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

Before I get into my impressions of the workshop, I thought I should share the feedback that the other attendees submitted via the web form over the last couple of weeks.

Attendees were asked to rate five categories from 1 – 5, with 1 being poor and 5 an excellent. Those categories, and ratings recorded were:

1. Venue – 92% of respondents gave it a 4 or a 5
2. Presenters – 64% rated them a 4 or 5
3. Content – 64% 4 or a 5
4. Food – 70% rated it 4 or 5
5. Organization – 85% rated it 4 or 5

Those who submitted comments were similarly positive about the event. Most acknowledged that there was a tremendous amount of material and that they had come away with a better understanding of planning needs, structure of the response and tools and techniques to help manage communications during a crisis.

A common theme to emerge in the comments, however, was that the content was not particularly relevant to the public sector practitioner and was too focussed around crises, rather that more issued based case studies:

Presenters were well experienced and case studies best practice, however, the examples they gave were almost all of oil companies where resources were unlimited. It would have been good to have done a public service case study were resources (money and people) were limited and we had to prioritise a response – a workshop of a case study like this would have been good.

I did agree that the focus was all on situations that most of us would never have to deal with (oil tanker running aground in Wellington harbour and spilling several thousand tonnes of crude — nah, never happen here), but the more I have thought about it over the last couple of weeks, the more I have come around to the view that the event itself is pretty much irrelevant: it is the way you deal with it that matters.

As Kym and Dick demonstrated, the formula for the response is predictable. If you plan for an event like an oil spill, or an earthquake, or a pandemic, then you can roll out your plan for just about anything; crisis, emerging issue, it doesn’t really matter – you will have the tools and the training in place to effectively manage it.

And if you look at the issues that we have had to deal with in the public sector over the last several years, I think that you will agree that most — if not all — either were well managed using these principles, or were poorly managed and could have benefited from this approach. I am, however, keen to open this up for discussion.

1. A ‘best of’ 2006 type thing, incorporating the highlights of the year from a comms perspective
2. Predictions for 2007 and what new technologies and approaches will bring
3. An ‘awards’ type post, where I handed out spuriously named gongs for various acts of infamy
4. None of the above

You will be pleased to note that I have (I think) avoided the clichéd options and gone for the merely hackneyed. But more of that later. First, an announcement.

Strategic Crisis Communications

Once we had waded through the feedback for comms@06, it became apparent that you wanted more professional development opportunities that offered intensive, interactive learning. So, we have organised the first of the Network workshops for 2007, a one-day session on Crisis Comms.

In order that you get the most out of the day, we are limiting numbers to 20. This will mean that you get to engage with the presenters and discuss issues relevant to your agency or experience. Registrations open in the middle of January, so I would urge you to register early to avoid missing out. More details available on the Network site.

Christmas & PR

As promised, option 4 for your amusement. A joke I was told at the first PR Christmas party I attended as a young tacker, pretty much straight out of Uni.

Many years ago, the BBC called up the then Prime Minister a couple of days before Christmas and asked him what it was that he would like to receive for Christmas.

Being reasonably media-savvy and a long term denizen of Whitehall, the PM recognized immediately the pitfalls around the question. After some deliberation, he gave what he thought to be a modest and suitably unassuming and very British answer. Pleased with his guile, he hung up.

On Christmas day, after enjoying lunch with his extended family, he gathered them around the wireless to listen to the broadcast.

“Finally, we asked a number of prominent people,” the announcer began after the news, “what they wanted for Christmas. The American ambassador said that he wanted to see an end to famine in Africa, the Russian ambassador said that he hoped for world peace, and the British Prime Minister wanted a nice pipe and his slippers by the fire.”

Back in January

Regular transmission will begin again in the middle of January. Have a safe break.