. When we consider that social technologies are offering some pioneering ways of eliciting voice, it is a particularly pertinent time to review current thinking in this area and embrace social media platforms in order to encourage advancement and change.

In early 2013, Silverman Research were commissioned by The Chartered Institute for Personnel Development (CIPD) - the world’s largest HR professional body - to write a report reviewing the current literature on social media within the workplace and the impact it is having on employee voice. The idea behind the report was to create a summary of existing literature on the subject and to act as a guide for future research. Using a range of literature materials including journal articles, blogs, discussion forums and books, the most up to date thinking and practices were captured to cover existing ideas on employee voice, uses of social media within organisations, the benefits and barriers of social media and how social media should be embraced to allow for an authentic employee voice.

The report (available for free here) proposes the adoption of an approach that focuses on social media within the workplace, empowering employees to speak up. Companies are encouraged to mirror the use of social media in our everyday lives to cultivate an information sharing and communicative environment where people feel as though they can voice their opinions and really are listened to – something which has not been possible until now.

The report also argues that our conceptualisation of employee voice should not be static, but rather should evolve in line with technological and social developments. In recent years, as a result of the relentless advance of social media, employee voice too, is evolving rapidly. The greatest difference is the shifting patterns of communication, from being one-way or two-way to being multi-directional. This has developed from giving employees a say behind closed doors to enabling them to engage in an open forum. It is hard to ignore and as such, is voice with muscle.

Social technologies allowing new forms of collaboration also lend themselves to collective decision-making. This aggregation is crucial in the evolution of employee voice because it is a necessary condition under which the wisdom of crowds can be harnessed. The result is a new form of collective employee voice that is mobile, organised and intelligent.

To date, much of the conversation within organisations has been about the risks and threats (especially to employers) that may be associated with social media. However, the perils of an open approach to employee voice and the benefits of more traditional closed systems are often overrated. Moreover, there is little organisations can do to stem the rise of social media. This reiterates the point that organisations should be designing their future in employee voice.

We still don’t know which aspects of organisational culture will be most affected and what new advancements will arise to enable an enhanced employee voice. Despite these uncertainties, one thing is for sure; drastic changes are afoot to the way in which employee voice is expressed within organisations.

 

Laura Hillman is a Research Manager at Silverman Research. She has an MSc in Organisational Psychology from Goldsmiths in London and specialises in the application of social technologies to employee research.

For more information please contact: laura.hillman@silvermanresearch.com

 

Do People Need Social Media Training? Yes. And (Much) More.

Earlier this year I shared my thoughts about online social learning communities in response to a Forbes post by Meghan Biro. This post supplements those ideas by reflecting on a 2012 series written by Shel Holtz about social media training:

• Part 1: Introducing a series on social media training
• Part 2: Getting buy-in for social media training
• Part 3: Research is at the heart of social media training
• Part 4: Social media training for employees: decisions, decisions
• Part 5: Should C-suites and boards of directors be exempt from social media training?

I'm always glad to see others write about the need for education and training, which becomes more important as the gap between technological and human capabilities continues to grow. I especially appreciate the thought and effort leaders like Shel Holtz put into helping leaders understand why the issue is important and how it can be addressed most effectively.

But just as marketing is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the applications of new communications technologies, so is social media training when it comes to Digital Era competencies. Based on my own research and writing on the subject, as well as the preliminary results of some focus groups on digital competencies I've been conducting, I offer the following considerations for both individuals and organizations:

1. As internal applications and implications of social and digital technologies expand (and will become far more pervasive and relevant to workers of all types), the training provided by organizations will need to expand as well. The focus must move beyond external discussions on public platforms to internal communication and collaboration on private digital networks. No functional area is exempt.

2. Our prevailing LIY (Learn It Yourself) attitude may have some limited effectiveness for personal uses of new technologies, but it is both inefficient and ineffective for professional uses. Most people - and especially later adopters - need help to develop the competencies they need. There has to be a balance between formal and informal learning, with different weights applied to each depending on an individual's baseline competencies. The ultimate goal, however, should be to enable people to engage in self-directed learning.

3. Education and training will have to range from high-level concepts to specific skills. Everyone should know how to do basic tasks like insert and crop an image and hyperlink text, for example, but they should also have at least a basic understanding of things like the role of mobile technology in commerce and legal considerations for both individuals and organizations.

4. Similarly, we have to focus on both the simple and complex. Yes, learning can often be boiled down to a few simple points, but those points hardly reflect everything someone needs to know. For example, knowing basic accounting principles like "assets = liabilities + owners' equity" and "revenue - expenses = net profit" is important, but that knowledge hardly qualifies someone to be a bookkeeper, let alone a CPA or CFO. 

5. Education and training must also address strategic and tactical considerations, again to varying degrees depending on the learners and the learning objectives. In addition to knowing what they need to do and how, professionals - and especially organizational leaders - need to understand why they should be be doing it.

6. Not everything can or should be taught in house. Some aspects of education and training should be customized, but general concepts and skills can be developed through more standard approaches. We need more valuable services to provide what organizations need - and organizational leaders must be willing to make the necessary investments in those services.

7. Higher education - especially in professional schools like business - has a critical role to play in developing competent Digital Era professionals and effective Digital Era leaders. There is MUCH more that they can and should be doing to create the necessary foundations for ongoing professional development of all types.

You can learn more about Digital Era competencies and the need for education and training through the Related Resources listed below. I encourage folks to share additional resources and especially welcome comments and questions about the challenges faced by digital rookies and what they need to bridge their own digital divides.

- Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD 

 

Related Resources

10 Digital Era Truths

Social and Digital Tech Trends: 9 Take-Aways for YOU

Digital Era Adaptation in 2013: A Long and Winding Road

The New Digital Divide: Thoughts for Leaders and Laggards

Digital Era Competencies: How Do You Stack Up?

What's Your Social Media Sophistication? The SMQ (version III)

Social Media Education and Training: Pro or Con? Please Discuss…

Social Media Education & Training: Where We Are. Where We’re Going.

