I’ve been getting frustrated the past few weeks after hearing stories of people and organizations launching a new Facebook group or adding a blog to their website and claiming to be taking part in the new world of social media. The problem isn’t the fact that they are making an effort or getting involved, it’s that they are taking these actions in isolation without considering how the actions fit into their organizations broader strategic goals and objectives and creates member value.

In order for social media, or any other tool, technology, program, etc., to be successful it needs to be part of a larger plan or strategy. So what is social media? To me, it’s a means to an end, not an end in itself. I found this recent quote from Valeria Maltoni’s Blog: Conversation Agent to be extremely relevant, timely and similar in sentiment:

“Social media is a tool, just like the telephone is. It’s not even marketing — in the traditional sense, marketing is dead.

What social media does is simply allow you to do one thing: communicate. That’s it. Social media is not the conversation. It’s the room in which you hold the conversation. It still comes down to saying, doing, or producing something valuable for your customer. Companies which forget this will simply throw money down the social media hole. Companies that get it will find social media a valuable tool — if they they are prepared to stick it out and learn how it works.”

The first sentence warrants repeating: “social media is a tool.” Of the many definitions that exist for the term “tool” one of them is: “the means whereby some act is accomplished”. The challenge with having a variety of tools at your disposal is knowing how to chose the right tool for the task. More literally, you can hammer a nail into a wall with a screwdriver, but wouldn’t it be a lot more efficient and effective if you used a hammer instead. If you subscribe to Valeria’s thinking, which I do, social media is simply a tool that enables a conversation to take place. To take this a step further, conversations are the fundamental building blocks of community, because it having a conversation implies having something to talk about like a shared interest.

While I am not trying to downplay the impact or criticize social media in general, I do want to call into question the way people and organizations are leaping into the use of it without considering the implications and obligations of doing so. The broad availability of these tools and lack of the typical barriers to entry further exacerbate the temptation to leap before you look. There are short and long term considerations that need to be weighed and balanced related not only to the what, but also the why and how. There is definitely room for experimentation, trial and failure, and doing things differently, but I think the fundamental rules of business still apply - know your market, provide value to your stakeholders, make your service/product easy to use, focus on the benefits - however, if you fail to plan, plan to fail.

You don’t have to have a perfect vision of the future in mind to be successful but you have to have a general idea of where you want to go or you’ll never be sure that you have gotten there. Let’s start thinking deliberately about what we are trying to accomplish and how we are trying to do accomplish it instead of throwing ideas out with no expectations or criteria for success. Anybody can launch initiatives that attract a large percentage of their member-bases, but it takes real strategy, focus and commitment to create viable communities that are sustainable and create value for the member and the organization alike.

As a former H.R. and Recruitment professional, I am still quite interested in the differences between each of the generations, what each values, and how they learn to co-exist in the workplace. Documenting, explaining and rationalizing these differences are definitely a hot topic these days (here, here, here, and here. One needn’t look any further than Jamie Notter, who has done a great job covering many of the differences and challenges that exist among and between the generations (Baby Boomers, Gen-X, and Millennials), in his e-book Generational Diversity.

If you are new to the topic or simply want a good overview of the generations and how to transcend some of the generational issues in your own association or organization I highly recommend Jamie’s book. Yet, as with any topic there are multiple perspectives to consider, especially with a topic as broad and complex as generational diversity.

This morning on my ride into work I heard an interview on the Marketplace Morning Report on NPR on the topic. Host Scott Jagow interviewed Cam Marston, author of “Motivating the ‘What’s In It for Me?’ Workforce“.

The key take away for me was the fact that there is a definitive gap between the way the generations view their work. Marston claims that the Millennial’s work to live, e.g. they define work as what takes place between the weekends and define who they are based on what they do in their free time, not what they do for a living. Conversely, the Baby Boom generation live to work and define themselves and derives their self-worth by what they do professionally. To that end, he advocates that the older generation manage the younger generation not through the number of hours they work or because they simply show up but rather by the quality of their work.

Another interesting point (and one that I completely agree with) is the fact that the Millenials are a generation that is used to flattery and praise for doing just the minimal things. It’s a reflection of parenting trends that we have experienced for the last 25 or 30 years. It’s problematic and a less then desirable attribute that will make them more challenging to manage.

Listen to the rest of the story here or listen via iTunes or get the feed.

It’s hard enough to schedule meetings with folks in your own office let alone on the other side of the world. Now that I am managing a virtual project team that literally spans the globe I need any advantage I can get to facilitate meetings and conference calls.

One tool that I have found invaluable is the World Clock Meeting Planner for the fine folks at time and date.com. To get up and running simply pick your home location and any other locations where your team members may be. The results are provided in a handy and easy to use reference table. There may be other online tools out there that do the same thing, but for my purposes I can’t find one that is more simple or easier to use.

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