The Social Organization: How to Use Social Media to Tap the Collective Genius of Your Customers and Employees

Abstract

Reviews The Social Organization: How to Use Social Media to Tap the Collective Genius of Your Customers and Employees Anthony J. Bradley and Mark P. McDonald (Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press, 2011) According to a recent McKinsey Quarterly report, 2 a different class of company is now emerging, one that uses collaboration and its attendant technologies to drive measurable increases in productivity and gains in market share. One of the advantages of these enterprises is the power of collaboration to transform companies into resilient that can apply learning acquired in interactions with one set of stakeholders to interactions with others, improving the value chain. For the authors of The Social Organization, this reinforces the idea that the value in becoming a is no longer notional or even mildly theoretical; fully networked organizations capture competitive advantage. Anthony J. Bradley and Mark P. Mc- Donald explore and unpack the formula for increasing an organization's capacity, capabilities, and productivity through interacting with its greatest asset- its people. At the heart of this book is the assumption, quietly stated, that all organizations contain myriad latent networks, relationships, and communities, some lying inside the and others external to it, some formal and others more loosely affiliated. Most organizations allow these relationships and communities to remain latent, their power dormant. By contrast, the social organization described by the authors engages and mobilizes community at all levels and locations, both virtual and physical, to increase the value of the organization. This engagement is transformative, creating a new organism, the enterprise, which is both resilient and powerful. The Promise of Social Organizations A organization, according to Bradley and McDonald, is one that strategically applies mass collaboration to address significant business challenges and opportunities. An becomes a when it discovers the power of mass collaboration and develops the necessary corporate skills to address challenges by readily and repeatedly creating collaborative A is agile, flexible, deft, and as a result it produces better outcomes and develops entirely new ways of operating, achievable only through mobilization of the collective talent, energy, ideas, and efforts of its various communities. In a organization, employees, customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders participate directly in the creation of value. While the robust use of media is necessary to the organization's ability to increase its capacity, media use is not by itself sufficient to transform an into a learning organization. Community and purpose must also be present. A collaborative community channels the direction change will take through transparent feedback and evaluation. This cycle has multiple iterations, driving the practice of what Chris Argyris, a leader in organizational theory, calls double learning. Double loop learning usually involves the modification of an organization's underlying norms, policies, and objectives, and in the end, contributes to the organization's resilience and ability to grow and extend its capacity. …