By Viktor Kunovski
Facebook: COACH ERA
Linked In: COACH ERA
www: COACH ERA
I like analogies.
Lets take a 8cm long garlic chopping knife (a tool).
In my drawer is useless, in the sink is dirty and stinky, in the hands of a soldier….and in the hands of maestro chef, well who is buying the wine then?
The knife on its own does not make the finger licking dish.
So our Soc. Media (SM) tools (Facebook, Twitter, linked….) are more or less like the knife. Often times they remind me of the old media. More marketing, more sale, brainwashing…etc. Do you remember the movie Network from 1976?
So on their own (without the skillful hand) they are nothing really new in the context of social change. Now here comes the braking point I believe.
If appropriately used and guided by a skillful chef (I will stop with the analogy here and call my chef a systemic leader) SM tools could and I believe will provide a platform for staging the biggest consciousness and social change the humanity has seen. Let me just add here that the signs of this are emerging and they are visible in small numbers.
The numbers are not so small anymore, take a look at Egypt, North Africa and the Arab world (this text line is added on 27th Feb. 2011)..
If you ask your self how, I would like to share some of my experiences.
For social change (we also call it cultural transformation) several things need to be in place:
1) Full system participation (this is where the SM tools become the platform for organizational and global alignment).
Just imagine the power of numbers.
Imagine 100 million of people (facebook @ present has 600 mil. users) being lead and focused on a issue, topic, problem that needs to be solved.
Anyone who has experience with appreciative inquiry, or open ended inquiry or world café discussions will know how powerful a single question can be in order to create positive change and attitude within a group.
Now imagine that instate of the current confusion on the SM (by the way this is only a reflection of our personal and collective confusion and lack of global systemic leadership) we start to use the SM in a coherent and aligned way and start to ask questions that matter on corporate/local/global level. This will start a process of inclusion and WHOLE SYSTEM PARTICIPATION and will tap the collective intelligence of our employees/people on the planet.
By the way, culture is extremely difficult to change without the whole system participation.
Further more, this process will also generate a systemic responsibility among the participants, which means that we do not have “a Leader” but rather a shared ownership and responsibility or a “systemic shared leadership”.
This is how we’ll govern our organization, nation or the humanity. This is the social change we are talking about.
2) Commitment from the top Leadership of the system (organization, region, nation, the planet).
- In the company the CEO and the board of director must be inn.
- In the nation, the government, president, prime minister must be fully committed to the process, etc.
- On a global level, all must be inn, UN, Governments, IMF, Google, IBM, corporations…
3) Continuous Measurement of culture and values within the system.
This is available and the tools are incredible.
In addition to this we need to follow the KPI (Key performance Indicators) of the things that matter to us.
Global KPI for example would be clean water indicators, global warming/temperature, education indicators…etc.
P.S.
Let me just say that this is not a theory. Over 2000 companies and some 60 nations are using the above described processes to accomplish social transformation and create cohesive and sustainable systems.
Comments
Hi! Thanks for this great post, it is very inspiring. I fully agree with you on the involvement of the whole system that is needed to fully leverage the power of social media. In organizations, there are always people who are front runners, they like to look out for new things and want to share with others. My question is, how do we engage the rest of the workforce?
btw. i would be very interested in those links.
All the best, Joost Robben
Hi Joost,
before sharing my opinion about how we engage the rest of the workforce, let me give the links I mentioned.
This is the CEO (Dutch man) and the CHR of UNILEVER talking about the process of culture transformation within the company.
this is the case study of the process
http://www.valuescentre.com/uploads/2010-09-02/Unilever%20Brazil%20Case%20Study.pdf
this is my book “Values or Death” that describes the process and you can download here
http://www.skyisthelimit.org/ValuesorDeath.html
“The system is always wiser than the leader or the leadership team that leads it”.
That is why a good leader is asking a lot of powerful questions.
In this way he involves the people. This is also empowering both for the leader and for his people. This is the way of the systemic leader.
http://hbr.org/2010/11/managing-yourself-whats-your-personal-social-media-strategy/ar/1
Dear Viktor,
Inspiring story and of cource we all know that a large number of people can change the world. Iam not convinced that “Continuous Measurement of culture and values within the system” can be found by using conventional tools and skills. It is very difficult to find the “real”values and meaning of a culture and beside that a culture can only survive by changing (Roman empire). By using special methods from different scientific fields, like cultural anthropology you can make a zero measurement and with participant observation for example you can really found values. Only this is a proces that takes longer (and costs a lot of money). I would be interested in the links and a lot of success. Yours,
Kees van den Meiracker
Power of Culture bv
Dear Kees,
the tools for measurement of the culture I am referring to, are ultra modern, in my experience they are extremely precise and most importantly they are very cheep.
http://www.skyisthelimit.org/CTTtools.html
They are so fast, that we can measure the culture of a organization or nation within one week. Trust me on this since I have done it http://www.skyisthelimit.org/MCAssessment%20-%20May%202009%20USAID%20Official.pdf in South East Europe and many of my colleagues have also done this in some other countries on national level. You can see the national values of several countries here http://www.valuescentre.com/products__services/?sec=national_values_assessment_%28nva%29
Today more and ore nations will use them since the results they have given in the corporate sector are also fantastic. More than 2000 companies have used the CTT.
I am not saying that the measurement will change the culture by itself. No that is not possible, still this is essential first start and a diagnostic step before starting any strategy development or change management efforts within a system.
Viktor
Tel: +31 (0)639348920
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I wrote this blog in October last year.
The events in North Africa have proven how fast the the world is changing.
They have also shown that systemic leadership is present and is very powerful. There was not a new leader or political party that made the change in Egypt, it was the whole system participating.
I have also made a mistake in predicting that the world is lacking new leaders.
They are all over and so many we can only call them systemic leaders.
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