Social Organizations Make Mistakes

Back in February I talked about the role of learning in social organizations, which is critical. Learning has always been the heart of social media for me. It’s what hooked me in terms of my own participation, and it’s always my answer when people give me the “who has time for social media?” argument. I learn so much, with such a small amount of time and effort–how could I resist?

In terms of organizational culture and learning, however, it’s not just about employees being on Twitter. It’s about constantly being open to new information and having processes in place that can translate new information into new action. It still amazes me how few organizations have cultures that can accomplish that seemingly simple task of translating new information into new action.

One reason we have trouble with it, is we are afraid of making mistakes. Bob Sutton has a nice post about the topic, which draws on the writing of Larry Prusak. In short, organizations typically make people pay for their mistakes, rather than learning from them. When is the last time you heard the top authority position in your organization say they were wrong or made a mistake? It rarely happens, because they would be punished for it.

As a human being, I know this is ridiculous. It is impossible to go through life being right all the time. Being wrong is human, but somehow not permitted in our organizations. This inhibits learning greatly, because if there is pressure to not be wrong and not make mistakes, then we tend to do the things that have already been done before, rather than experimenting and discovering new solutions and new paths to growth.

Social media, on the other hand, seems much more comfortable with mistakes. From blog posts that go a little too far to public flops like Google Wave, it just doesn’t feel like a big deal when mistakes are made in the social media realm. They are confronted and then people move on. So many of today’s social media successes started out as entirely different projects or products, and only by failing in their original intention did they discover eventual success.

But what happens when your association tries that first little step into social media by letting your members actually write a blog? I can hear it now: “But what if they say something wrong? It will be out there, on the internet, forever?!”

Tagged as: learning