A Master’s Degree Specialization in Social Media & Online Communities

Digital Era Leadership: The Role of Business Schools

For even more resources, check out slides 35-42 from my closing Impact99 keynote, The Road Forward: Striving for Balance. More recent pieces can be found in the blog archives from December to the present. 

The Social Media ROI Challenge: Are We Making Progress?

This post revisits the social media ROI (return on investment) question, focusing in particular on whether we're making progress in terms of the challenges put forth by organizational leaders and other experienced professionals who have been resisting increased digital engagement. Playing off the ROI acronym, it provides alternatives for interpreting the ROI argument. It then articulates – and counters – seven assumptions on which the resistance arguments are often based. The post concludes with some indications that leaders may be moving away from specious arguments and balancing concerns about ROI with the equally important COI (cost of inaction), and invites others to share their insights and experiences as well.

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A little over a year ago I wrote The Social Media ROI Challenge: What it Really Means (and 7 Related Faulty Assumptions). After kicking off this year with Social and Digital Tech Trends: 9 Take-Aways for YOU and Digital Era Adaptation in 2013: A Long and Winding Road, I thought I would revisit and update my thoughts on the question of social media ROI (which can also be extended to the adoption of other new digital technologies).I welcome the insights of others as to whether and how we're making progress on addressing the important Digital Era issue of new technology adoption by organizations and their leaders.

- Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD

 

ROI is Often Code for...

Technological advances continue to outstrip the willingness and ability of many organizational leaders to address the opportunities and challenges they present. When it comes to social technologies in particular, skepticism has been widespread, and often manifests itself in questions about the kind of return on investment (ROI) leveraging these technologies can produce.

These questions seem perfectly rational on the surface, and it appears that leaders who ask them are fulfilling their fiduciary responsibilities and acting as good stewards of their organization's limited resources. But looks can be deceiving. All too often the ROI argument has been used as a smokescreen and/or a form of filibuster against moving forward. In my experience, when organizational leaders and other experienced professionals talk about the ROI of social media, they’re not just referring to Return On Investment. ROI, in fact, is often code for: 

• Ridiculous Online Indulgence. In their disdainful dismissals of social media, people still highlight the (over)abundance of vapid and banal social media activity (e.g., people sharing what they had for lunch) and characterize the people who engage in it as shallow and narcissistic, with too much time on their hands.
• Real professionals Only Interact in traditional ways. There is a clear bias among many professionals toward how things have “always” been done. The phone, and in-person exchanges - and even email - are seen as inherently superior to newer forms of digital interaction. More importantly, the different types of exchanges are viewed as mutually exclusive rather than integrated and complementary.
• Resist Out-of-the-box Ideas. In spite of all the media hype surrounding social media and digital technology, people are not particularly quick to adopt – let alone embrace – new ideas and thinking.
• Reserving Our Interest/Investment until we see what others do. For better and worse, most senior professionals tend to follow more than they lead. Though there may be a strong desire to “keep up with the Joneses,” very few people actually want to be the Joneses.
• Risk aversion Over Innovation. Even when they recognize that they probably need to move forward, fear – of the unknown, of failure, of unintended consequences – holds them back. The risks of engagement are always clearer than the risks of inaction.
• Respect Our Idiosyncrasies and Inconsistency. If pressed, leaders and other experienced professionals would have a hard time defending their negative positions on social media and other digital technologies, especially relative to other positions and decisions. But many of them seem to expect others to accept their arguments at face value and not question or challenge them.

 

7 Faulty Assumptions Underlying Resistance

Generally speaking the resistance arguments contain a number of implicit - and often faulty - assumptions, including:  

1. Social media technologies – particularly the public platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube – represent the complete range of digital technologies available today. 

• Today’s digital capabilities are far greater than most people realize – and they’re expanding every day.
• People need to think beyond software, to hardware and networks and analytics too (i.e., SMAC - social, mobile,analytics, cloud).
• When it comes to software in particular, they need to think beyond specific platforms to the tools and technologies that comprise them.

2. Organizational leaders know the ROI of current practices for marketing, branding, selling, etc. - and it's good. 

• The links between many current practices, such as advertisements and trade shows, is difficult, if not impossible, to measure.
• The costs of traditional approaches can be much higher than comparable digital efforts.

3. Current communication and collaboration practices are efficient and effective and cannot be improved on by leveraging new digital technologies.

• The limitations, challenges, and frustrations of email are well-known.
• Many in-person meetings are considered an avoidable waste of time.

4. It's appropriate to hold new practices - particularly new digital technologies - to higher standards than existing practices.

• People need to be willing and able to critically examine current approaches. There should be no sacred cows.
• The relative value and utility of different approaches should be determined based on a fair assessment.
• It’s unrealistic to expect any approach to working to be “drag free.”

5. Leveraging new technologies requires adding them to rather than integrating them with or substituting them for current practices.

• We should all be open to identifying ways to work smarter, not just harder.
• The best approaches to achieving goals/objectives should be pursued.

6. It will all settle down (or maybe go away?) at some point, so why bother engaging and suffering through all the chaos before it does.

• The only constant in the Digital Era is change. Expecting things to settle down is unrealistic.
• By the time the laggards choose to engage, it could be too late. At a minimum, they will have missed out on a number of potentially great opportunities.

7. It's better to wait for a "silver bullet" solution than to invest in the necessary hard work now to climb the required learning curves and lay a foundation for future success.

• As in other aspects of running an organization, there are no silver bullets.
• Success in the Digital Era requires a new mindset, as well as new knowledge and skills. Learning new ways of working is unavoidable.

 

We're Making Progress (Slowly)

It's perfectly appropriate for individuals and organizations to decide not to take more advantage of the digital capabilities that currently exist, as long as they're making informed decisions. When it comes to organizational leaders in particular, they have a fiduciary responsibility to understand the new environments in which their organizations operate so they can provide the proper guidance, both strategic and tactical, as well as the necessary resources their organizations need. 

As a practical matter, digital  technology is only going to continue to advance, and the longer people wait to understand and embrace it, the more risks they take with respect to creating and maintaining their own success. In addition to being concerned about the ROI, in other words, they should also be thinking about the COI – the Cost Of Inaction.

