Connecting Organizational Silos: Taking Knowledge Flow Management to the Next Level with Social Media

FREEDOM WITHIN BORDERS: THE POWER OF GUIDELINES

One of the big myths around ESNs is that some users will produce a lot of negative energy, and there will constantly be cases that you need to manage because someone says something that is politically incorrect or too critical, and spreads quickly. It might be dependent on the general culture, but in all the cases that I have seen, this fear has been overestimated. One reason it doesn’t happen as much as some of the pessimists expect is that a certain type of self-policing happens on the network itself. Like most other things on a social network, users are organically building and respecting norms for communication, and this happens relatively quickly. Some of this will happen outside of the network itself. A colleague might remind another to be careful about saying certain things in a certain way, or a manager might remind one of her staff to stay on the constructive side with their comments. A lot of our norms are built by observing others, and many of those engaging actively have experience from other external platforms or have had the chance to observe the ESN’s unspoken rules before posting or sharing content themselves.

Despite this, incidents where someone goes too far can and will happen. There is one important activity you should go through that can considerably reduce the chances of these types of problems: The creation and proper rollout of social media guidelines. This is a task you should have already done for external ...