I’m facing a challenge. Luckily wiser men and women have trotted the path before. She has. So has he. And they discuss it.
I’m talking about the struggle for legitimation, the struggle of how to convince managers and executives that humans and relations make up a bigger sum than the sum of single parts put together. And that it is that surplus that can translate into social capital depending on how it is managed. And that in the end social capital has an effect on competition and innovation strategies. And thereby effecting the bottom line as well. Not to mention the hardship in convincing anybody that they ought to have their organization investigated, the social relations analyzed, and the social capital measured.
I’m guessing that I have already lost readers by now. And those readers are not even potentiel buyers. Imagine that I stood in front of an audience of potential clients and I outlined the argument as above. I wouldn’t even make it to explaining what a relation is before being accused of living in an ivory tower.
I’m adressing the problem of language and presentation when you refuse to resort to simplified, reductionist models that I expect is valued by corporate culture. How to be convincing on complex topics such as networks? How to be taken seriously on complex topics such as relations? How to transform complexity into an argument of dynamacy? These are questions that make up my challenge #1.
5 comments so far
Well you’ve made a good start: You’ve described your challenge in a very eloquent manner.
May I suggest looking into storytelling as a way to quickly convince people of the importance of these topics? If you can find a compelling story that illustrates your concerns, I’m sure you’ll grab people’s attention.
Thanks Kars! And I think you’re absolutely right. It would be brilliant to start out describing an empirical example in storytelling mode. I guess my concern is a bit more general though. Most companies don’t consider human/social capital as important as physical and economic capital. I think it is because of the argument of human capital that doesn’t translate into bottom line figures as well as physical capital for instance. Hence I see it as a big challenge not to resort to a simplified generic formula for social capital and at the same time try to be convincing.
I’m not sure you have to take a ‘reductionist’ approach to convince company managers of the value of social capital. I think the challenge is as the messenger not to be too normative in our approach and come with predefined assumptions about the expected outcomes. Examples could be: “more relations equal more value”; “Social capital is more important than other types of capital” and so on.
These statements might be correct in some settings, but definitely not in all. I think from a potential client’s perspective it is much more credible to come with a framework that demonstrates how we will work with their organization and what approaches we will have to distill conclusions and recommendations. To me this is quite contrary to make wishful promises ex ante.
Credibility is extremely critical in this context. Having different tools like story telling or other techniques at your disposal is only part of the equation. It is important to acknowledge that to massage a company’s social capital is a sensitive task, and to invite external expertise into this field demands a high level of trust.
So it is not about reducing or simplifying the message or the value proposition. In my view, it is much more important to align the organization behind the services so it is able to establish the level of credibility and trust required to be acknowledged as player in this marketplace.
David Maister (http://davidmaister.com/books.ta/) has written extensively on the subject and on how to position professional service companies in alignment with the services offered.
A good example on how to bridge social network speak and business speak and also discuss some compelling case studies on how network analysis can create measurable value can be found here: http://robcross.org/pdf/roundtable/driving_financial_return_through_networks.pdf
Hi Karsten. Some how your comment was caught in the spam filter, where Jacob found it by accident the other day…
Thanks for the reference and for the great words of comfort. I guess I’m still a bit too predujice towards corporate culture :).
I think you’re so right when you propose that social capital may not be the right thing for all companies, and that it isn’t necessary a positive thing. Rendering it either positive or negative is definitely a normative approach, which I do see in a lot of the businesses doing work on social capital, but which I don’t find suitable at all. Social capital is an analytical object and as such you can’t put op simple equation such as social capital=value.
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