Lose Control, But Not of Your Values
Flickr Photo: Jeremey BrooksIf you asked me for the sound bite version of my social media advice for nonprofits, it would be this: Lose control.
From where I sit, it seems clear that social media amplifies the ability of our stakeholders to do what they've always done: talk about us and our causes. We can't stop them.
But we can embrace it and figure out how to ride the coming tide.
Last Thursday, I participated in a session at the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits Leadership Program. Even though I was participating remotely -- they could see video of me through Ustream.tv and we had two way audio through ReadyTalk -- I really felt like I was in the room, and had the chance to do something I don't do nearly well enough -- listen.
The amazing Nicole Garst laid the groundwork for managing technology in your organization, especially all this newfangled social media stuff. By the time I entered, the participants had spent an entire lunch session discussing social media. They were ready to vent.
I heard a lot of interesting things from the room:
- I feel like a competent nonprofit leader, but this stuff is so new and unfamiliar. What if I can't do it?
- Participating in social media means losing my privacy. I don't want anyone to be able to know that much about me.
- Social media means putting yourself out there. What if what I put out there is taken the wrong way?
- We could really open our organization up via social media. And it could all go horribly wrong.
- Social media challenges traditional sources of information/authority. How will we be able to discern what's credible?
- What if our experimentation in social media leads to unintended (negative) consequences?
The participants shared a variety of concerns and fears, all of which centered on this idea of control. Control is an idea that resonates with me. I like control. I like being IN control. I dislike the notion that anything could just happen to me. I want to control what people know about me and my cause, what they say about me and my cause, and what they are sharing about me and my cause. I've only just come to terms with the idea that it's not possible to do that. It still makes me uncomfortable, but I'm over it.
It was pretty easy for me to sit back in my office and say (via video feed), "Get over it." Up until this session, I felt pretty good about that answer. To me, the idea that, to borrow from Charlene Li, the groundswell is coming is obvious. To me, it's clear that we have to be ready to lose control.
I got the sense, however, that "Get over it" was not an answer that would fly with this audience. It's probably not a fair answer, either. It doesn't validate anyone's feelings, and that's not fun.
So I listened to the conversation. It occurred to me that a blanket "Lose Control" was not really my message, anyway. Yes, you need to let go of your message. Yes, you need to open up and become more transparent. But social media calls for even more control in one particular aspect of our work: our values.
For many folks just getting started with social media, it must feel like a lawless, anything goes kind of place. Somehow, because you can't control what people say, they will say anything. It's not a new feeling. Remember when nonprofits started using discussion email lists? We had the same conversations and fears.
The answer then is the answer now: you can't control everything, but you can control your values.
Any use of social media by your organization should be governed by your values, and you should make those values clear to your community participants. If you value a diversity of opinion, be clear about that. If you are looking to gather only like-minded people, be clear about that. Lead with your values, then be sure to uphold them.
It may not stop bad things from happening, but if your values are clear and present, your community will self-select into them.
And your community will support you when someone doesn't behave according to your values. I've seen this manifest itself again and again: A negative blog comment is followed up by community members responding in defense of the organization; a list member not following the terms of use for the community will be chastised by someone OTHER than you.
Perhaps the best examples out there are wikipedia and Craigslist. They both have very clear terms of use, and their values are reflected there. The community members uphold those values on behalf of the leadership every day.
Isn't that the place we want to be, where our stakeholders feel so much ownership of our organizations and causes that they actively work to uphold our values?
Social media can mean so many things now. It has been picked up as a buzz word and it used by many who do not even understand the meaning of the phrase. Some think Facebook IS social media -and that's as far as they look. Others think it is Digg and Digg only. So many misunderstandings.
It's the power of the crowd, I suppose in its broadest terms, and that power can take many different forms. So diverse are these different forms that filing it all under 'social media' is just not right, IMHO.
Thanks for participating in last week's session and sharing your reflections here. As I mentioned on twitter, I had a hard time wrapping my head around my own reactions. Your comments here gave me hook that has been really helpful.
For me, there has always been an element of the pragmatic to my responses to hesitation & concern about using social media. To me it has always boiled down to: Why fight the wave when you can ride it?What was so valuable about last week was seeing (really seeing & hearing) how that argument just won't work in certain situations. When I saw "If you could name one critical success factor for implementing change within an organization, what would it be?" in my twitter stream, my thoughts immediately went to that discussion. My responses really had to do with the value of listening to concerns (such as the discussion last week) and trying to build buy-in by identifying mutual self-interest. The full post is at http://snurl.com/34h9z. A really valuable comment from Anne had to do with recognizing what people are losing or giving up to make this change happen.
Which brings me right back to here. For lack of a better phrase, I do think we're in the middle of a huge paradigm shift. Even if we can't stop these changes (which, in the interest of full disclosure, I think are generally positive), there can be ways to manage what's happening. Your takeaway about recognizing the need for control within the chaos and drawing attention to what can be controlled really resonated. I don't think anyone who advocates social media believes we should abdicate all control over values (and/or message). Your values, your mission should be central to anything you do, everything else should naturally flow out from them and reinforce them. I guess it's a lot about making the implicit explicit. Make your values explicit, and tie them to how you want to use social media. But I would take it another step and link this work to how it's furthering your mission (for example, we seek out ways to use social media that will encourage healthier financial practices in the nonprofit community, it's an extension of our training, resources, and TA). And I think tying values and mission to using social media can be a way to move the conversation towards mutual self-interest -- doing your work more effectively.