Connection is what matters

A great Tweet from Oscar Berg this morning:

  • oscarberg: IMO #socbiz is primarily a mindset&way2see business in increasingly connected & digital age

I think he’s exactly right there: in essence, ‘social business’ is a different mindset about the way a business relates with others, and also with itself (as in the now seemingly-all-but-forgotten ‘Enterprise 2.0’).

But there’s a real booby-trap there that it’s essential to avoid (and that too many people did fall into with ‘Enterprise 2.0’). And that’s that this is not about the technology: it’s about the connections.

Okay, we’ll be fair about this, and agree the new digital technologies are important, as enablers of connections that would otherwise be hard (but not impossible) to set up via other means. As Andrew McAfee once put it, we’d have to agree that “it’s not not about the technology”.

Yet in social-business the connection is what matters: the ways we connect are always of secondary importance relative to that core focus.  If we ever lose sight of the fact that the technology is merely an enabler of connection, and not the connection itself, we’d be in real trouble real quick, with no way to see why we’re in trouble. Oops…

Something always to keep in mind here, please?

2 Comments on “Connection is what matters

  1. Agreed. Their are many ways to tell a business story that connects with people. Social media is a means to pass on the remarkable. Seth Godin had a great example in a previous post. Here is a story and how social media impacted it. No, it isn’t a social business … or is it? http://cainesarcade.com/

  2. Spot on Tom!! I really agree with this.

    The thing that is going to most challenging for most businesses will be letting go and embracing a mindset that let’s staff engage at every level and learning to trust that most staff with do the right thing.

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