Over the past
year or so we have seen growth and a big change in attitudes to social media,
perhaps particularly with Twitter, which is now an accepted element in today’s
communication mix.
Those who a few
years back were adamantly against social media have now joined, often with a
fanfare of “we’ve arrived, we’re innovative” and with some organisations once
totally anti social media now proclaiming expertise in helping others.
In 2012 I wrote
in The Guardian (Why the construction sector should engage with social media)
that one of the barriers to social media take-up, and hence by default a
barrier to collaborative working communications, BIM, learning and sharing and
general construction improvement is the reluctance of directors and senior
managers to recognise, embrace or enable social media.
Of course there
are as ever some great exceptions to this. But all too often directors have
tinkered out of curiosity, and empty LinkedIn and Twitter accounts now tell a
different story: of organisations and directors who are poor communicators.
So why are built
environment organisation leaders slow to embrace these communication platforms?
Maybe it’s the:
Need to retain
control
The beauty of
social media is in its open sharing. We can never know who staff will reach,
converse with, learn from, share with, collaborate with and how those we
converse with will respond.
Lack of
understanding
Digital
communications are expanding rapidly, beyond the understanding of many.
Consequently many directors feel vulnerable in engaging with something they
don’t understand, so stay away.
Fear of just
being a fad.
Without a clear
vision of how social media will evolve, and how it can be used strategically to
benefit an organisation, many directors are reluctant to invest in seemingly unchartered
waters.
All this is sad
for a 21st century construction sector, where communications are so often the
root cause of most of our problems, where most companies promote a vision of
innovative, open, collaborative and where most directors sell themselves as
enabling role models for innovation.
Social media
presence is increasingly used as a good test of an organisation, and indeed the
organisation’s leader’s claims within PQQs, bids and PR material to be
innovative, and having effective internal and external communications.
Martin Brown
(@fairsnape) is a built environment improvement consultant and blogger
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