SocialMedia404

Today, I gave a presentation to about 100 employers from all types of organizations, regarding Social Media In The Workplace.

The big message?  The reasons Social Media is there, and will continue to grow, are as plain as the nose on your face(book).

A common workplace perception is that social media is a waste of time, so we spend endless resources trying to stamp it out.  We (think we) don’t understand it, so we fear it, study it to death, police it, and keep our old systems in place because they produce predictable outputs.  Whether these outputs are good, crap, or somewhere in between is of secondary concern.  Because at least we know what is going to happen.  So, we want employees who can fit a job description and produce the outputs in our system that we think works just fine.  We want circus bears for our show, not thinkers who may revolutionize the system.

But not only is Social Media here to stay, its use will grow and evolve.  Because it reflects us; the way we normally behave: socially, and how we interact within the many relationships we already have.  The people we trust and what they say, the contributions we make, the opinions we have.  It’s about the community experience.

Technology is continually facilitating the blurring of personal and professional, which makes anyone who has grown up with process, procedure, and unquestioning duty, uncomfortable,  But the separation of work and home has only happened since around the time of the industrial revolution, and the creation of the assembly line.  This is “old thinking”, given today’s economy is increasingly based on delivering services (people-focused), not manufacturing goods (things-focused).

The millennials, who will soon outnumber anyone else in the workplace, understand this intuitively and use social tools naturally.  They expect social technology as part of their job if you want them to work for you.  They are not fooled by marketing lip-service when they are targeted by ‘attraction and retention strategies’ that is merely bait for their participation in your machine.  They can bide their time elsewhere.  It won’t be long before they run the show, and they know it.

The irony, really, is maintaining a perspective that you “can’t keep up” to all these “new innovations”.  In reality, it is the technology that is actually trying to keep up with us humans.

And if you think the social-ness of “web 2.0″ is revolutionary, wait till you see what’s coming.  The web will almost be as smart as you.