There are many executives who are curious and interested in this whole social business phenomenon. They want workers to try it, test it and see what it can do for the business bottom line…but what about participating? That is often where the process slows down or comes to a screeching halt and where many communities see their maturation stop. Here is some of the wisdom we’ve learned from our TheCR Network members and have discussed in depth during Advisory Services sessions.
First here are some of the challenges you’ll face and the push-back you will hear from leaders.
- Booked: They have little time for unstructured conversation and with it, innovation
- Bottleneck: It is challenging for them to be proactive and focused on important (vs urgent) items
- Handled: The information they receive is often filtered with a point of view
- On-the-Go: They aren’t able to spend a lot of time in the same room with teams
However, this is exactly where being more collaborative and being community-minded can be helpful. It can help them:
Scale Themselves
They can speak to many different people – all at once. There is less repetition, and less time spent communicating with small groups about the same topic. And to that end, they get to answer questions once, in a semi-public place that people can refer back to. Executives can gauge reaction and risks to hypotheses with borad audiences before going public with them. And they can reduce the number of in-person team meetings employees need to attend. Instead of emailing, anything that is not strictly private or one-to-0ne can go into a searchable network of information.
Mentor & Align Their Team(s)
One of the hardest challenges executives face is how to expose and transfer their judgement to their teams. Unlike the transaction skills in lower levels of the organization, executives don’t need to ‘teach’ their teams in the same way but they do need to mentor them. In online team networks, their perspective gets shared and they can correct any minor issues or gaps in judgment that emerge before they grow into a major issue that needs significant time and attention for them to resolve. Their work is visible for all to see and learn from and can be easily documented and shared. This shared situational awareness created for often multinational teams can really improve executive productivity.
Remove Filters
While receiving curated content is mostly very helpful to executives, it always comes with a point of view and it can be hard to understand how that point of view has shaped the information executives receive. Online communities allow executives to ‘hear’ voices they typically don’t have access to – and who don’t typically have access to them. This can help them and their teams see the broader concept with new or fresh eyes. They can also easily ask for feedback and suggestions. Even if this interaction is infrequent, executive participation helps employees feel valued and heard and can give support to innovative concepts that might not otherwise rise to the top.
This is not an easy or quick process – extremely busy schedule make it challenging to prioritize learning about new techniques. It involves lots of education, behavior change, and the adoption of new work flows. Keep in mind that social media socials or brown bag luncheons will not typically work for executives because they do not want to appear unknowledgeable. Instead consider one-on-one face time for educating and mentoring executives. Reverse mentoring and other techniques are also great ways to help nudge executives in the right direction.
Have you have been successful at getting your executives to yes with social collaboration? What were/are the biggest stumbling blocks and how can they be overcome?
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