Facebook has a gender problem. We want Sheryl Sandberg to fix it.

Facebook has had a gender problem since its beginning. Now, with the publicity around Facebook’s upcoming IPO, business analysts, portfolio managers, potential investors, and feminist businesspeople are calling attention to the most glaring symptom of Facebook’s gender problem:

Facebook has only white men on its Board of Directors. No women, no men of color, no one to represent the 70+% of Facebook users and advertisers who are not white men.

As with all organizations, Facebook’s gender problem has deep roots and will be hard to fix. However, fixing this one thing– getting women on Facebook’s Board — is not only an easy step, it is also a powerful step.  This is one piece of the gender problem that Facebook can fix right away.

And, Facebook has an advantage that most other organizations with gender problems do not. That advantage? A powerful, visible, well-like, self-described feminist as a COO -  Sheryl Sandberg.

Sheryl Sandberg — the not-so-secret feminist businessperson

Sheryl Sandberg is one of the most successful business women of her generation. As the COO of Facebook, she runs a business that grossed $3.7 billion in 2011. In the hierarchy of Facebook, she is second only to Mark Zuckerberg, and significantly ahead of her closest possible peer, Facebook’s chief financial officer, David Ebersman.

Sandberg has set and executed the strategy behind Facebook’s internal and commercial success. She has also lead the way publicly, as Facebook has confronted complaints, burnished its corporate reputation, strengthened its corporate relationships, and worked to position the company for its IPO.

We could write pages and pages about how admirable a leader Sandberg is. Born into a family with a certain level of class, race, and social privilege, Sandberg has worked hard to turn her opportunities into real accomplishments. She has made hard choices, personally and professionally. And, Sandberg has earned her money and her position in ways that capitalism deems fair.

Sandberg is a highly-accomplished business women, a soon-to-be billionaire, and a public figure who’s influential nationally and internationally. And, Sandberg is also considered by many, both female and male, to be a role model for aspiring leaders.

Despite all this well deserved, well earned praise for Sandberg’s leadership, there is one thing that she hasn’t done. This one public action would demonstrate not only Sandberg’s power, but also her authenticity as a leader.

It’s time for Sandberg to put her words into action right at Facebook, and use her power to address Facebook’s gender issue. Starting at the top, with the Board of Directors. 

Aligning Presence, Platform & Power

Leadership requires the leader to use her presence, her platform, and her power to make a difference. And authentic leadership requires a person to align her presence, her platform, and her power to maximize their impact and make her leadership real.

We can give Sandberg high marks for how she’s using her leadership presence.

Sandberg is an inspiring, positive, personable, approachable role model. We know she’s a mom, a wife, and a girlfriend’s girl friend. We know how Sandberg thinks, that she feels, and why. People have a strong sense of who she is, they find her inspiring, and they seek advice in her personal journey.

As a personal presence, Sandberg seems authentic. Her personal life and the story she tells about herself seem aligned- she’s struggled with the demands of being a woman, a mother and a spouse at the same time as an ambitious business person. She’s worked to make a personal link between what she believes and how she presents herself.

As a public presence, Sandberg puts herself everywhere. From Vogue to Bloomberg, Davos to TED, she’s out there being seen as a savvy business woman leading an important company.

We can also give Sandberg high marks for how she’s using her leadership platform.

Sandberg is more than visible– she’s vocal.

Sandberg uses her platform to speak out, whether the message is about Facebook’s resistance to proposed chances in the EU’s data privacy policies or about how women must embrace and protect their ambition. With regard to her analysis of gender dynamics and her advice for women, she’s correct without being complete, and change-oriented without being controversial.

Even those of us who find Sandberg’s advice for change too individualistic and too tied to one kind of woman’s life story appreciate her anyway. Sandberg’s out there talking about feminism and women’s challenges on the road to equality in organizations. She talks about the ambition gap, taking a place at the table, not leaving until you’re ready to leave, and “owning your own power”.

Sandberg is a voice for women, and a voice for gender equality. In the world of business, she’s not only one of the loudest voices, she’s also one of very few advocating for gender equality.

But what about how Sandberg has used her power?

Leadership is not about ‘having’ power; it’s about using power. Anyone who wants to make a change in this world has to use what she’s got. So we ask:

How well has Sandberg used her ability to influence other powerful players at Facebook so that the company addresses and resolves its gender problem?

Specifically, how well has Sandberg used her power to influence Zuckerberg and Facebook’s Board of Directors to demonstrate a commitment to women’s achievement?

If Sandberg were using her power within Facebook, we’d see corporate policies and business results that put her public admonitions into actions.

All those things Sandberg talks about for addressing gender equity? They would be designed into Facebook’s organizational systems. We would see policies designed to get women to the table as well as keep them there.

If Sandberg were using her leadership power within Facebook on behalf of gender equality, we might also see:

• More than one highly visible, highly valued female employee
• More than white, heterosexual women at the top
• A higher percentage of women employees and male employees of color, tracking these group’s representation in the overall paid work force
• Pay equity/ absence of gender-based pay gaps
• Explicit policies & systems for increasing inclusion, that would addressing gender, race/ethnicity, as well as moving toward a work culture/ corporate culture that is free of sexism
• Work life fit policies that help men and women stay connected to their families and their communities while contributing fully at work
• Facebook Site policies that support women (for example, policies that can tell the difference between a photo of a breastfeeding mom and a photo of a topless pron star)

I recognize that these are all relatively big changes for an organization to make.  Certainly, Sandberg has demonstrated Facebook’s support for women by recruiting other prominent women to key positions of responsibility (and hopefully, influence) within Facebook. And, she has demonstrated her support for women on Boards of Directors by recommending women for positions on the Boards of other companies. There are likely to be other efforts by Sandberg that we simply don’t see, because we aren’t privy to the inside of the Facebook organization.

Yet, precisely because Sandberg’s possible internal efforts are invisible to us, it’s all the more important that she demonstrate her leadership by moving Facebook to do something visible to everyone.

Sandberg needs to use her power to get some women on Facebook’s Board of Directors

Sandberg should use her power at Facebook to get talented, competent and inspiring business women — yes, plural, in “at least 2 or 3″ onto Facebook’s Board.  Right now, the board is made up of “rich white guys—not terribly representative of the wide open world Facebook claims to represent“.

Getting women on the Facebook Board would be a public, symbolic, inspirational, functional and financially-responsible demonstration of commitment to gender equity at Facebook.

