Is being Social conditional?

2013

On Quora there was a question that was phrased rather interestingly – to paraphrase – “Given that the world’s systems are becoming more intelligent – how should an enterprise become a social business”?

My answer follows:

I would have to start by asking which “world systems” you mean, since there are so many kinds of systems that enterprises deal with or are a part of. Traffic systems, Healthcare Systems, Communication Systems – you can see how ‘systems’ is quite a broad term.

As long as my statement about enterprises being social is true, then their need to be a part of such systems is due to the fact that their being ‘social’ adds value.

Even though there is a significant increase in the amount of information available to systems, and perhaps also there being much more automated ‘intelligence’, there is still a need for humans to be involved.

Such enterprises therefore must necessarily also excel at being social. A ‘Social Enterprise’ performs several activities as part of a system – It makes sense of information, takes decisions, innovates, develops solutions/designs and interventions, acts, often collaboratively or at least cooperatively and learns from its experience. Most importantly it produces value – value that is consumed by other social beings.

As long as this remains true, and I would say that will be the case for a long time to come, all enterprises and businesses must aspire to be socially competent/excellent.

The answer to how enterprise/business should become social has been extensively written about. Where an enterprise starts its efforts depends on its specific strategic context and needs.

It depends on the nature of your enterprise and where the opportunities happen to be. In general if you look at what is happening, the marketing function and its activities are a good place to start, though Customer Services and other support functions are also good candidates.

Others start with various attempts at creating capabilities and becoming a Collaborative Enterprise, with initiatives ranging from Knowledge Management, Product Development, Accelerating Learning etc. Eventually a social business leverages the power of ‘sociality’ pervasively in all aspects of its business, though the extent and degree might differ.

If the enterprise does not have experience with introducing such initiatives, since there are new competencies involved and quite a paradigmatic shift, it is of course best to start small, do a pilot and then learn and scale rapidly.

As maturity increases, the enterprise can take on wider ranging and more complex transformation challenges.As long as their is human activity, there will be Social Enterprises – whether or not this current interest wanes in the near future, the need to be social will remain. And, yes, we will increasingly included online/virtual sociality in the design of our enterprises.