CIOs: Stop Ignoring Social Media

CIOs and IT leaders need to promote social media or risk becoming marginalized.

I recently attended a panel discussion of four CIOs put on by a major IT research firm and found the exchange on social media interesting. In addition to the CIO of the research firm, there was representation by both the private and public sector.

The moderator asked if the panelists allowed open access to social media sites and if they had a policy in place governing the use of social media. I was pleased to hear all of the panelists respond "yes" to both.

There appeared to be general consensus that appropriate employee use of social media is really a supervisory issue more than a technology issue, and that a good acceptable-use policy is helpful in providing guidelines to employees on how to use social media without jeopardizing the company. Judging by the audience reaction, there seemed to be widespread agreement.

I asked, "I was encouraged by your answers on open access and the need to set guidelines, but this is a rather passive approach to social media. How is your company using social media to improve communication to and between employees and also to interact with your customers?"

After a very pregnant silence, the research firm's CIO mentioned analysts' blogs, and a second CIO indicated that her company is looking at various ways the blogs could be used but hadn't yet decided what to do.

This lack of engagement with social media is not all that unusual. Bill Chamberlin recently reviewed how IT leaders use social media and reported the results on his blog "2009 CIO Award Winners Are Not Embracing Social Media".  Chamberlin conducted online searches of 10 IT leaders honored as "leaders and change agents" and 25 senior IT staffers honored as "rising stars" and destined to be the future CIOs. I found the results rather saddening.

Chamberlin reports, "Of the 35 award winners, I could find no evidence that anyone was blogging or commenting on others blogs. Only two of these award winners have Twitter IDs and both of them are not actively using Twitter. It was encouraging to find that 29 out of the 35 did have profiles set up on LinkedIn, however, most of those profiles were lacking content. I found less than half of them were on Facebook."

The following day Chamberlin tried a different approach, doing a general search for IT leaders actively using social media, and found 65! Hardly a large number in the whole universe of IT leaders.

Arguably both Chamberlin's and my observation reflect that social media really isn't dependent on CIOs or IT in general. Social media exists in the cloud; other than providing access, IT really isn't needed. In addition, IT could claim that its job is to only provide the tools and that it is up to users to figure out what do with them. Figuring out ways for employees to communicate and collaborate or for a company to interact with customers hasn't historically been IT's strong suit.

This complacency is dangerous. Think ahead to the time when someone publicly exposes confidential company information via social media, or it is discovered that various groups using social media are promoting different and conflicting messages to your customers. Do you really think the CEO will be impressed by your argument that you had nothing to do with it? She is likely to say, "That's exactly the problem! Where were you?"

One of IT's roles is to be a promoter of technology. This evangelism role not only creates new opportunities for our companies, but it keeps us involved and gives us the opportunity to make sure the right corporate governance is in place. While some might also argue that there is no business value to social media, I believe that this is a very short-sighted and unimaginative belief.

What is so disappointing about Chamberlin's analysis is that CIOs can't possibly understand how to use social media if they've never really used it. You can't lead from the rear.

Ignoring social media won't make it go away. Our employees will use it for both personal and company purposes. The question is whether or not we want to be involved in seeing that it is used properly and that the proper governance model exists to both protect and benefit the company.

Sitting idly, we will soon find ourselves marginalized when it comes to the use of social media in the corporate world. Our role will become one of cleaning up the mess that "we let happen" while letting a good opportunity slip away due to poor execution and governance that we didn't want to be bothered with. True IT leaders will get out in front of this before it's too late--if it isn't already.

"Free-to-use Social Media Icon set" photo courtesy of  mr-mojo-risin

This article is also posted on Forbes.com.  Feel free to join in the discussion either on this site or at Forbes.com

If this topic was of interest, you might also like these:

• The Death of Social Media
• Responsible Twittering
• Twitter's Corporate Message
• Why Companies Need Web 2.0
• Or the posts in the "Web / Web 2.0 / Internet" category

Comments

[Douglas Schultz]

Mike - great post and I agree with your analysis and recommendations. I did a webinar late last year on Social Media and It's Impact on IT professionals. We talk about the various tools, technologies and platforms for social media, but also talk some about the points you brought up.

IT (and Records Managers) can't block their usage - the tools are too easy to use and people can always access them via their mobile devices. I was doing some work with an organization that said they block Twitter usage. I showed them how I could use TweetDeck to get on Twitter from within their network. They thought if they blocked it at the firewall they had solved the problem of it being used in the enterprise.