Fortunately, there are encouraging signs. I'm seeing and hearing less resistance. And although there is still some reluctance, the acceptance of new realities and the need to understand (if not embrace) them is increasing. Here are a few specific examples from my own recent experiences:

• In two weeks I will be leading a digital engagement strategy session for the Midwest region of a large grocery chain. This chain's excellent brand reputation has facilitated their talent acquisition efforts for years, but as they expand into new markets where they're less well known, they recognize they have to up their digital engagement efforts to continue to attract top talent.
• Earlier this year I met with two different groups of executives and senior professionals in transition (in one case presenting Job Search in the Digital Era to over 100 job seekers). The response to both sessions was extremely positive, with virtually no skepticism about new social technologies and their importance. The recepton to those talks has led to a project focusing on how senior professionals can and should enhance their digital competencies, from both career management and organizational leadership perspectives. (If you would like to participate in this project, please email focus@denovati.net)
• I am also developing an initiative with a leadership consulting firm that will help leaders develop their digital competencies. The managing partner has the vision to recognize that no quantitative "proof" is needed to determine that this is an important area his firm and their clients must begin to tackle. Proof of concept is sufficient for him to move forward.

Although progress is often painfully slow, I am encouraged by the shifts in both attitudes and behaviors I'm seeing so far in 2013. Are you seeing encouraging signs too? If so, I'd love to hear about them!

 

Related Resources

Social and Digital Tech Trends: 9 Take-Aways for YOU

Digital Era Adaptation in 2013: A Long and Winding Road

What's Your Social Media Sophistication? The SMQ Quiz 

"Social Media" is SO 2009! 7 Proposed Semantic Upgrades

SMinOrgs Social Media Primer

Digital Era Leadership: Defining Characteristics?

Note: many of the above pieces include links to additional resources.

Job Search in the Digital Era

As the Digital Era continues to evolve, it is increasingly important for professionals to provide the same level of care and attention to their professional identities in cyberspace as they do to their presence and reputation in the physical world, especially when they are looking for their next career opportunity. This presentation offers guidance for: 1) Establishing and managing your digital professional brand, 2) Defining personal and professional boundaries and protecting your privacy, 3) Leveraging digital tools and technology to achieve goals, and 4) Bridging the physical and digital worlds.

I really enjoyed giving this talk to members of The Executive Network Group of Greater Chicago last week. Apparently other folks found my tips valuable as well. The deck was "hot" on SlideShare and was featured on their home page in both the LinkedIn and Facebook sections! I also got some positive feedback about it in some of the LI groups where I shared it, which is always gratifying.

Enjoy!

- Courtney

 

Job Search in the Digital Era from Social Media in Organizations (SMinOrgs)

Increasing Social Engagement: A Little Recognition Goes a Long Way

You know that new social intranet or knowledge-sharing platform you built, beta-tested and launched with great fanfare? It WILL increase your team’s collaboration and productivity, but you need to provide the right level and type of recognition.

This is the first guest post from Richard D’Ambrosio, a trusted executive communications advisor and member of our Global Leadership Team. The value of having one’s contributions acknowledged is underscored by recent developments in the area of social recognition, both as stand-alone software systems (e.g., You Earned It, MTM’s Carousel, and Small Improvements) and integrated into larger applications (e.g., NewsGator’s Spotlight module for Microsoft SharePoint). I expect we’ll see even more synergy among various social engagement movements and tools over time.

- Courtney Shelton Hunt

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Neuroscientists are just now beginning to grasp the full ebb and flow of chemical reactions in our brains, and how that flow triggers our actions.

As a professional communicator for 20+ years, I’ve worked on projects from national sales conferences, to small team meetings, to being the community manager for online knowledge sharing platforms. What I’ve found, and what many sophisticated neuroscience researchers are proving, is that a simple system of recognition can go a long way to triggering the neurons that incent the right social media behaviors.

This holds tremendous potential for knowledge sharing and other objectives sought by social media platform managers. According to a recent survey from the IBM Institute for Business Value, almost two-thirds of companies are applying social capabilities internally “to find information and collaborate more effectively.” Eighty percent expect to do so within the next two years.

However, these firms may not maximize their investment and obtain the results they need if they don’t fully comprehend the dynamics of popular social media sites like Facebook, where one out of three adult Internet users are sharing some kind of content.

 

A Thank-You Can Go a Long, Long Way

When I helped launch a knowledge sharing platform in a prior role, we worked in advance with people leaders to identify key objectives our sales team was already working towards. We chose a handful of core expertise needs and built some offline activities supplemented by an online center of excellence for each of the initiatives.

We uploaded job aids and other critical sales tools to these sites. More importantly, we seeded the centers with comments from some of the sales leaders and individual contributors working on the project. Then, we actively and very publicly recognized anyone who contributed. Our SVP also chimed in online and off, personally thanking subject matter experts and sales people who were joining the conversation.

The reaction was phenomenal. The sales team and others ramped up their contributions as they saw their peers receiving positive feedback. The engagement far exceeded previous online usage, and unlike the launch of the tool two years earlier, we didn’t have to hold raffles or provide financial incentives to get our teams to contribute.

In fact, we didn’t spend a dime outside the project buildout. Participation was driven solely by personal leader recognition, both online in the tool, as well as at town halls, staff meetings and other offline activities. We also saw a correlation between contributions and peer-to-peer informal recognition.

 

The Gamification of Knowledge Sharing

In an article published last year in the MIT Sloan Management Review, Andrew McAfee, Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Center for Digital Business, spoke about an experience he had with TCS, Tata Consultancy Services, the Indian software development company.

TCS was using a tool where any of its 200,000 employees around the world could ask questions to and get answers from the entire enterprise. Employees were rated and recognized for their participation. After a while, the company did some analysis of the discussions being shared and who was participating. According to McAfee, they noticed that some people were offering answers and expertise not directly relevant to their role.

