Social Media Policy and Corporate Management

When people think about ‘social media’ they often envision reckless employees fumbling around on Facebook and Twitter. In many cases this wouldn’t be too far from reality if we were examining a group of employees without any leadership.

But what a minute…

when was the last time employees did
everything the way you wanted without any leadership?

Leadership defines how an organization will succeed or fail.
Knowledge defines whether a leader can make educated decisions.
Communication defines if your team will understand your decisions.

Your Social Media Policy serves as a channel for your leadership: communicating business fundamentals and actionable goals to maximize opportunities.  A good social media policy also involves educating and motivating your team to find the best possible uses for new tools and avoid potential pitfalls.

The evil part of social media consists of the large numbers of business leaders who have failed to create a business benefit driven process that *good* employees can follow and participate in.

This lack of leadership has compounded “career fear” at the mid-management and executive level. These corporate leaders are hesitant to adopt new ideas, explore unchartered territory, or take risk in something they do not fully comprehend.

Yet the real evil of social media shows itself when amazing, positive, committed, and thought-leading employees are forced to find alternative ways of doing things when they know the BEST WAY to do it would include some utilization of ‘social media’

Imagine this scenario

You have a team of contractors building a house. Most of your team is stacking wood up and gluing the frame together. One of them is sitting in the corner using a hammer to drive these pointy little things into two pieces of wood to hold them together (I.E. hammer & nails.)

The foreman hasn’t seen nails before, but he remembers stepping on something pointy as a kid and he simply doesn’t like pointy things.

As a manager the foreman come comes to you (the boss) and tells you he has an insane employee ruining the wood by driving pointy things into it with a hammer. He advises you tell all the employees that hammers and pointy things are banned from the worksite.

You could jump the gun and simply agree with the foreman. You could even go overboard and fire the employee as an example of how dangerous pointy things are.

Or you could develop a process of examination and ask questions that allow you to be a leader.

1. What are the pointy things?
2. Has anyone hurt themselves with the pointy things?
3. Why is the employee using pointy things instead of glue?
4. Where did the employee learn of these pointy things?
5. Are the pointy things faster, stronger, or more durable than glue?
6. Are your competitors using these pointy things?
7. If there is any validity to using pointy things, can you make them better?
8. Is there a process of using pointy things correctly?
9. Why didn’t your foreman ask these questions?

Beyond Hammers and Nails

Those are some of the highlights of using a  Social Media Policy to communicate your corporate management and ask fundamental benefit questions.

As a leader have you enabled your team members with balanced social media policy and process questions or do you fall in the group that chastises employees for bringing pointy things into the office?