Social media are rocking our world

Social media are changing what we do and how we do it.   With our families.  With our friends.  With strangers.  With our colleagues.  At play.  At work.  Social media haven’t even come of age and they are already rocking our world.

Nowhere will these changes be more profound than in our workplaces.  Social media are changing basic assumptions about how we organize to get things done.

Was	Will be [if it's not already]
Centralization	Decentralization
Formal hierarchy	Informal networks
Chain of command	Collaboration
Central planning	Collective learning
Bureaucracy	Community
Departments	Tribes
High control	High accountability
Machine models	Complex adaptive systems

I don’t for one second think that it’s as clear cut as this conversation makes it out.

I don’t believe institutions of the future will operate fully one way or the other.  They will need to find the right balance – their right balance – given the nature of the work.

And, social media create institution-wide opportunities for connecting that simply didn’t exist for large organizations before.  Social media are already driving changes in behaviour, attitudes and expectations.  They are already having a profound effect on our institutions and the role of the managers who run them.

What is certain is that the function of management is changing.  The days when power and authority based on hierarchy alone is gone.  Instead, managers will need to be influencers. Facilitators. Consensus-builders.

And, it is certain that this will change the function of institutional communications especially internal communications.  In a world where managers are influencers, what is the role of internal communications?  In a world where employees will have access to what they need, when and how they need it [thanks Bill Jensen, Work 2.0], will the internal communications function even need to exist?

Tags: Collaboration, Employee communication, Innovation, Social media