The problem is that social within organizations is doing exactly what we’ve always wanted it to do: it’s maturing.
Which means we don’t need rockstars, we need performers. People that can further business goals within a system and build and implement strategies that fit as part of an entire organization, not just their personal agendas.
We talked in The Now Revolution about social becoming a skill rather than a job. A set of capabilities that every person will have, to some extent, and apply differently within an organization depending on their needs and responsibilities.
It’s already happening.
We need people who can understand social’s impact on an organization, but not just so they can be the ones to use the platforms and engage with customers online.
We need them so that they can socialize that knowledge, form key leadership teams within of centers of excellence and distribute what they know deeper and contextually inside a company so that everyone gets smarter and more immersed in social as a catalyst for better work (not necessarily the solution for it).
The social ‘superstars’ need to be the best enablers we’ve ever seen. Which means they might need to be behind the scenes, not right out in front.
These are people who are polymaths and understand the intersections of social with different corners of the company. People who are skilled in diplomacy and teaching and creating consensus, bringing lots of different people to a table to develop a unified vision and a plan to get from here to there. People who can and will do the hard work, slog through the inevitable trenches, work through the arduous process of resetting organizational memory, and sticking with the sometimes slow process of change.
Am glad because that's exactly what we are doing at Philips India. We want to build "social" as a skill to all the HR professionals and also to get the senior leadership to engage with social and do stuff, to understand the power of the medium and therefore implications for the organization.
In fact I had said this some time ago on Social Samosa too :) There are a bunch of us at Change Agents Worldwide who are trying to learn from each other as we do this.
