Weight training and finding your enterprise social muscles
I’d participated in Bodypump classes for years and years before finally getting up the guts to go and train to become an instructor. It was a big deal for me. Ask me to get up in front of a crowd and make a presentation about communications or social and I’m at ease. But when it came time to certify as an instructor, the thought of submitting a video of me coaching a class in how to execute deadlifts, squats and lunges was terrifying. The road of certification was very different to anything I’d ever navigated before.
I wish I’d taken the leap sooner because it’s so much fun! I look forward to every class I teach. My participants and I sweat bucket loads and our muscles burn. Over time, our weights have become heavier, our limbs leaner and more toned. We return for more again and again. We’ve found ourselves part of a wonderful virtuous cycle, spurred on by the great things resistance training was doing for our bodies.
"Building your enterprise social muscle plays out in the same way as it does with weight training in the gym."
McKinsey talks about the evolution of social technologies occurring in three stages, taking companies from trial and error use, to collaboration and managing knowledge and on to the Nirvana of harnessing social to democratise strategy.
In my experience, building your enterprise social muscle plays out in the same way as it does with weight training in the gym. As McKinsey points out, once you make the leap and use social at work in more purposeful ways, you’ll get a bigger benefit from it. You have the opportunity to get into what I’m calling a virtuous social business cycle.
Here’s how:
Connect – We make a conscious decision to move out of our silos. We listen. We post, without having an expectation of where a response may come from. We may be excited or anxious about what people will think about our post.
Collaborate – The social habit forms as we feel the love from colleagues who engage with us. We make our work visible. We share what we know to help others kick business goals. We're adding value.
Act – We embed social in the flow of our work, making the most of it to solve business problems and tap into new ideas. We’re action-oriented, not passive by-standers.
Achieve – With the right people doing the right things in enterprise social, organisations committed to getting real work done in open and transparent ways will achieve better business results. The virtuous social business cycle is at work and we return to it again and again.
Just like my Bodypump experience, getting into a virtuous social business cycle will help organisations find enterprise social muscles they never knew existed. And who doesn’t want great muscles, really?
