Within a few years, the word “social” may seem as cliché as “synergy” feels now. Social connection will be like a dial tone, something we once expected to hear and now don’t bother listening for as we dial. What it represents is just there.
Between now and then, though, we have some growing up to do. We must get comfortable in our social shoes. Overcome personal and professional discomfort with relying on relationships to get work done. And do that publicly, as an intentional mindful function rather than something we’ve always done without notice or acknowledgment.
It’s not as though relying on relationships is new. People have worked together, learned together, and made buying decisions together for centuries. What makes social a hot topic today is that light mobile tools and vast digital networks extend our access and conversations with all our connections—in our workplaces, our communities, and online. We can stoke a conversation’s fire from the subway, 36,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean, or even during a workout at the gym… And unlike anytime before, the people we converse with need not be beside us or even awake.
Social tools allow us to reach across time and space to solve complex problems and make informed decisions in ways we couldn’t dream of years ago. By connecting those who share interests, no matter their location or time zone, people will transform workplaces, schools, and civic spaces into environments where being social is as natural as it is powerful.
Businesses are beginning to realize that by rewiring themselves to actively build strong relationships and reach out to colleagues as a normal course of work, they ultimately produce a better product to their customer. Social comes full circle as both an internal practice and an external revenue generator. As Alistair Rennie, General Manager of Business Analytics at IBM said, “How you wire your own business has a direct impact on how you impact customers. Social is not a set of technologies. It’s a highly connected business transformation with people at its core.”
Three areas will move this conversation toward its inevitable ubiquity: social business, social learning, and social commerce. Each moves us a step closer to the day when these topics return to business, learning, and commerce because social just is.
Social Business
Sabre Holdings, the company that owns Travelocity and several other global travel reservation systems, created an internal online community to provide an internal tool for professional networking so that employees could connect quickly and easily. At the time the networking tool was created, Sabre Holdings had grown from a small U.S. operation into one with 10,000 employees in 59 countries, many telecommuting and beginning to feel disconnected from colleagues and information.
To use the online community, employees completed a profile of their interests and expertise. When someone posted a question to an online bulletin board, the system’s predictive modeling software automatically sent it to the 15 people whose expertise was most relevant to the question. The more people who completed profiles and the more questions that were asked and answered, the better the inference engine could assign questions appropriately. “You have a greater chance of getting a useful answer if your question is directed not just to the people you already know, but to the people who have the most relevant knowledge,” explains the general manager overseeing the software tools.
The online community was credited with $500,000 in direct savings its first year. Based on anecdotal results, that figure doesn’t come close to representing the total savings. The community manager attributed the site’s success partly to the fact that management ceded control over its use to line employees. They effectively created a massive knowledge base that employees willingly populated with their own information.
Classic business models presume that relevant information is created and shared either through management or training. But classic isn’t enough: There’s too much to know and make sense of, too little time to gain perspective, and information changes too fast to dispense. A virtual water cooler becomes a gathering place to share ideas and ask questions beyond the limits of formal organizations, company meetings, or classrooms.
Social Learning
When Faith LeGendre, engagement manager at Cisco, was a new employee, working away from headquarters, she sought a seasoned employee to mentor her. Within seconds of making her request on Cisco’s internal social network, a woman in a completely different area responded. They quickly began sharing and learning together across the miles. In other companies, LeGendre had spent hours searching through intranets and distant servers to learn about her employer, her role, and how things really worked. Now, by asking others for guidance, she both receives the exact information she needs and constantly learns from colleagues around the globe, saving time while increasing her productivity and accuracy.
Instead of asking for periodic progress reports, Claudia Miro, when she led client services at a midsize coaching and consulting firm, used social tools to keep tabs on her virtual workforce spread throughout North America. They relied on short exchanges to share, collaborate, and communicate about the work they were doing with clients. It was not unusual for a consultant to get a quick status update from Miro, broadcast to all the consultants, asking for a report on who they met, how much time they spent, and what were the outcomes. The organization began using social tools as an internal document repository for operations; yet over time, it grew to become a dynamic communications tool across their internal and external partners. By capturing learning in the moment, the organization could quickly leverage the collective knowledge of its consultants and provide more value and collective intelligence, to the organizations it served.
Most of what we learn as adults comes from engaging in networks where people co-create, collaborate, and share knowledge, fully participating and actively engaging, driving, and guiding their learning through whatever topics will help them improve. “Training often gives people solutions to problems already solved,” as I write in The New Social Learning: Connect, Collaborate, Work (now in a fully updated 2nd edition). “Collaboration addresses challenges no one has overcome before.” Social learning makes that immediate, enabling people to easily interact with those with whom they share a workplace, a passion, a curiosity, a skill, or a need.
Social Commerce
Equator Estate Coffee & Teas sells limited-batch coffees and rare tea. Their Facebook page makes it easy for their customers to share information about their purchases with friends and the retailer’s fans. They’re not the only retailer realizing that the more ways we enable shoppers to shop, the better.
“Our research tells us that consumers are making a dramatic shift in shopping habits—value, versatility, and convenience are more important now than ever, and people are buying to satisfy needs over wants, though they’re still interested in unique offering,” said a senior executive at Brown Shoe. “We also learned from our consumers that it is an emotionally transformative moment when they find the right pair of shoes at the right price that are convenient to obtain and offer something unique like a great brand or new fashion trend.”
The Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey from 2009 pointed out 90% of consumers surveyed trusted recommendations from people they know, and 70% trusted consumer opinions posted online even from people they didn’t know. Some things in retail never change. The right product, the right price at the right place. When people find that product, at that price, having the means and opportunity to share that information moves others to take action too.
Peter Drucker once said that “the purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer.” Social connections strengthen organizations because people learn from one another, and then enable customers—both those within their workforce and those they serve—to make broadminded, fluid, well-informed decisions for themselves. They leave a digital audit trail, documenting the journey—often an unfolding story—leaving a path for others to follow and from which to learn. I look forward to the day when that’s no longer considered social as much as just how we work.
[Image: Flickr user: Dave Scriven]
Parts of this post were previously published on FastCompany.com.