Social enterprise – needing a little more science

There’s plenty of frustration amongst social media commentators about the steadfast attitude of many enterprises towards the adoption of social tools. More specifically, accepting the philosophy of Enterprise 2.0.

Ross Dawson of Future Exploration Networks and Stephen Collins of AcidLabs amongst others have often commented in detail on this topic. They have pointed to some great successes and I also hear their frustrations. There is language, thinking and approaches around social tools that simply don’t fit into the corporate culture of old. Barriers need to be broken down to give people free open access to these tools, sometimes rules need to be put in place and even some situations call for access to be restricted during work hours. There isn’t a clear and general solution for all enterprises be they large or small.

I’m an advocate for open access for enterprise knowledge workers, as we do in Saasu. We’ve even built connections to social platforms from our online accounting web finance engine. We are building Enterprise 2.0 capabilities into our products and services. However I also hear the frustration of business owners and management teams who believe they are losing productivity due to Facebook and Myspace.

The main factor causing slow adoption by enterprises is productivity fear. Decades of workhorse enterprise culture has left management in fear of productivity declines from social tools. Just as SMS, Instant Messaging systems were perceived to be slowing productivity so are social networks at this early stage of their technology cycle.

Naturally they jump to no access for anyone. Well, they are totally justified to have this fear, but not to apply it to everyone unilaterally. If in managing the flow of information in tools like Facebook can only be served by blocking certain users and allowing others then that’s justified but far from ideal. Many roles in organisations may not be well served by these tools until either a self managing culture or a social communication workflow system is firmly in place that understands or controls acceptable versus unacceptable use.

I talked about restricting access to social tools some time ago in my post about Facebook in the workplace. I’ve witnessed first hand productivity costs in an enterprise environment. I still advocate restrictions and policy around access based on a role by role basis. Access to social networks should be no different to any other communications or knowledge tools used to generate productivity. Any approach to this which is not analytical and scientific in it’s assessment is simply decision making based on poor business intelligence.

Even in the Saasu business we are careful what each new system is that we adopt. It’s not about a free for all, an unequivocal license to explore for all employees. That’s nice, but an analogy springs to mind. If all the scientists choose to go out into the field because it’s fun then none of the lab work gets done.

Most importantly I’m committed to scientific rigor on the adoption of any tool in an enterprise. Anecdotal, emotional and social benefits are all important but what do the numbers also say about the social tool being employed. This is where enterprises should look at the usefulness in numbers and not just jump to conclusions. There is no substitute for at least some rough scientific checks being applied to any system, business or otherwise.

Many managers witness staff spending time working their personal Brand in Facebook. Plain and simple it often about entertainment, events and niche interest groups. So a manager in that situation adds that anecdotal evidence to their bag of reasons and moves on. That evidence is then pulled out of the bag when a decision is being made to block a tool or if thought leaders like Ross or Stephen happen to be giving advise and encouragement on adoption. The argument no doubt becomes tough in the face of this. My approach would be to:

1. Demonstrate why social tools are an opportunity and not a time waster in many circumstances.
2. Get them to adopt an Enterprise 2.0 framework with metrics or that connects to a system that has metrics.
3. Get the social flow managed via culture, tools and procedures.

The reality is that some jobs simply become less productive while others benefit. The job specs for a production line worker, retirement home salesperson or waste removal person probably don’t call for it. However, there is an argument that even people in those roles gain job satisfaction, get better communication with colleagues and possibly better access to management when using social platforms.

Knowledge workers should always be given access to platforms. I’ll leave it to Ross and Stephen to communicate this. Read their blogs, they are the experts.