The Social Organization

Social media is something that everybody talks about but not many people can define.  A common definition would involve Facebook and Twitter, but really these are just technology platforms that allow social interactions to take place.  Mark Zuckerberg built the technology of Facebook, but he doesn't create social connections, just as Bill Gates helped to popularize what we know as Microsoft Word, but he did not write a novel that was written using it. Too often, organizations miss the social part of social media and forget what is really going on--people are connecting with other people, even though they are using technology to do it.

For some reason, we humans tend to focus on technology as a final solution rather than as a means to a solution.  When we do that, what we get is technology without a real solution, and in the process we may create more problems for ourselves and others.  Once again, there are echoes in the work of Jaron Lanier who argues against the confusing of the thing and the person in You Are Not and Gadget and Who Owns the Future?.

A practical focus on social capital rather than on technical capital is the main point of The Social Organization by Anthony J. Bradley and Mark P. McDonald.  In other words, a truly effective organization cannot just be an organization that does social media in some department or office -- it must become a social organization.

That is a hard process for several reasons.  First, dealing with change in any organization is difficult.  Compounding this challenge, many of the real changes that the organization must make are not immediately visible and may not seem like problems at all.  Why change something that has worked?  To a certain extent, this is wise advice, but it is also important to note that the world is changing, and organizations must change with it.

This change must go beyond throwing money or staff at a problem.  It is all to easy for leaders to direct subordinates to take on social media challenges; it is much more difficult to affect real change.

The authors of The Social Organization do a great job of breaking down the process of how an organization can become social.  This is crucial because the process involves all of the steps the authors outline, including the following:

1. Forming a vision for community collaboration
2. Developing a strategic approach to community collaboration
3. Refining purpose by building purpose roadmaps
4. Launching the community
5. Guiding from the middle, including the community's purpose
6. Adapting the organization

These steps are not easy in most cases because they involve diving underneath the surface and getting the individuals in the organization to engage.  But the payoff is huge, as shown in the examples the authors give, and hopefully as will be shown in the work of Isabella County Restoration House and Central Michigan Manufacturer's Association.

Literature in the Social Media Age

My professional development has followed a winding road, but I value all of the places I have been.  I started college as a mechanical engineering major because my favorite high school class was calculus. 

However, I found that my favorite classes by far my freshman year were my writing and English classes, so I decided to switch my major to English.  I was mostly glad I did -- I had great instructors, I enjoyed most of the reading, and my writing got a lot better -- but when I reached graduation, I realized that my job options were limited.  In fact, there are many careers for humanities majors, but it requires extra work to develop the skills and gain the experience needed to make yourself marketable.

Looking back, I see that the fault was mostly mine: Even though I had an excellent GPA, I was not proactive in seeking out extracurricular activities that would show initiative and develop real-world skills.

Through a series of twists and turns, I found that my abilities were valuable in the business world and, not only that, that they were not all that common.  Communication is consistently ranked as one of the top two or three skills by employers.  But what is communication? Could I have just skipped all of the literature classes and just studied grammar and read non-fiction reports?

It turns out that the answer is no.  A recent study published in the journal Science, one of the most prestigious scientific research journals in the world, says that reading short stories by Anton Chekhov (one of my favorite authors) or other fiction can increase social skills.  Here is a summary of the research:  

It found that after reading literary fiction, as opposed to popular fiction or serious nonfiction, people performed better on tests measuring empathy, social perception and emotional intelligence — skills that come in especially handy when you are trying to read someone’s body language or gauge what they might be thinking.

The researchers say the reason is that literary fiction often leaves more to the imagination, encouraging readers to make inferences about characters and be sensitive to emotional nuance and complexity.

Does it matter what kind of fiction you read?  Does it have to be snobby literature? The answer is yes:

The researchers — Emanuele Castano, a psychology professor, and David Comer Kidd, a doctoral candidate — found that people who read literary fiction scored better than those who read popular fiction. This was true even though, when asked, subjects said they did not enjoy literary fiction as much. Literary fiction readers also scored better than nonfiction readers — and popular fiction readers made as many mistakes as people who read nothing.

What does any of this have to do with social media?  Employers have often told me that one of the skills university graduates are lacking is social skills -- how to interact with colleagues in groups or as individuals.  Some people blame this lack of social skills on texting, social media, etc., although I have never seen any research conclusively proving this.  Yet perhaps universities and students should not be so quick to discount the real value of the humanities - classic literature, art, and music -- in developing the human skills that are really needed.