Reading and responding to the comments left on the last couple of posts had me returning to a question that I have wrestled with periodically over the last year or two: how do you convince senior management of the need to begin planning for online engagement? One tactic that occurred to me is to use the language of public sector managers; that the issue of social media is one of change management.
Change management is often most closely associated in the public sector with machinery of government changes or internal departmental restructuring. However, it can just as easily be required as a result of changes in the external environment. It could be new legislation, a crisis of some sort, or it may be – as is the case with social media – a social and cultural change.
The transformation of New Zealand’s public management system is, for example, essentially a change management programme for the State Services:
Organizational Change Management is a structured approach to transitioning individuals, teams, and organizations from a current state to a desired future state. Organizational Change Management is characterized by a shift in behaviors and attitudes in people to adopt and embrace the future state.
Wikipedia
Public sector agencies coming to terms with the impact of social media on their staff, their policies and their external and internal engagement programmes can similarly be thought of in these terms; shifting behaviours and attitudes to this future state.
The change
According to the Wikipedia article, going by the comments on this blog and the discussions I have with most of you, it would not be unfair to characterize most of the public sector in the ‘unfreezing’ state:
It involve(s) overcoming inertia and dismantling the existing “mindset”. Defense mechanisms have to be bypassed.
One expression of this change is the various guerilla activities that are happening in the social media space. These vary from Ministry Facebook groups through to full-blown (and successful) implementations.
Another indicator that I have discussed before is the changing nature of the media landscape, and in particular the emergence of Google as the largest, most profitable and practically omnipresent player in this space.
The plan
How do we manage the change? Simple. It is about moving from the current state to a future state, in a structured, organized way.
Naturally, you will need a strategy. Essentially, this will be a plan that assists your organization take the manageable, moderated steps necessary to evolve over a period of years into a model Govt 2.0 agency.
Begin with an audit. Develop as comprehensive a picture as possible of all of the social media touchpoints in your agency. Does your agency have a Wikipedia page? A del.icio.us account? YouTube channel? Who in your agency is already blogging? Are there people already commenting and engaging in fora (even if not necessarily relevant to your business)?
Find a champion. Every change management programme needs a senior manager as a sponsor. Try and avoid the CIO for this role as it may reinforce the misconception that this is just about technology — its not, it’s about behavioural change.
Agree on the future state. Make sure that everyone from the sponsor down has a clear conception of where you are going, and the steps that you will take to get there. The reality for most public sector agencies is that this will be a modest vision…
Measure your inputs, outputs and outcomes. This will enable you to accurately report progress towards the future state and to tweak your plan accordingly.
Seize opportunities to bind the change into other organizational initiatives. Use an internal blog in concert with your employee engagement programme; launch a wiki as a knowledge base for staff inductions; podcast your staff talks. By including social media in your people and organizational development activities, you are effectively building capability for the future state.
Conclusion
Pitching the integration of social media into your agency’s internal and external engagement and communications programmes as a change management strategy won’t guarantee you traction with senior management (see the quote above about inertia and defense mechanisms). It doesn’t hurt, however, to have these conversations in a language that managers are comfortable with and connects more purposefully with the organizational goals – rather than focusing on the technology or the tools.
Photo: David Reece
7 Comments
good post jason. the only thing i see missing is the mechanism to encourage staff to engage with their agency’s social media.
most people willingly engage with social media “in the wild” because it has social outcomes. agencies need to consider how this social engagement will work internally. my agency is working through this at the moment, and it’s not an easy process to establish.
Thanks Che. You are right, the key to social media is to engage internally before launching on an unsuspecting public.
I wouldn’t think people would need too much encouragement, just the choice to engage using those channels…
i agree, and it’s your feb 07 post that’s been guiding us in rolling out an internal product here.
what we’re currently investigating though is, why would people engage with the product? are their particular social processes that will prevent people from utilising social media within our organisation (e.g. “managerial disapproval”)? does the culture of our organisation allow or prevent this type of media from being adopted? do we need to make it guerilla and ‘cool’ to get buy-in from our users? who will be our content generators (not everyone is a generator, some are only users)?
it’s a big set of questions.
Che, a lot of the cultural stuff can, as usual in hierarchical organizations, be managed with good governance – having a senior manager as a sponsor ‘legitimizes’ the activity. Having an owner is also important, as is dedicated accountabilities for maintenance and editorial and content creation.
With regard to content generation, it might be helpful to think of it in terms of the sales funnel: get as many people as possible through the induction process (people have to be shown how to use the tool & have the T&C explained and agreed to) on the basis that not all will create, and not many will create consistently.
One important point to note: people won’t engage with the product, they will engage with the people and the content on the platform. So, like all communications efforts, 90% of the focus should be on those two areas.
As I said a couple of weeks back, looking forward to the case study.
I think “change management” is needed - and I agree that it will include much of what you write about (I esp. like the audit, champion & seizing opportunities bits). The overall tone of the post worries me a bit though - “if only we had a plan with more structure, everything will be OK”. I think the first thing to acknowledge is that social software isn’t like trad IT and a lot of old skool change management stuff (that we used when we bunged in PeopleSoft or had a restructure) won’t work with it (not that it always worked that well then).
My own thoughts on change management can be found here and here.
So I think using the language of public sector managers (wot have MBAs n stuff) is a canny move, I’d be careful that it doesn’t bring a whole bunch of baggage with it.
It doesn’t hurt, however, to have these conversations in a language that managers are comfortable with and connects more purposefully with the organizational goals – rather than focusing on the technology or the tools.
Yes indeed - the focus is on new behaviours and capabilities - not Facebook vs MySpace.
Thanks Matt. I think that it is important that we do integrate social media into our business planning process, as part of our overall communications planning. The solution isn’t just more structure per se; it is about driving the cultural and behavioural changes in the organization – essentially Kotter’s first 6 steps that you mention in your post.
I agree about the failure of most change management around old school IT; but I see that as symptomatic of a wider failure. Moving the focus of your business planning from technology to people should address these issues.
Moving the focus of your business planning from technology to people should address these issues.
I am convinced it will. I think we have to change the way do we business planning - esp. in the public sector. What is your take on complexity theory?
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