I've had "social media" shoved down my throat since at least the 1996 IABC conference (seriously, that long ago). It's a tool, no more, no less, and not always the right one for the job.

Still fascinates me how many employees say they want communications from their manager, and how few managers want to communicate.

(Everything I know about communications I learned in kindergarten. Maybe first grade.)

"Still fascinates me how many employees say they want communications from their manager, and how few managers want to communicate."

Amen to that, Diane. JUST TALK TO YOUR EMPLOYEES, fer cryin' out loud. They're needy. It's pathetic how needy they are. They'll be so grateful for a little human communication from the boss that they'll willingly walk through fire for you. And keep your damn electronic gizmos--just give 'em the cash.

I think internal communicators lean on social media and other tools precisely because they know full well that they can't rely on managers to translate the culture, to ameliorate the cold employee policy manual. And so these big tools must suffice, as the next best thing.

I'm intrigued to read the book, David, so job well done on that front.

I'd also agree those that those who posit technology as a universal "solution" are wrong, although the leading thinking on the very broad topic of social media in the workplace is that it is not about the technology.

I'm not sure I understand about social media's use as a democratic device. From the snippet above it's difficult to see the context.

Passion like a tire fire? It's more like an old guy offended by simplistic thinking. Let me try to provide more context for the comment about social media as a democratic device. For openers I dislike the term social media. It just covers too much territory. When it comes to internal communication, the term in practice seems to be mainly about internal blogging as I read the various promotional literature and listen to the evangelists.

Shel Holtz has done a fantastic job in trying to educate the profession about the various forms of social media. Still the notion persists that social media are nothing more than a means of allowing employees to emulate at work what they have access to on the Intranet--specifically (at last count)70 million blogs, a variety of virtual 'friends' and the like. That all strikes me as harmless and occasionally even valuable dialogue although much of it is insipid and juvenile. But the idea of unleashing that stuff in a profit-making organization where people are already drowning in information strikes me as wrong-headed.

One of the agenda items of the people I have labelled NeoComms is to reduce corporate power and in the common phrase 'to level the playing field' between employees and their leaders. Those who take that position see internal blogs and the like as symbols of corporate democracy in action.

I dislike defending the necessity of authority and power, but corporate organizations are not clubs or church organizations where volunteers can endlessly debate the purchase of a Coke machine (an actual parish meeting that once nearly drove me to tears.) Run well, corporations are wealth creation machines, not democracies. Led properly, they are also humane institutions where we can find meaning and fair compensation for our life's work.

Read your local newspapers' letters to the editor or more recently its readers' blogs and ask yourself if that's the kind of stuff you want to sponsor as important corporate communication that will help employees understand their lives at work. I, for one, doubt it.

But what if leadership BELIEVES in internal communications and WANTS to reach employees scattered around the globe? These tools are then valuable. I do believe that the term "social media" is the wrong term to use in a business environment.

Roger, I think you're going at a straw man here--a bit, at least. I don't think social media proponents actually support or believe in the possibility of anything like "corporate democracy," and I challenge you to find an example of someone saying so.

I do think there are people who would like to help employees communicate laterally to other employees on matters of corporate culture and business. Who would like a more spontaneous give-and-take between more employees and more executives. Who even believe that user-friendly social networks can make all intra-corporate communication less formal, less daunting, less rigid, less political, less expensive and less difficult.

Now with that last sentence I'm definitely teetering on sounding like that wild-eyed corporate democracy freak you talk about.

But only teetering, only open to (and looking for) success stories that show how some of these tools can help make corporate life a little better.

"Led properly, they are also humane institutions where we can find meaning and fair compensation for our life's work."

Now there are a lot of people who would call THIS just as unrealistic or at least uncommon as the social media Utopia that you don't believe in.

Ditto on the Straw Man... but there *are* many proponents of Social Media who are drawn to the tools because of what it can do for their underlying core values and principles. (For that matter, Leftists can appreciate guns when they further the cause of the glorious peoples' revolution.)

These tools are tools. They do not presage nor dictate a shift in corporate philosophy. When used properly, they allow individuals (working in line with the corporate goal) to better sift, sort, and respond to the information relevant to them -- without becoming overwhelmed in a datalanche.

