Work Management and the Facebook Imperative that Cannont Be Stopped

Marc talks about learning out more about his company, but he doesn't want to know everything - no one does. A facebook approach can get you more of the information you want and individuals can easily put more of what they want out there. The main organizational construct here is information about individuals.

A few thoughts:

- The efficacy of face-to-face communication (where possible) will never be trumped by new tools

- For distributed teams there can be benefits as long as security is addressed (the public tools like Facebook and Twitter are not going to cut it for most organizations, they will need something in-house or with adequate security and access controls in the cloud).

- New tools can be very beneficial in terms of collaboration (even co-located collaboration) and accessibility to shared documents/information

- Synchronous methods like real-time chat can be very problematic if not implemented well. Having the ability to disrupt someone''''s work at any time can be very bad, especially if there is an expectation in the culture that you should drop what you''''re doing and task switch or multitask. Tools like twitter, facebook, blogs, and email can be good because they are asynchronous....however many people and organizations place a real-time expectation on themselves.

-There is a BIG difference between using public social media such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. for sales/marketing/PR and using it for operations and projects. Some recent posts and articles (the last issue of PM Network, for instance) seem to be conflating the two. That PM Network article (March 2010, pg 40) used a study about social media for sales/marketing/PR that I feel had no place being there. It was unrelated to what followed, at least from what I can tell.

Josh Nankivel
pmStudent e-Learning

I think the answer to Marc's question, "Why isn't all enterprise software like facebook?" is pretty simple.

1. It will never "all" be like facebook, because one mode of communication doesn't really make sense.

2. These things need to come along at the right point in time. People understand how facebook works now. That might give them enough motivation to try using something like it at work. Then its a question of whether its useful enough to become part of the fabric of daily life.

Posted: Apr 3, 2010 1:50 PM

I appreciate the contribution to the discussion. Although Benioff is promoting his Salesforce Chatter application, he points out that he is referring to Facebook and Twitter as a metaphor. So am I.

I agree with Josh, the answer does not lie in how we use Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media in the workplace. But rather, how successfully project management software companies can harness the way social media encourages collaboration and communication amongst our social network within project teams and stakeholders.

We need to stop looking at project communication from a top-down perspective and create an environment where project teams are not forced to update status and collaborate, but are actively (and willingly) engaged in the process. I don't believe it is strictly an ease of use issue, but that could be a part of why social media is successful at encouraging communication. Maybe it's the almost instantaneous feedback or the positive reinforcement for accomplishment. Although Benioff''s message might be a little self-serving as Dave suggests, I believe there is more to the discussion. I believe the conversation should revolve less about whether Facebook or Twitter is a viable tool for project teams and more about what is it about those social media tools that encourage dialog and participation. I think that is what Benioff is really asking. Why aren't more software companies looking at what Facebook, for example, is doing right? I personally don't believe the answer has been discovered yet. However, like Benioff, I believe that we are facing a paradigm shift in how project teams communicate and collaborate—whether we like it or not.