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Thanks to Harold Jarche, we have a fun meme for people who are into social media.  Let's counter those 10 top reasons to ban social media in the organization, based on Ron Desi's video from four months ago, Organizations should ban social media.  And I'm not particularly into it as part of my business, I just think there are a lot of good ideas here for my personal practice as well as for the larger question of knowledge management. 

My version of the rules to this game: create a counter to each of the reasons.  Maybe the conversation shouldn't even be about these "reasons to ban" but should come up "reasons to use" social media.

Here are mine.  I'm sure you can come up with your own set that are even better. 

10. Social media is a fad.  In the long-term, everything is a fad.  Does that mean it isn't helpful?  The question is whether this particular fad has any value to us today.  The argument I like the most is that social media (or Enterprise 2.0 or "this technology") gives us an ability to return to the heart of what organizations should be about: people working with each other.  Social media is a great way to help people connect and engage with each other, especially when they no longer share physical space.
9. It's about controlling the message.  This one has very little connection for me.  Within the organization there is no "message" to control.  And outside the organization, plenty of other people are handling the message, both the company message as well as all the messages customers have about the company (which are often shared with these tools).
8. Employees will goof off. And, so?  How is this different from all the other ways we have of relaxing and taking a break?  In business people are expected to be available nearly all the time, so we also need to give them a break if they need it, whether that is heading down the road for a coffee or checking their favorite blog.  And by the way, many of those blogs have a business connection.
7. Social Media is a time waster. And the 25% of time people spend hunting around on the corporate intranet is a good use of time?  Maybe if I could ask a question and get a direct answer, I could be more productive.
6. Social media has no business purpose. How about a few: connecting people in the organization; pulling people away from their over-stuffed email boxes; helping to answer questions on-the-spot.  My participation with blogging and other social media has been deeply fulfilling and has helped me make business connections that I would have never made (or never even found).  I'll let someone else talk about the benefits for public-facing social media.
5. Employees can’t be trusted. 5, 7 and 8 are all saying the same thing, though this one says it more clearly.  If you don't trust your employees, why are they employed?  And if you don't trust them, I am fairly sure they know it already.  Give them some appropriate, simple guidelines and let them have at it.
4. Don't cave into the demands of the millennials. The generation argument is rather flimsy.  Besides, they are all participating in social media on their phones, which you don't control anyway. 
3. Your teams already share knowledge effectively. Excellent.  And how are they sharing that knowledge? E-mail traps knowledge and doesn't help it spread.  The same goes for document management.  Social media adds to the ability of people to find each other - people who can help solve problems and get those projects out the door.
2. You'll get viruses. Another non-issue.  Teach people responsible use of the internet.  Oh, and make sure your IT group has the latest patches installed.
1. Your competition isn't using it, so why should you?  You might want to ask that question again.  Even the stodgiest companies have blogs, wikis and other pieces of the social media puzzle running.  And, once again, your customers are probably using it to talk with other customers.

If you just want the list, here they are in reverse order.  Go ahead and make your arguments.  Or agree with the points, if that works for you.

10. Social media is a fad.
9. It's about controlling the message.
8. Employees will goof off.
7. Social Media is a time waster.
6. Social media has no business purpose.
5. Employees can't be trusted.
4. Don't cave into the demands of the millennials.
3. Your teams already share knowledge effectively.
2. You'll get viruses.
1. Your competition isn't using it, so why should you?

And here is the video embedded, in case you haven't watched it already.  Be prepared to smile - Ron Desi has his tongue firmly planted in his cheek.

[Photo: "fad" by Max Boschini]

I don't quite know how this happened, but I have just read another book on the tribal dynamics of organizations.  This time it is Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fischer-Wright.  Of course, the book has its own website, where they are seeking more examples of Tribal Leaders and the organizations that create them.

My ears are up particularly because this is at least the second time this topic has arisen in my reading lately.  Great Boss Dead Boss (my review) developed along some of the same topics with its emphasis on people grouping together in tribes.  And these books taken together make me see discussions and descriptions of workplace behavior in a new light.  As in, "No wonder they are struggling.  They are clearly stuck in Stage 2." or "That is a classic sign of Stage 3 behavior."  For example, the Stages were so obvious to me in Luis Suarez' discussion of a Andrew McAfee piece that I had to mention it in the comments.

