Lifting barriers to communication

BigRuckus has vot­ed 1,980 times on mystarbucksidea.com, the three-year-old web­site that invites com­ment and sug­ges­tions from the cof­fee giant’s cus­tomers. And that’s just in Novem­ber.

BigRuckus might be unusu­al (or per­haps just has a lot of time on his or her hands). But for Star­bucks, BigRuckus, Dad­Cooks, Char­liebouse and the host of oth­ers who have post­ed prod­uct ideas, music sug­ges­tions and com­plaints about seat­ing are a fan­tas­tic resource.

“This is all about con­ver­sa­tion,” says Tazeeb Rajwani, lec­tur­er in strate­gic man­age­ment at Cran­field School of Man­age­ment. “Busi­ness­es are con­tin­u­al­ly try­ing to improve their deliv­ery to the cus­tomer, and crowd­sourc­ing [ask­ing a large and often unde­fined group of peo­ple for input] pro­vides free infor­ma­tion and inno­va­tion.”

Star­bucks is among many com­pa­nies har­ness­ing the pow­er of social media to improve the bot­tom line. Indeed, there are those who believe social media is fast becom­ing manda­to­ry for cor­po­rate use.

Social media will soon be as reviled as those who refuse to answer the phone,” says Jef­frey Mann, vice pres­i­dent researcher at Gart­ner, a tech­nol­o­gy con­sul­tan­cy. “Using this tech­nol­o­gy is crit­i­cal to busi­ness suc­cess in the 21st cen­tu­ry.”

The way peo­ple inter­act at work is becom­ing more sophis­ti­cat­ed

But what is social net­work­ing? There are no hard-and-fast def­i­n­i­tions, but any­thing that invites a response from a group of indi­vid­u­als can fall under this term, whether in a pub­lic forum such as Face­book or an inter­nal Twit­ter-style net­work.

“The way peo­ple inter­act at work is becom­ing more and more sophis­ti­cat­ed,” says Max Mock­ett, researcher at Hot Spots Move­ment, a spe­cial­ist research and con­sult­ing team that bridges acad­e­mia and busi­ness. “There is a move to a more social approach at work, one based on friend­ship, not hier­ar­chy.”

Gen­er­a­tion Y (very rough­ly, those under age 30) are a key dri­ver of this trend. The first gen­er­a­tion to grow up with social media tools, this age group is bring­ing per­son­al mobile devices into work, and using them.

“It is chang­ing organ­i­sa­tion­al struc­tures,” says Dr Rajwani. “Com­pa­nies can no longer main­tain the old com­mand and con­trol struc­tures. These tech­nolo­gies are designed to engage with peo­ple; they are part of the mind­set of Gen­er­a­tion Y, which wants to talk to employ­ers in a sim­i­lar, social way.”

But social busi­ness is not just for cre­ative indus­tries, where organ­i­sa­tion­al struc­tures are often flat­ter and more flu­id, the use of social media tech­nolo­gies brings huge ben­e­fits to all types of busi­ness.

“Social media is much more than is implied in the name,” says Xabier Ormaz­ab­ul, direc­tor of prod­uct mar­ket­ing at Salesforce.com, an enter­prise cloud com­put­ing com­pa­ny. “It’s a con­ve­nient and easy way to com­mu­ni­cate, and the main dri­ver is con­text.”

Mr Mann agrees. “If you look at the activ­i­ties tak­ing place on Face­book, but change the words, then it becomes high­ly rel­e­vant to busi­ness. So instead of keep­ing up with what your friends are doing, you are keep­ing up with what your col­leagues are doing. Instead of ask­ing advice on what shoes to buy, you’re ask­ing advice on which sup­pli­er to use.”

A 2010 report from man­age­ment con­sul­tants McK­in­sey & Com­pa­ny found that the “net­worked enter­prise” (one that uses these col­lab­o­ra­tive Web 2.0 tech­nolo­gies to con­nect employ­ees inter­nal­ly, and reach out to cus­tomers and sup­pli­ers exter­nal­ly) sig­nif­i­cant­ly improved per­for­mance.

“Every­one under­stands the exter­nal-fac­ing bit, the con­nec­tion to the cus­tomer,” says Mr Ormaz­ab­ul. “It’s at the next lev­el, when you apply these tech­nolo­gies inter­nal­ly, that you get a lot of val­ue.”

He argues that any busi­ness will ben­e­fit from social net­work­ing, where indi­vid­u­als are con­nect­ed to each oth­er in a kind of per­ma­nent water­cool­er moment. But instead of rely­ing on a chance and pos­si­bly infre­quent phys­i­cal encounter, every­one can see exact­ly what every­one else is doing via brief but inter­nal­ly pub­lic com­ments. “It’s about how to dri­ve a more inter­ac­tive com­pa­ny cul­ture – becom­ing a cul­ture of trans­paren­cy,” he says.

For busi­ness­es that rely on knowl­edge shar­ing or are geo­graph­i­cal­ly diverse, the ben­e­fits are obvi­ous. An inter­nal Wikipedia, where col­leagues add to the sum total of the company’s knowl­edge about dif­fer­ent sub­jects, helps pre­vent dupli­ca­tion of work. An inter­nal Twit­ter can help peo­ple con­verse and col­lab­o­rate in such a way that research and inno­va­tion moves faster. Giv­ing staff access to an inter­nal blog can moti­vate and encour­age every­one to feel con­nect­ed.

“Sud­den­ly, you have access to all these peo­ple and all these ideas,” says Mr Mock­ett. “Aggre­gat­ing tac­it knowl­edge with­in a com­pa­ny adds val­ue. The pay­off is amaz­ing.”

Much has been made of secu­ri­ty prob­lems with social media, lead­ing some com­pa­nies to ban the use of pub­lic sites at work. But the ben­e­fits far out­weigh any risks, and experts are unit­ed dis­miss­ing such prob­lems.

“The best poli­cies for use of social media are com­mon sense,” says Mr Mann. “If you wouldn’t say it at a par­ty or in the pub, don’t say it here. Most peo­ple want to do what’s right for them­selves and the organ­i­sa­tion.”

Com­pa­nies need to make sure there is a clear agen­da to any social net­work­ing, whether it’s lis­ten­ing to the cus­tomer or shar­ing knowl­edge. That agen­da will help decide which net­works, what infor­ma­tion and which peo­ple should be involved.

But it’s not just inside com­pa­nies that social media is being used. Many indi­vid­u­als are turn­ing to these net­works to fur­ther their career out­side the com­pa­ny umbrel­la. Such per­son­al brand­ing is par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful for free­lance pro­fes­sion­als, says Mr Mock­ett.

“We are see­ing the devel­op­ment of ‘vir­tu­al guilds’, which mim­ic old­style guilds based on pro­fes­sion­al­ism, indi­vid­ual rep­u­ta­tion and shared job oppor­tu­ni­ties,” he says. “An individual’s rep­u­ta­tion resides in the net­work, not a com­pa­ny.”

Like so much in the 21st cen­tu­ry work­place, social net­work­ing is con­stant­ly evolv­ing, and some­times it seems to add to the cor­po­rate work­load rather than reduce it; just one more activ­i­ty that busi­ness­es need to under­stand. But join­ing in just because every­one else is doing it is the worst pos­si­ble strat­e­gy, and like­ly to lead to dis­as­ter.

Instead, the advice is to focus on what you want to get out of it. Then it becomes not an obsta­cle, but a resource to lead you into the 21st cen­tu­ry work­place.

BigRuckus has voted 1,980 times on mystarbucksidea.com, the three-year-old website that invites comment and suggestions from the coffee giant’s customers. And that’s just in November.