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Open Organisations

Posted January 15th, 2008 by chrishambly
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What is an open organisation and how can you achieve it?

You can take a variety of channels and mediums and become impressed to hear various voices bubbling with enthusiasm and knowledge for change. It is most impressive when these voices have an outlet, and channel for open dialogue.

Change is a good thing, change brings goodness and change brings challenges for everyone, not least the identity (or brand) of the organisation, in this connected world.

Large organisations the world over are struggling with traditional forms of advertising, it is no surprise to find the branding and marketing conversation rampant in the online world, where daily large institutions are having to employ, consult, embrace, the currency of trust, which is of course transparency.

Marketing is now a dialogue, marketing is now a conversation, the product has to be engaged with, with the client, there is now a NEED, an absolute requirement to have interaction with the prospects.

Web 2.0 is here to stay, and those who embrace it will win, those who ignore it will fall, without a shadow of doubt.

So what’s needed?

A few things…

1. SELL TO YOUR STAFF - senior management need to engage with their staff transparently, and lead the transparent and open dialogue, effectively leading by example and encouraging feeding (fuelling the conversation). Traditional management cascades are one way, very old school, the conversation stops, immediately!

2. ENCOURAGE STAFF TOO SELL FOR YOU – here this is where you actively support and promote the soldiers to champion and engage in representing the organisation in the online space.

3. TOOLS – you need tools in place which allow the above to take place, including, blogs, podcasts, videocasts, wikis, and not only.

4. COMMUNITY DEVELOPER - you need someone full-time working in and around the community (the staff), who not only brings people together with all of this technology, but more importantly documents, showcases, makes aware of all the wonderful activities going on and spreading that externally within the important spaces. You need this person popping in board meetings, nipping into lectures, filming activity and pumping it out on an organisational channel.

I have been community developing with my online businesses for some time and relish the environment of connecting people and extended the conversation, it's empowering for all.

The point is how to move mountains, how to mobilise a community to act and engage with the product.

Now tell me what you are doing in YOUR organisation to promote change, are you just hoping it will happen, or are you actively pushing for change, is that difficult to accomplish, if so why?


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Comments

Change....

On January 20th, 2008 Asha (not verified) says:

This is good reading Chris..and I agree change is good. It's important to keep up with technological changes and keeping in line with the competitive market, otherwise too easy to trail behind.

In my opinion and only from what I've seen being in HR you will always come up with resistance whether change is instigated effectively or not. Manager's sometimes fail to have that 'transparent and open dialougue' you mention in points 1 & 2. Communication breaks down from the outset immediately and resistance occurs because staff are not involved in the planning, devising and implementation of change. They are expected to just go with the change, so it's almost dictated to them...
The flip side to this is if change is applied the way it should be there is still likely to be some negativity from employees. They don't always embrace change because maybe they're too institutionalised, too set in their ways and molded, afraid, don't want extra work creating for themselves, don't have a clear understanding etc .

Nothing is straightforward with change, I guess it's how organisations choose to communicate and actively embrace it and what tools they believe are key for a positive and encouraging outcome - and how to change the mind sets!! There's a danger of too much change too soon which can lead inconsistencies and de-motivation..

There are other projects that I'm involved in and lots more that are going on for HR as a whole but what I'm doing at the mo..

- Change we advertise. There's nothing worse than looking at a A4 size advert full of useless jargon. Hoping to implement change to smaller, sharper and to the point adverts and refer to the website.

- Pushing for new recuitment agency that are more forwarding thinking and up to date to with Web 2.0 and other social media tools that can enhance our recruitment process.

It's not difficult but the process is slow as it involved mapping and going out to tender. It's also difficult if you don't get the right support..

I ilke the conversation of change, I can go on and on and on...

institutionalised

On January 22nd, 2008 chrishambly says:

Thanks for your comments Asha, I found some good points in there, especially about staff becoming institutionalised.

I agree with you in that it is the communcation method which is important, how do managers and senior staff communicate effectively, in fact even more to the point how do they enable their staff to communicate openely to them?

Looking for new recruitment agency, how will you do that?

Agencies

On January 26th, 2008 Asha (not verified) says:

It's quite a straight forward process (I hope)..!! Working with Procurement to carry out a small tender process with some selected agencies. Not having to re-invent the wheel, the previous tender is being revised to our current advertising requirements. I'll send this out to all the senior managers/deans so they can make their recommendations and then out to the agencies and see who offers the best package....

It's well overdue..

Web 2.0 Channels

On January 27th, 2008 chrishambly says:

You mention Deans, therefore talking of education.

Now what would Procurement think to the idea of using web 2.0 channels to find the agencies? Is that something you think would have value? Or will they go the more tradition route and use offline sourcing, is it important to consider or not?

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