When I present social business as my passion, the typical listener assumes I’m talking about Yammer, Facebook or Sharepoint. It’s interesting to see how they can easily confuse social platforms as the same as being a social business. But it’s not.
It’s easy to become distracted by shiny, new tools and platforms, but these are just delivery channels. As I’ve learned, and I’m sure as you have as well (if you’re reading this post), being a social business is so much more than that. Social within a business may have began with Marketing and IT, but let’s face it… we’ve reached a point where it’s clear that Human Resources is the GLUE in creating social programs that are not only relevant and adoptable to employees, but ones that transform your organization and its culture. If you’re truly looking to transform your organization through social tools, then your purpose should be based on the human ingredients necessary to drive that change: employees.
If there is one thing that became pointedly clear during my attending and speaking at the J. Boye Intranet conference last week, it’s that we are all experiencing different aspects of what it means to become a world-class corporate (social) intranet. The typical shelf life of an Intranet implementation averages about 18 months. This timeline can easily be extended when you add on the complexities of social layers. So if you feel that your company has been struggling for some time with not only the correct strategy, but also the implementation tactics of a social intranet… don’t feel bad.