McAfee believes that “some combination of the peer recognition and being on top of the leader board, that kind of status, was so valuable to them that they were doing stuff that was exactly outside their job description.” He goes on: these employees were “doing it for the joy, doing it for the peer recognition, doing it because of the game-ification. Making visible how good you are.“

 

Put These Tactics on Your Checklist

I have witnessed this dynamic over and over again throughout my career as a communications professional and consultant.  But getting there isn’t easy. There are still a number of core activities that need to be in place to create a rich environment that will kick off and reward contribution.

I strongly advocate a number of strategies including:

• ensuring subject matter experts are readily accessible through all internal social tools and are rewarded for responding to questions and requests in a timely manner
• targeting and incenting experienced high-performers and leaders for contributions
• leveraging multimedia wherever and whenever possible
• directly demonstrating the link between business goal achievements and social knowledge sharing through prominent company-wide communications and events

There are a number of other very productive supporting strategies that require buy-in from internal business partners that also could trigger the neurons that initiate and sustain the right behaviors. Key among them is incorporating knowledge sharing in annual performance goals and reviews. McAfee suggests “enterprise-level collegiality” make up to 10-15% of performance reviews.

Unfortunately, I’ve found changing performance management programs, which speak to the broader culture of an organization, are much harder to come by. More on that in another post…

 

Richard D’Ambrosio is a writer and consultant with 20+ years of experience in the media and with large and mid-size corporations. His passion is for helping organizations achieve their goals, through leadership development and effective communications. Richard believes that social media is rapidly changing the way institutions organize workflows, share knowledge and develop talent, and is collaborating with SMinOrgs to advance strategies and tactics that will assist individuals and organizations in reaching their full potential. You can read more of musings on his Narrativity blog.

500+ Books about Social & Digital Technology: Trends and Opportunities

It’s probably no surprise that over 500 books have been written about social and digital technologies over the past 15+ years, and that many of these focus on social media marketing. What’s more intriguing are the topics that have not received much attention yet from thought leaders and authors. This post offers a brief introduction to a research project that explores the Digital Era literature and (in true 2.0 fashion) invites people to participate in its ongoing development.

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Last year, with the help of Marci Stewart and Genifer Snipes, I embarked on a project to identify all the books that had been written about social and digital technologies. It was a naïve quest that has turned into a very ambitious undertaking. Although I was aware of the most well-known books from the past five or so years, I had no idea how many other publications were out there, or how far back they stretched. We’re now at 520 – and counting!

In this post I share some project details, the initial high-level results, and what we plan to do next. More importantly, I’d like to invite folks to participate in the development of the project by sharing the questions, analyses, and information they’re most interested in. And of course I welcome recommendations for books lists, titles, and authors, to make sure our final list is as complete and accurate as possible.

I look forward to hearing from you!

- Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD

 

Methodology

Here, in a nutshell, is the approach we have used to create the database:

• We selected Goodreads as our primary source of information, primarily because it’s vendor neutral – and of course it’s a social media platform in its own right!
• We seeded the list with titles from “best of” lists like The 25 Best Social Media Books of 2011, 10 Best Social Media Books, and Top Social Media Marketing Books.
• For each book we collected the publication data, Goodreads rating information, title, author(s) and book description.
• To expand the initial list we checked the titles listed under “Readers also enjoyed similar books” and “Lists with This Book.” Once we had exhausted those sources we conducted 40+ searches using all the potentially relevant terms we could think of, including general terms like social media and big data as well as specific terms like Facebook and Tumblr.
• In an effort to make the data collection effort more manageable, we only included books that were written in English and had at least one review. Yes, that’s somewhat arbitrary – but we needed some kind of cutoff! We also tried to limit the database to books that were targeted to non-technical readers.
• Throughout the process we added relevant titles as they were brought to our attention if we hadn’t already identified them.

Using the book descriptions, we created a three-tiered coding scheme to reflect their focus:

• Perspective: conceptual (focused more on conveying information or discussing topics at a high level) and tactical (“how to” oriented).
• General focus: categories ranged from macro to micro and included society, commerce, marketing, workplace, individual, and data.
• Specific focus: used to indicate if a book was specifically focused on a single topic (e.g., cloud computing, Twitter, mobile, LinkedIn).

We’re happy to provide more details about our methodology upon request. Please add a comment or email books@sminorgs.net with your specific questions.

 

Initial Results

To convey a general sense of what these 500+ books are all about, we have created two Wordles using the books’ titles (after cleaning them up by deleting unnecessary words and combining similar terms).

The first Wordle includes all the relevant terms (click to enlarge):

Because SocialMedia, Guide, Marketing and Business dominated the results, we created a second Wordle without those terms to dig a bit deeper into the books’ focus (click to enlarge):

The initial results may seem “no duh-ish” to some folks, especially early adopters. There’s nothing particularly revelatory about the fact that the books published to date have had a heavy emphasis on business, specifically social media in the context of marketing. The “how to” focus of many of these books, as well as the promises of success, are also not surprising.

But some of the emphases are less obvious. For example:

• Blogging (which has been declared “dead” at least twice in the past 5 years) remains a primary topic.
• Even though Facebook is a significantly larger platform, Twitter and LinkedIn have received relatively more emphasis as book topics.
• Although people are still wrapping their brains around what to do with data, there have been a relatively substantial number of books focused on the topic (e.g., analytics, metrics). Similarly, cloud computing has also been a fairly significant topic of discussion.

And perhaps most importantly, we need to think about what’s not been addressed, as those are the areas in which there is perhaps the greatest need – and the greatest opportunity for thought leaders and authors. These include:

• More discussion and guidance about topics like gamification and mobile technologies.
• How social and digital technologies can and should be used in non-commercial sectors, including in non-profit and religious organizations, public sector entities, and academic institutions. In a similar vein, there’s probably a need and opportunity for more focused discussions on digital communities and community management.
• Applications and implications of new technologies inside organizations (e.g., enterprise 2.0, social business, social enterprise).
• Leadership-oriented discussions, especially in terms of what it means to be a leader in the Digital Era.
• The human-capital management implications of new digital technologies, as well as legal/policy issues and risk management considerations.
• Applications and implications of new technologies for individuals, including digital competencies, jobs, professions, and careers.

