Technology and Organizations

Modern organizations are increasingly complex across all three dimensions of TOP Management (Tech, Org, People):

• Technology has become an underlying utility for our organizational strategies — yet is it constantly in flux
• Organizations are global, partnered with other organizations and more and more run via virtual teams with limited physical interaction
• The people of the organization are more diverse given globalization and crossing generations of vastly different backgrounds

Over the next week or so I’ll provide examples for each category. For today I’ll focus on Technology. Thank you to BL Ochman for providing this example within her post Three Top Ways to Damage Your Brand With Social Media for the blog, SocialMediaToday. Her three points are each examples of using technology without bringing together the organization and the people:

1. Start a Twitter account then don’t use it
2. Don’t track your brand in social media using either free or paid monitoring tools.
3. Start a social media program, but don’t tell the rest of the company about it.

Time Warner provides her examples for points 1 and 2; the small company Uprinting.com provided the example for point 3 — though they acknowledged the problem and seemed to be moving to correct it (the same could not be said for her experience with Time Warner).

The image tells the story of a problem that has not been corrected in the six days since the post: TimeWarnerCares, doesn’t seem to. They have still not used the account and they are still not following any of their followers, who are possibly Time Warner fans. Ochman reports that although she used Twitter to document her service problems – using their Twitter account name – she had no reply in 24 hours. She says, “That’s approximately one week in Internet time.” This suggests that no monitoring is in place.

Time Warner seems to have had someone think that using technology was good — but that person either wasn’t in a position to bring the organization and people onto the project, or they didn’t understand that they should.

Ochman also provides an example of success – and of a success that seems to cover all of TOP Management’s dimensions: Comcast has become famous for their use of the social messaging service Twitter. Frank Eliason, a customer service director, has been using Twitter to support Comcast customers for over a year. BusinessWeek describes him as the most famous customer service manager in the in US, and possibly the world. Monitoring systems are in place at Comcast so they can follow what people are saying about them and/or any problems customers are experiencing. Comcast has developed systems for acting on this information: other customer service reps are available and know how to use the tools.

The moral of the story is that new technologies can be great triggers for innovation — but the use of the technology should be thought through and integrated with organizational practices and employee skills before going live to almost 30 million U.S. users.

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In the last couple of days both the NFL and professional tennis governing bodies have made proclamations regarding how their players and officials (and families, etc.) will, and will not, use social media. The Associated Press reports “The use of social media by NFL game officials and officiating department personnel will be prohibited at all times.” The US Open Tennis Championship has signs up with the following header, “Important. Player Notice. Twitter Warning.”  Andy Roddick, for one, is not impressed, “i think its lame the US Open is trying to regulate our tweeting.. i understand the on-court issue but not sure they can tell us if we can’t do it on our own time” — sent via Twitter.

A TOP Management Failure is one where organizational decision makers error by not considering all aspects of the foundations of organizations: Technology, Organizations, and People.

Technology: In this instance, the governing bodies are clearly considering the technology attributes of social media use and not liking what they see. The Tennis Integrity Unit notes that the information provided could be used as “inside information” and relate to the “Tennis Anti-Corruption Program Rules.” They are thinking about the technology and possible detrimental organizational outcomes.

Organization: The organizational aspects are broad reaching. These include: the internal organizational mechanisms that were used to make the decisions; the implementation mechanisms, for example, getting the word out and letting the parties understand the consequences; and the mechanisms of enforcement.

There are also organizational boundaries to consider. Others report that individual football teams have banned, or tried to ban, fans’ use of social media at practices by banning cell phones and laptops. These organizations have a right to manage their facilities (e.g., you can’t bring in your own alcohol), but these are complex issues when you are talking about multipurpose technologies and a particular behavior. Laptops don’t send tweets that bookies might read, people do. (Apparently the Colts even tried to prohibit reporters having paper notebooks at practices, but quickly changed their minds.)

TechDirt shared this additional perspective on organizational boundaries, “What if the ref’s job during the week requires the use of social media?”

People: This aspect may be the simplest in this setting. In TOP Management, the people aspect relates to the human component — the basics of motivation, perception, and the like. I can come up with a variety of issues that might matter (e.g., habits, perceived “need” to tweet, psychological contracts perceived regarding personal versus work space). I don’t see these as being bigger levers in this instance than the organizational issues.

Some organizational changes are too complex to rationally parse and effectively address all at once. Nobel Laureate Herb Simon noted that people have “bounded rationality” in that we cannot rationally process all the information all the time. For complex changes, TOP Management may mean to create small wins starting with the big levers, checking the feedback, and moving ahead. Don’t bite off more than you can chew — or at least more than will let you credibly predict the outcome.

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