Luis Suarez, IBM, shares a colleague’s slide show about corporate culture and social media. His colleague, Adam Christensen, says about culture:
That culture is, in my view, the most overlooked, underestimated factor determining whether social media succeeds or fails in a company. And when corporate culture and social media are pitted against each other, social media will always fail. Always.
There are some impressive stats on usage within the 12 slides.
Adam also says the culture factor “is also why it is so hard for any third-party vendor to really play a meaningful role in helping a company transform itself to be more collaborative and embrace these technologies. They don’t have that deep understanding of a corporation’s culture.” Something important to address up front.
The Impact of Corporate Culture on Social Media (IBM’s Case Study) | Adam Christensen | 23 January 2009 and Elsua: The Knowledge Management Blog – Thinking Outside the Inbox | Luis Suarez | 23 January 2009
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Culture endures–in fact, that’s part of what makes it culture; otherwise, it’d be a fad or a craze. The auto industry arose in a hierarchical, management-knows culture; inevitably developed adversarial labor relations as the status quo; achieved a kind of permanent us-versus-them stance (with management and labor taking that as a given). Effort after effort to change (Chrysler near-death with Iacocca, GM’s tryout with Saturn) foundered.
“Top-down mandates generally don’t work.” But people love to pitch to C-level folks, because there’s far fewer people required for buy-in.
See financial industry cluelessness, with John Thane surprised at hostility to news that bonuses were 40% lower — seen by mere mortals as wildly excessive rather than unbelievably excessive — because in that culture, enough was never enough and too much was, well, okay for now.
Dave Fergusons last blog post..Lovin’ Bloom
thanks for the nod, Janet.
Dave, excellent point. Culture does endure. And I agree with you… some of the stuff going on right now in the finance industry is a very good explanation of it.
I liken it to inertia. It takes a lot of energy to slow down, speed up or change the current state of culture within an organization. I think there are things we can do to impact and influence culture, but it takes a LOT of energy. Or, it takes massive external forces. Sometimes, as in the cases you are referencing, even that isn’t enough at first.
adam christensens last blog post..The Impact of Corporate Culture on Social Media (IBM’s Case Study)