Why Bother Looking At Social Media For Use In Projects
April 29, 2009 @ Project Shrink from Bas de Baar
If you have no problems in your projects what so ever, consider yourself very lucky and please, keep on doing what you are doing.
Project components – methods, processes, procedures, tools – should only be introduced when they either reduce a risk or create an opportunity. Always.
If you have communication problems in your project and you are located in the same building, consider yourself lucky and please, train your communication skills. Simple techniques, we all know for decades, can improve your face-to-face communication immensely.
But what if we move all our interactions into cyberspace? What if we throw out physical collocation and what if everyone of us has an entire different frame of reference?
And now you run into problems.
Words just form 7% of our communication, the rest is 38% tone of voice and 55% body language, so the “standard” communication is not going to cut it.
I am not saying that we should move all our interactions into cyberspace. I am just saying that we are moving them online. It is happening. Resistance is futile
Managing projects will be different. Not in the trivial sense of sharing files and collaboration. The Project Management style, and the supporting tools have to be "social", and now more than ever.
The project landscape is turning mobile, multi-cultural, 24×7, highly distributed and in ever flux. This situation will increase the risk of three social booby traps:
- Misunderstanding: increased difficulty for a proper understanding of what other stakeholders need in the project;
- Lack of Trust: reluctant to let go of control and trust the people do what they are supposed to do;
- Isolation: no sense of belonging to the project through geographical, cultural and time zone differences.
For Project Management in this context the real challenge will be a social one. This is exactly the place where I think Social Media will bring us insights and support. But not in collaboration alone, but more in how software can build a sense of community, enhance trust and stimulate open communication. Social Media might be the project component to reduce these risks.
Social media is build around the concept of having online conversations; engaging human to human interaction in cyberspace. When you view a project as nothing more than social interactions and we move all interactions into the virtual space, it should not be hard to imagine why I think we should bother looking at social media for support.
But being global and virtual is not only about risks. It is also about opportunities:
“It is about reducing urbanization and its heavy toll on the environment (no commute is no pollute).
It is about a more healthy (sustainable) distribution of wealth.
It is about improving education in general.
It is about The Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia.”
Social media can reduce risks and create opportunities at the same time.
Not always.
Not for every project.
But increasingly more often.
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Why Bother Looking At Social Media For Use In Projects
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