One of the first readings i assign to my students is a 2007 NY Times article by Harriet Rubin titled “C.E.O. Libraries Reveal Keys to Success.” One of the underlying themes is the importance of looking at any field and its associated discourse (i point out to my students, as do you, that _every_ field has its own discourse) from a different perspective. Rubin writes:

“Poetry speaks to many C.E.O.’s. ‘I used to tell my senior staff to get me poets as managers,’ says Sidney Harman, founder of Harman Industries, a $3 billion producer of sound systems for luxury cars, theaters and airports. Mr. Harman maintains a library in each of his three homes, in Washington, Los Angeles and Aspen, Colo. ‘Poets are our original systems thinkers,’ he said. ‘They look at our most complex environments and they reduce the complexity to something they begin to understand.’”
…
“Almost everything I have read has been useful to me — science, poetry, politics, novels. I have a lifelong interest in epistemology and learning. My books have helped me develop a way of thinking critically in business and in golf — a fabulous metaphor for the most interesting stuff in life. My library is full of things I might go back to.”

I agree with Rubin, and especially with Sidney Harman on the value of poets in any field, and have already seen evidence that your system thinking abilities are bringing clarity to our thinking about organizations. I’m still waiting, however, for you to write the official SociaLens poem

( http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/21/business/21libraries.html?ex=1342756800&en=bf1211dfff7b232d&ei=5124 )

Stay tuned. That is exactly what we are researching right now. Our forthcoming book will be reporting on our findings. Interestingly enough, preliminary research seems to indicate that the type of industry/field is not as much of a driver as are some other characteristics – of both individuals within the organization and whether or not the organization itself is a “learning organization” as defined by Peter Senge and Chris Argyris.

The combination of electronic speed and digital representation that exist in new media have promoted change, complexity, networks, multi-disciplinarity, innovation, exploration, and collaboration. The emergence of social media applications such as Twitter are derivatives of the transformation taking place as a result of the digitization of media. For those who do not invest the resources (time and money) to understand, fear is a natural response – fear of the unknown, fear of change, fear of failure, and fear of rejection.

I find it interesting to read Drew’s observations of his experiences with two different organizations. I do not know the particulars, but I would imagine that the designerly nature of the environment at Disney Animation would predispose them to being more open to Twitter and other forms of social media. I talked about this in my most recent post on my own blog.

I definitely think you are onto something here, Christian. I would imagine that the responses you point out are symptoms of an underlying root problem, notably fear. In order to effectively treat an illness, it helps to properly diagnose the problem. I think you are heading in the right direction. Keep digging!

Chad, thanks for your comment too. Lots of interesting thoughts there.

For both of your sets of examples, do you think the sort of functional resistance (for example “i don’t want to know what employees think”) would be sufficient to result in the types of emotionally-charged reactions i received?

We fear what we do not understand. “No one cares what I had for lunch!” can be translated into a lot of things:

1.” I think Twitter users don’t talk about anything more substantial than lunch. I am as ill-informed about the value of Twitter as people who ban/burn books that are “bad” even when they haven’t read them.”

2. “I feel like I need to dismiss this new social media thing because if I acknowledge its worth, and I am not really into it all that much, then I am a dinosaur. Denial is a stage of loss. By denying its worth I get to pretend that my current approach to my position is still relevant.”

3. “I don’t immediately know how to make money with that.”

4. “Who cares about Twitter? In 2 years we won’t remember Twitter because some other new thing will have taken its place. But I will still be here.”

5. “Why would I want to listen to my employees’ opinions about things? I have an MBA. I know better than them.”

When I was working for Deloitte, there was a great fear of “blogging about work”, mostly because this ‘blogging’ (forum posts) was actually bitching about the state of the organization. For example, the creators of GreenDotLife.com, a place for employees to anonymously talk about the firm, were let go of by management (or quit shortly after being discovered). The firm management was deeply afraid of anything that might make the company look bad, because frankly, the work environment wasn’t very good and they were afraid of the light

My experience at Disney Animation, however, was that they embraced social technologies. Our manager encouraged us to use Yammer, but did not discourage us from using Twitter! Even in a place where they had to keep a tight control over the content, they embrace social media!

My take on it is that a manager who is afraid of something like Twitter is also afraid of having an earnest conversation with their employees about the state of the organization and their work.

Management is approaching this reorg differently than usual. They are sharing the new org charts and explaining what is expected in terms of outcomes but letting employees figure out new linkages and how to engage others in the “new” organization. I think this is smart because even with the reorg and new development lifecycle, we all have the tools to figure out how to work together (and we’ll figure this out faster and better than management could anyway).

Even so, some employees are reeling from what they sense as a lack of direction from management. I think it may take time for employees who are used to a lot of “management from management” to feel empowered to take the responsibility for some things that have traditionally been handed down to them. But I agree that this is a move in the right direction as the needs for management are changing.