In case you aren't familiar with the idea of "tribes," the authors talk about them as the essential building block of human groups.  Tribes are small towns, work teams, lunch groups, corporate divisions, hockey teams, industry groups - tribes appear anywhere that people gather.  It's "built into the genetic code" for humans to gather in tribes for support and recognition.  The idea behind the book is to decipher what's going on in tribes, based on the authors' research, and look at how those tribes create Tribal Leaders. 

One of the big elements of their research highlighted that tribes operate in five different stages, with Stage 5 being the Workplace of the Future and composing fewer that 2% of workplace tribes today.  The stages:

• Stage 1: "Life sucks" for everyone, and therefore it is okay for me to behave badly to make my way.  Fortunately, this stage is relatively rare in corporate life.  The book
• Stage 2: "My life sucks" is an upgrade from Stage 1, as people can see that life is okay for some other people, but in this stage, people have little to no motivation to change because they believe their life (or their work) is bad because of uncontrollable outside influences.  It's all "their" fault.  The authors claim about 25% of workplace tribes operate in this mode.  And you can see it when you talk to people who use language that blames others and who are convinced that any change effort is doomed to failure.
• Stage 3: "I am great, you are not."  Here is the world that many corporations live in (50% of workplace tribes).  Organizations have hired the best and brightest people, who have come out of educational and training environments that promote individual excellence.
• Stage 4: "We are great, they are not."  This is a shift from individual competition to the entire tribe competing against other tribes.  In organizational settings, Stage 4 is a combination of having common goals and values as well as a common "enemy tribe" to compare against.  This represent 22% of workplace tribes.
• Stage 5: "Life is great."  The pinnacle of workplace tribes are those who seek and promote good life for everyone.  The tribe is driven by their noble cause and for the shear joy of doing what they do.  Values are the central glue that holds the tribe together - and violation of those values can rip the tribe apart if the leader lets the violation stand.  There are no tribal competitors, not because they don't exist, but because the tribe is striving to make an impact (on the world) rather than striving to win (against another tribe).

While large companies may consist of tribes at varying stages and people exhibiting behaviors from several stages, the authors suggest that there will be overriding tribal cultures in every organization.  The book describes the process of upgrading from each stage with the explicit goal of helping the leaders (Tribal Leaders) bring their tribes into Stage 4 and 5.  As you might expect, the authors claim that tribes in the higher stages consistently outperform those in lower stages.  Interestingly, throughout the book the authors make it very clear that it is not possible to jump multiple stages at once.  Also, they suggest that the experience of previous stages are critical to growing into the next stages.  For example, the authors suggest the importance of personal excellence to Stages 4 and 5 relationships, and that is only there when people get through their "I am great" world of Stage 3.  Another aspect of the various stages is that there is some self-reinforcing behaviors that happen within the tribal cultures.  People look for evidence that things are still the same, so even when leaders attempt to make changes, it is the previous culture seeks to inoculate itself from those changes.  This sounds very familiar to anyone who has followed change management research and literature.

The description and discussion of Stage 3 was most troubling for me, as I was reading it.  I really didn't see a tribal culture described at all.  Rather, the "tribe" of Stage 3 seems to be a collection of individual contributors, who all complain that everyone else isn't as great as they are, and why can't people perform as well as them.  What is the tribe in that?  But then, seen in the context of Stage 2, which is almost a requisite tribe for the Stage 3 over-achievers to rail against; and in the context of Stage 4 and 5, where the personal mastery and expertise and crucial elements of building lasting relationships, then it becomes clearer that Stage 3 is a phase that must be endured, particularly for the Tribal Leaders.

While the authors didn't particularly cover this topic, it is clear that there is very little to do with technology in the transformation of organizations into Stage 4 and 5.  It's all about how the tribe and leader interact to develop the common values and seek out their cause.  I could see technology playing a supporting role in keeping people connected and supporting one another.  I could also see some interesting uses of Organizational Network Analysis in helping to diagnose where an organization might be in the spectrum of tribal stages.

