The main issue with social technology in the corporate context is visibility. These technologies will show anyone anything, and that is terribly annoying to management, that has made a living on control and information brokerage.
And therefore management needs to evolve ... but not in the direction most managers fear. Really, we need more managers, not less. We need stronger skilled managers, able both to manage content and context, people and process, internal and external.
Because visibility does not come with talent. It's only visibility. And the capability for insight, that would allow any employee to act on this new-found access to most information / knowledge / people / issues is definitely not a given. On the contrary, it is talent that will be long in the making for most people, notwithstanding what the tenants of "generation flux" may say.
Social technologies should have us working on increasing the number of managers, I mean of people entrusted with the responsibility of achieving the company's mission.
Obviously, as Dominique Turcq hinted at in a recent post, it should also have leaders thinking on this mission and on the corporation as an institution. But that is another story.
And therefore management needs to evolve ... but not in the direction most managers fear. Really, we need more managers, not less. We need stronger skilled managers, able both to manage content and context, people and process, internal and external.
Because visibility does not come with talent. It's only visibility. And the capability for insight, that would allow any employee to act on this new-found access to most information / knowledge / people / issues is definitely not a given. On the contrary, it is talent that will be long in the making for most people, notwithstanding what the tenants of "generation flux" may say.
Social technologies should have us working on increasing the number of managers, I mean of people entrusted with the responsibility of achieving the company's mission.
Obviously, as Dominique Turcq hinted at in a recent post, it should also have leaders thinking on this mission and on the corporation as an institution. But that is another story.