 

Coming Up

We are conducting more in-depth analyses of the data (including a formal text analysis in conjunction with Silverman Research) and plan to share more results in the coming weeks/months, including:

• A slide deck of Wordles that reveal emphases by year, category, etc.
• An infographic, which will include things like the first time Social Media appears in a book title and most popular buzzword(s), as well as various representations of general and specific categories.
• A white paper that offers a more formal treatment of the methodology, results, and implications.

If you’d like to be informed as soon as these and other results are published, please join our mailing list or subscribe to the S.M.A.R.T. Blog.

 

What’s on Your Mind?

To enhance the value of this project, we’d love to hear from you. Specifically, we’d like to know things like:

• What books would you like to make sure we include? Are there specific “best” lists we should double check? Favorite books or authors? Your own tomes? We’re especially interested in hearing about recently-published books, as we are more likely to have missed them.
• What other topics, categories and/or questions do you think are important to explore?
• What questions do you have? What would you like to know? What are you curious about?

Please add a comment or email books@sminorgs.net with your specific suggestions. Thanks!

 

Related Content

Paper or Digital? The Results are In… And It’s a (Virtual) Tie! With over 500 votes and nearly 200 comments, the results of a recent poll indicate people are fairly evenly split between paper and digital book formats. Although the poll wasn’t perfectly scientific, the richness of its results can be of great value to authors, book publishers, and designers, as well as professionals in other fields such as training and development, academia, and communications.

4 Big Barriers to Social Media Adoption in Organizations: Key Research Findings. The results of a unique and ground-breaking study by Silverman Research (n=644+) indicate that there are four main barriers to increased adoption of social technologies in organizations: lack of knowledge and understanding, unprepared leadership, fear, and the absence of a well-grounded business case. This post highlights those findings and offers recommendations for overcoming the barriers. It also provides a link to a free report with details on the research and its results.

Digital Era Adaptation in 2013: A Long and Winding Road

As the Digital Era progresses, technological capabilities continue to outstrip our capacity to address the opportunities and challenges they present. We may be more willing to move forward in 2013, but we're not necessarily more able. In this post I reflect back on the changes that took place in 2012 and offer pragmatic thoughts for the year ahead.

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In my first post of 2013 - Social and Digital Tech Trends: 9 Take-Aways for YOU – I shared a number of resources addressing technology trends for 2012 and 2013 and highlighted the implications of those trends for individuals and the organizations of which they're a part.

As I was working on that post, I decided to revisit a piece I wrote a year ago entitled 12 Hopes for 2012: Enhanced Adoption of Digital Technologies, to see how many of my hopes had been realized and how much the digital landscape had changed (or not, as the case may be), in the past 12 months.

In this post I reflect back on 2012 and offer some thoughts for the year ahead. My attitude going into 2013 is much more pragmatic, but my ideals and aspirations are unchanged. I’m looking forward to seeing what the next twelve months brings.

As always, I welcome your comments and questions.

- Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD

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Click here for an excerpted list of my 2012 hopes

Media hype and impassioned advocacy continue to mask the reality that the vast majority of working adults – particularly those in leadership positions at organizations of all types – are still sitting on the sidelines of the digital movement. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is that we continue to be mired in an economic malaise that causes many people to be reluctant to take risks and/or venture into still mostly-uncharted waters.

Throughout the past year there were a number of discussions about the importance of socially (and digitally) savvy leaders, as well as a few related research studies and reports, but generally speaking there was much more talk than action. Toward the end of the year, however, I started getting a stronger sense that leaders recognized they couldn’t ignore the trends and/or put off action any longer. Interestingly, the continued integration of social media into modern life was unlikely to have influenced them much. From my perspective, in fact, I think the (perceived) dominance of social media has been one of the key factors holding them back. The rise of mobile technology and cloud computing, however, as well as growing talk about big data and analytics, has piqued their curiosity – and their appetites – and has probably been a much bigger factor in their changes of heart.

The vilification of social media has continued, but with less heat and volume, primarily because the honeymoon is effectively over. That doesn’t mean social media is going away. It just means that it’s now generally viewed more as a utility or a commodity than a novelty, much as we view other utilities like electricity and commodities like email. The fact that we no longer put Millennials/Digital Natives on super-high pedestals when it comes to new technology may be a result of this shift. We’ve come to realize that digital engagement is much more about hard work than fun, as well as something that requires a broader skill set and judgment that comes from years of experience. It’s much easier to learn the technical details of a technology tool than it is to gain wisdom and perspective…

But we’re still a long way away from “getting” what new technology is all about and realizing its potential benefits, especially in professional and organizational settings. More to the point, we haven’t made the necessary behavioral shifts. Old habits die hard – but it’s more than that. The gap between what technology can do and how humans can harness and leverage that technology continues to grow. The lack of knowledge and understanding, combined with critical deficiencies in digital competencies, is perhaps the biggest obstacle to moving forward. Without a significant shift in attitudes toward education and training, both generally and specifically in the area of digital literacy, it will become increasingly difficult to bridge that gap.

The ROI challenges continue (more on that in a future post), but they seem to have lessened as well, perhaps in part because of the shift toward viewing new technologies as utilities, and in part because of a growing recognition that the environment is too dynamic and evolving to apply specific metrics in any meaningful way. That’s not to say that return on investment is not important, but people seem to be slowing down and trying to address the question in more strategic, thoughtful, and deliberate ways. It's no longer just about "bang for the buck."

Although there hasn’t been an expressed movement toward private digital networks, there has been an increasing recognition that public platforms cannot be relied on as exclusive or even primary engagement channels, especially when it comes to internal and other private communication and collaboration. And as more software vendors and service providers adapt their offerings to include social elements, there will be an increasing number of viable options that help organizations reap the benefits of new 2.0 technologies while minimizing their risks. This shift can also be seen as an indicator that we’re maturing from an emphasis on splashy, disruptive technologies to those that can extend and enhance existing competencies.

