Interesting points learned and Interesting Questions generated from the Social Business by Design on Chapter Eleven and Twelve
This paper herein presents an exhaustive summary chapter eleven and twelve of the managerial text, The Social Business by Design, co-authored by Hinchcliffe and Kim in the year 2012. In an overview, chapter eleven has dwelled on an in-depth exploration of the origin of social media and its incorporation in business setups and organizations and the major functions of workforce collaboration. Chapter twelve on the other hand extensively discusses social business supporting capabilities and how organizations can effectively manage social platforms and media for the benefit of the organization as compared to traditional conventional approaches. Below are the three interesting points alongside the three interesting questions derived from the two chapters as intended by the authors.
Chapter eleven still expounds on what makes social media social. This too is an interesting point since it gives an illustrative definition of social media and subsequently clears the misconception and common confusions about social media. According to Hinchcliffe and Kim, 2012, page 124, two aspects qualify social media. There should be an aspect of user profile and identification as well as the activity stream and a process to govern the user participation and engagement. Going with these fundamental requirements therefore, anonymity isn’t an element of social media, neither are other retrogressive vices such as cybercrime and cyber bullying on social media platform.
Interesting points
In chapter eleven, page 128, the authors have largely emphasized on social media as an important tool for workforce engagement and collaboration. According to the authors, social platforms, if well managed and designed with certain objectives; provide unlimited environments where employees engage each other to create improved business outcomes. “Blogs, wikis, microbloggings (Page 134) tools attempt to create convenient and useful social businesses. This is an interesting point to note since it categorically states the role of social media on business development. For instance, most people cannot elaborately state a single benefit of social media on growing and expanding business organizations. In fact, a misconception of such benefits is what has greatly contributed to abuse and misuse of social media platform; workers lose track of the initial intention and end up engaging in non-business related issues.
In chapter twelve, social media has been fronted as the emerging richest source of new information and as a result, a key component of social analytics and business intelligence. “While internet is peer produced, social media generate more information than any other sources” Hinchcliffe and Kim, 2012 page 139. However, for such information to be useful in organizational growth and development, it must be filtered and subsequently aggregated into a form that is highly strategic and insightful. Hence, while there could be lots of information available on social media, the prudent roles played by community managers should never be assumed or bypassed at any instance, since they determine which information is relevant to the organization. This is an important point since it further highlights on the importance of controlled and well managed social media, as well as cautions against blindly implementing social media information.
Interesting questions
In chapter eleven page 132, the interesting question is how can social media allow for collaborative engagement between workers in a society? In essence and most practical scenarios, it’s rare to find workers on social media engaged in constructive discussion regarding an organization. This thus calls for establishment of clearly stated objectives for provision of social media guidelines as well as control and governance of the same provisions. For instance, if an organization offers unlimited internet access to its workers, then there should means through which the management ensures that the same internet is not abused for peer talk and other social media activities. In fact, the best approach could be provision f suggestive topics for workers’ engagement and discussion on social media.
Another interesting question to ask relates to chapter twelve on page 144, what is the role of the management in creating a connected company using social business? The beauty with this question is that subsequent answers gives the roles of the management in ensuring alignment of the organizational social media platforms alongside the organization’s objectives of establishment. It is interesting to note that irrespective of the hierarchical position in the organization’s administration, the management can be effectively engaged in constructive exchanges and conversation on social media by the junior workers and in the process, get a revelation on certain aspects that ought to be adjusted in the organization.
The final interesting question is still in chapter twelve on page 150, what are the best social business strategies for implementation to enhance efficiency and productivity in an organization? Several factors determine the most effective strategy and thus, different organizations are free to implement the most suited strategy to guarantee the projected outcome. Nevertheless, the business intelligence capability of the organization overrides every other factor.
Conclusion
Social media is undoubtedly one of the emerging trends in modern business and organization management. Managers should thus be flexible enough to harness the voluminous information available on social media platforms and process them into productive strategies at the organization. Worth to note however that lack of control and governance on social media is might easily lead to abuse of the same social platform.
Reference
Hinchcliffe, D., & Kim, P. (2012). Social business by design: Transformative social media
strategies for the connected company.
