Be part of the solution, not the problem

Chris Brogran recently sparked a discussion with his post about Bob, a Fortune 500 company employee who was apparently reprimanded for using social media to engage with the company’s customers, against his manager’s directions. We only get to hear one side of the story and general opinion in the comments seems to be strongly divided.

There are too many things about this story that we don’t know.

Maybe Bob is a social media guru at a pre-millennial dinosaur of a company. Maybe the manager in the other division is an idiot, and Bob’s manager is a brainless cog in a Kafkaesque bureaucratic machine.

But maybe not.

• Maybe Bob is spending too much time on social media and isn’t getting his job done.
• Maybe the information that Bob is sharing creates risk for other parts of the organization. There may be legal or regulatory issues that Bob is not aware of. Bob may be saying things that have an impact on the company’s lobbying efforts or on an active sales negotiation.
• Maybe Bob doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It wouldn’t be the first time that a company has had to deal with a “helpful” but uninformed employee. Why do you think companies have overly restrictive policies? Because people have done stupid things in the past, and companies have been burned.
• Maybe someone else in the organization has been getting organizational support to launch a corporate-wide social media  initiative, and some executive naysayer is using Bob as ammunition to torpedo the project.
• Maybe the company has a thoughtful and well-conceived social media strategy and isn’t ready to launch yet. This weekend’s #motrinmoms firestorm demonstrated that you have to have a monitoring and response plan in place before you launch a campaign.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. The point is, we don’t know.

There’s a reason I’m a corporate flack.

Generally, I agree with Chip Griffin’s take on this story.

Loose cannons get companies into trouble, no matter how good their intentions may be. Unfortunately, a significant percentage of the individuals who have responded in the comments to Chris’ post suggest that Bob was very much in the right.

That’s the sort of Social Media Kool Aid thinking that undermines the arguments many of us make to companies to get more involved. One of the fears that executives have is that employees will spin out of control and take matters into their own hands rather than bolstering the company’s message. Hearing the story of Bob will make them less — not more — likely to begin to participate.

I feel for Bob. I really do. I’ve been in his shoes. I’ve been the one shouting from the rooftops. I’ve also been the one telling him to shut up.

If Bob’s company isn’t doing anything about social media, maybe it’s time for Bob to get a new job.

But maybe there’s an opportunity for Bob to be an agent of change. Maybe Bob can raise his voice within the company and become and advocate for social media. Not all Fortune 500 companies are social media dinosaurs, even if it doesn’t look like they’re doing anything. In organizations of that size, things take time.

It’s easy for small companies to be nimble, because the decision-making process rests in the hands of relatively few people. At larger companies, dozens of individuals and departments may have to buy in, and a lot of questions need to be answered.

What’s the strategy? Who is responsible for the content? How do the pieces fit together? Whose budget does this come out of? What’s the policy? What kind of oversight needs to be put in place? How will we train our employees? How will we monitor? How will we respond? What impact will this have on our business? Are we prepared to deal with it?

Size may prevent Fortune 500 companies from being nimble, but don’t mistake slow for stupid.

Meanwhile, Bob? Remember where your paycheck comes from. Then figure out how you can be part of the solution, not the problem.