Micro-Leadership: Five Ways Enterprise Microblogging Can Make You A Better Leader

Mike Strand (Seattle, WA) -

Large organizations are moving to a new phase of internal collaboration and communication using social tools. The last two years has seen a shift from managers questioning the value of micro-blogging and other enterprise social media to giving permission and even encouragement to their employees. The next logical step is for managers to actually use the tools themselves inside their organizations, to lead. Here, I describe five ways in which corporate and government leaders can leverage internal micro-blogging to inspire, inform, and ultimately lead their respective organizations.

From Skeptic to Advocate

In my recent post, “Believe the Hype: 5 Practical Applications of Micro-blogging in the Enterprise” I touched on the hesitation (including my own) of IT professionals to embrace and support social collaboration as a corporate solution inside the enterprise. The primary concern being, do we really need another tool in the age of information overload? While I personally have moved from skeptic to advocate, some of those around me have not. As I thought deeply about why this was, I realized it was my fault for them not adopting – and that lack of adoption was an example of my failure in my work. Let me explain.

My title is Business Relationship Manager. This means I’m a technology partner and consultant to the leadership teams of certain business units inside my company. In simple terms, it’s my job to understand the strategies and priorities of my business partners and then ensure that our company’s information technology services are enablers of those goals. Impressed? Well, don’t be, because I’m failing in one respect of my job - helping my business partners leverage Web 2.0 inside the enterprise to reach their objectives.

My earlier blog post about practical applications of micro-blogging reflected many of the arguments I’ve used to try and help them see beyond the stereotype of Generation Z chattering. And while the post drove some discussion, it didn’t move the needle as far as I hoped. Most nodded their heads and said, “yes – I want this for my organization,” but few of these leaders used the service themselves. So I pondered my approach and I decided to re-vector.

Like much of the current literature and marketing, all my value propositions were oriented around microblogging as a collaboration tool for workers. And while this perspective is valid, let’s face it – do senior business leaders have trouble getting people to collaborate with them? Not at all. What my business partners do need however, are solutions to help them effectively lead their organizations. With this perspective, a whole new orientation to the issue emerged.

Over-reliance on Email: A Missed Leadership Opportunity?

I’m active on Microsoft’s internal micro-blogging service, and I follow a number of company leaders whom I respect. After a time, however, I realized that some of these leaders hadn’t posted anything. Not a single word. Interestingly, as on Twitter, you can view how many followers an individual in our company has, and some of these leaders had thousands of followers without publishing a single status update. As I watched these numbers over time they continued to grow! How? In my view, there is a large and growing population in this forum with a demand for additional insight into the minds of these leaders. These important members of our company community were missing an opportunity to lead, and to do so in an efficient and uniquely effective way.

In their defense, it’s fair to say that these very leaders, not engaged on enterprise micro-blogging, do certainly engage inside the company by sharing their vision and helping to set priorities. A primary way this is done is through email. It’s not uncommon that once a month a given leader sends out an organization wide email. These emails can go to anywhere from 300 to 30,000 people and usually rally employees around issues like innovation, cost controls, or customer focus. Such emails are about five paragraphs long and land in everyone’s inbox with a thud; You can hear all the typing around you stop as everyone stops to read the steady, booming voice from the beyond sweeping a blanket of wisdom over the corporation.

What’s interesting about such emails is that they often conclude with something along the lines of, “I don’t have all the answers. I want to hear from you. Tell me what you think we can to improve .”

As opinionated as I am, I’ve never responded to one of these mails. It’s a little overwhelming, like telling Martin Scorsese you’ve got an idea for a movie. And on the flip side, leaders are often left wondering, “What did people think of that message? Did my message really land?” An over-reliance on email may be a missed leadership opportunity within enterprises because email does not naturally lend itself to interaction, conversation, and action. To some degree, when those behaviors happen through email, we’re forcing it on an imperfect system. Luckily, others like micro-blogging have evolved.

Micro-leadership in the Enterprise

I am certainly not arguing to do away with email as a communication tool. But I do think that business leaders can augment email and other communications approaches with microblogging to better land their visions and actively engaged employees at every level of the organization. I call these short micro-blogging bursts of interaction “micro-leadership.” Here are five practical applications of micro-leadership in the enterprise:

1. Increase Your Touch in Remote Teams: In today’s virtual world where team members often sit in different geographic locations, it becomes increasingly difficult for leaders to stay connected with their own employees. Traditional tools like organization-wide emails assist in this regard, and in a bit of a technological update, many leaders are now also embracing video-enhanced Web meetings to keep remote teams and their ideas better connected. However, the planning and overhead involved in these channels is quite high, both for leaders and their organizations. In contrast, micro-blogging is 140 sweetly succinct characters instantly reaching your entire organization with low overhead to both create and consume. A common concern I hear from social skeptics is that they do not have time for another communication tool. In the case of a skeptical business leader, my suggestion would be this…try cancelling your next org-wide email or all hands meeting and replace with 5 consecutive days of a single post per day and see what you learn.

2. Share the Leadership Mindset: Ralph Waldo Emerson poignantly said, “If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.” Most business leaders are focused on the road ahead and helping their organizations prepare for changing market conditions. To do this efficiently, this often means reading industry research and listening to other experts. Unfortunately, most leaders are too busy to regularly cascade the information that is influencing their thinking throughout their organizations. A misconception about micro-blogging that many people have is that they need to have something original to say. However, those experienced with the Web and Enterprise 2.0 would tell you that a large percentage of posts are simply pointers to news articles, books, and other web content that they are currently reading and finding value in. Leaders can keep their organizations aligned with their thinking as well as elevate the strategic awareness of the entire organization simply by regularly sharing what they are currently reading.

