Please Remove Me...

 

I have just survived through a social networking mayhem. I woke up the other day with hundreds of mails jammed in my mailbox and it took me half an hour or so to clean them up. As I was going through the mails, I realized that it was started by someone accidentally posted a private message to a public group and that message was mass-mailed to everyone in that group. A few people replied to that mail after that and the whole chain of conversation could have just stopped. Unfortunately, an impatient group member blasted off a reply requesting to be removed from the mail chain and thereafter, setting off the first crack that led to a torrent of mails flooding in with similar requests. Helluva mistake! In just a few minutes, my mailbox was choked with tons of mails starting with – “Please remove me…”

It is amazing how people are using social media these days. We have seen how the notorious hacker group LulzSec has harnessed social media in a new and unique way to narrate its hacking activities on Twitter. We have also witnessed how Twitter and Facebook were used to spread and coordinate London’s recent riots. There is no doubt on the speed and power of using social media for communication and collaboration. The problem then is not so much on how to use it but how to use it correctly. Without proper regulation and governance, any mistake in social media could be fatal as in the case of congressman, Anthony Weiner, who fell from grace by mistakenly releasing X-rated photo of himself in Twitter.

With all the touted benefits, it is very tempting to link up social media with project management. In fact, there are a few project management tools (e.g. Wrike and Vantage) in the market that have already done so. However, just like any other usages of social media, it is important that we have proper governance in place to administer its usages. It is a double-edged sword. An efficient tool with a wrong usage simply implies that things will be done in the wrong ways more efficiently. Think about how rumors, once commonly spread through pantry talks, can be spread like wildfire through social media. It will become the favorite tool for the naysayers and gossipmongers to bring down your project. Even if you are lucky enough to escape the rumor wildfire, there is no guarantee that you will not end up like Anthony Weiner accidentally sharing or leaking out some confidential project information through the social media. Such a mistake will pronounce the end of your career as a project manager prematurely.

However, don’t get me wrong. I am not a hermit that hates social networking. On the contrary, I love social media and also an avid user of it. I just don’t like the idea of waking up one day with hundreds of emails in my mailbox requesting to be removed from my project social group. Call me a paranoid. I believe I do have good reasons to be paranoid.