Reading this L.A. Times article about a recent study performed by researchers from Harvard’s Department of Psychology entitled “Disclosing Information about the Self is Intrinsically Rewarding” made me think not so much about the consumer implications and explanations for the popularity of social media outlets such as Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram, and Pinterest, but rather what this Harvard study tells us about the potential impact of social media (or social business) capabilities if they are well provided within the enterprise.
I will save you the trouble of reading the study in detail – in a nutshell, it tells us that people derive actual, measurable (in the brain) pleasure from sharing information about themselves with an audience (the larger the better) made up of their friends, colleagues, family members, etc. – whether through speech, or through social media.
Think about the implication of this simple fact within a corporate work environment. People derive actual pleasure from doing something (in this case sharing information about their work) which can be of significant value to a corporate enterprise. A win-win in other words – people enjoy sharing information about what they are working on, what they are struggling with, what they just completed, what deal they just “won” or “lost,” what they just learned, what they just launched, what they just uncovered, etc. – and the more that this information is discoverable and shared with others, the more the organization benefits as a whole. People can more easily make internal connections, understand information, review and participate in discussions, and “subscribe” to future updates on various topics – all to help them complete a task more quickly and at a higher level of quality.
And yet, if you think about it in the context of your typical professional work experience over the years, sharing information within the enterprise has traditionally been pretty hard to do – you had to talk with colleagues around the water cooler, over a meal, on the phone, at happy hour, at organized “lunch and learns,” meetings, retreats, etc. Or maybe you heard about something from a colleague, or happened to get copied on an email, or noticed something on the corporate intranet or portal. Or you may have even experienced some kind of centralized knowledge management functions who attempt to capture and share knowledge back to the organization as a whole, but who are typically woefully behind or out of the loop on the latest and greatest information – through no real fault of their own, but due to the dynamic nature of organizations.
Enter enterprise social media capabilities. With the introduction of “Facebook-like” social business functionality within the enterprise, all of this changes significantly because the barriers to sharing information with a community of interest suddenly come down. And the key concept here is “lowering the barriers” – in other words, making information sharing and collaboration easy and natural is the critical thing – and enterprise social capabilities have a major impact on easy and natural (just as Facebook knows and has demonstrated perhaps all too well).
Of course, some structure, rules, and ongoing governance are critically important for any enterprise portal and enterprise social initiative to have lasting measurable success. But imagine the business impact of creating low friction, trusted enterprise portal social environments where people truly exist and enjoy sharing and collaborating. This has the potential to make both the individuals and the enterprise happy – and should be the goal of any enterprise portal initiative. Imagine the power of that.
Enterprise Social Makes You (and the Company) Happy
by Walter Rowland on August 1st, 2012 | ~ minute read
