Re-engineering the social dimension

It is important that you begin to develop the new skills that the Age of Collaboration demands, and that you develop – also to the maximum – your personal capacity to participate and contribute to collective innovation. Without a doubt, the way you approach these issues will have a decisive impact on your future employability, and the future of your organization.

Until now, the social contract in our companies has essentially consisted of stability and safety at work in exchange for obedience and diligence on the part of the people who perform the tasks entrusted to them. The millions of people who are currently unemployed in this country are evidence that this contract is not only undesirable, but obviously unfeasible in the current economic context, dominated by uncertainty, globalization, deregulation of markets and competition without borders.

Hierarchical organizations—typical of the Industrial Age—were organized around the delegation of authority, chains of command, and the division of labor into specialized positions. Things have changed a lot around us, and yet the last substantial changes in the shape of organizations have long since taken place. The last “reengineering” of the structure of our organizations took place in the second half of the previous century, and consisted of the recognition that in order to achieve greater scalability, efficiency and predictability in business, it was necessary to provide our organizations with a new dimension of processes. A dimension that will cross functional divisions and orient the organization towards relationships with customers, partners and suppliers.

It is therefore time for a change. And the path to a new social re-engineering requires, first of all, a clear recognition: that the media make possible new ways – hitherto unimaginable – of coordinating human effort.

The ability of social media to create value in a self-organized way, in small connected nodes, in more than hierarchical network structures, gives organizations a third social dimension. A dimension that is essential to address new business challenges, since it allows organizations to use all their experiences and all their collective creativity to innovate. By making use of these tools, organizations can place mass collaboration at the center of change, which means that they can have a real engine of growth for the new Era of Collaboration.

Analogous to how the “Process Dimension” It provided our organizations with the scalability needed to capitalize on essentially demographic growth in a supply-side market, the new “Social dimension” It will give our organizations new capabilities to adapt to change, manage increasing complexity, and connect with the collective genius of the organization’s people in an essentially demand-driven market. And, in the same vein, taking a step even further, the social dimension is what will give our organizations the meaning, purpose, trust and transparency necessary to address business challenges collectively.

The key to this social dimension is precisely to reframe collaboration so that it is not “something else to do”, just another item on the list of priorities, but a fundamental means of addressing all business priorities. It is about radically changing the corporate culture to establish a new paradigm in the management and leadership of organizations. A new paradigm that makes mass collaboration possible. Thus, the strategic use of mass collaboration is the key to social organization, and the only tool capable of making it achieve its goals.

This is the only way to survive, to stay relevant in the new context. For this reason, traditional organizations are going to have to redesign their structures to make this new social dimension possible. And, at the same time, they will be forced to transform their culture to make possible a new social contract with their workers. This new contract must necessarily reflect and make real the new values that make mass collaboration possible. Values such as redarchy, transparency, trust, autonomy, and a sense of purpose for the community.

Transformation Framework

To advance on the path towards Social Organization, I am going to propose a particularly flexible transformation framework, arranged in three simple iterative stages that any organization can follow. We have built this framework based on our consulting experience, that is, taking as a reference the dozens of projects in which we have made Collective Innovation a reality, in very significant companies in our country.

I am convinced that you will be able to adapt these steps to the specific needs of your organization without any problem:

1. Creation of new contribution frameworks that enable collective innovation.

• The starting point is to create and foster an appropriate environment, which allows dedicated time and resources to be devoted to collective innovation. It is necessary to have a collaborative platform, as well as to establish a base community of “innovation champions”, to share a common purpose that is aligned with the strategic challenges facing the organization.
• We need to put a real “firewall” between the “collaborative community” and the “formal organization.” The objective of this action will be to protect the community both from the most common pathologies in the hierarchical dimension (functional silos, power struggles, corporate policies, passion killers…) and from the natural tendency of the formal organization to seek short-term results, via traditional ordering and command.
• Collective innovation requires that we be open to receiving ideas from any member of the value chain, whether internal or external to the organization. Following the same logic, the collaborative platform must be open, to make it possible for everyone to participate in the generation, evaluation, and transformation of ideas, which, in the end, must end up becoming concrete innovation initiatives. In this initial phase, it is very important to visualize and make visible the results of participation, which implies recognizing individual and collective contributions.

2. Development of leadership, culture, and soft competencies necessary for collective innovation.

• We must develop new 2.0 skills in social media, with the aim of adapting leadership, culture, processes and individual responsibilities to the new frameworks of collaborative contribution.
• We also need to develop specific methodologies and processes that facilitate creativity, idea generation, evaluation, selection and development. At this stage, it is very important to translate new skills into new habits and new ways of working. This new way of doing things will allow us to turn mass collaboration into the natural way to address business challenges.
• We need to make mass collaboration compatible with the functional structure, so that it is possible to integrate its activity and its results into the overall organisational context.

3. Innovate by doing, to translate mass collaboration into business value.

• We must translate both ideas and collaborative work into business value. Crowdsourcing must be transformed into innovation initiatives, concrete operational improvements, and a new way of working for the organization as a whole.
• It is important that the collaborative platform supports the creation, selection and translation of ideas into concrete business initiatives, with progress metrics and results management. This will allow us to accelerate the development of those initiatives that add the most value to the organization as a whole.
• In short, it is about translating mass collaboration into tangible competitive advantages in all possible aspects of business activity. Not surprisingly, if we manage to involve customers, distributors and channels in the design of new products, we will improve their chances of success, and we will accelerate their acceptance in the market.

By way of summary

The real value of social media is that it can make possible a “third dimension” – the social dimension – in our organizations. This new dimension, located beyond hierarchy and processes, will allow us to connect with the collective intelligence of the organization, and will help us use mass collaboration to solve the business challenges we face.

In short, it is a matter of identifying those business challenges in which mass collaboration – whose existence and operation is possible thanks to social platforms – can generate value for the business.

Our experience shows us that it is very easy to get lost on the road to Social Organization, especially if we focus on social technologies – after all, mere tools, an instrument – and forget the essential: that it is purpose and meaning that really motivate people to collaborate. to participate, interact and contribute to the community. In other words, it’s not about creating islands of innovation in the company. It’s about making innovation everyone’s job.

As a professional or manager, it is important that you reflect on how you can make collective innovation a reality in your organization. If, despite what you’ve seen, you don’t realize the urgency of this reflection, think that many of your competitors are already doing it.