Designing Impact

David Armano from Edelman shared a great post about what organizations should consider as they grapple with determining where social media lives within an organization. One of his key points:

“So while managers debate who will control social media inside their organizations — marketing, PR, corporate, IT — I say stop and ask the bigger question: Do any of the people who make up your company, agencies, partners and so on actually live social? Do they demonstrate that they work and play in a connected fashion? Once we begin to resolve that (and don’t underestimate the power of baby steps), then we can worry about which discipline, department or agency/consultancy is best equipped to help lead the way.”

His core question resonated with me:  Do you live social? It led me to ask: Do you learn social? Do you lead social?

Like many, I view social media as a an umbrella term describing a digital user’s (or learner’s) ability to share, respond and/or react to any type of digital media content in real-time. These three actions are the simple core skills of learning not just socializing. Indeed, the line between learning and socializing is very thin and often completely transparent which brings me to my point:

Things Learning Leaders Should Consider As They Grapple With How To Include Social Media Features Within Learning Solutions and Human Performance Initiatives:

1. Do a leader diagnostic of your design & implementation team.  “How many leaders within the design and implementation team learn social? Do they demonstrate that they work and learn in a connected fashion?  “Many learning leaders skip this question because they assume they themselves don’t have to learn social (be participatory, timely, transparent, current users of social media) to reap the rewards they think they might get from social media-enhanced learning solutions.” (Klein words in italics within Armano’s original text)
2. Do a user/learner diagnostic of the group that will use the learning solution and measure before and after key performance indicators. How many learners within the targeted participating group learn social? How do they demonstrate they work and learn in a connected fashion? How are users/learners working and learning now? How will the social media enabled features within the site/event/product/thing help users/learners work better?  S-P-E-L-L  I-T  O-U-T  for the users/learners using interactive marketing and rollout events.
3. Do a strategy diagnostic. How much is the design strategy of the social media-enhanced learning solution/initiative mimicking what the targeted participating group is already doing on the job?
4. Do a change marketing and management strategy that aligns to the strategy diagnostic results (#3). The closer the solution mimics the real-time practical elements of work team communications or workflows, the faster users/learners will use it and the least amount of change management and marketing will be needed.  If the solution is vastly different than real-time work, more change management and marketing support will be needed to get users to use it and value it.
5. Seek management participation and support. I use the rule of 3. If users/learners see at least three levels of management, directly connected with the targeted participation group, genuinely modeling the social learning behavior they’d like to see, faster, long-term adoption is guaranteed. It has to be genuine, authentic, practical modeling or your target group will smell a fake and all momentum/buzz will stop and reverse quickly. To help leaders understand the power of their impact and the importance of their leadership and support,  I dialogue with them about the nature of faking it and the options of baking it into the organization’s culture.

What do you think? What other considerations should be included?