Can You Really Be "Social" At Work?

 

Earlier this week I read an interesting article at Forbes.com written by Rajeev Singh titled Why Social Engagement is Critical to Business Success. While you may be immersed in social media as a consumer, how much thought have you given to the implications of this phenomenon from a business perspective?" asks Singh. "From client support to marketing to R&D and even keeping tabs on the competition, it's not to be daunted by the implications of what this new era of social business means for the enterprise as a whole."

For most project managers I know, social media has become a big topic of discussion. In fact, many project teams have been implementing social media components into the project management process for a while now. In fact, I think it's a very good idea to use a familiar metaphor to the workforce to encourage better communication and collaboration. With that in mind, I totally agree with Mr. Singh when he suggests, "Just as with many endeavors, the incorporation of social into business is an art not a science—a strategy we continue to refine."

I don't think incorporating social media methods into the process is a silver bullet, in fact I'm convinced that if we only give lip service to becoming more social, but still cling to a heavy-handed command-and-control management philosophy, we will probably do more harm than good.

Singh describes how they have incorporated social media within their organization, which is pretty interesting: "From being active on Twitter (with several handles that target distinct audiences), to posting fresh content several times a week on our corporate blog, to sharing videos on our YouTube channel, to hosting forums where clients can interact with each other and share knowledge, to setting up LinkedIn groups that bring people with similar interests together, to keeping everyone updated via Facebook, we truly believe in the incorporation of social networking. Indeed, we not only encourage our employees to help us engage people online, we also use Chatter in-house, which enables over 1,500 Concur employees to share and collaborate with each other 24/7, no matter where they are on the globe."

Of course, what Singh is describing is not a project management application of social media (and I'm not an advocate of incorporating Twitter or Facebook into the project management process anyway), but I like his organization's push to create dialog with both external and internal stakeholders via social media.What's more, I think it makes perfect sense to leverage something so ubiquitous as social media practice in the workplace (particularly with all the young people in the workforce).

Have you had success incorporating aspects of social media within your project teams? Or, do you think this is a passing fad?