Social Ways of Being

I'm doing a course on organizational culture and communication, and every now and then it strikes me how my own culture affects my approach to work. I tend to think first of results and then of means to attain those results. I sometimes don't think as much as I should about process - and being.

I've volunteered to help an NGO in India develop a social media plan. Immediately, I began looking for the best ways to use the toys - blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc. I started this blog as a means of gathering information experientially - with the intent of learning by doing. I've gathering "how to" information to help me with my long-term mission. For a "late adopter" such as myself, learning how to use social media effectively is challenging enough, but learning to change one's way of thinking, one's cultural programming is a different thing altogether.

I'm about half way through "The Networked Nonprofit" by Beth Kanter and Allison Fine, and the book isn't quite what I expected. It does have sound practical advice about how to use social media for social causes. But there isn't a chapter on using Facebook or a chapter on using Twitter per se, though there are practical examples of how these social media have been used for good. Rather, the emphasis is on the mindset and philosophical approach to social media.

"Tools will come and go," they write, "but strategies sustain organizations. Using social media is more of a way of being than a way of doing" (p. 6).

Organizations, corporate or non-corporate, have a tendency to think of themselves as the centre of the universe. Their cause, their immediate needs, their priorities must take precedence over everything else. They must compete for the attention of prospective donors. The traditional marketing approach is to use a medium to promote one's aims from this perspective. To tell the truth, many individuals are like that too.

Rather than looking out at the vastness of cyberspace and thinking, "How can I build a community around my cause," a truly networked person or organization will recognize that there are already networks of people with similar values. These people can be valuable allies if approached in a spirit of reciprocity and trust.

It strikes me that this emerging network culture runs counter to old ways of all kinds of organizations - corporations, governments, NGOs, and, yes, universities.

Kanter and Fine make a fascinating point that effective networks are made up of actors with loose ties as well as strong ties to the network. If a network is made up only of those actors with strong ties, then it tends toward the formation of a clique and would ignore the valuable contributions that those with loose ties can sporadically or with less consistency make to the network's cause. If it consisted only of actors with loose ties, very little would get done (p.29).

This revelation runs counter to the elitism that can exist in traditional hierarchical organizations and networks. The authors recognizes that one need not be a core network member (CEO, professor or even a techno geek) to be valuable to the network.

So, when Kanter and Fine speak of embracing new social ways of being, they aren't just talking about embracing social networking with old friends on Facebook or business associates via LinkedIn or even fellow social activists on Change.org The implication is for the creation of networks that are much more diverse.

Kanter and Fine also urge nonprofits to look to the periphery of their networks for people who may be core actors in other networks, thereby expanding networks. As we venture into the periphery of our networks, we also expand into new frontiers of networks. The implications for an even more interconnected world are obvious. How will old power structures cope with this change? Perhaps they won't - as we have recently seen in the Arab world.

I am becoming more and more fascinated by where this is all heading. It's nice to have people like Kanter and Fine who can shine a light on it.