When I talked about this book with my colleagues, they immediately heard undertones of the ideas of Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing (first proposed by Bruce Tuckman in 1965).  This model focuses on team development, though many others have used it and built upon the ideas.  I pushed against this connection in discussion with my colleagues, but the question is still sticking with me.  What is the difference between this Tribal Leadership model and the Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing model of team performance? 

The connection to Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing seems to be around the shift from Stage 3 to Stage 4: shifting from individual contributors to the group (tribe) contributing as a whole - and contributing more than they would as individuals.  In Stage 4 the group is aligned to a common goal.  Tribal Leadership calls this a Noble Cause (which I keep mis-typing as "Nobel").  My difficulty with this connection, is that I've always seen Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing as a team-level path, rather than an organization-level path.  But there is nothing keeping an entire organization from making that shift along these lines.  And I can see the Norming activity in particular as a tribe gelling around common values as well as around the tribal leader.

FYI: I "read" the free audio book version, made available by Zappos for anyone who's interested.  The book isn't about Zappos, but Zappos epitomizes many of the characteristics that Tribal Leadership discusses.  Listening forces me to pay closer attention - or pay attention in a different way.  I read it while sitting at my computer, because I wanted to build a mind map of the discussion.  The graphic below is my mind map, and here are pictures of the four main branches: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.  Be warned, they are large.

Thanks to Euan having a bad day, I have found Steve Schwartz' article at Lifehacker on The Science Behind "Having a Bad Day" (and How to Solve It).

When I was a teenager, I was grousing to a friend's mother that we were going to have a terrible weekend because we couldn't join a group of friends on a camping trip.  The mother responded with, "You are as happy as you choose to be."  And the article says essentially the same thing: "A bad day is as real as you make it."  If this is the case, the solution should be pretty obvious: If I make the bad day, then I can un-make the bad day.

When I was younger, I used to greet people with a cheery, "Good morning!" no matter the time of the day.  I think I learned that from the principal of my high school.  My intention was to get people to realize that they could start their day over, if they needed to.  And one of the things I notice over and over again: one day the little things roll off my back, another day they all pile up into a big ball of blackness on my soul.  Once again: the solution is within.

So, there is no such thing as a bad day (or any other period).  Thing happen, and how we interpret them is dependent on all sorts of factors.  If you want a "good" day, find ways to use the "bad" things for positive benefit.  Don't let all the "stuff" pile up into that ball of blackness.  Start the day over.

Good morning.

[Photo: "Good morning... morning...morning..." by JulyYu]

Do you want to do things well, or do the right things?  The difference between efficiency and effectiveness is exactly this difference.

Today, I came across this interview with Keivan Zokaei of the Lean Enterprise Research Center from last year where he says the same thing. Moving from efficiency to effectiveness using adaptive systems thinking.

Effectiveness is all about doing the right things.  Doing things that help bring money to the bottom line of the organization - or to help the organization achieve what it wants to achieve. 

But isn't "being efficient" a good thing?  Of course it is.  the problem is that most organizations focus on being efficient under the assumption that if everyone is efficient, then we must be successful in the end.  It should be obvious that this isn't true - but it isn't.  Organizations are complex beasts.  Doing things really well in one area might actually degrade the ability of the entire organization to do well.  

If you don't believe me, check around your organization for the way it is measured.  Is your plant equipment measured on "uptime?"  How does uptime everywhere relate to selling more product?  (No, not MAKING more product.  SELLING more product.)  Are you project team members measured by how well they are able to hit internal milestones?  Does that translate into projects finishing on time?  Are the sales people measured (rewarded) when they hit their targets?  Are they rewarded even more by exceeding targets?  Are they punished if they don't hit the targets?  I wonder how high their targets would be if these reward schemes weren't in place?  And how much does the organization suffer in lost sales because of it?

The best organizations know what the right things are, and then they have focused efforts on improving the efficiency of those things.  All the while, monitoring their business to check for other things that may get in the way of overall effectiveness. 