Finally, when it comes to risk management, there doesn’t seem to have been much change on that front in 2012. Many organizations still lack adequate policies, procedures, training and guidelines to mitigate Digital Era risks.

All things considered I view 2012 as a mixed bag. There were lots of encouraging signs, especially toward the end of the year, but no real dramatic changes with respect to new technology adoption by professionals and in organizations.We are still far from the tipping point...

Although resistance to new technologies has lessened, that doesn’t mean we’ll see a dramatic increase in adoption any time soon. There are still a number of barriers to be overcome, including global economic challenges, limited resources, conflicting priorities, lack of time, relatively few success stories that leaders can relate to, and the general lack of a roadmap or established best practices. The journey ahead will continue to be long, slow and rough. But traverse it we must...

We must continue to pay attention to trends, watch industry titans, and listen to thought leaders, but we must remember that although what they do and say are extremely important, their actions and views are not necessarily representative of the world most of us live in. They are explorers, adventurers, and prospectors – and they occupy space on the leading edge of the digital movement. Most of the world, however, is comprised of people who have only just begun to think about leaving the comfort of a civilization they know to become pioneers, settlers, and immigrants in a world that seems as full of dangers as it is of possibilities.

WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?) will remain a powerful motivator. No amount of reasoning, cajoling, selling, threatening or teasing can make someone change if they don’t want to. As we strive to find ways to move forward, this question must constantly be top of mind, regardless of what form it takes. It lies at the root of every challenge, every point of resistance, every criticism… and every advocate, proponent and change agent must be able to answer it – not from their own perspective, but from the perspective of others. Put another way, to help others think outside the box, champions must think inside the box.

But for me above all else, we must educate.

Social and Digital Tech Trends: 9 Take-Aways for YOU

The advance of social and digital technologies continues unabated. We witnessed dramatic changes in 2012, and the anticipated changes in 2013 promise to be equally profound. This post provides resources that capture some of the key trends and predictions and offers nine bottom-line insights about what these trends mean for both individuals and organizations.

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Although we tend to emphasize personal resolutions and goals at the beginning of each new year, there is value in establishing professionally-oriented priorities as well. With that in mind, I’d like to share some of the resources I’ve gathered about social and digital technology trends and offer my thoughts about what these trends mean for professionals in all functional areas, at all career stages, and in organizations of all types and sizes (in other words, everyone!). Armed with this knowledge and insight, I hope folks will give serious consideration to how they will bridge the “digital divides” in their professional lives to enhance both their own technological competencies and those of the individuals, groups and organizations with which they work.

Have you established any specific technology-oriented goals for 2013? If so, I’d love to hear them. I also welcome links to other resources on trends and predictions for the year ahead, as well as additional insights.

Thanks!

- Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD

Coming Up: In the next few weeks I’ll be revisiting some of the issues I covered in early 2012, including digital technology aspirations for the year ahead, the “ROI question,” and the need for training and education to enhance digital competencies. I'll also be sharing new ideas about some of the things individuals and organizations need to think and do to be more successful with digital technology in 2013 and beyond. Please check back or subscribe to the SMinOrgs S.M.A.R.T. Blog to be notified when those posts are published.

 

The Bottom Line for Individuals and Organizations

Let's begin with the end - what the trends and predictions shared below mean for you, your peers and leaders, and the organizations of which you're a part...

1. In case you’re still wondering, the Digital Era is not coming, and it’s not just getting started. It’s HERE.

2. While many new technology trends, like public social media platforms and mobile technology, have reached a certain maturity level, there is still significant upside potential with respect to both growth and opportunity. We are nowhere near saturation.

3. New technologies, platforms and tools, as well as new applications for existing technologies and tools, are being developed Every. Single. Second. Every. Single. Day. And there is no end in sight. Truly the only constant is change.

4. Technology development and adoption may happen first and fastest in the individual consumer space, but they eventually reach and spread throughout organizations.

5. There is a convergence among four main technology movements: social software, mobile devices and access, cloud and network computing, and data analytics. Individually, each one of these movements is incredibly powerful. Together, they have the potential to create dramatic transformations.

6. Now more than ever it’s incumbent upon organizational leaders to be focused on the future and to operate with a big-picture, wholistic, strategic perspective. Change is happening too fast and in too many different dimensions, and falling too far behind could ultimately be disastrous.

7. Even more importantly, leaders of all types must have at least a high-level understanding of how social and digital technologies work. Lacking that understanding can be viewed as irresponsible – and possibly even a breach of their fiduciary responsibilities.Leaders who don't see value in pursuing the opportunities presented by new technologies must still be prepared to manage the unavoidable challenges and risks.

8. The Digital Divide is increasingly being defined by lack of knowledge and use rather than lack of access. Professionals at all levels and at all career stages who are socially savvy and digitally engaged will reap both direct and indirect rewards, especially as the differences between them and their less-savvy peers grow. Being a “digital dinosaur” is a luxury few people can afford.

9. Individuals and organizations should no longer assume that an LIY (Learn It Yourself) approach to developing digital competencies is an effective strategy (if it ever was). People need help to climb their learning curves efficiently and effectively – and providing that help in both structured and unstructured ways is a critical investment that will pay dividends in both the short term and over time. We have to stop thinking about technology education and training as an (unnecessary) expense.

 

General Social and Digital Technology Trends

Mary Meeker's Latest Must-Read Presentation on the State of the Web. Call me a geek, but I look forward to this annual summation from the Kleiner Perkins partner. The 88-slide deck offers a great snapshot of Digital Era realities and possibilities.

The Future of Digital. A 137-slide deck of trends in digital media created by Henry Blodget and his team at Business Insider to kick off IGNITION: Future of Digital conference in the fall. Even when you are aware of how drastically and rapidly things are changing, some of the data is still mind boggling - especially when it’s represented visually!

Social Media around the World 2012. This 129-slide deck from InSites Consulting provides “insights on the status of social media and more than 2.000 facts & figures about social media in 19 countries. Topics cover main adoption and usage, interactions of consumers with brands, impact of branded conversations, evolution of mobile and the opportunities for structural collaboration between consumers and brands.”