It's up to the Internal Communicators to make the case for allowing the appropriate level of individual-user control, and to provide a tool that maximizes time and stays in line with corporate goals.

Don't tarnish the tool just because there are advocates who hope-wish-pray that you use them to build their Utopiae.

I really do understand the impetus for social media and those who argue for employee empowerment and more democracy through the use of these tools (though I agree with Diane that too often it's being 'shoved down our throats.')

Unquestionably, today's business demands require much more employee engagement and collaboration than ever before. To the extent that things like wikis, podcasts. internal facebooks, etc. increase collaboration and productivity, they are superb tools. And I support the effort to use them in that fashion.

What I don't support is the idea floating around in the blogosphere that you can't trust any messages except those that emanate from your peers. I think that view is poison for our profession, and I don't understand our colleagues who want to encourage even more distrust of leaders than already exists inside corporate walls.

Dave, you asked for an example. Here's one: At the IABC Conference in New Orleans, I heard a renowned social media expert present social media as 'not about technology but about many wresting power from the few.'He went on to claim that neither public nor corporate media can be trusted to tell the truth. Now I'm not naive enough not to recognize how much spin goes on in such media, but to tar them all with the same brush is ridiculous and inaccurate.

The real issue here is resentment of all power and particularly of its arbitrary uses. Communication professionals, who all too often have seen their messages ripped to shreds or been told that 'you can't say or do that,' are understandably prone to resent the corporate censors who have made their lives difficult and frustrating.

In my view they see internal bloggers as potentially able to send the messages that they have been denied. In that sense they see blogging, in particular, as a means of challenging leadership power and bringing more democracy in the form of freer speech to their organizations. The same presenter I quoted earlier said, "It's really about (challenging power and) leveling the playing field."

There's nothing wrong with the social media tools. They are and should be simply another part of a diverse communication strategy. What is a misguided strategy in my view is to discredit corporate leaders further and to believe that peer communication will dilute corporate power. I think that it's a delusion to believe that those who hold that power will give it up. Command and control management is too deeply entrenched for that to happen.

I close with another example--this one from the introduction to "Wikinomics," a wonderful book whose message I accept for the most part. What it shows, however, is the not so hidden agenda of many who support social media. Here's what the authors say:

"Throughout history corporations have organized themselves according to strict hierarchical lines of authority. Everyone was a subordinate to someone else...While hierarchies are not vanishing, profound changes...are giving rise to new models of production based on community, collaboration, and self-organization rather than on hierarchy and control."

In my view that's a vision of a more democratic workplace coupled with an anti authority message. I understand the motivation, but I doubt that it will happen from the influence of social media.

I equate the attempt 'to wrest power from the few' with the effort to establish greater democracy within organizations. I think that's a classic definition, and that's what I was trying to say.

I don't think it's the influence of social media; I think it's the influence of the next generation (forgive me; I haven't kept up with the labels). I've heard they're skeptical of authority. I've even witnessed it. (I even share it, old as I am.) Perhaps it's really about chicken and egg -- are the proponents of social media driving "democracy," or is the workforce driving the proponents of social media and "democracy"? Who's responding to who and what?

I hope that makes sense.

"Datalanche." Good one, Ike!

Roger, thanks for your thoughtful post. I agree with all of your ideas.

I only think we do still disagree about how many workaday practitioners (and how few social-media gurus) are actually pushing a power-shift from top management to grass roots. (To be honest, I wish more of both would push it harder, and more intelligently.)

I think communicators DO enjoy the creativity of making podcasts, doing blogs, making videos--doing ANYTHING but another newsletter or intranet news update--and I think they enjoy the freedom of doing it so cheaply and not blowing their budget.

Another subtle difference: I think you decry this as a focus on "craft" a little more vociferously than I do; I'd criticize it more if I thought communicators were trading in their Strategic Counselor to Top Management Wings for a chance to learn the wonders of RSS. But I think THAT'S another straw man, too.

Ultimately, I'm not interested in social media for its ability to advance the profession.

I'm exactly interested in it because it's making the profession more interesting--and in some cases, it's getting our audiences, employees especially, participating more enthusiastically in corporate communications.

Yes, that's exciting to me, because it gives me hope that someday in my lifetime I might witness the extinction of the "Letter from the Corner Office." And its boring, staid, corporate likes.