Attributes of the Social Organization (Part 1)

Before we explore the attributes of the Social Organization it is important to first answer why we need a new model…  Why don’t solutions like Social CRM, Government 2.0, Social Relationship Management, Enterprise 2.0, Healthcare 2.0, Education 2.0, and others suffice?

While all of these strategic systems have much to offer they all fall short.  The new view, the new system, must recognize the commonalities across organization types, organization sizes, and across geographies.  There are too many silos forming within these so-called open systems that the opportunity for us to build a common language, a core set of strategies, becomes impossible.  For example:

• Social CRM looks externally and is a system focused on businesses, mostly enterprise-level.
• Enterprise 2.0 looks internally and is a system focused on businesses, mostly enterprise-level.
• Government 2.0 is not as well-defined but does look both internally and externally.  It focuses on the public sector only.

The Social Organization recognizes that:

• A large percentage of the strategies, processes, policies, and tools are common across organizational types, organizational sizes, and geographies.
• That there is a great deal of lost productivity that results from organizations and industries attempting to define what others have already defined.
• Social Media has affected how customers in some sectors buy products/services and in some sectors has already affected how the customer conversation is taking place. 
• In other sectors and geographies that Social Media has had no impact and may not have an impact for many years.

Lets be honest.  All organizations are social in the sense that they interact with customers to some degree. Your town government delivers law enforcement services, restaurants sell food, my blog delivers content.    In the simplest of terms:

The Social Organization will use standard approaches that make it easy for customers/citizens to find and buy products and services while enabling the organization to meet their goals.

Simple, right?  When we return we’ll begin exploring the attributes of the Social Organization, more soon.

John