IN FRONT OF THE GRAND PRIX — The biggest challenge to using social media in the workplace is bringing together the various skills and functions that need to approve it.
I was at a Tuttle meeting yesterday. Not for long. Not long enough. But I me some very interesting people. And I came out with a nagging doubt having been turned into a full-on concern. I can’t find anyone who knows how to put together all the bits required:
THE BUSINESS CASE: Can social media really make a difference?
THE TACTICAL PLAN: What technology(ies) will work best? Why?
THE ADOPTION PLAN: How does that work with our culture?
TECHNOLOGY DELIVERY: Can you programme it? Can you get our IT people to agree? Get IT excited about it?
IMPLEMENTATION: How do you get actual people to use it?
MEASUREMENT: Can you show it is working? And that it has worked?
COORDINATION & FORWARD PLAN: When it works, what do we do next?
The biggest gap I can see is between the ‘technologist’ and the ‘communicators’. My concern is that there are few people who can reconcile these two sides.
Communicators tend to have a ‘yes, we can’ approach to social media: It’s new, it’s cool. We can do it. Let’s just push on.
The technology people often are cast as the villains by doing their job properly and saying: Our systems are finely balanced. This is a minor programme with major implications… and costs. We can’t afford it.
Who can reconcile those two views? Who can convince a CEO that the opportunities and risk are worth it?
I’m not sure I have met them yet.
/df