There are any number of reasons why Facebook should put women on its Board of Directors, right away:

• Women on the Facebook Board will help improve Facebook’s financial effectiveness and strategic thinking
• Women on the Facebook Board will represent Facebook’s largest groups of users
• Women on the Facebook Board will represent Facebook’s most profitable group of users
• Women on the Facebook Board will demonstrate that Facebook is a progressive corporation with enlightened (as in, not sexist, not racist) assumptions about human talent, skill and value
• And, women on the Facebook Board will burnish Facebook’s public image, keeping the stock price high.

When it comes right down to it, if Sandberg is really to be considered a ‘powerful’ woman, or a real leader, she needs to demonstrate that she has power, by tackling the ultimate leadership challenge– directing her influence upward, to get her boss(es) to do the right thing.

Sandberg herself has said that, to achieve gender equity, we need more women at the top of corporations.

Citing gender inequality as “this generation’s central moral problem”, Sandberg told Barnard graduates last Spring,

We need women at all levels, including the top, to change the dynamic, reshape the conversation, to make sure women’s voices are heard and heeded, not overlooked and ignored.

If, as Sandberg claims, there’s a “stalled revolution especially with women at the top”, Sheryl Sandberg herself can jump start it. Not with her presence or her platform alone, but with her power.

What We Want — What We Need — From Sheryl Sandberg

We don’t need Sheryl Sandberg to resign, as contrition for some kind of leadership failure.

We don’t need her stalled one step from the top, to remind us that women haven’t quite “made it”.

We DO need Sandberg to publicly  “own her own power”.

We DO need Sheryl Sandberg to put her own advice into action right there in the organization she leads.

We need Sandberg to make gender equality happen — starting at the top, at Facebook.

 There are a whole lot of us out here, rooting for you, Sheryl. You’ve told us what to do. Now, show us how it’s done.

See also:
The Horrible Work-Life Truth I Learned at the Harvard Business School Reunion
Recognizing “Women” On The Far Side of Complexity
The (Feminist) Business Bloggers’ Lament

No Women on Facebook Board Shows White Male Influence , by Carol Hymowitz, Bloomberg, Feb. 2., 2012
Sheryl Sandberg: What She Saw At The Revolution, by Kevin Conley, Vogue

Heather A. Haveman and Lauren S. Beresford, (2012) If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You the Boss? Explaining the Persistent Vertical Gender Gap in Management, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 639: 114

The Path to More Women in Senior Leadership: A User’s Guide By Anne Perschel, PhD, and Jane Perdue Summarized at Forbes.com

It always hurts when organizations lie.

Lying hurts the organization, the employees, the organization’s partners, the organization’s prospects, and most importantly, lying hurts the organization’s constituents.

When an organization does something that sparks a”‘reputation crisis”, the absolute worst way to respond is to lie.

As the reputation crisis of the Susan J. Komen Foundation continues, everyone is watching how Komen’s corporate “explanation” is unfolding. Well, it’s actually not unfolding, it’s imploding and exploding at the same time. Each iteration of their explanation is more desperate and more tone deaf than the last, as they embellish their lies.

Some of their “explanations” are so far away from their original claims that you can feel sure that they are on-the-spot fabrications. But I digress.

It’s not the poor quality of the lying, but the fact that Komen continues to lie at all, that is hurting the organization and damaging its reputation.

In a reputation crisis, it never ever helps to lie. Here’s why:

10 Reasons Why The Komen Foundation Should Stop Lying

1. When your organization lies, the lies offend the intelligence of your constituents.

“Whaddya think, we’re stupid? ” they ask. Your audience can read the leaked memos in The Atlantic or the NYT, they can read the reports of people and organizations who’ve been lobbying you to go anti-choice for years, and they can read the public statements of your executives.

Your constituents and the larger audience can actually see the lies, right there in print. To assume they won’t see you contradict yourself treats them as stupid.

2. When your organization lies, it disrespects your constituents’ relationships with you.

By lying, you are telling your constituents that they are not important enough, that your relationship with them is not important enough, and their support is not important enough, to be respected with the truth.

3. When your organization lies, it’s proof positive that your organization is itself profoundly stupid.

What, you can’t find the real explanation for your own behavior? The real criteria for your own decisions? The real values that shape your priorities? If you can’t explain your behavior with a real understanding of their sources, you’re a stupid (as in, dumb) organization.

4. When your organization lies, it makes people wonder what else you’re lying about.

Organizations that lie don’t do it once and a while, just on special occasions. They do it over and over. It’s only a matter of time before your other lies are uncovered.

5.. When your organization lies, it reinforces all the emotional dynamics of denial.

You can’t avoid the anxiety, guilt, embarrassment or shame that are part and parcel of lies. Even if you think no one else sees the lies (see #1, above), you know you’re lying. That eats away at whatever’s left of your organization’s heart, and corrodes what’s left of your integrity.

6. When your organization lies, the activity devoted to lying distracts you from more effective damage control.

You’re too busy lying to acknowledge the pain you’re causing. Even if you are, for a time, unwilling to admit the breadth of your responsibility, the very least you can do is say you’re sorry to the people you’re hurting. But, while you’re busy lying to Andrea Mitchell, you’re wasting the very opportunity you could use to apologize to your constituents.

7. When your organization lies, it embarrasses your employees.

Your employees know the truth. Do you want them all to resign in protest, or even worse, to continue working for a company they can no longer respect? When employees can’t respect your organization, they won’t do anything more than they must. That’s a great way to push your organization to fail.

8. When your organization lies, you block your organization off from any opportunity to learn from the initial mistake.

You and your organization get wrapped up in ‘cognitive distortion’. You don’t hear the truth about others’ reactions to your betrayal, so you miss chances to hear helpful feedback. You don’t learn about your constituents and their concerns, you don’t learn how to handle a crisis, and you won’t learn about yourselves.

9. When your organization lies, your leaders look incompetent.

Because they are.

10. When your organization lies, it makes it hard for you ever to be forgiven, by anyone.

Only those with super-human spirituality can easily rise above a crushing blow of betrayal (see #2, above) to forgive you and give your organization another chance. The rest of your constituents will take a long time to come around, if ever. And in the meantime, they won’t be supporting you.

Finally, there’s a bonus reason why your organization should stop lying.

Bonus Reason #11. When your organization lies, it makes it hard for anyone to ever trust your organization again.

Even if your organization reverses the decision that caused exposed the problem in the first place,

Nothing gets fixed until you tell the truth, to your constituents and to yourselves.

images:
Waling into walls, on Flickr. Some rights reserved by marc dalio
Life’s a bitch, on Flickr. Some rights reserved by pfala

Can you help me out with a messy research-related question?

