Gary Vaynerchuk once riffed about how today we need to just try something, something small perhaps, and from trying we can better plan. As he put it, Action today leads to strategy. And nothing could be more true when it comes to successful org social efforts.
Social is dynamic, fluid, a state of ever-change because it’s all about emotional and often illogical human-beings. And social varies based on context too and can be very different from company to company. A top-down buttoned-up strategy to increase connection is not only like fixing the plane while it’s in the air, it’s plug-n-play which, and as noted, rarely works due to cultural differences. Rather, we need to find those people related performance problems. Set aside the default approaches of applying new technology, change management, or training and instead work to bring people together to solve the problem and close the knowledge and skill gaps.
This action of connection can also expose issues in your organizational design because your design (those elements such as management, info flows, rewards, development, etc) are really about people, their behaviors and beliefs. Now your solution, and specifically the key principles you surface from it, can then scale to other areas of the business.
Small actions leading to a larger strategy.
