McKinsey and Company recently released the results of their Web 2.0 Global Survey, which showed that organizations are reporting real benefits from their use of Web 2.0 tools internally and with customers and with partners.  I would highly recommend that you read this report if you are considering the future of your organization.  Before you do, though, i would like to point out two intriguing findings that are easy to glance past.

..companies reporting business benefits also report high levels of Web 2.0 integration into employee workflows. They most often deploy three or more Web tools, and usage is high throughout these organizations. (page 5)

We speak to many organizations who are interested in using Web 2.0 technologies as an ancillary marketing channel or as a cheap and easy method for expanding branding efforts.  We speak to many other organizations who are interested in using these technologies mostly because they have heard that “they are the future,” or that their competitors are using them.  Still others consider outsourcing social media execution to outside firms, or to interns.  The main problem with these motivations and tactics is that they are not tied to anything of substance (either committed, empowered people, serious organizational goals or ongoing work practice) within the organization.  And without tying the adoption of something new – whether it be a technology, a mindset (Web 2.0 is both, actually) to something of substance, adoption is pretty much doomed to fail.  The McKinsey quote above supports this, as does our research and the research of organizational thinkers for many years.  This is why SociaLens stresses that every client’s efforts to use social media align with real goals, enacted by committed people.

role modeling—active Web use by executives—has been important for encouraging adoption internally (page 6)

I wrote a blog post in June of 2009 about this topic, which might be worth a review if you’ve not read it.  In it i pointed out the fact that many of the best social media success stories come from organizations whose leaders at least championed and at best modeled the behavior that they then requested from their employees.  Why is this?  Organizations, markets (non-organizational groups) and web 2.0 technologies are locked in a trialectic relationship, which means that when you change one of the three, the other two change as well, and all of them (it’s a bit difficult to figure out which one started this in motion) are moving toward a much heavier reliance on less-hierarchical, more social ways of mediating their existence. With hierarchy diminished, then, leaders are left (or the smart ones willingly move toward) then to lead by gaining “followers” – not “subordinates” – and this leadership requires modeling.

We can draw three big recommendations, then, from this report (among others):

1. Always ensure that any Web 2.0 or social media effort is anchored to something of substance within the organization.
2. Get people at all levels involved.  Web 2.0 use is not something best dictated from on-high.
3. The best way to get people involved and empowered is for leaders to lead by example, modeling behavior