What are the best ways to set boundaries around subsets of an “extended organization”, and then give these subsets names so that they are easy to talk about?

The problem seems on the surface looks like a question of semantics (i.e., what to call it). But it’s more than that, since the terms of expression need to be founded on some kind of principle of composition. I need help with both the semantics and the principle(s).

When we’re talking about a network of coordinated, interdependent economic actors, how do we decide which of these actors should be considered part of the organization and which of these actors should be considered outside the organization?

And, how do we name the groups within different levels of boundaries, in a way that’s easy to comprehend and makes sense conceptually?

And the biggest issue:

How do we refer to “the organization” without automatically dismissing the sense of connection that any particular actor might feel, and without diminishing his/hers/its valid status as “part of” the organization?

(Note, I can’t call it The Organization because (ultimately, though not now) I want speak of it as its real self, by name, and not just talk about it as a theoretical organization.)

Here’s the situation:

“The Organization” in question is the core entity and the largest entity in a community of commerce / commercial network of businesses. All of the businesses are interdependent economic partners.  The core organization cannot exist without the co-commercial organizations. And, although some of these entities have revenue streams and commitments to entities outside the extended organization, most of them depend on the incorporated organization for key elements of their value chain.

The incorporated organization is big-ish (400 employees), and the co-commercial entities are small (1 to 10 employees) concerns. Some are incorporated or LLCs.

What I’m talking about this extended organization, I need to name three things:

• The incorporated organizational entity, which is incorporated and has a CEO, and directly employs individuals (that all get W-2 income from their work in the organization).

• The extension of the organization that includes not just the W-2 employees of the incorporated organization but also includes all of the co-commercial partners whose participation is critical to the incorporated entity.

Because the incorporated organization relies so heavily on these co-commercial partners, it’s hard to think of them as not being part of “the organization”. In fact, lots of these partners describe themselves as being part of “the organization”, and are often seen that way by customers and outsiders. If you asked a customer or a random person on the street who The Organization was, they’d likely include the co-commercial partners and maybe not even know that they were not completely part of the incorporated organization.

• The community of commerce, which includes not only the incorporated organization and its co-commercial partners but also includes the customers that interact with partners.

Do economic or financial dimensions work as complete decision rules?

In my description above, of the different layers/levels/subsets of “the organization”, I’ve defaulted to using legal & financial categories to set the boundaries. For example, the incorporated organization vs the intended one. Another similar strategy is distinguish between entities financially, by using who issues the W-2 to whom as a way to separate the pieces.

The easiest way for me to distinguish the boundary is to consider the legal entities–whether they are incorporated or not, and then to consider who is attached to each Inc. entity, based on their W-2 income.

But these dimensions and boundaries are defined by purely financial criteria – which isn’t enough to really define “the organization” if organizations are more than just economic machines. Categories like sources of revenue, origin of income for individuals, and legal status don’t reflect any particular sense of social agreement, such as the beliefs of participants about who the organization is or isn’t.

I’m willing to use the financial criteria to establish qualitatively different boundaries that include more or less of the network’s participants, but once I do that I still have the problem of …

What do I call the different entities?

I have to start with the core organization’s real name, so that outsiders can sort of know what I’m talking about. My daughter suggested “Pluto” as the nom de recherche for this organization, so Pluto has to be part of it. (Or not, you can convince me otherwise).

I could call the three key groupings Pluto Incorporated, Pluto Extended, and Pluto Community.

The method for distinguishing groupings can’t put any particular group down. In other words, there can’t be a master category (e.g., President) and a few marked categories (e.g., Female President), because adding the modifier to only some of the categories makes them subordinate. SO, I can’t do Pluto, Pluto Extended, and Pluto Community.

And, I need a method to refer to them that feels reasonably seamless, and is not clunky or cumbersome. This is made me think about using subscripts, to call it Pluto -I, Pluto-X, Pluto-C. (note, I can’t format a subscript in wordpress — techfail on my part)

But does this look dumb or distracting in print?

Self-Determination and Psychological Connection

Finally, a perfect solution would be to have a naming system that was related to how the different people (and the entities they are part of) think of themselves in relation to “the organization”. How could the names reflect the group that think of themselves and each other at “the organization” when this includes the core organization and some but not all of its co-commercial partners?

Even though the I, X, and C designations map onto financial distinctions, they don’t tell the reader anything about the sentiments or relationships among the actual people I’m referring to. For example, to talk about Pluto-I when I’m talking about things other than revenue/finances, such as the effort of “the people who think of themselves as ‘the organization’ and who are all working together”.

Theoretically, I could make a fourth group that includes all the people who think of themselves as being part of Pluto.

Maybe Pluto-| could stand for Psychologically Pluto?

Making distinctions of who’s in or out based on members’ psychological self-assessments, by asking them whether or not they consider themselves “in” the organization, makes sense when we’re trying to capture or talk about their psychological (that is, non-economic) motivations. But, since I’m an outside researcher who can’t survey the sense of membership of all the entities in the network, I’d always be referring to this group as a theoretical one with a boundary that hasn’t been firmly established.uld always be a blurry group.

Any thoughts on how to parse these distinctions in a way that’s conceptually clear, emotionally inclusive, and textually simple?

I’d love your suggestions ..

Image: B’okay on Flickr ??? Some rights reserved by HarshPatel;Photographer

Networks of people and organizations are usually either “markets” or “communities”.

It bothers us that networks fit one or the other model of working together, because we envision something more –something both market and community –  in one network.

We are often disappointed when markets don’t exhibit a commitment to any values other than maximizing profits. And, while we treasure communities where we create collective meaning and build relationships, we often shy away from using these relationships to help each other make a living. We ask too much of the market format, and expect too little from the community format.

It’s become easier to see how these two different models, the market focused on economic transactions and the community focused on meaning & social interchange, diverge in both form and feeling.

Ebusiness and social technologies have made it easier for us to buy and sell based on prices alone. At the same time, they’ve made it easier for us to build strong and rich networks of interpersonal and collective relationships that sustain us socially.

In online markets, the ease of finding a lower price or quicker delivery has led us to dis-intermediate the buyer-seller social relationships we relied on before. We’ve learned to sacrifice the comfort, the security, the qualitative connection, and any interpersonal meaning we found in these commercial exchanges in favor of reduced search costs, lower prices, and increased economic efficiency.

