Why executives fear social media

“It’s not always commercial to be honest with the marketplace”

I heard these words in a meeting with a potential new client and immediately knew it would be a while before we would be working together.
These were not bad people, or minions of an evil corporation. They were expressing the constructed reality of the culture they worked in.

I’ve been thinking about that comment a lot in the last week or so, it’s not enough to merely walk from that client because I have no doubt it will be a sentiment I come across again and again. I’ve also been reading The Cluetrain Manifesto and this morning the two combined to belt me with a blinding flash of the obvious – you only hear these comments from people who have not yet engaged in any significant way on-line.

If your on-line experience has not gone much past web surfing and email then of course you will see the internet as a broadcast tool, but there is other stuff going on, stuff that once you get a taste of will not let you go back in your thinking. It’s the paradox of the technology of the internet being a humanising experience through sharing and connection. Social Media mavens can lecture about this stuff and blog about it as much as we like – but until our potential clients tangibly experience it, it is as quoted in The Cluetrain Manifesto “like trying to explain rock’n'roll”.

Our job then is not to show, but to lead into experience. Not to lecture, but to facilitate.

Yesterday a business associate (thanks Gary) sent me the link below to a video from Australian Anthill on-line where the title for this post came from. It’s well worth your time.

“Why executives fear social media” – video

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(Image by Jeremy Brooks)

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