Becoming a “Social Business” (Part 2 of 3)

Corporate Adoption Curve measured against Linguistic Determinism

Why is it that we need to (re)define jargon to accept something new?

For the past two years SOMESSO has organised conferences throughout Europe on the topic of social media in businesses. Each time we noticed that there’s much confusion about how to name the things that we are talking about. In 2009 we did a 2-day conference about social media in banking and finance at Swiss Re premises. Most of the leading local brands from the financial services industry were represented, including UBS, Credit Suisse, and Zurich Insurance. We did a so called “Swiss Re Risk Talk” where we arranged thought provoking individuals to speak: Marilyn Pratt – community evangelist at SAP, and Anne McCrossan – CEO of Visceral Business. In front of them were around 90 bankers and I am not exaggerating when I say 95% of them were males above 50 in traditional dark suits. The Risk Talk enabled an interesting dialogue, but as could already correctly predict the main reactions from this audience, learning from many past experiences. The main concerns (read “fears” in plain English) came up already during the first question from the audience: “We can’t work with social media, because our firm deals with highly confidential information”. This reaction shows that there is still no real trust in the judgement of colleagues & teams inside the organisation in general. More importantly, they all miss the point of what social media means: an important tool to establish a dialogue with your customers.

The fact that the Internet is here to stay is obvious. It’s also clear to most people that everyone is talking about everyone and everything online, just as everyone does in an “offline” setting, like a pub. From my experience as a recruitment specialist in Finance I can confirm that most people neglect almost any company protocol or rule when they are being mistreated or, worse, not being heard. Most people want justice, which seem difficult to get in large, slow organisations that are built to deliver on scale. Anyway, the above example show the general misconception one new buzz word can cause. This is typical of course when the buzz word is supposed to indicate that a new trend is reaching the horizon, especially when everyone around you starts talking about it. Peer pressure makes you feel that you can’t leave out, which is probably one reason why our events being visited. Buzz words that stick, so the new words that are accepted by a group of people or an industry (and the actual changes it facilitates) will become part of the daily business without further question. This is how new jargon is embedded into business and society, and it’s also how companies evolve.

As mentioned in my first post, our last Summit in London in March seemed to be slowed down due to jargon debates. Fellow Dutchman Ton Zijlstra (we actually first met via twitter, even though he was sitting right behind me an event we did in London – oh, how virtual fosters physical) commented to never use jaded current business jargon, as it makes any change about your ‘social business design’ completely invisible. He advised: „Instead, allow yourself to redefine the language that comes with the incumbent way of doing things“. I tend to agree with his statement, as I remember the words from professor Frans van der Reep to me after he finished his opening keynote speech at the very first SOMESSO conference back in 2008. Frans advised to always come up with new jargon in a growing business as it’s the only way to truly embed something new into a society. Not long ago I spoke with Steve Wylie, who runs the largest web2.0 conference / expo in the USA called Techweb. We spoke about this matter too and concluded that this entire (lasting) trend is about collaboration, while social tools, web2.0, social media, and becoming a social business, are all aspects that fall under this umbrella term.

Besides the recommendations from Frans and Ton, my girlfriend – a Doctor in Linguistics and very interested in how a / my brain functions – is reading The Brain by Ammar Al-Chalabi. She pointed me towards an explanation. It’s called the theory of Linguistic determinism, which states that we can only think of and handle concepts for which we have words. I’d say we’re on the right track with inventing new words for new things, like „social business“. As soon as new words appear repeatedly, we’ve adopted something new, even though no conformity exists (yet).

Next week I will discuss the corporate adoption curve of organisations becoming social businesses, but then measured against linguistic determinism…

Arjen Strijker CEO Somesso.com