It is tempting to look at the rise of social media and assume that government is singularly unprepared to meet the challenges that the (socially) connected workplace have delivered to us. And if you restrict your field of vision to the technology, there is a good case to be made.

However, viewed in the context of the ongoing evolution of the public management system, here in New Zealand anyway where I believe we have a good record of evolving and developing in response to these environmental pressures, it is a much more tractable problem. It is the speed of that adaption that is the central issue.

The wave

As the Pew report points out, (online) social networking is not some novel behaviour that, along with rounded corners and reflective logos, arrived with Web 2.0. Usenet, bulletin boards and discussion lists provided media for this sort of activity as soon as people started connecting computers to each other. What has changed for organizations is the volume of participation.

As it has become increasingly painless to network online – you no longer require any real technical know-how, just an email address and some self-belief in the significance of your opinions – more of us are doing it. It is inevitable that this trend would extend to public sector employees, particularly the digital natives.

To give you a (purely anecdotal) picture of the change, in 2006 I had roughly four of five agency queries about social media, for that year. From late 2007 to today, I am averaging about one a week.

The strategy gap

The problem, as such, is not that public sector organizations are not adapting to the change; the fact that there is so much interest in understanding social media is a good indication they are. The problem is the rate at which they are adapting, and the consequences of that lag.

Government agencies naturally have a long-term strategic view; this is driven by statutory as well as practical considerations. The Statement of Intent looks forward three years, as do business plans and budgets. How many of you, given the chance, would have written social media into your business plans in 2005/06?

The tension we are all experiencing now, between the early adopters in agencies who expect to be able to use these networks as a matter of course and management struggling to understand and adapt to the shadow workplace, is an expression of the conflict between a shifting strategic perspective and tactical imperatives.

Managers are trying to adapt their strategy within a set of, in the immediate term, unforgiving constraints – like, for example, the Public Records Act and other accountability structures, and simultaneously manage the demands of tactical and operational contingencies that are reactions to, in most cases, ‘guerilla’ implementations that begin their cycle outside the corporate framework.

Let me give you an example (if you are still reading after that last paragraph, you have earned it): managers in Agency X discover that an enthusiastic employee has set up a Facebook group for the staff. They are now using it to communicate with each other across the geographically dispersed organization, to share knowledge and to build social and professional relationships.

Tactically, it is providing some value. Strategically, it is a nightmare. Why? There is no defined purpose, no exit strategy and, from a risk management point of view, they couldn’t have picked a worse application. It is, putting it quite conservatively, a crisis waiting to happen…

On the other hand, what this requires of managers is a rethinking of their strategic approach. They need to begin planning immediately to migrate the behaviour (which, to be clear, is both inevitable and desirable) to a medium, or possibly media, that is consistent with the security, legislative and cultural norms of the public sector. But, even with complete management support and the requisite funding (ie., in a perfect world) that won’t happen in a hurry. That’s your strategy gap in action.

And this sort of thing is not restricted to a few agencies, it is happening all over the public sector.

Change management

Public sector managers should all be conversant and comfortable with change. To narrow the strategy gap, what needs to happen is for senior managers to recognize that social media are a symptom of a wider cultural change, and to begin revising their strategies accordingly. Agencies should begin to consult, communicate and involve staff in the process now, because if the gap widens too much, our people will —literally— leave us behind.

As I noted at the outset, this doesn’t require any specialized management knowledge or technical skill; it is just another expression of the (hopefully commonplace) need to constantly manage change. What it does require, however, is a sense of urgency, a willingness to engage and a focus that is on people, rather than technology.

Photo: iMorpheus