social media – Page 3 – The Consulting Artist

Creative Leadership – Connections

I’m having a blast here at the 2013 Illinois SHRM conference. Kudos to the gang of volunteers that energise and galvanise these events, I feel privileged to be here.

Musical Connections

Thanks to the organisational skills of Dwane Lay and Jonathan Brewer, and the generosity of John Hudson, guitar provider par excellence, things got off to a lively start with a pre conference camp fire singalong on Sunday evening. This was a great way to catch up with old friends and meet some new ones too, and Dave Ryan was on the ball and captured a flavour of our musical time together for posterity.

The theme and purpose for the conference this year is all about HR helping HR – and we are being encouraged to discuss and suggest and encourage different ways of working better together. I chose to approach this challenge by preparing a session about connections, communication and creativity.

Vulnerability

We looked at how we currently learn and work and how this seems to drive up convergent thinking and drive out creativity and divergence. I shared a little of what I’d learned from the recent RSA talk by Ken Robinson to help illustrate this. We also looked at how we react to experiences that make us feel shameful and the impact that often has on creativity too. Here’s a little something I learned from Brene Brown and Heather Bussing on this important, and yet little talked about aspect of vulnerability – an essential ingredient of creativity.

Diversity

We spent time talking about the benefits of investing in building a diverse network. Being able to connect, share and learn with and from people is increasingly easy, particularly with the technology available to us (we looked mainly at Twitter, blogging and Instagram as tools to help with this). And we explored how much more interesting things get when you reach beyond people you might typically associate with and strive to learn from others less like you too. Diversity is another essential ingredient of creativity.

Conversations

We looked at Starbucks and Qantas and their ill timed #SpreadTheCheer and #QantasLuxury campaigns as examples of what happens when social goes wrong. Both of these examples could have been prevented , and we discussed how organisations that choose to work in a more conversational, open and transparent cross departmental way often minimise the chances of making these kinds of dumb mistakes. And if HR has a role to encourage smarter working in the business, and we agreed it does, then why not take the lead and be the oil in the machine. Conversations – essential ingredients of creativity.

I’ll come back to this subject after I’ve flown back from the US, and I’ll also take a look at some of the new thinking that Paul Hebert shared with us, some of which fits neatly in this connections space too. For now though, I’m off to enjoy Dwane Lay’s talk and the rest of the conference. Have a great day.

Johnny Rotten or Beethoven?

Last week I picked up on a tweet from someone via a conference which said ‘Social HAS to loose the anarchist tag – will never go mainstream otherwise. Need to move from punk rock to classical. #e20s’

I thought this a somewhat narrow minded view so I retweeted and said so. Shortly after I received a reply saying ‘You’re welcome to your opinion #e20s’, and perhaps rather bluntly I replied ‘Ta – I don’t particularly welcome yours, punk and classical, we can have both’. In quick succession I then received ‘I’ve no problem with challenge or criticism Doug. I’ve dished out enough of both! #e20s’, followed by ‘I don’t particularly enjoy being hashtagged all the time though’ and finally, ‘I just find the hashtags a bit #naff and #petty Doug’.

I tried to respond with ‘If you can’t stand the tweet heat – stay out of the kitchen’, but the person had blocked me, so I couldn’t. Of course we’re free to follow, unfollow and block whoever we choose and I couldn’t help but feel the final response and subsequent and immediate blocking of me was perhaps, in the tweeters own words, a bit ‘#naff and #petty’.

Leaving aside our squabble, I think anarchy sometimes gets a bad rap. As well as being ‘A state of disorder due to absence or nonrecognition of authority’ it is also defined as ‘Absence of Government and absolute freedom of the individual, regarded as a political ideal’, and I’m sure you’ll find other definitions out there too. There are times when people question how much help Government is (regardless of its political hue), and despite all the challenges the concept of absolute freedom of the individual does at times have an allure to it, doesn’t it?

Of course there is an element of rebellion about social media. I expect Starbucks would rather people hadn’t hijacked their #SpreadTheCheer Twitter wall at the Natural History Museum and tweeted ‘Pay your fucking taxes’ right across it, but the mood of the day turned against them, and they got a taste of a ‘State of disorder’. I think this is more a case of recognising that you don’t own and control hashtags and the responses to them once they’re out there, rather than outright anarchy.

I found a few other examples of the Dark Side of social media (you’ll doubtless have plenty more), which I shared recently at the Workplace Trends Social Media for Business Conference. This was an interesting opportunity for me as in the main; I have a very positive experience of social media. Nevertheless I went searching for the dark side, and I found myself in the sewer soon enough.

I found plenty of examples of disjointed organisations proudly displaying their silo mentality for all to see, including a fine one courtesy of Qantas. As Qantas launched their #QantasLuxury competition to win a pair of Qantas pyjamas, what their marketing department failed to consider was their current public image following the decision taken to ground the entire fleet during an industrial dispute. The online furore that followed was of Qantas’ own making, and you can’t help but feel that a bit of good old fashioned talking between departments beforehand could have saved a lot of embarrassment.

We delved into the tragic tale of Sandy Hook from the perspective of Ryan Lanza. Ryan Lanza, estranged brother of the gunman Adam Lanza was incorrectly named as the killer by CNN News. Fox and CBS quickly followed suit while Ryan continued to work at his desk in New York City, until his social media feeds lit up with false accusations and his world changed.

We then considered Mary Beard, the sometimes controversial Cambridge Don who was vilified on social media following an appearance on BBC Question Time. In this case – the attacks were more about her appearance rather than her intellect, and I wondered, if Mary had been male, would such a thing have happened? As she reflected in an interview with The Independent, Mary Beard said:

“I think we’re still in the process of learning how to deal with all that. I suppose I feel, perhaps naively, optimistic that we’re just not yet quite clear about the rules of how you communicate online publicly. If you do respond, and say quite calmly, ‘I don’t think I actually said that,’ quite often you get a real response.”

Is she right? Watch this space.

My journey took me to some dark places for sure, and in summary this is what I was reminded of:

You don’t own hashtags so use them by all means – at your own risk
Despite the open nature of social media we see loads of businesses still completely siloed inside. When is business going to understand that it’s all about the conversation – not just in silos, but across and beyond the organisational boundaries?
Check your facts

People can be and are hugely irresponsible at times, and they certainly don’t need social media to achieve that.

Perhaps more importantly – there was a brief aside to the squabble I referenced earlier when another contributor said (re: punk v classical), ‘how about New Romantic?’ How about it indeed. In fact – why not a bit of each and every musical genre (except maybe Phil Collins)? If the culture of social can’t be an inclusive, broad church, then it’s not a culture, it’s a cult.