It Really Is Important

We've been talking a lot about social media here = it's important! If you are leading or directing people in any way, you should definitely understand why the use of social media is important to your team.

In my book, these "social" engines facilitate transparency; a critical attribute for organizations who want to accomplish anything. One of the best descriptions I've come across to explain why this is comes from the Standish group:

...transparency can be painful, but transparency reduces barriers to communication, builds trust, and accelerates consensus building and decision making.

It's important. Yeah Buddy!

Best Practices - NOT

At the Social Media conference last week, several people mentioned they were looking for "best practices." These were inevitably the same people who also insisted on the importance of "thinking strategically" when it comes to social media.

It seems to me that both sentiments have the same root. Namely, both are expressions of a modernist worldview, in which rationality can supply all our needs and activities can be optimized. I'm just not sure this worldview stands up to reality. It makes sense logically, but experience tends to disprove it. When that happens, we can't blame the world for not living up to our theory (but Strategic Best Practice advocates often seem primed to do just that).

Best practices are someone else's best practices. We should use them for illumination, not imitation. We should reflect on them, not just copy them. And strategic thinking is all fine and good if we mean intentional, thoughtful consideration of our eventual objectives... but not if it means locking down those objectives before we even begin.