Culture, the Great Influencer on Corporate Social Media Adoption

I’ve helped dozens of companies define their social media strategy based on research. Often, we conduct custom research efforts to evaluate first if their customers are using these tools (technographics) then we often talk with many stakeholders to find out their thoughts on social media.

Sadly, in some cases, brands that had active customer bases using social technologies were not ready to participate themselves due to culture. Whether is paralysis, legal, or a cultural influence from management, or even location (I did a tour in Japan to find out how social media is growing there).

One example that comes to mind is a financial company I worked with, they are one of the ones that have an incredible amount of money –and a lot at risk as their customers were on the verge of self-connecting to each other without their account teams involved. Despite the clear business need to ‘fish where the fish were’ we advised them not to participate as their internal culture was not ready, there were too many roadblocks.

Recently, after a presentation I gave at the Ominture Summit last week, I was able to meet the marketing manager at Apple who’s responsible for social media. While I’ll respect the privacy of our conversation, I know the impacts of culture on deployment.

What about big companies? Yes, they are a unique beast, and typically organize in what I call the ‘Tire’, where adoption happens at the edges of the company. Let’s lean on IBM’s Adam Christensen who presented this slideshare of how big blue was able to filter social computing throughout the company.

The impact of corporate culture on enterprise social media

View more presentations from Adam Christensen. (tags: culture ibm)

What other companies really live and breathe social computing throughout their DNA? Facebook, Google, Microsoft, SUN, and of course any social media vendor.

Love to hear your thoughts on these questions that many struggle with:

1) Does culture impact adoption of social technologies within a corporation?
2) Even if customers are using social technologies, and the culture is not ready, how will you convince the powers that be?
3) How do you change a top down culture to a bottom up?

38 Replies to “Culture, the Great Influencer on Corporate Social Media Adoption”

  1. Nice post, Jeremiah.

    Re: How do you change a top down culture to a bottom up?

    I think most corp’s have many people engaging on social media already – and perhaps an interesting approach to catalyzing the shift to “bottom up” is to secure executive-level buy-in first. Not in the sense that someone at the top should mandate that people do this stuff and then micro-manage the manner of participation, but the executive level should “remove the shackles” that some of the “bottom” employees are feeling in regards to participation.

    One way to shift to “bottom up” is, I think, encouragement (from the top) that social media is acceptable and VALUED in the company – and then just let it happen from there. I think a lot of folks forget that bottom-up doesn’t necessarily mean that the top is uninvolved, rather, the top is being asked to make a change from dictating culture/behavior to encouraging the corp. culture as it is and as it wants to be – according to the inherent qualities and values of the (huge number of) people at the bottom.

  2. I think the IBM thread brings up several interesting points. I myself experienced the challenges of being entrepreneurial minded in several corporate settings for 13 years. While I did not experience the pressure of not being able to care for my family when I needed to, I did witness the corporate mindset of hiring (and firing) and also not rewarding people who actually produced. At my last gig, I spent 7 years there, went through an acquisition after being there only 9 months and had 6 different managers while working. I wasn’t evaluated on productivity, but rather on how well I went along with what my manager said. In the last six months, I watched a decision to spend $275,000 on a project that didn’t have a plan or deliverables identified. I was baffled at the waste when I presented a plan to deliver the project for $150,000 in 12 months. I left the company 2 years ago. I saw a former co-worker a month ago and they were still trying to get the project completed.

    So the benefit of social media tools to corporate is to really understand what is going on in the business from the people who are actually doing the work. This is difficult to deal with if the leadership is focused on a hierarchical top-down flow and not willing to let the social media tools help them understand what is really going on. It requires an openness to change that I myself have not experienced in a corporate setting.

    Lastly, while the tools are great for communication, a DM on Twitter with a personal phone call to follow up and then a lunch meeting in person would not be a bad idea. If this former employee has experienced this type of treatment, there are many others just collecting a paycheck who are still there, experiencing the same.

  3. I can agree with the ex IBM-er and others who have shared their experience with corporate culture. I worked at a regional bank for several years. I saw them systematically get rid of all of their senior staff. They made our lives so difficult that most of us left on our own. They then hired mostly young married guys with young families – ones that had to work to support the family and made ridiculous demands on their time. I even saw them threaten to fire a 30-year plus employee when he took 2 weeks off after his son was murdered. All in the name of greed, as this particular bank was controlled by one family. I do not want to name this bank, as they do a fair amount of suing of other folks.

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