Help us craft the subtitle for our book — Social By Design.
The subtitle we have (see above) may work, but we aren’t yet convinced. So below I pasted some excerpts from the draft of the book’s introduction. James and I hope sharing it here would allow you to better understand the book’s direction and purpose AND, quite possibly with your help, surface the clearest and most succinct subtitle.
Give it a read and share with us your thoughts. Thanks in advance!
INTRO EXCERPTS (WIP)
“…Right now, in your organization — be it the whole company, a division or even a single team — are passionate people. They are nimble, resourceful, thoughtful, and connected. You know this is why you’re successful but you wonder, “can we keep this as we grow and change?”. Why do silos emerge? Why do distrust and knowledge hoarding emerge more frequently? And why does the agility and innovation you initially had slowly evaporate? Can it be different? Can’t we scale a social, collaborative culture of 3 or 30 to 300 or 30,000?”
“…Effective organizational social is like attending a really good dinner party, one where the conversations are plentiful, diverse and ongoing. The energy is high and if it weren’t for other commitments, people would never leave. A successful dinner party doesn’t happen by chance either. The room, the setup, the host, proximity, and the location of people are all considered, and the purpose of the event was made clear. You know that just making a meal and inviting people over won’t likely have the same success. So why then would you think employees will just connect, share, and collaborate without the same care and attention given to the environment they work in?”
“…We are social creatures. We lean towards being social. But we need the situation and context to allow for social interaction to flourish. Do you ever tell your dinner guests to “just talk and share” and expect them to do so? Why do you think doing the same will work for employees?”
“…If you are looking to maximize the power of social you can’t focus just on changing individual mindsets, behaviors, lowering cubicle walls or investing in social technology. The list of failures by narrowly focusing on these is long. To truly support and grow greater connection and collaboration and reap the rewards they bring in the form of higher engagement. The systems people operate under must also be examined and modified to encourage social behaviors the organization wants and needs.”
“…We are mainly concerned, as you should be, with frequent, open and impactful conversations. Conversations move ideas, people and the business forward. … People have been conversing for millennia, nobody needs help there but they do in making work environments (physical and technological) more fertile for conversations to happen easier and to be baked into the organization’s DNA.”
“…What is needed today is the set of guiding principles that this book will present. These principles emerged consistently in the organizations we have worked with and for. In our conversations with peers, experts, leaders, and in the research we saw them again and again. We have refined shared them in presentations and in consultation and have seen remarkable responses (including “when is this going to be in a book?!”).”
“…The principles can help either lay the foundation for a more social organization or be used to constantly nudge an organization in a more social direction. And if you’re farther down the road, we expect they will go a long way to measure the impact of your efforts.”