CIO's can't help the business understand how the tools could benefit them if they don't know what they do. There is tremendous benefit for the business in using the Web 2.0 tools for collaborative working in the enterprise. If IT would look at an Enterprise-friendly version of some of these tools, they would understand that it could provide the security that many think is an issue.

If you are interested, our webinar is available on our website. http://snipurl.com/um2bg

Thanks for being a leader in this area and pushing others to see the value of these tools.
Doug Schultz

[Bill Chamberlin]

Well, Mike, since you made my list of "Top 50 CIO and IT Leaders in the Social Media" http://bit.ly/aqpBYY I was not surprised to see you took the leadership initiative to blog about it above and on your column at Forbes.com.

As with any new technology, change is disruptive. And that disruptive change is a major cause of slow adoption. Its just hard to teach an old dog new tricks. CIOs need to take the initiative and lead by example.

Remember the shift to corporate email? The shift towards Social Media and Enterprise 2.0 as a communication/collaboration technology will have a similar impact that email had on communication and collaboration within businesses. Those of us who were around to witness the shift towards corporate email in the late 80's and early 90's know it did not happen over night. Email caused disruption and it took time for senior business leaders to adopt the new way of communicating with email and feel comfortable with it. It took many executives a long time to begin using email to communicate thought leadership and opinions.

Now we are asking our business leaders to adopt Social Media tools and Enterprise 2.0. This shift is as significant as the shift to email, but it also adds the concept that we asking them to put their thoughts out there for everyone to see. A new leap of faith is involved. At least with email our leaders could attempt to control who saw what they wrote. Public comments on the social media opens up the question of vulnerability.

I agree 100% with your thoughts that CIOs need to blaze the trail for the business leaders. It will take time to complete this shift, but forward-looking CIOs can and should take the leadership initiative and find ways to embed social media and enterprise 2.0 tools into business processes like product development, customer support, and channel/supplier management. Participating in the online discussion by blogging, tweeting, and commenting on CIO blogs is a great way to begin that journey.

Come on all you 2009 CIO award winners....lead by example!

[Kris Kelso]

Great post, Mike. I am not a CIO, but I work closely with them as a consultant, and I have recently started using Twitter and Facebook for the exact reasons you cite - that as a technology leader, I need to understand and have experience with them in order to know how to effectively use and control them in an enterprise environment. Surprisingly, though, I have found them to be very useful for myself in terms of networking and finding information (such as this blog) that is helpful to me both as a technology leader and as a businessperson. I'm no longer using them just to understand how they work - I have become a believer.

[Mike]

Doug,

Great to hear from you again. I absolutely agree that CIO can't understand the potential benefit if they haven't tried them. As Kris Kelso indicates in a following comment sometimes when you try new things you learn some completely unexpected thing, something you'd never see as just an observer on the sidelines.

Mike

[Mike]

Bill,

Thanks for the comment and doing the analysis - it highlights an important issue. One big difference between social media and email is that our users don't need IT to start using social media the way they need us to do enterprise email. If we aren't careful IT can be completely by-passed.

Mike

[Mike]

Kris,

Thanks for commenting. Your example illustrates an important point. Sometimes by experimenting we find new and unexpected uses for new technology - something we couldn't have found other wise.

Mike

[Brian Joosse]

Great post and certainly holds true throughout the C-suite. Social Media is a fact that won't go away, no matter whether it is ignored by CIOs or anybody else, and the sooner they realize it and starts to understand SM, the sooner they can begin leveraging it for the benefit of the organization.

[Rick Gillis]

Hey Mike,
This is a great write! Congratulations. To your point there was a fascinating column in Business Week recently from an employment lawyer speaking to social networking that brought up an interesting and important issue. Premise: I, the employer, terminate 'Bill'. Company policy states that we provide no information on former employers except for confirmation of employment and dates and maybe salary range. The company has determined that we will not even discuss 'subject to rehire' if asked. Remember this is policy.

Bill maintains a LinkedIn profile and asks 'Mary', his former immediate supervisor to write a recommendation and she does. "Bill was a great worker when he worked for me, etc...."

Bill's lawyer, as a result of Mary's recommendation, might now have cause to sue based on wrongful termination.

The advice ultimately was that all should be familiar with the company policy; Mary is able to write a personal recommendation that does not reflect the company's position or go against policy. (i.e.: Bill is a great guy and I think he is someone you should interview for your company."); the issue becomes a non-issue.

Fundamentally, you don't say 'no' to your employees re: social media. You inform them of the company policy (and hope for the best...?)

[Mike]

Brian,

You're absolutely correct. It won't go away so we shouldn't ignore - we better learn about to figure out what to do with it.