Online communities, facilitated by social technologies, have created more meaning for us, as we’ve been able to find and interact with people who are like us (or unlike us in desirable ways), who have similar interests, values, and goals, who can recognize and affirm who we are, and with whom we can pursue a shared social purpose.

Although we often draw on online communities for social support, learning, and collaboration, we have sometimes shied away from using them to sell or buy or earn money. We worry about burdening our relationships with something as crass as pricing or payments, since we fear that these will change the nature of our interactions and deprive the community of its innocence – or its nobility.

These concerns and these hesitations are appropriate, since markets aren’t supposed to be about creating meaning, and communities aren’t supposed to be about extracting excess rents. Markets and Communities are different models for working together.

But what about our vision of markets where relationships matter and communities where we can make a living while we explicitly pursue values beyond profits?

Enter the Community of Commerce.

As I’ve been researching online eMarketplaces like eBay and Etsy, I’ve identified that while the dominant model is a marketplace that’s all about efficiency and economic exchange, an emerging model is a marketplace that combines the exchange of goods and services with the exchange of social meaning. This combination of economic and social exchange is intentional, motivational, and wickedly effective.

Instead of seeing this model as some sort of ‘not-free’, values- constrained market, let’s give it its own category. Let’s call this model a Community of Commerce.

Defining a Community of Commerce

A community of commerce is a network of organizations and individuals that buy, sell, and exchange goods and services within a collectively-defined community culture, a culture that is based on articulated, shared, more-than-economic values.

Back in 2000, Stacy Bressler & Charles Grantham published a book “Communities of Commerce: Building Internet business communities to accelerate growth, minimize risk, and increase customer loyalty.” Their thesis was that businesses should learn how to transcend geography so that they could identify and connect with strategically relevant business partners. Bressler & Grantham’s motivating contrast was between off-line and online business relationships; they used the terms “communities of commerce” and “online business communities” interchangeably.

I want to expand the definition of “communities of commerce” to focus on how the tensions, tradeoffs and opportunities of a commercial network that puts community first will differ in economically and socially important ways. Trying to stack a network for exchanging meaning on top of a network of economic exchange won’t work – it’s not like we can simply add “meaningplace” to “marketplace” and call it a coherent business model.

In the next few weeks, I’ll post my efforts to define what’s distinctive about a community of commerce, to explain how it’s related to other progressive business models, and to begin to unfold the tensions and opportunities that arise when buying & selling are inseparable from and integral to the mutual exchange of meaning.

I’d love your thoughts about the concept and especially your suggestions for defining it.

See also:

Don’t Tell Esty That Authenticity Is Getting “Old” — The Social Dynamic Between Crafters and Buyers is Timeless
Purpose is the Killer App: Why Organizations Need Social Business Tools
7 Ways That Social Business Advice is Wrong for Your Organization
Insights about Authenticity from the Open Community Book Tour

Image: Indian Garden Flowers Some rights reserved by EssjayNZ

While it’s true that I’m an unabashed advocate for social technologies as tools for transforming organizations, there are lots of reasons why we’d want social technologies in our workplaces and ‘together places’. Social technologies help increase engagement and make organizational democracy easier — just to name the top two reasons.

But the biggest reason to like social technologies? They can help us keep the big picture in mind, even as we pursue our own local goals and tasks.

My personal favorite bit of social technology is the social intranet– a socially enabled organizational commons, where people can find the resources they need to get their work done. I like social intranets because they help build community and connection from the organization’s core, allowing everyone (not just a few early adopting departments) to get a taste of active connecting to the community.

From a social psychological perspective, there’s a lot about a social intranet that facilitates collective behavior. The social commons that is the intranet helps us keep our eyes on the community’s purpose, helps us see progress being made, helps us see our contribution to the whole, and give us a useful and relevant place to add our voice.

Social technologies do this ‘instrumentally’, in that they have features designed to accomplish these goals, and they do this psychologically, by triggering cognitive and emotional responses that in turn nudge collectively-oriented behavior.

Psychological Mechanisms Triggered by Social Intranets

We attribute a large part of the shift to collectively-oriented behavior to a prominent social psychological mechanism — social identity.

When individuals are made aware of the larger organization– say, by seeing the larger entity represented on their social intranet screen in the form of logos, icons, and visuals — their identity as a member of that larger entity becomes more salient, leads them to think first of themselves as a member, leads them to think that their interests and the organization’s interests are the same, and leads them to act in the organization’s interest. Voila, triggering social identity triggers collectively-oriented behavior.

An odd bit of research suggests another subtle but valuable way that a social intranet can lead to collectively-oriented behavior by shifting individuals to be biased towards “global processing” instead of “local processing”.

[Global processing bias is usually a good thing in groups. It's assumed to reflect a more open mind, and to be somewhat more conducive to creativity. ]

This new research suggests that individuals can be nudged to think more of the whole than of the details, if they are exposed to an ‘urban’ environment. An urban environment is more populated, more full, more active, and more energized.

So here’s the conceptual leap:

If the social technologies we use in the workplace function as our ‘environment’, an “urban” technological environment could trigger individuals to think more holistically. It could trigger us to focus on the big picture, and to think first of the global issues over specific details.

I know, this is a superbly nerdy post. But don’t you think the concept is intriguing?

The cognitive mechanism for triggering a global bias is shorter than the mechanisms of social identity. And, it bypasses the self-concept (always so complex), and just works on shifting cognitive perspective. Shorter doesn’t mean better, but sometimes more automatic processes are so subtle we miss them.

It’s intriguing to think of the myriad of ways that our technology influences our most ‘automatic’ psychological processes. If we are looking to ‘sell’ the value of social technologies in the workplace, or even better to tweak them until they bias us towards ‘good’ and not just ‘different’, we need to keep wondering how they are working to shift the ways we think.

Notes:
Hat tip to the Research Digest of the British Psychological Association: Do urban environments trigger a mindset that’s focused on the bigger picture?

In my first contribution to Social Business News, I’m reminding organizations that want to align their social media messages to focus their efforts on leadership.

I find it pretty frustrating that so many social media advocates recommend “governance” or “policy” or “control” when an organization finds there are too many voices, not enough voices, or the “wrong” voices aiming to represent the organization online.

My post on Social Business News, “Too Many Wrong Messages On Social Media? Try Leadership, Not Control” outlines my argument and recommendations in full. Here’s the takeaway:

If employees are making “mistakes” on social media, that’s not the fault of the organization’s governance, but the fault of the organization’s leadership.

