A recent article in the Harvard Business Review discusses the increasing corporate use of social media during 2010. Nothing new here.
What really caught my eye, however, was this:
“The biggest threat presented by social networks is to middle managers, who may become obsolete when they are no longer needed to convey messages up and down the organization. The key to success in the social networking era is to empower the people who do the actual work — designing products, manufacturing them, creating marketing innovations, or selling services — to step up and lead without a hierarchy.” (Underline added.)
It is interesting to think about the possibilities of using social media to flatten an organizational structure. Of course, there are those who will be threatened by this – see the comments to the blog post linked above! But, once any personal interest is put aside, the result is that senior management will be brought closer to – meaning in direct contact with – all of a company’s key constituencies: customers, business managers, sales teams and others.
Add a new benefit to the social media orthodoxy: social media empowers senior management to establish a direct, and personal, relationship with everyone and anyone who matters to the business.
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