25-Page Social Media Rule Book. Really?

According to a recent Ottawa Citizen article. A 25-page rule book for social media that was years in the making. Really? What are they thinking?!?!?  With so much demand on everyone's time, and the amount of discretion that people can exercise in their day to day work, who has time to read, make sense of and apply this extensive a guideline set for one small aspect of their work?   Granted, there are always some people who make bad decisions, as this story about an MP using profanity in his tweets exemplifies, but 25 pages?!?!

At least that was my first reaction.  But of course, it's always a good idea to go to the source and check facts.
The guidelines, first released on November 18th, and published on the Canadian Treasury Board web site, are, in my opinion, not what you would first think, or perhaps what the media would imply.

If you give the guidelines a quick read, or even look at the table of contents, they are not for individuals specifically, but for government departments to use as a framework for making strategic decisions and for contextualizing direction for departmental staff. Section 5, for example, offers consideration for creating guidelines for staff.

The guidelines are not a difficult read, are not something that would be referred to on a frequent basis, but would be good input to a broader Internet strategy.

Sure, there are always ways to refine, simplify language, make writing clearer, but at some point it has to be 'good enough.'  Given what I believe to be the audience / purpose for these guidelines, I think they are more than good enough, and a pretty good job on the part of the authors.

But, you be the judge.

Respectful Practices in Social Media

A few years back, I had some great conversations with The Email Shrink, and a concept that he spoke of often was "respectful practices" in the use of email - one of them I'll paraphrase as don't flood your colleague's business email boxes with unnecessary junk - anything from a pointless "CC" to forwarding those intrnet chain messages containing jokes, photos or videos. The impact of doing this is pretty obvious - additional workload to deal with the unwanted emails. The point I take from this is consider the receiver before pushing Send.

So, I was looking at Facebook last night noticed that over 1/2 of the news feeds are generated from apps like Snowball Fight, Island Paradise, The Warlords, Tartan Treasures, Farmville, etc. etc. etc. which makes it difficult to identify (what for me is) more important updates and information provided by the friends network. I certainly respect and support people having the right to decide what they do (plus, "people will exercise free will as they see fit in all circumstances"), but I also think that social media, in particular as it is used in the workplace, will require additional considerations by everyone to ensure we all don't end up collapsing under the weight of having to deal with all the unwanted information. Plus, many of the min-apps available in social applications require that recipients take specific steps to block / opt-out of receiving information automatically generated. Again, more unnecessary work.

So, to all social media users out there, consider for a moment the impact of your choices on the members of your "network".

For business looking to leverage social media inside the enterprise, it might be advantageous to consider limiting the number of non-work related apps that can be installed on your social media platform. The risk of unnecessary distractions and productivity loss is significant, as is the impact of having this type of content around the organization in scope for any form of legal discovery.

Is a Status Change on Facebook an "Announcement"

A recent AFP news article states: "Chelsy Davy, the former girlfriend of Prince Harry, has confirmed to friends reports of their split by changing her profile on her "Facebook" web page, British media reported on Monday."

Two questions crossed my mind; is leading a story with a Facebook status change good journalism, and the importance of good discussions across stakeholder groups on which social media functions to "turn on" inside the organization to enable productive conversations / collaboration, and which ones will interfere with or marginalize it.

What I Would Like in a Corporate Library System

How well do you know your librarians? I think I know the ones in my organization quite well. As has been my experience all the way back to high school, librarians are a wealth of knowledge, and not just about subjects and collections, but often what is "going on" in the organization. And they're pretty terrific people too.

If you'd like to have an interesting conversation, bring a book on a general business topic back to the front desk and ask, "Can you tell me the names of the last 20 people who borrowed this book? I'd like to talk with them about their thoughts on the book, what they learned from it, and how they are thinking about applying what they learned to their work context."

That type of question is typically met with "We can't give you that information! That's personal / private!"

So, this scenario started me thinking about what I would like to see in a library system or related functionality. Here's what I've come up with so far:

• see who else is interested in particular topics based on the books/ articles / references they access
• find out (discover & ask) what they thought of the books, what they learned
• use this information to tap into / form a community / discussion group about the book/article/reference or general topic area
• maintain a compose a "wish list" of what I'd like to read, share it with others, and have library acquisitions teams automatically acquire access to popular requests based on popularity/frequency across multiple lists
• have a personal list of books / resources accessed / read / currently reading that I could share
• find out who is reading what now
• easily generate automatic bibliographic references for writing papers/reports/documents etc.
• include, and share (aggregate) references in a different context (e.g. on a blog/wiki etc.) for all external/internal, reference links, documents, presentations, graphics, photos, podcasts, video clips, charts etc.
• access an organized / grouped subset of these in various contexts (general responsibilities, projects, communities etc.)
• have references suggested to me based on identified interests roles / responsibilities / activities, existing references, interactions with others, search patterns etc.
• "references" I define here as quality, relevant links / actual content of all types, in internal systems, library collections, external / 3rd party collections & content, blogs, news media, social media, etc.

I suppose this list is a bit like Amazon meets LibraryThing, meets EndNote, meets Delicious, meets Slideshare, meets RSS, meets Facebook etc.

Web 2.0 and the Future of Management

Jim Lee at APQC has recently posted a blog entry titled Et tu, web 2.0? In it he reviews a number of Web 2.0 technologies and rates their usefulness in the context of his own impressions, needs and contexts. At the end of the post, he asks Gen Y'ers to share their experience with Web 2.0 stuff. (Which is why I'm commenting here and not on his blog.. I'm a bit "long in the tooth" to qualify as a Gen Y'er.)

Jim has been exploring the use/usefulness of Web 2.0 technologies for a while, even questioning the value of his APQC blog. I think his questions are in line with what many of us are considering when looking at Web 2.0 in the context of business value and purpose.

I picked up on a couple of interesting themes in his blog;

• the value of Web 2.0 tools if you're on the road almost 100% of the time
• some of the tools don't work for him , which it think is as much related to preferred learning style as anything else
• and most interestingly, he mentions "knowledge marketplace"

The last point really caught my attention, as I'm reading Gary Hamel's absolutely brilliant book (at least in my opinion), The Future of Management.

In the context of key trends and external forces that are affecting individuals and companies alike, requiring dramatically greater adaptability, Gary points to the shortcomings of the current management paradigm built on the core principles of standardization, specialization, hierarchy, alignment, planning and control, and influencing human behaviour using extrinsic rewards. He then suggests that the key is management innovation, which he defines as "anything that substantially alters the way in which the work of management is carried out, or significantly modifies customary organizational forms, and, by so doing, advances organizational goals."

He also suggests that adopting new principles is at the core of management innovation, and offers:

• variety, diversity, experimentation, depoliticizing / depolarization of decision making
• resource allocation flexibility through a market model
• enabling activism through democracy (devolution of accountability, distributed leadership, unalienable dissention rights)
• engagement and mobilization through meaning and common cause
• increasing the odds, and successful contribution, of serendipity

When I think of these, I see a role for Web 2.0 / social media in supporting and enabling management innovation. The effective integration of social media content, features, functions and capabilities (e.g. collaborating, creating, publishing, linking, sharing, commenting, reviewing, rating, aggregating, dis-intermediating, combining and re-combining) has the potential to enable a shift in management paradigm, to support the change from old to new, and provide the part of the support infrastructure for working in new and innovative ways.

BTW: James Gardner has an interesting view of Web 2.0 social media in his blog post titled "The New Divide: The workforce gap."

As well, McKinsey has published a management innovation related article titled Innovative Management: A Conversation with Gary Hamel and Lowell Bryan.