If your employees use social media to talk too much or not enough or not about the right things, that’s a leadership opportunity for you. Don’t concentrate on policing the perimeter with control tools and governance initiatives. Instead, lead from the core of your organization and help members learn to express the organization’s brand and demonstrate the organization’s values as they represent the organization.

 

________

Social Business News is a website dedicated to covering enterprise social media, collaboration, governance, technology, and change management. It’s updated every day with original content from a broad range of social media, social business and social organization experts.

Be sure to bookmark or get the RSS feed for Social Business News.

Follow us on Twitter @SocBizNews_.

Every organization has a story. Any group that wants to be an important part of that organization needs to craft a place for itself in that story.

The story an organization tells itself and shares with others helps everyone make sense of who the organization is. For members, the organization’s story helps them articulate their connection to the organization, because it explains how their work contributes to who the organization is and to why it exists.

Crafting a place in the organization’s story can be harder than it seems.  Especially in consumer-facing companies, groups that are not visible to consumers often fall outside of the story. Departments like Accounting, IT, HR, Facilities Management, et. al., are rarely part of the organization’s brand, and they are often distant from the core promise of who the organization is, what it does, and why.

 [When I worked in the manufacturing and sales divisions of a consumer products company, folks in both divisions felt like under-appreciated step-children. If you didn't work in marketing you weren't a full-fledged member of the organization, because only marketing was featured in the organization's story. ]

So how does a part of the organization that might not be seen as central to the organization’s purpose make itself part of the organization’s story?

The Software Engineering group at Etsy has what looks to be an effective way of connecting themselves to their company story. Their example shows how some clever and authentic self-description can knit a traditionally ‘backstage’ group into the main fabric of the organization’s identity.

Etsy’s Company Story

Etsy’s company story revolves around artisans, makers, crafters, and the community these artisans create with each other and with their customers. At Etsy¹:

Our mission is to enable people to make a living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers.

A company story about a marketplace for handmade and unique objects doesn’t seem like a story where software engineers could be lead characters.  Conventionally (meaning, outside Silicon Valley and Alley), software engineers work in the background, off to the side, in cost centers that support but don’t create the organization’s identity.

But at Etsy, engineers have cast themselves as craftspeople – as people who make a living making things — just like everyone else in the Etsy community. With their Code as Craft initiative, Etsy’s engineers have designed their group as a central, direct, and explicit contributor to Etsy’s mission and Etsy’s overall success.

The Code as Craft Initiative at Etsy

Back in June of 2010, the Etsy tech group launched a blog “Code as Craft” to focus and share their conversation about how the engineering group sees itself and how it fits with the larger Etsy community.  In the inaugural blog post, Etsy CTO (now CEO) Chad Dickerson explained:

At Etsy, our mission is to enable people to make a living making things. The engineers who make Etsy make our living making something we love: software. We think of our code as craft — hence the name of the blog.

It sounds a bit over-reaching, until you realize that the Esty Engineers’ Code as Craft initiative based in something real.

Genuine, not fake.  The language of “Code as Craft” captures and highlights something that is already true, indigenous and authentic about software engineering. Just as light is both wave and particle, software design is both mechanical and organic.

The “Code as Craft” movement /meme has been around since the dawn of computing. While mathematical rigor, linearity, discipline, and a mechanistic orientation might characterize how outsiders see software engineering, engineers themselves see this and more. They see themselves as artisans exercising skill, judgment, taste and creativity.

The computer technology folks aren’t over-reaching posers for calling themselves craftspeople. Their sense of themselves as crafters and their work as craft is real, rooted in years of professional self-description. The Code as Craft language may be strategic, but it is also a very simple act of engineers’ highlighting the part of their work that they choose to identify with most. In the Etsy environment, engineers are artisans whose work is simultaneously functional and beautiful.

Chosen, Not Imposed.   Etsy’s software engineers chose the language of craft themselves. The language wasn’t imposed on them by someone else in the organization trying to fit them into a tidy little box.

You might think it’s just a nice coincidence that software engineering would have words like ‘art’, ‘craft’, and ‘beauty’ in its toolbox of self-description, and that software engineers would be critical for enabling Etsy’s code- and data-heavy business model. But while there many organizations like Etsy that couldn’t exist without a cadre of software engineers, for these same companies words like ‘art’, ‘craft’ and ‘beauty’ are irrelevant to the company story.

For Engineers at Etsy, describing themselves as crafters isn’t a coincidence, but a leadership choice.

Craft Connects Coders to Etsy’s Other Crafters

At Etsy, engineers striving for improved run times and multi-layer design compliance can use the same words — craft, crafting, craftsperson — to describe their work as do the artisans making sweet mouse pincushions.

The shared vocabulary literally helps them communicate across differences that in other organizations could be barriers.  Moreover, shared language helps vendors, marketers and engineers see each other and recognize what each group is contributing, because they can use criteria that everyone understands.

Whether rendered in colors, textures or command lines, skill and beauty can be recognized by any craftsperson.

By connecting their discipline and their department to Etsy’s core story about “making things”, the Code as Craft initiative presents engineers as central and  relevant contributors to Etsy’s purpose. As a result, engineers can be recognized, affirmed and appreciated by other members of the Etsy’ community, who share the values and skills as craftspeople, albeit in different media.

Craft Connects Coders to Etsy’s External Role and Image

Engineers’ link to the company story is also useful outside the organization. Because they are crafters, Etsy engineers can represent Etsy and its company story to outsiders, not just other crafters but also the start-up community and the software engineering community.

For years, Etsy’s Community & Education group has been hosting regular after-hours Craft Nights at the Etsy Labs. Artisans come to learn and and share techniques for making products. With the advent of the Code as Craft initiative, Etsy’s engineering community has begun hosting occasional “Code as Craft” nights at Etsy Labs, where members of the tech community can come to learn and share techniques for running websites.  (Even better, the engineering group holds these events in a room lined with bins of sewing machines and fabric scraps, and feels perfectly at home.)

Their position as crafters helps the Etsy Engineers become both like other crafters in the Etsy community, and distinct from other software engineers in the tech start-up community. Etsy’s crafty coders become “optimally distinctive” — the same and special, at once.

Enabling, Engaging and Contributing as Crafters

The Code as Craft initiative is a way of embedding the professional brand within the organization’s brand to the benefit of both — like employee branding from the inside out.

What I like the most about the Code as Craft initiative at Etsy is the way that it invites engineers to contribute — from their uniqueness  — at their highest level. Code as Craft recognizes a specific part of a software engineer’s (potential) professional identity — the skilled craftsperson.  It engages that identity by inviting engineers to speak in the craftsperson’s vernacular, allowing them to communicate more easily within the Etsy crafting community. It puts their work right at the heart of the organization’s purpose — making a living making things — and aligns them with Etsy’s goals.