I'm looking forward to reading more of Bob Sproull's new blog on this topic, Focus and Leverage.  [Both this link and the link to the article above were mentioned by @Kallokian.]

[Photo: Excellent descriptive graphic, "Efficient VERSUS Effective" by Laura Dantonio]

[This is a comment on The blinding light of Web 2.0 from tribaldating@gmail.com.]

yeah, i totally agree.
no matter how advance technology is, some things is just better to keep to 'stone age'.
just like a piece of agreement, a hardcopy with a signature can never be replace by an computer generated one.

A few years ago (when I was a teenager), I recall a friend's mother telling me something along the lines of "Ignoring someone is the height of ignorance."  The implication being that it is offensive to the person you aren't paying attending to.  It was an interesting set of wordplay.  I suspect in that context, I was staring at the television instead of talking to her.  Today, it is more likely going to be due to abuse of the smartphone.

When the topic of multitasking arises, people point in many directions from project management* to personal management to attention management and "walking and chewing gum at the same time."  Most of the discussions of multitasking have to do with attention and being able to do individual work.  How many studies and articles have come out in the last year that describe people being unable to accomplish complex tasks when under the influence of distractions (music, texting) that pull at their attention?  These articles usually fall under the guise of discussions of multitasking.

For example, someone pointed to Taken to Multitask at ChiefExecutive.net that talks about people who are so addicted to dividing their attention that when told to put down their smartphones they picked up playing cards or even macramé, even when their attention was desperately needed.  (The macramé was being done by long-haul truckers!).

The impetus for the ChiefExecutive.net article is Christine Pearson's discussions of incivility in the workplace where a large component of this incivility is people ignoring one another in favor of their devices.  They claim "multitasking" when they are really bored or driven to distraction.  She has a book, The Cost of Bad Behavior, and a related New York Times article from May, Texting in Meetings - It Means 'I don't Care':

AS technological devices have become more portable and more popular, they’ve enhanced our connectedness at work. But they have also led to a greater degree of incivility — a trend that is damaging our workplace relationships.

So, maybe my friend's mother was right.  Ignoring people really is ignorant.  And I do it at my peril and the peril of workplace civility.

* For what it's worth, my primary interest in multitasking is in the context of projects: working on two (or more) things at once BY DEFINITION means that none of them will get done as quickly as working on one thing at a time.  Since projects are a series of interlinked tasks, this behavior guarantees that the projects will not move along aggressive timelines.  They will move along molasses timelines.

[Photo: "Civility Is Not A Sign Of Weakness" by Crazybananas]

[This is a comment on The discipline in personal knowledge management from Kate.]

Hello, Jack!

I came back to this post after sorting through emails to find the conversation thread I'd launched with Stan Garfield. I won't supply you with an answer yet - for I do have a hypothesis - but I did want to let you know that I'll be sending you a link to an assessment in about a week or so. While the restraints of Capstone have limited the extent of my research (at least for now) - I'm hopeful that the results will produce some further food for thought. I'll be sure to let you know how it all turns out!

Hope you're well!

Kate

[This is a comment on The discipline in personal knowledge management from Jack Vinson.]

Good point, Celie. I think of the "without a goal" stuff to be the serendipitous conversations and things that come across my desk / phone / ears / dreams. This stuff may become more structured, but for now, I want to catch it and maybe use it later.

[This is a comment on The discipline in personal knowledge management from A. Celie.]

Interesting discussion. Why not split the practise of gathering information using PKM tools with a clear goal in mind and gathering and capturing information without a clear goal. This would mean that you use a generic toolset and capture information that excites you or where you see some potential value for the future. Later on the captured information can be organized and enriched with a clear goal in mind. This also gives the user the opportunity to use information for several goals.

A. Celie

[This is a comment on Do you have bad days? Really? from Jack Vinson.]

Even better: Things are only bad from the perspective of the people involved. They are only good from the perspective of the people involved. All the effort is associated with changing _me_ so that I see the positives.

[This is a comment on Do you have bad days? Really? from AnaVar.]

This article is so true! No one feels great when bad things are happening to him, but sometimes we just don't have enough energy to turn them to good. Is it that hard to see good things instead of bad?