Social Media for Project Managers – Part 4 – The Risks

Three things about human nature that you are probably pretty familiar with. One…People like to be nay sayers. It is easier to bash someone else’s initiative than come up with your own. When it comes to introducing Social Media into your organization, you are certain to come up against a slew of reasons why it can’t succeed. Two… people don’t like change. Some of the reasons Social Media can’t succeed are more legitimate than others. But as it is human nature, people will resist change including the introduction of cool new tools that will probably significantly improve productivity. And three…people are risk adverse. People prefer to keep it safe and not step into the wilderness (not true of everyone obviously but lets agree that in a corporate environment, risk is its own beast and needs to be approached carefully).

Yes, there are certain risks to adopting any new technology or process to an organization and Social Media is not risk free. But there are certain preconceived notions that I think we can safely address here. Elizabeth Herrin’s (from PM4Girls) new book ”Social Media for Project Managers”, discusses four of the most common risks brought up by organizations. She also discusses methods to mitigate against those risks.

1. Poor up-take – No one will bother to read or engage in whatever content is being generated by social media.
2. Too much information – Social media will create an information overload where everyone can comment and participate. Information will become harder to access and find because of the sheer mass of it.
3. Excludes non-computer literate team members – Team members who are not computer literate will not be able to jump on board and will not get critical project information.
4. Distraction – because all team members will be able to participate and comment on conversations, people will become distracted and spend all day on the web and not engage in business activity.

Let’s take each one of these risks one by one and determine how to mitigate against it.

1. Poor up-take – I actually discuss this in my previous blog post about Introducing Social Media. In summary the 5 steps to ensure proper adoption are: Find a champion, bring in examples, get people on board early, make people feel secure, have a backup plan.
2. Too much information – Discipline. Need to teach people what type of communication is appropriate and what is not, use keywords where possible, use tools that archive material and are searchable and have a repository for business critical documentation to be saved (BTW, Clarizen’s Collaborative Planning functionality allows users to save documents, notes and conversations and attach them to tasks and all other work items).
3. Excluding non-computer literate team members- Social Media is just another communication tool and will generally not be the only communication platform for a project. Often a project plan includes a blended communication plan that includes email, printed documentation, phone and face to face meetings. Be sure that critical information is getting communicated many ways to ensure that it is not missed. Another approach is trying to get those non-computer literate people literate but that might be the hardest battle you will have to fight.
4. Distraction – There are a few different ways to handle this argument. One is to say if management gets on board and is involved with the Social Media initiative, they will be able to monitor what is going on online and get a feel if the platform is being abused. But not all management is happy policing its employees. Another argument is that if limitations are placed on web or social media usage within the organization, with so many employees having smart phones (aka iPhones), trying to control this behavior is futile anyway. It can be said that bringing the social media platform in house, in a controlled and monitored way, will encourage employees to use the tools responsibly. At the end of the day, building trust with your work force is critically important and also completely out of the scope of this post.

What is clear about any of these risks is that setting expectations and boundaries within a project charter, clarifying the scope and responsibilities of the project and making it clear in the scope that things won’t change overnight, will be your best bet against any of the above mentioned risks, and probably other risks that weren’t addressed here too.

You will probably have stakeholders that love the concept and those that hate it and you will need to balance the expectations on both sides. Strong control over social media policies are critically important and give people a framework for what they can say and do within the social media context.