When we can craft our place in the organization’s story, we can create an authentic connection to who the organization is, what it does, and why that matters. That connection makes our work relevant and imbues our contributions with meaning.

See also:
How Social Media Create Organizational Meaning
Be Your Own Hashtag
The “New” Crisis of Meaning?
Authentic Student Entrepreneurs: Embedding Personal, Product and Organizational Brand

Images:
Mouse with felt ears, from July 2011 Craft Lab, by thelongthread.com
I Love Etsy from amazingminiatures.com  

¹ It turns out that identifying Etsy’s current mission statement is harder than you’d think. More on that in a future post.

When it comes to discriminating against women, you’d think that only sexist organizations would be involved.   But did you ever imagine that meritocracies would encourage managers to discriminate against women?

Research conducted by Emilio Castilla and Stephen Benard, published last year in Administrative Science Quarterly, documents a disturbing dynamic that the authors call “The Paradox Of Meritocracy”. In their rigorous set of empirical studies, they found that

When an organization is explicitly presented as meritocratic, individuals in managerial positions favor a male employee over an equally qualified female employee by awarding him a larger monetary reward. (p 543)

Although these meritocratic organizations aren’t explicitly encouraging managers to discriminate, they seem to be inadvertently freeing managers to demonstrate gender bias when they award raises and bonuses.

This discovery is distressing. The Paradox of Meritocracy casts doubt on a range of efforts that organizations are using to try to reduce gender discrimination.

Meritocracies and Why We Love Them

We love meritocracies. We love the idea that organizations will link members’ career success to their actual performance.  We love meritocracies because we think that merit is the fairest, most objective way to reward some people (meritorious ones) over others. After all, meritocracies explicitly reject the idea that a member’s gender, race, sexual orientation, age, or other social category should influence how that member is evaluated and rewarded.

Managers, leaders and HR experts especially love meritocracies. They enthusiastically advocate for merit-based systems because they believe that tying rewards to performance evaluation motivates people to work harder. Not only that, but linking merit and pay also increases employees’ satisfaction with their work-reward ratio and with the organization itself.

Linking Organizational Rewards to Individual Merit

As organizations have tried to increase fairness and decrease discrimination, they have emphasized practices that create a formal link between evidence-based performance evaluations and  promotions / pay increases.

One strategy has been to shift to ‘pay for performance’, where there is an explicit link between performance rating and pay increases. A second strategy has been to decouple the performance evaluation conversation from the salary decision, so that a manager is not unintentionally thinking about both of these when considering a candidate.

Unfortunately, merit-based rewards in organizations don’t seem to do what we’ve hoped.

Merit Pay Does Not Reduce Gender-based Pay Discrimination.

Despite the intent behind them, there is a consistent problem with merit-based practices: Women and minority men in the same organization, in the same job, and with the same supervisor, are found to receive lower salary increases than white men, even after same performance evaluation score (Castilla 2008).

Let me repeat that: It has been empirically demonstrated that:

Women and minority men in the same organization, in the same job, and with the same supervisor, received lower salary increases than white men, even after same scores on their performance evaluations (Castilla 2008).

Research on merit-based pay practices has consistently demonstrated that merit-based practices do not achieve gender- or race-neutral outcomes.

Is it the practices themselves, or something else that allows for bias? In their research, Castilla and Benard shifted focus to consider the role of organizational context. They aimed to compare what happens in organizations that strive to be meritocratic versus those that do not.

Most people would expect that organizations that strive to be meritocratic would do better at reducing gender-based pay gaps. But what Castilla and Benard discovered was exactly the opposite.

Highlighting the organization’s commitment to being meritocratic actually made gender-based pay discrimination worse.

The question is — why? Why do these merit oriented practices, meant to increase fairness, end up increasing discrimination?

The Role of The Organization in Supporting Biased Actions by Individuals

Castilla and Banard propose that there is something about the organization’s intent to focus on merit that leads organization members not to focus on merit.  Their interpretation is, essentially, that when people are primed or reminded to feel unbiased, fair or objective by the organization itself, they feel freed to express the bias that they personally hold.

“Managers embedded in meritocratic contexts may experience higher confidence that their decisions are impartial, leading them to feel less motivated or to invest less effort in avoiding the application of stereotypes.” (p. 568)

“Moral Credentialing”

Castilla and Benard propose that one mechanism that explains the paradox of meritocracy is “moral credentials”. When people have established their moral credential as an unbiased person, they are more prone to express biased attitudes. It’s as though they’ve already proven to themselves – and others- that they aren’t unbiased.  However, when these supposedly unbiased people act, they reveal real bias and discriminate against others. (Monin & Miller, 2001)

In addition to the straightforward credentialing mechanism that Castilla & Benard suggest, there are two other mechanisms that work in similar ways that also might be letting managers feel free to express bias in their decisions.

Moral Credentialing by Association  

The ‘My Best Friend is X’ Effect. We know that individuals often feel that they have achieved their ‘I’m not prejudiced‘ bona fides by claiming to have relationships with the (potential) target group of discrimination. Some individuals even claim that they are not discriminatory (e.g., not racist, not sexist) because they obviously have a close association with specific members of the target group.

I like to call this the “My Best Friend is X” effect, after the most common statement people make to claim Moral Credential by Association.

Vicarious Moral Credentialing

We give ourselves moral credentials for being unbiased not only through actual relationships with others, but also through vicarious relationships with others. A study just published by Maryam Kouchaki demonstrates that individuals license or credential themselves vicariously, through identification with others who have “established non-prejudiced credentials”. Both the mechanism of association and the mechanism of identification might give managers the cover of moral credentials.

Do Organizations Provide Managers with “Vicarious Moral Credentialing”?

The idea of moral credentials influencing behavior has previously only been discussed as an individual phenomenon– something that a person does for him- or herself.

What’s new with the Paradox of Meritocracy studies is the idea that the organization itself can provide a halo of moral credentials for its managers.

The managers don’t need to think of themselves as being unbiased — they just have to think of their organization as unbiased or meritocratic. Then, the organization creates a halo for managers through three slightly different but distinct psychological tricks, when managers can:

1. Think of their organization as being meritocratic and thus assume that bias has already been removed,
2. Think that they are meritocratic because they are part of an organization that is meritocratic, and
3. Think that they are like their organization, so that if it’s meritocratic, so are they.