Nielsen’s Social Media Report 2012. A 15-page ebook from NM Incite (a joint venture with McKinsey) that mixes text and visuals to provide a series of snapshots on topics ranging from the global social consumer to social TV and social care.

 

Technology Trends and Predictions for Organizations

Although the focus in these pieces is on commercial enterprises, many of the ideas and implications can be extended to organizations of all types and sizes in other sectors as well.

The 2012 IBM Tech Trends Report. This report is based on a survey of more than 1,200 IT and business professionals, as well as 250 academics and 450 students, throughout the world. The bottom line… four pivotal information technologies are rapidly reshaping how enterprises operate: mobile technology, business analytics, cloud computing and social business.

Forrester – Cloud Predictions for 2013. The 14 predictions in this post nicely reflect the fact that cloud computing is coming of age. A related post on the Cisco blog – Six Predictions for Cloud Collaboration in 2013 – provides a nice complement to the Forrester predictions.

The Leading Indicators of Social Business Maturity in 2012. Although I think his numbers and estimations are too optimistic, the underlying ideas and trends that Dion Hinchcliffe addresses are spot-on. The piece also provides links to additional resources. He followed it up recently with Sizing up Social Business for 2012.

The Can't-Miss Social Media Trends For 2013. Ryan Holmes, the CEO of HootSuite, makes six predictions about the kinds of growth and changes we can expect in the year ahead. In 5 Ways Social Media Will Change The Way You Work in 2013, he offers his take on some of the ways in which social media will impact the workplace.

 

Digital Era Leadership

The World in 2013: A Top Ten for Business Leaders. This Economist article is a must read for everyone, not just leaders - and certainly not just business leaders. Seven of the ten trends involve social and digital technologies in some way, and their impacts potentially affect organizations of all types and sizes.

Social Media And The Boardroom: Critical Questions Directors Need To Ask. This Fast Company article offers specific suggestions that reflect the fact that “social media are no longer novel stakeholder and consumer outreach tools; they are the new normal in the modern business operations environment.”

9 Digital Era Photo Essays

Nine photo essays, using images from around the world, tell nine different but similar stories about life in the Digital Era, highlighting social media and digital technologies. These stories focus on both individuals and organizations and emphasize the need to adapt to changing times in ways that blend the best of the earth with the best of the cloud.

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I am a visual person, which is one of the main reasons I've been so enthusiastic about establishing an SMinOrgs presence on Pinterest and Tumblr. I especially love photo imagery. I've been an avid photographer most of my life, and as my friends and family can attest, I love using pictures to tell a story... 

Though it wasn't intentional, the first official S.M.A.R.T. Blog post I wrote was a photo essay reflecting on what the city of Rome, Italy can teach us about building digital communities. Since then I've created eight more photo essays via different media. This post highlights all of them, categorized in two groups: Signs of the (Changing) Times and Digital Era Reflections.

I hope you get as much out of viewing them as I did out of creating them. And if you know of other great Digital Era photo essays, please add a link in the comments. Thanks!

Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD

PS - You can find more original photos and reflections in our Digital Era Images and THIS is Social Media Pinterest boards.

 

Signs of the (Changing) Times

Social and Digital Technology in Rome and Cairo. A Facebook album that contains examples of social media and other digital technologies from my trip to Rome, Italy and Cairo, Egypt in February 2010. I was particularly interested in examples that contained elements of surprise or defied people's expectations of how these technologies can and should be used.

 

 

Tourism in the Digital Era. A Facebook album that shares some of the ways in which digital technology in general - and social media in particular - enriched a road trip in the summer of 2011. Also check out the accompanying blog post: Technology-Enriched Travel: 10 Take-Aways that Reveal Digital Era Truths.

 

Celebrating "Books" in the Digital Era. A Facebook album of photos from the 2012 Printer's Row Lit Fest in Chicago, which used to be called the Printer's Row Book Fair. As our notion of what a "book" is morphed, and print media gave way to digital media, the name - and what was being celebrated - also had to change. These images and my observations reflect those changes.

 

Dublin in the Digital Era: A City in Transition. Using images from a recent trip to Dublin, Ireland (Sept 2012), this SlideShare photo essay offers examples of how the city and its residents are moving forward into the Digital Era, while simultaneously clinging to remnants of a paper-based way of life.

 

An Post: A Venerable Institution Transforms Itself. On the trip to Dublin, I was also captivated by the country's Post Office (An Post). Unlike the US postal system, An Post seems to have done a great job of transforming itself over time to adapt to changing circumstances and technologies. This SlideShare photo essay offers examples of how it has embraced and responded to Digital Era realities, and demonstrates that its current adaptive capacity is deeply rooted in a history of flexibility and nimbleness. 

 

Technology at the HR Tech Conference: Old School Meets New. The significant progress the HR industry has made in developing and leveraging social and digital technologies was clear at the 2012 HR Tech Conference in Chicago. Especially impressive was how "high tech" was used to facilitate "high touch" interactions.

 

 

Digital Era Reflections

11 Lessons about Digital Communities from Rome. I visited Rome for the first time in 2010. Struck by powerful images, I decided to study the city while I explored it. Viewing it as a metaphor for virtual communities, I was curious to see what kinds of insights I could glean into the factors that should be considered when building, maintaining, and participating in digital communities. I identified 11 lessons, organized into three themes.

 

 

 

The Early Bird May Get the Worm, But the Brave Bird Gets... The Fries?!?! In June 2010, I (unintentionally) shared my lunch with some brave sparrows who made me reflect on the role of bravery in the context of social media adoption.

 

 

Think You Know What Social Media Is? Think Again. Using images from a road trip in the summer of 2011, this SlideShare photo essay demonstrates that social media is about more than digital technology. The essay strives to demystify social media and get people to think more broadly about it and its economic and social roles. Providing this perspective on digital manifestations of social media should help everyone from rookies to mavens, detractors to advocates, understand that today's social media isn't just novel - it's normal.

