The Merit-Driven Enterprise
When the traditional business hierarchy works, it's a beautiful thing. The chain of command endures and evolves for good reasons of order and accountability. And although the hierarchical organization has stood the test of time, it is not perfect. Social networks, social media and even social commerce have exposed some of its weaknesses and fundamentally changed expectations of all parties involved.
These weaknesses can take various forms: when employees are discouraged from working across departments and divisions; when the CEO's visibility is constrained by his direct reports; when employees advance because of their assertiveness rather than their competence; when individualism squelches team play; and when good ideas die on the vine only because they came from the rank and file.
Business is now seeing the potential for social dynamics to bring exponential efficiency to the organization. There is now an alternative to the traditional hierarchy, or perhaps a moderating layer. It is the "merit-driven organization."
"Like" the myriad ways social can improve the way we live (and work)? I do.
We have witnessed the astonishing efficiency with which Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter have toppled traditional obstacles to social interaction. It is suddenly easier than ever to find a new job, locate old friends, find out about upcoming events, mobilize a demonstration, start a revolution or just keep the family connected.
Social has changed the expectations employees have of corporate IT and has ushered in a new organizational dynamic. We have transparent networks for many-to-many connections, robust knowledge exchange, communities and frictionless real-time problem solving. As a result, silos have diminished, knowledge hoarding is not en vogue, and the hierarchy, if an organization wishes, can be flat. Or at least flatter. Either way, merit matters more today than yesterday.
The Merit-Driven Organization
The merit-driven organization transforms the chain of command into a web of contribution. Trust, reputation and career can now hinge less on self-promotion and more on what the leadership team really needs to see—support of the greater good.
In these highly networked organizations, collective intelligence is at your fingertips. Consider a leader trying to select the right members of a project team for a business transformation initiative. In the traditional hierarchy, leaders select people they know through their direct experience. In a merit-driven organization, the leader can start by searching the enterprise social network for candidates. Rich social profiles and expertise maps track explicit (or stated) experiences and skills, revealing a different view of the org chart—based on talent, not seniority and traditional factors.
Understand the value of social currency in driving employee satisfaction.
In a recent survey of NewsGator customers, we found that 41% of organizations increased employee satisfaction through the use of internal social computing technologies. Highly networked organizations give employees easy ways to immediately feel connected, start contributing—and be recognized for those contributions.
Social technologies are inspiring a new class of credentials in the form of electronic badges. Derived from social location-based services like Foursquare, consumers "check in" to "places" via their mobile device and consequently earn badges. Although Foursquare is a game, badging and its roots in game theory can be an effective way to spotlight, reward and motivate employees for the actions you want to reinforce. Some examples of badges are salesperson of the quarter, years of service, hero of the day, community leader, most valuable contributor (MVC) and the Edison award (for innovation ideas, of course). It all depends on what your specific business wants to encourage.
In order to be effective, badges must be timely—granted as earned—yet scarce enough to distinguish the recipient. Badges should be equally available to all employees. Universal badging reinforces a flatter organization. It allows for the possibility of an intern and the CEO to win the same badge, a nice way to inspire the intern and even the CEO to keep learning and participating.
But what about the worker who can't spend all day on the enterprise social network and is perhaps buried in a different application, e.g., accounting, ERP or CRM? To address this, it is important that a badging environment integrate with third-party applications. If a marketer runs a wildly successful campaign that generates 1,000 hot leads, that event should show up in the organization's central activity stream, and be tracked in the badging application. Maybe that achievement warrants a marketing master badge.
"Friend" the social, merit-driven organization.
Expertise maps and recognition badges give rise to a model that may be imperfect but can reinvigorate a business. It won't prevent a new brand of posturing. It won't instantly transform hoarders into generous mentors. It won't guarantee the transformation of timid employees into networking moguls—but emergent leaders will be discovered.
As with any cultural change initiative, the merit-driven organization requires more than technology. Leaders must explain the value of the change the company culture is about to undergo. With luck, many of your employees will become evangelists who transform their social network into the organization's "business operating system." That is when the merit-driven organization evolves from a concept to a new, more prosperous reality.
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