In all three cases, managers no longer have any motivation to avoid applying biased stereotypes or to monitor their own expressions of bias. They are off the hook.

What can organizations do about the paradox of meritocracy?

Castilla and Benard suggest that organizations can try to counter the paradoxical dynamics of meritocracy by (1) increasing transparency around evaluations and salaries, (2) by increasing accountability, and (3) by reducing managerial discretion. While I’m not a fan of reducing discretion, it makes sense to have managers be more accountable for their decisions about other people’s merit and the appropriate award for that merit.

1. Organizations should report out historical patterns of evaluation and pay increase data, for each individual manager.

Managers need to become more accountable for knowing and monitoring their own personal patterns of behavior regarding evaluating and rewarding others. Organizations can help individuals to hold themselves accountable by providing each manager with an historical summary and analysis of pay and evaluation decisions, broken out by gender, race and other diversity criteria of the persons evaluated. This way, managers can see their decisions over time, and note whether their pattern of behavior is unbiased or not.

2. Organizations can examine pay and promotion practices for design issues that make decision patterns more transparent while evaluations and awards are being made.

I can’t put my fingers on an old and useful study contrasting two methods of evaluating performers and the different effects on decision making, but… The study examined the evaluations of male and female managers, and varied whether the evaluations were made one at a time (i.e., single processing) or in groups (i.e., batch processing).

When people were evaluated one at a time, gender bias was demonstrated more often in the evaluation and reward decision. In contrast, when people were evaluated in groups, discrimination was significantly reduced. The researchers explained that in the ‘batch process’ scenario, decision-makers could actually see their gender bias in action (e.g., they could see that in 6 decisions out of 7, they were favoring the male over the female). In contrast, when decisions were made one at a time, decision managers forgot how often they rewarded a man over a woman. Batch processing might create a useful kind of real-time transparency, letting people see, evaluate and interrupt their own trend of bias.

3. Organizations can teach managers to be more mindful when they evaluate merit and rewards.

By mindful, I mean in the strictest sense, where ‘mindful’ is understood to as being not only active but also analytical about the way that they are processing information– but as seeking out and making novel distinctions. “Mindfulness is expressed in active (versus automatic) information processing, characterized by cognitive differentiation.” (Langer, 1989) What this means is that managers need triggers that interrupt automatic thinking and that force them to consider their decision criteria critically.

4. Organizations should investigate the degree to which they are actually meritocratic.

Do organizations that are actually meritocratic have managers that consistently make decisions that damage women and minority men? No. So organizations need to be transparent and hold themselves responsible for the effectiveness of programs intended to create a meritocratic organization. Organizations need to display their ‘diversity data’ internally (i.e., be transparent) and monitor to correct any patterns of bias (e.g., hold themselves responsible) in organization-wide decisions. They need to teach managers what it means to be meritocratic, and how to make decision based on merit while excluding irrelevant data. Organizations need to monitor the degree to which their claims of meritocracy map onto the outcomes of supposedly merit-based decisions.

The Paradox of Meritocracy shows that the link between an organization claiming to be a meritocracy and actually being a meritocracy contradicts reality.

Meritocracies hurt women because claims that decisions are based on merit can hide decisions that are gender-biased.

These claims of being non-sexist, non-racist, and non-discriminatory are not only false, but they can also increase bias by letting managers think that vigilance is not longer necessary.

The opposite is true –

Any organization claiming to be a meritocracy has to sustain and validate that claim by holding itself and its members accountable for unbiased, merit-based decisions, or risk being hypocritical and inauthentic.

See also:

Want More Women on Tech & TED Panels? Reject Meritocracy and Embrace Curation

References

Castilla, Emilio J., and Benard, Stephen. (2010). “The Paradox of Meritocracy in Organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 55: 543-576.

Monin, B. & Miller, D. T. (2001). Moral credentials and the expression of prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 33-43.

Bradley-Geist, J.C., King, E.B., Skorinko, J., Hebl, M.R., & McKenna, C. (2010). Moral credentialing by association: The importance of choice and relationship closeness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 1564-1575.

Kouchaki M, (2011). Vicarious moral licensing: the influence of others’ past moral actions on moral behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(4): 702-15.

Also, this discussion focuses on gender-based discrimination because that’s what was directly tested in the study’s experiments. However, the logic holds for other forms of social prejudice, such as prejudices against people of a given race, sexual orientation, gender performance, physical ability, and so on, that have no actual effect on an individual’s performance.

Images:
–  Figure 4, The Paradox of Meritocracy, with updated non-meritocratic condition vs. meritocratic condition, p. 566.
– Stephen Colbert, with his “Best Black friend” Alan, claims moral credentialing by association.
– Nerd Merit Badges from– you guessed it– Nerd Merit Badges

Here’s a quick response to today’s New York Times article by Emily Weinstein, All That Authenticity May Be Getting Old, about the flood of ‘authentic’, handmade and one-of-a-kind-ish items on the home decor marketplace. The article dances on the line between criticizing mass marketers for faking authenticity, and reminding readers that our desire for ‘authentic’ will never go away.

The article is interesting, for sure, and worth a read. But it is also worth some reflection.

What’s missing from this article, and from so many critiques of the explosion in the marketplace for handmade home decor, jewelry, cards, clothing, and more, is a deep understanding of what is actually going on between the artisans who make and sell these products, and the customers who covet, buy, and use them.

This dynamic is the genius that propels businesses like Etsy and the larger crafting movement.

When we make and buy handmade, hand-selected, and artisanal items, we are exchanging:

Recognition, Affirmation, and Connection

Recognition

Recognition comes from both the buyer and the seller having their aesthetic– their taste, their values — expressed in a visible place. For some of us, the first time we saw someone else design their own decal for their laptop was on Etsy. The first time we saw someone else make a bike basket out of a lunchbox was on Etsy. The first time we saw someone else make an apron out of their great aunts’ embroidered handkerchiefs was on Etsy.

All of a sudden, it seemed, one could actually see other people who shared your unique tastes. And, instead of that being disappointing (e.g., I’m no longer unique)  it was heartening — Somebody else gets it! Somebody else recognizes this! Your taste can be discovered, and enjoyed.

Affirmation

Affirmation comes from being told “I see you“. “I see you.”

Affirmation comes when you see a cool tech-dude with a wool iPad sleeve, and you say “Etsy?” and he grins. Somebody else has seen your aesthetic– whether a buyer or a seller– and said “I like that. I agree with that. I think that’s beautiful. I’ll pay money for that.”

