Much has been written and observed on how dramatically social media has been reshaping our social interactions. Online social networking tools such as Facebook and LinkedIn, micro-blogging tools such as Twitter, and crowd-sourcing sites such as Wikipedia and Yelp are no longer just communication tools of a generation and have definitely gone mainstream.
Many organizations have realized the importance of these tools to effectively support marketing and brand management initiatives. And in a few cases, organizations that haven’t realized the importance of this new communication medium have faced embarrassing public relations nightmares where an issue exploded in the social media space for days until it moved into mainstream media at a point where it became difficult
to contain.
I once counted myself amongst those skeptical of the value of social media in the business and process excellence context. However, over the course of the last few years, I’ve come to realize the huge opportunity presented by social media to the process improvement professional and have had a chance to experiment with many different tools and approaches.
When social media is well leveraged in a business context, it creates a new medium to encourage collaboration, communication, learning and knowledge management. In the process improvement context, these tools can also help overcome time and space barriers.
Over the next few posts, I will explore different ways in which social media could help your operational excellence and process excellence efforts by improving engagement and collaboration on key projects. In the interim, my colleague Michael Marx and I will explore some of these opportunities in a free Process Excellence Network webinar.
I encourage you to start exploring some of the potential opportunities that social media presents to us in evolving and enhancing our existing methods and to challenge any preconceptions that might exist around the value of these tools.
