Part II. Business is Social Again?

Uncertainty of Business Value Principle

With hindsight, one can see that there were benefits that could have come from Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 transition (they coined it the Semantic Web at initiation) but what failed early on was the fruition of a world changing application, and more importantly, a business changing infrastructure. Fundamentally, the most importantly failure, was the inability to derive a marked and marketable improvement in productivity. The sales speak couldn’t be aligned with the perceived benefit. It would take many cycles to overcome the negative momentum to actual provide real benefit solutions.

In early days of the social media software revolution, there was always the “Uncertainty of Business Value Principle”.

ΔMΔC ≥ B/2

In short, this equation describes the notion that the more precise the measurement of monetization the less collaboration we can see, and vice versa. Any measurement of the position with accuracy ΔM collapses the collaboration state making the standard deviation of the collaboration ΔC larger than B/2ΔM where B is the Bohemian constant.

In layman’s terms, it was hard to measure how effective social software tools were.

That’s not to say that social software went away, it just didn’t evolve in the normal formulaic way: driven by requirements which were driven by business needs which were driven by marketing analysts. Institutions simply failed to capture the organic nature of ideas. Moreover, the necessary components for the growth of an idea were simply overlooked by software and process mandates. Fortunately, it was in fact impossible for social software to disappear because it had embedded in the consciousness of so many people. It was merely the effectiveness of these solutions that was repeatedly drawn into question. Interestingly, the evangelists didn’t solve the social software crisis and drive forward the practices that would ultimately survive, but they applied extended resuscitation to keep the dream alive long enough for the purposeful social software to be created.

The Business is Social Flaw

One of the main flaws of the social software movement was the implications of something being a social revolution. The digital divide was indeed narrowing – connectivity was ubiquitous, and technology accessible; however, where did social fit in? Jive Software called itself “The Social Business Software Leader” had a video called Now Business is Social which included text to such ideas as:

Work can be a drag…deflating…isolating….seems like you’re out there on your own..

and moving, in as positive a voice as possible to

But what if work was social AGAIN? when work felt good… job well done… trophies… atta boys… what if we were one big happy team… tear down cubicle walls… get to know each other… roll up our sleeves…

The question I was left with was when was work ever something someone would describe as social? During the Industrial Revolution? During the Great Depression? During the repressive 1960’s? During the greed fueled 80’s (or 90’s) ? Much of what people view as social is talking, communicating, sharing, and hopefully with an equal share of the rewards (but don’t you dare add an -ism to social!). Even during the one period of wanton social activism in the late 1990’s, the rewards were perks and meaningless benefits: free coffee, stock options, in-chair massages are simply not collaboration tools.

Much of the effectiveness of the workplace was in the pre-technology era– effectiveness was perhaps most recognizable in the form of the abhorrently misused metric of productivity. This metric was, to a certain extent based on community but the basis was a real community with an almost mandatory participation – not through edict, not through a mandate, but just in its very nature. You lived in a community. You supported your community. Social work was social work because that’s how life was. You worked with people and for people. There was an immediacy to contact and contribution with fellow members of the guild.  I’m not about to lose all credence by denying the obvious vast improvements in all standards of living, I’m simply stating that effectiveness has not been a measure of social tools as much as it has a social environment.

With technology, the idea of community was removed and rather than returning to that sense of communal belonging, the world tried to create a virtual community. It was not good enough: you simply couldn’t create virtual commitment. Work communities – the office – while not a community, was a sub community that bred loyalty, friendships, and even valuable conflict. With social software came work-at-home, off hours, remote working, non-regular hours and the isolation. Consider the line “tear down cubicle walls,” before the cubes came offices with doors that you could CLOSE. These offices did not act as a deterrent to conversation so neither would a cube, so what does this all mean to you looking forward? The issue is simple – the issue we need to solve is to prevent the ISOLATION of ideas and this can be partially achieved by tearing down the barriers of INTERACTION.

The ultimate irony, is the fact that if one searched the archives hard enough you might even have found the Business Consulting Evangelista of Jive Software complaining about the isolation of their work (via Twitter). If they found it isolating, what hope did everyone else have?

When work become social, the work life balance programs unbalanced work AND life – and you appreciated it. Rewards in the form of simple accomplishment, learning, and teaching were replaced with Thanks! and 110% clubs, and even financial awards (or ice cream in times of tight budget). These are fake rewards and do NOT understand the real motivations that drive and spur people to accomplish. Think about this fact: the single biggest benefit of working is simply financial compensation yet “I just work for the paycheck” is the most disparaging comment an employee will ever make about their job.

So Social Software – it’s not Social at all.