Are inmates running the asylum?

Ok, I’m being a bit cheeky with this question, but I know you’ve also heard leaders, IT, HR, and communications professionals express their concerns about social media, and you have to wonder if this is their vision. Yesterday I joined fellow senior communication professionals for Shel Holtz’s pre-conference “Social Media for Communication Leaders” workshop. Because it was an intro to social media, Shel ran through the necessary set-up statistics: current user demographics; projected growth of online population; research findings from McKinsey, Forrester, Gartner, and Aberdeen (to name a few). I’m not going to go into these as a little Google leg-work will get you all this information and more. Instead, let’s go to the heart of it—there is no central source for information anymore so forget about controlling the message.

To many, this can induce great gobs of fear. Basically, to digest the idea that it’s an illusion that you control the message requires a big shift in communications thinking. Not that it really should. As Shel pointed out, one root meaning of communication—communicare—means “to make common to many, to share, to participate.” If you can subscribe to this notion, it’s not a stretch to say it’s a communicator’s role to build the frameworks that allow for sharing and participation, not to distribute information.

In my experience, organizations have more readily adopted social media for external use. And frankly, I’m not surprised. The customer is king after all and their feedback and input is deeply-valued. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case with internal customers and our best brand ambassadors, employees. Who hasn’t experienced a leader or client saying they aren’t interested in employee listening because all you hear are “complaints”? We should be jumping at the chance to harness social media internally. Organizations that have see improved productivity, increased retention, higher engagement. As one example, Best Buy saw a drop in turnover from 75% to 8% in those coworkers who participated in their blueshirtnation.com. They also saw a 40% increase in 401(k) enrollment after turning over the communications campaign to employees via an employee video contest on “why I participate.”

With figures like these, I say turn the inmates loose.

Note: Statistics are taken directly from the workshop. Materials will be made available soon.

fran melmed
principal/founder, context communication consulting llc
CCM board member