When organizations first consider the use of social media within their organization, the first thing they do is to make a series of decisions the way they’ve always made them:  they do a bunch of market research to find out if and how their customers are using social media, assess current corporate goals, identify the “best practices” and “right tools” and finally lay out and execute a strategic plan.   According to a fantastic 2007 Harvard Business Review cover article by Dave Snowden and Mary Boone, this decision-making process follows the process of “Sense > Analyze > Respond”  which seems to make pretty good sense, right?

Wrong!  Snowden and Boone point out that this sort of a decision-making approach can only work in what they call complicated situations (they also leave a category for simple situations), where “Cause-and-effect relationships” are “discoverable but not immediately apparent to everyone; more than one right answer possible.”  So while such a decision-making process might make a lot of sense for considering whether or not to use accounting software (we can pretty well figure out, with a little debate, whether there will be some ROI on its use), it probably does not make sense when considering social media, the effects of which are notoriously hard to predict given that it involves lots of users in a very open environment, who each experience, use and abuse it in very different ways which often vary based on the particular situation, the community of users, and many other factors.

So we are left, in the case of things like social media, with three options: First, we can try to stuff this decision into an old process which worked for complicated or even simple decisions. This may lead us to frustration and perhaps even disastrous outcomes.  Second, we can give up on deciding at all, and limit our organization to initiatives with more predictable outcomes like the use of traditional media.  Third, we can try to find a more appropriate way to make our decision.  Fortunately, Snowden and Boone offer some insights, not only on how we can pursue the third option, but also on how that third option can actually be turned to our advantage.

By extending Snowden and Boone’s framework to apply to Social media situations, we can see that these situations (as well as most plain old social situations as well) fall into one of the last two situational categories, which are complex and chaotic.

(table from the Snowden/Boone article)

Most social media decisions fall into the category of Complex.
In other words, there is no more absolute way to predict the outcome of using social media than there is an absolute way to predict the outcome of throwing a birthday party for your sister.  Both are inherently social, hard-to-predict situations.  But in either case, the risks are probably worth the benefits, and there are some general patterns that can guide decisions, so long as the person managing the party is ready to adapt to Aunt Bea’s dropping the Jell-o on the floor and the social media decision maker is ready to handle the first bad (or good!) public customer comment on their corporate blog.

As a matter of fact, sometimes the best results emerge directly from these unpredictable dynamics, like the spontaneous family sing-along or the customer who accidentally helps a company create a massive internet sensation.  The key is to manage this sort of decision-making process by probing (i.e., “Thanks for your comment on our product.  What exactly did you mean when you said it exploded?”), then sensing (i.e., “Ah, so you mean it broke open.  I understand now.”), then responding (i.e., “We will be happy to ship you a new product, as well as a gift certificate for $40 for the trouble it caused you”).

Some social media situations fall into the category of Chaotic.
In a chaotic situation, there are no clear cause-and-effect relationships to be found, no matter how hard one looks.  In the example of the birthday party, the un-announced, uninvited arrival of a long-lost drunken Uncle George would transform a previously complex situation into a chaotic one.  Similarly, a bombardment of illegally-mashed up customer-generated videos about a product posted to a corporate website (regardless of whether they are positive or negative!) would be considered chaotic.

Either case requires immediate action, and there are no right answers.  The key is to manage the decision-making process by first Acting (i.e., “We’re so pleasantly surprised by the recent raft of videos about our product!  Since we are in legally murky waters here, we had to temporarily take the videos down so that we don’t get into trouble.  We are checking into this right away, though, and will re-post the videos if at all possible!  We will let you know by tomorrow.  Please stay tuned.”), then sensing (i.e., paying close attention to the responses), and responding (i.e., “Since you were all so passionate (and right, according to our legal team) about the fact that your videos were legal, we’ve re-posted them.  Enjoy!”)

Both the complex and chaotic responses are inherently difficult for those of us who have been raised in organizational cultures which have privileged heavily analysis prior to action.  The probe>sense>respond and act>sense>respond processes feel rash.  But there are inherent differences in this social media-enabled world, and smart leaders are beginning to join – really join the “parties” going on around them.