Last weekend I experienced my first ever Super Bowl. “First? Where have you been??” I
hear part of the audience thinking now, but yes, my first. Because
American Football really is, well…. American. And, as I am, really
European….a place where American Football is, at best, a niche sport. So
I had no clue about Super Bowl Sunday and everything it stands for in
American culture.
That is, until Twitter
In my social network I’ve
accumulated a large number of American contacts over the last few years
and a part of that group are avid Giants fans. So when the Giants made
the Super Bowl, my Twitter stream exploded with NFL-related content. Not
afraid to get into a conversation, I mingled in and before I knew it I
was being educated on the merits and fascinating aspects of the sport…
eventually getting invited to a real American Super Bowl party. Not one
that would require me to hop on a plane and fly over, but a virtual
party, through a Google hangout (multi-person video chat) on Super Bowl
Sunday watching the game together (while apart) with a bunch of other
American and Australian football fans.
Of course I accepted! This was
just too much of a chance to skip. Not just to watch the game (I really
had no clue about it anyway) but more as a great social media
experiment. Plus I’m always in for trying out something new and
uncommon, and doing a virtual video Super Bowl party with people from
three continents certainly qualified as such.
But I also quickly realized that
I needed to at least get a basic knowledge of the game, and so I dared
my Twitter friends to train me.
For the next two weeks I got
relevant information and links through Skype chats, pop-quiz question
tweets and even LotusLive meetings with diagrams full of arrows and
marks. By game night, I was prepared to watch my first ever American
Football match.
I loved it!
So what does this have to do with social business?
Well on first face, probably not
a lot. But what it showed me was that by building a network and
interacting with people, I was able to get information and training (in
this case on American Football) in a way that made it accessible and
manageable to me — personalized to my needs and geared to the info I was
going to need (I surely didn’t have time to learn all NFL rules in less
than a week).
And, interestingly enough, also
from sources that weren’t always obvious. One of the people to get
involved in contributing to my knowledge turned out to be an Australian -
not the first person I would have turned to for knowledge on something
so typically American! It turned learning sports rules (something I’m
usually absolutely not interested in) into a great adventure.
But how would this apply to a social business environment?
Finding relevant and
to-the-point information in the vast amounts of information that is
offered to us today can be daunting. Lots of people nowadays struggle
with information overload. And distinguishing between relevant and
irrelevant information can be a problem. It’s not just a question of
getting information. It’s often a question of getting the right bits of
information. I found the NFL rulebook on my first query, but dismissed
it more or less right away because I was never going to be able to
finish it, let alone understand it, in less than a week.
And that’s exactly where social
business comes in, because it offers ways of connecting to people who
know where to get information that can be relevant to you and that know
how to prioritize the information you are after. Building networks and
making connections is invaluable to tapping into that knowledge. But it
also means creating a culture where not only sharing, but asking too, is
stimulated.
From sharing to interacting
The mistake sometimes made is thinking of social business as a culture of sharing.
It is, without a doubt. But it’s
only part of the equation. It should be just as much about a culture of
feeling safe to ask for help. Sharing alone is not enough to start a
real dialog. You don’t want people to just share information; you want
them to interact on that information with others: with peers, but also,
and maybe especially, with those who need the information to learn from.
That way it gets challenged, tested for relevance and enriched. To get
that interaction, however, people will need to feel comfortable asking
for help and admitting they lack certain knowledge —something that isn’t
natural to a lot of us, especially in highly competitive environments
with strict role divisions.
But, it’s also where companies
stand most to gain. Getting people to step outside their own little
bubble and learning from others directly, eventually enriches all
involved. It makes inventions and process improvements possible and
encourages personal growth. It does, however, involve changing the
culture. And that is something that won’t happen overnight…something
that was clearly demonstrated when years of training, and instinct to
always go for the touchdown, caused running back Ahmad Bradshaw to make
the most awkward and unwanted winning touchdown ever…
So, is your company ready to change the rules of the game?
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