Mike

[Mike]

Rick,

Great to hear from you again. This is a great example of why you need the proper governance in place. Without it we are putting the company at risk. Who is more at fault in this example - Mary for giving that type of recommendation or the company for not creating the proper guidelines and governance on the use of social media? Thanks for sharing that.

Mike

[Douglas Schultz]

Rick - Good point. This example is one of the reasons I typically will not write a LinkedIn recommendation for a current employee of my organization. If an employee leaves under less than desirable conditions, that recommendation is still there.

[Account Deleted]

Hi Mike, Interesting thoughts and I fully share.

I live in Latin America, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and I dare say that CIOs behave the same way that showed Bill.
Reading some comments, it appears that there is an aspect of social networks that generates much noise in organizations, is that when I open an account on facebook, linkedin, twitter, I do personally and not on behalf of my company. Can only be interpreted that I do on behalf of my company if I use my corporate email address, but when I use my personal email, I don't think you can apply business rules on my actions on social networks.
Likewise, my recommendations are personal and not necessarily on behalf of my organization. I think corporate policies should act on these issues when my opinion is corporate or personal.
The other aspect that bring social networks is that they took me out of my hiding place in the corporate and leave me exposed, with my views, opinions and my data, customers can find me and talk to me. How many CxO executives let their customers send them an e-mail? How many of you respond? Very few if not practically none.
In the case of the CIO is very clear that ignore social networks, which would be interesting to see this same analysis on other CxO executives and two in particular, the CMO and CEO.
I think we'll be amazed at the results.
Best Regards
Carlos Francavilla

[Dr. Keri Pearlson]

Mike, really like your perspective here. My research in this area also shows that CIOs are lagging behind in social media/social business/social tools usage. In part, because so many of the tools originated in the consumer space rather than the enterprise space, official adoption is slow in the enterprise and therefore not on the top of the corporate agenda (and not on top of the CIO whose priorities are those of their corporation).

That said, I think there is a need for a way to discuss social business..a language that speaks to the business needs, rather than the tool's capabilities. Certainly the tools have given us new opportunities in our businesses, but like virtually all technologies of the past, it's not what the tool can do for us, but what the business needs that will generate more social business savvy CIOs.

My point of view is that the CIOs not only need some perspective on the tools to set up the right governance, structures, and infrastructure for social business, but CIOs and IT Leaders can take a more proactive role in generating the conversations around building social business. I've blogged about this (http://bit.ly/btKTTx) to get the conversations started. Since social networks, social media and the like cross functional boundaries, the CIO had an opportunity to show leadership by launching a coordinated strategy formulation process to help the enterprise create their social business strategy.

[Julius Campbell]

Thanks for this post Mike. I am not a CIO, but I agree that IT leaders need to be "promoters of technology". I must say I am surprised by the low numbers you report of CIOs who are embracing social media. Quite an eye-opener.

I have been recently getting involved in social media and have felt like a late-comer. After reading your article I feel like an early adopter!

[Mike]

Carlos,

Thanks for commenting. Your points about the use of social media highlight the need for good guidelines to let our employees know what is expected of them.

I agree that it would be interesting to see the same analysis for CMOs and CEOs. I suspect that they wouldn't fare much better. For some reason much of the corporate world is working hard on ignoring social media - what pity.

Mike

[Mike]

Keri,

I agree that many CIOs have lagged since the tools originated in the consumer space but our employees and customers are starting to expect the same functionality in the "corporate" realm that they have in the "personal" realm. Providing these tools could give our companies an advantage over others but we still seem slow to pick up on that possibility.

Mike

[Mike]

Julius,

Like you I was also quite surprised and disappointed. As Keri Pearlson pointed out in her comment it may because these tools developed in the consumer space not the corporate world but I don't really see that as a valid excuse for our lack of interest.

Mike

[Kelly Monroe]

As an IT consultant I am fully aware that IT management is struggling with whether social media is productive or obstructive for companies and their employees. Software is being developed and policy and restrictions are being decided everyday by IT managers. The security of company networks are at stake but the potential for innovation using social media is a large enough carrot for the discussion of how to properly utilize the medium continues. Palo Alto networks came up with a whitepaper, http://bit.ly/d2NZRp, which will explore the issues surrounding social media in the workplace. It is important to not only understand the immediate benefits of doing business how one lives, but the threat it presents to a company's greater ROI and productivity when it comes to the server's safety and security.
If your IT Department wants to block social media apps on the company network... http://bit.ly/d2NZRp and http://bit.ly/cR80Al