3. Leading Begins with Listening: One of the most underutilized benefits of micro-blogging in the enterprise is listening to what other people are saying. Many large organizations spend lots of money every year to survey their own employees for feedback about satisfaction. This structured approach has its merits, but if you’ve ever analyzed survey results you know the big value is in the verbatims - the free text boxes where you ask people to explain their multiple choice answers or provide additional information in their own words. Micro-blogging is nothing but verbatims, and therefore it can be an extraordinarily valuable insight into the minds of your employees, even if only read for five minutes a day. Leaders should consider cancelling their next organizational survey and in its place simply ask employees for feedback via micro-blogging.

4. Attract Talent: An inherent difference between micro-blogging and email is transparency and reach. An email only reaches who you put on the “to” line. In contrast a micro-blog post in principle reaches everyone who uses the service. In other words, it is “discoverable.” This means that when an organizational leader is engaged with and inspiring their teams, other leaders and workers inside the company can see it. This can highlight your organization as a good place to work and provide other benefits.

5. Go to the People: Recall the executives I referenced at the beginning of this post who were missing a leadership opportunity - they had thousands of micro-blog followers inside our company but had yet to post a single message. There’s a real reason why leaders volunteer to sit in the dunk tank at the company picnic or shave their heads if a particular sales goal can be met. They do this to remind us that they are human, too. Given the increasing use of micro-blogs at the grassroots level of companies, it is critical that leaders reinforce their accessibility, relevance, and humanity by participating in the conversations occurring in their company micro-blogs.

Examples of Leaders Who Understand Micro-leadership

Andrew McAfee, who coined the term “Enterprise 2.0” and recently published “Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Company’s Toughest Challenges” talks about the role leaders play in the use of social tools. McAfee states “Early adopters and Generation Y are typically the most enthusiastic trainers and evangelists for Enterprise 2.0, but the formal leaders of the organization must also participate actively in the communication effort.” Here’s some examples of just such leaders:

Barbara Gordon, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft

Microsoft Corporate Vice President Barbara Gordon runs an organization of over 22,000 employees and vendors spread across 60 countries. Since Barbara and her team are responsible for service and support for all Microsoft products (hardware and software) they have a broad charter, geographic footprint, and diverse worker profiles to coordinate across. Barbara leverages intra-company micro-blogging as one cornerstone of a multi-faceted leadership communication approach. In speaking with her, she said the following about the unique value micro-blogging lends to her leadership approach,

Research and feedback from across my organization indicated some employees had reservations about leadership authenticity and openness to feedback. In an organization as large and geographically dispersed as ours, I can understand where those reservations might come from. It can be difficult to get in front of employees and build personal relationships. As a leader, I want every member of my team to feel personally inspired and engaged in creating a positive experience for the customers we support every day. Micro-blogging offers my leadership team a way to have a multi-directional dialogue on a wide range of topics. We discuss everything from the current management view and the individual customer experience to sharing more personal insights such as business challenges we’re wrestling with and where we seek motivation. Micro-blogging enables us to do this with incredible timeliness and transparency. There’s also something inherently conversational about micro-blogging that flattens the traditional hierarchy. This strengthens the connection I have with every employee but also draws out the best ideas and input from every corner of the organization.

SunTrust Bank

In Charlene Li’s 2010 book “Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead,” she shares SunTrust Bank’s experience using social tools internally to “better understand and get closer to employees.” Specifically, the bank drove an initiative called “Voice of Teammate” through which the bank looked to both gather feedback from over 28,000 employees as well as demonstrate use of employee input in management decision making. One important topic SunTrust leadership sought input from employees on was the company’s current and future strategy. Not only did the effort save SunTrust money, but SunTrust’s director of internal communications heralded the “teammate goodwill” and support gained by openly engaging with the employees on such a critical topic.

Lessons From Government

While the public sector is often perceived as lagging behind the private sector in technology innovation, the Obama campaign in 2008 was a great early example of leadership through the use of Web 2.0 in leadership, broadly defined. This January 2010 article from Bloomberg outlines some of their approach in 2008 and how the administration is looking to continue to evolve that approach to support the current white house agenda. Of particular note is that information does not just travel in one direction. White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer, for example, is active in 2-way dialogue on Twitter under the handle @pfeiffer44. (Check the stream starting at January 26^th starting about 11am and you’ll see a real-time Q&A.) Micro-blogging uniquely enables this level of transparency and access to leadership on such scale.

Of similar note, is the recent buzz created when Chinese President Hu Jintao created an account on the micro-blogging platform of the People’s Daily, the main mouthpiece of the Communist Party. According to this February article in The Telegraph, the president was gaining followers at a rate of 600 per hour. This is clearly another case of high demand for leadership participation in the micro-blogging medium.

Returning to Charlene Li, for a moment. If you missed it, her consultancy the Altimeter group recently announced its 2010 awards for open leadership and the public sector did not go unnoticed. Specifically, the innovative city of Manor, TX was recognized for its work on www.manorlabs.org. ManorLabs lets citizens converse, submit, and vote on ideas to make the city better. You can read the complete project description here as well as find a complete list of the public sector entrants.

Clearly there’s no shortage of micro-leadership opportunities in the public sector and leaders from all sectors will be well served to monitor this space for future innovations and inspiration.

Conclusion

Regardless of whether they are in the public or private sectors, all leaders need to give serious consideration to moving from merely supporting Enterprise 2.0, to participating in it. These services need to be understood as cornerstones of effective leadership in the modern age. As evidenced by the handful of executive teams already benefiting from micro-leadership, the advantages and impact are material.

Mike Strand is a Business Relationship Manager for Microsoft IT based in Bellevue, WA. He last wrote about Five Practical Uses For Enterprise Micro-blogging in October.

Photos of the skeptic, the email logo, and child leader used under Creative Commons. “Exhibit A” from this page.