Because what that all says is — “Your aesthetic is valuable to me, mine is valuable to you”.

You know that feeling when you find a blog written about exactly that topic that bugs you, with great and useful perspective? That’s what Etsy is like… Blogging is for people to share words, Etsy is for people to share beauty.

Connection

Connection. With these aesthetic exchanges, we create communities of shared beauty, shared vision, and shared self-expression.

Hey, I know I’m not the only Etsy buyer who sends little notes to the sellers I buy from saying “I just put that wreath up in my office. I totally love it. I might not ever give it to my sister as planned. Will you make some bigger ones in the future?” I also know I’m not the only person who feels connected looking at other people’s Pinterest pages.

Not only do we connect through the purchase, and through feedback , but we connect through vendor/artist communities. Group after group after group of people with shared aesthetic interests support each other — Yes, there is indeed a Steampunk Catlovers Quilting Group. You can join it. You can be part of that community.

Recognition, Affirmation, and Connection

In a consumerist culture, we are well-trained to seek out opportunities for recognition, affirmation and connection through purchases. Much of the time, though, we have a hard time imagining that there is another person on the other end of the purchase — a creator who is making something not (only) because it is commercial, but (also) because it expresses who they are.

On Etsy, at the Bust Holiday Craftacular, at any Maker Faire, and at the farmer’s market, we get to experience something closer to a social exchange, something closer to a human exchange, something more than a commercial exchange.

Our sense of beauty, our style, and our sense of self can be seen and celebrated, and we can gather with our own kind.

That’s not a fad. That’s a timeless social exchange that we value.  And that’s what’s going on in this commerce of Authenticity.

Images: Fall Wreath from ItzFitz
iPad sleeve, wool herringbone tweed
Steampunk Hat for Cats

Is there a “best way” for organizations to ‘go social’?

More specifically, is there a best way to ‘grow social’, so that the organization incorporates social tools and processes so that change is generative and authentic?

Because I’ve been critical of arguments for Social Business and felt unengaged by arguments from the world of technology, I’ve been wondering what the alternatives are for advocating that organizations become more social. I’ve identified four arguments for moving towards social organizations.. Each of these paths tells us to adopt enterprise social media to become more social. But, each of these paths serves a different set of purposes and a different world view.

4 Paths to Social Organization

We can get to social organization on 4 basic paths:

            1. Technology
            2. Social Business
            3. Collective Values
            4. “Product” Resonance

Two of these paths get a lot of attention, and two of them are under-appreciated. Can you guess which two will lead to the most positive transformation?

1. Technology

The Technology path is the classic model, where the availability of technology leads to the desirability of that technology which leads to implementing that technology. Social media tools exists, we like them, we are able to add them to our enterprise 2.0 systems and so we do. Besides, they’ll make work more efficient, reduce waste, increase speed, etc.

Technology-driven ‘social’ seems most prominent in the Enterprise 2.0 / Knowledge Management / Collaborations systems conversation. And, the Technology path is usually promoted by IT experts.

2. Social Business

The path with the largest cheering section is the “social business” path. Originating in Customer Relations Management (CRM) and Marketing disciples, the social business path starts with parts of the organization deploying social media as a way to link the customer community and the organization’s outward facing / front line employees.

When marketers realized that it would take more than social listening and a few brandividuals to serve customers’ needs, they advocated that the organization transform into a ‘social business’ to support these externally-oriented programs with internal changes. These internal changes seem to be concentrated in areas where other organization functions (outside of marketing) can serve back information or solutions for customers. (Lateral social connections within the organization are still largely an afterthought, if included at all.) The Social Business path is usually promoted by marketing experts.

3. Collective Values

The Collective Values path is often derided as the ‘kumbaya’ approach. This path is pursued, where organizational leaders realize that enterprise social media can support the values of the organization by facilitating new kinds of coordination, communication and collaboration behavior. Values like “community”, openness, full participation, engagement, and the like can be brought alive through the behaviors that enterprise social media supports.

The Collective Values path is promoted by a diverse assortment of business unit leaders, HR professionals, organizational change agents, management scholars, and organizationally-committed employees.

4. “Product” Resonance

The Product Resonance path is so rare that it doesn’t even have a good name. I’ve thought about it as the “Progressive” path and the “Movement” path, but neither of those names captures the intent that drives organizations down this path. So let me try to explain in a few extra words.

Organizations follow the Product Resonance path when they realize that the product, service or issue that they produce suggests a certain set of values, and they also realize that these product values demand to be demonstrated through more ‘social’ organizational practices.

For example, an organization that sells recycling services might see that the community participation their product advocates and depends on can also be expressed through specifically social work & organizational practices, like community forums to discuss the organization’s next quarter targets.

For another example, a community health collective adopts enterprise social media because the very premise of community, health, and collective demand transparency, openness, and inclusiveness — all values that cam be demonstrated in enterprise social media. The employees of these organizations use social media with each other to practice what they preach.

Motives Matter

The path that any organization takes to go social matters, because each path carries with it the potential downsides of the perspective it comes from — the Tech path can seem un-human, the Social Business path too profit-driven, the Collective Values path too woo-woo, and the Resonance path too uptight about appearances.

Only two paths towards social organization
engage the core of who the organization is and what it stands for.

Only Collective Values and Product Resonance paths
engage the organization’s identity as an engine for growth.

Even though the Resonance path and the Collective Values path both are driven by values, there’s a subtle difference between the two. The Collective Values path is driven by self-reflection, a push for authenticity, or other self-expressive motivations. It gets its momentum from the inside.

In contrast, the Resonance path is driven by the organization reflecting on what its external presentations say, and then using any discrepancies or opportunities to drive organizational change. For this path, the trigger for change is external. The Resonance path would be pursued when an organization make connections between external projections — its sustainability goals, its CSR goals, its products, services, political commitments — and the way it organizes itself.

What is Growing Social really about?

Technology is about being more efficient, Social Business is about being more profitable, but Collective Values and Resonance are about creating and aligning meaning. And, both Collective Values and Resonance are all about changing the organization to benefit people first, with concomitant benefits for products, processes and profits. Finally, both paths will lead to deploying social media to create systems of engagement.

This is what I’ve come up with so far — I’d love to hear what you think about these 4 paths, the distinctions between them, and how they might matter.

See also:

Social Media for Social Change — Inside the Organization?
CSR that Improves the World But Leaves Your Damaging Business Model Intact: Authentic or not?
Is your organization flourishing or withering?

Image:
Resonate Some rights reserved by theloushe, Resonate Some rights reserved by Attrill