Social Media and HR: Lessons and Reflections from SUMMIT 2012

Want to know how to increase the role of social media in your organization’s HR strategy? Or maybe you’re just beginning to talk about it and don’t know where to start... A panel of senior professionals at SUMMIT 2012, the annual premiere event of The Human Resources Management Association of Chicago (HRMAC), recently shared their experiences and lessons learned. This post offers tips and takeaways for enhancing the effectiveness of social media initiatives in any organization and raises questions about how individual HR practitioners, their organizations, and professional associations like HRMAC should navigate the road ahead. 

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This is a guest post from The Human Resources Management Association of Chicago (HRMAC).

HRMAC held its annual premiere event, SUMMIT 2012 on November 8^th at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, IL. With over 800 attendees and four general sessions, one of the highlights of the day was a panel discussion entitled Social Media and Mobile Communications: Leverage Your Ability to Connect, Share, and Engage. The session was moderated by WTTW Chicago Tonight’s Phil Ponce, and the panel included three leaders from the Chicago area: Joel Warady, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at Enjoy Life Foods; Paul Hamann, President of The Night Ministry*; and Veronica Micklin, Manager of Associate Training at True Value Company (panelist bios appear at the end of this post).

The session began with a few poll questions that produced interesting results and set the stage for the discussion to follow:

• 51% of the respondents disagreed with the statement “Social media is important to my company’s overall HR strategy” (35% agreed, and 14% were uncertain).
• For professional outreach 87% said they mostly use LinkedIn (4% said Facebook and 3% said Twitter).
• 52% indicated they mostly use social media for recruitment; 34%said networking.
• 88% responded that their organization still has a significant learning curve in integrating social media into their HR strategy.

To early adopters and social media enthusiasts, these percentages may seem surprising and perhaps disheartening, but they are fairly typical and indicate that social media adoption in most organizations is still in its infancy.

In their introductory comments, the panelists emphasized that social media is a means for connecting and needs to be used as such in organizations, especially in HR. They also highlighted the fact that social media should be used for two-way communication and should become a platform for dialogue. Specifically, Hamann noted that social media is a great way to connect with employees who work odd-shifts or might not be in working environments that easily connect them with the rest of the organization. And Micklin reminded the group that people are always learning from one another. Offering electronic media simply facilitates a natural process.

Warady suggested that organizations consider hiring a ”Chief Listening Officer” to identify opportunities for improvement based on what employees and customers are saying about the organization and its products and services. Hamann recommended that the CEO set an example by using social media as his or her primary means of communication. The panelists also advised:

• A senior person or the CEO must be prepared for an increased level of transparency that will follow the initiation of social media. If she or he is not ready to be more transparent, then the use of the media cannot be complete or effective.
• Be aware that the use of social media will bring with it a whole host of other concerns that need to be addressed, such as policies around its use, employee access to it “off hours,” etc.

When asked by Phil Ponce about implementing social media into HR strategies and with employees, the panelists gave this advice:

• Start with a process or group in which sharing will be natural and the convenience will be appreciated, such as a cross-functional project or multi-site team.
• Start small and document your successes. Run a pilot in which you move communication from email to a new platform. Make access and participation easy.
• Invest in one-on-one time you need to make participants feel competent and excited about participating. You can prevent small questions from becoming barriers. Everyone learns at a different pace.
• Shake off any age bias. You’ll be surprised at the fast adoption and creative use by Baby Boomers.

Hamann also noted, “The constant goal is to keep your employees interested and involved in the overall social media plan of the company.” And Micklin suggested attendees remember the four E’s of social media: Engage, Educate, Excite and Evangelize.

 

Where Do We Go From Here?

The social media panel was both informative and stimulating, providing HR professionals and social media advocates alike with ideas and advice on how to better leverage social media and engage employees in its use. It also raised a number of questions and provided important food for thought. When we connect this session with the opening keynote from Penelope Trunk (The Brazen Careerist), in which she championed the idea of HR professionals assuming more significant roles as change agents, we were left with a few questions of our own:

• What role should HR professionals play in helping organizations and their members become more socially and digitally sophisticated?
• What changes need to take place in organizations to enable HR to assume a greater leadership role with respect to the digitization of work and the workplace?
• What changes do HR professionals need to make to better prepare themselves to take on those leadership roles?
• What role should a professional association like HRMAC take on to help HR professionals, HR functions, and organizations better prepare themselves for success in the Digital Era?

HRMAC has been and will continue to help its members address these questions and more as the Digital Era continues to evolve. We’d love to hear your thoughts on them as well.

 

About HRMAC

Since its founding in 1915, HRMAC has been leading the dialogue on workplace strategy, connecting HR leaders with the industry’s best-in-class resources, and growing Chicago area companies and talent. With a membership of over 750 organizations and a network of more than 7,000 HR professionals, HRMAC is the oldest organization of its kind in the country and independent of other local, state or national organizations. For more information on HRMAC please visit our website at www.hrmac.org.

 

About the Panelists

Joel Warady is Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at Enjoy Life Foods, a leading brand in the North American Gluten-Free, Allergy-Friendly CPG category. Prior to joining Enjoy Life, Joel was Principal of Joel Warady Group, a Marketing, Social Media, and Business Growth consulting firm. Internationally, Joel is respected as a marketing and social media expert, speaker and business advisor. 

 

Paul Hamann is President & CEO of The Night Ministry, a 36-year-old Chicago non-profit that compassionately provides housing, health care, outreach, spiritual care, and social services to adults and youth who struggle with homelessness, poverty and loneliness. The Chicago Community Trust named Paul as one of three Nonprofit Experienced Leader Fellows for 2012, and in July of 2012, he was awarded a Champion of Change Award by the White House and the Federal Interagency Council on Homelessness.

*Disclosure: The Night Ministry is a client of Renaissance Strategic Solutions, which is Courtney Shelton Hunt’s consultancy.

Veronica Micklin is the Manager of Associate Training at True Value Company where she provides leadership in helping employees improve their job performance and develop their careers. For True Value University, she created a blended multi-level curriculum for company managers, and developed the series Human Resource Toolkits, used extensively by True Value retailers.