Enculturing Soft Skills for Social Commerce

“So let us begin anew —- remembering on both sides
that civility is not a sign of weakness,
and sincerity is always subject to proof.”

~ John F. Kennedy

Civility is defined as ‘Formal politeness and courtesy in behavior or speech’.   Civil society, civic culture, and social capital are all important for strengthening democracy and enabling conflict resolution.

What is Social Capital?

While social capital is ” an instantiated informal norm that promotes cooperation between two or more individuals” (Francis Fukuyama) , it cannot in a community of diversity without a foundation in civility. Cultivating civility is an integral element of social capital because it fosters good relationship where ever you engage.

Through civility we behave altruistically,  extending courtesy to one another, creating trust.  The radius of trust is founded on consistency and quality of interpersonal exchange. Every point of engagement is an opportunity to demonstrate civility and more.

Part of our learning modules, RMI has a created a model of mindfulness we call ”The Diamond Rule’.

Respect

Honesty

Accountability

Boundaries

Responsibility

Trust

Reciprocality

Altruism

Unless enculturing civility becomes an initiative educationally, corporately and communally, there will little opportunity to grow trust amongst communities.

In his  book,  A World Waiting to be Born,  M. Scott Peck examines the concept of community by referring to his own philosophy and applying the ideas  to corporate backgrounds. The book explores  self-absorption  and the destructive aspects of materialism which have become part of our  behavioral norms. Peck  proposes a variety of philosophies to help address these challenges.

‘We human beings have often been referred to as social animals. But we are not yet community creatures. We are impelled to relate with each other for our survival. But we do not yet relate with the inclusivity, realism, self-awareness, vulnerability, commitment, openness, freedom, equality, and love of genuine community.’

M Scott Peck

As social business gathers momentum through enterprise adoption of social technologies, the inevitable shift to breaking down organisational silos towards a more social organism will become evident. This will create opportunities to do things differently, as three generations of workers collide in the workplace. The legacy of silos causes many problems in terms of knowledge mobilisation, agility of response to disruptive market forces in terms of strategic decision making and overall engagement of the workforce.

Jack Welch deemed speed to be of the utmost importance to business advantage. The transition from predominantly control and command structures that have dominated historically towards a more informal system will demand new practices and novel interventions in order to accelerate the workplace satisfaction quotient and encourage employees to co-operate together in a contemporary business climate. This video outlines the problem and solution : The lowest levels of engagement ever measured

A recent blog piece published by the RSA indicated that ‘most organisations want their employees to be more engaged. Most individuals want to contribute and to find meaning at work. Yet research suggests that more than two thirds of people are not engaged with how they spend their working hours. Instead of contributing their creativity, employees seem numbed by work, stressed by seemingly unreasonable demands and, in the UK, absent to the tune of 180 million days a year. This carries with it significant costs to the individual, to business and to society’.

It’s likely that silo culture does much to engender the disengagement factor and to apparent bottom line cost as well as trust factors, a key contributor to job satisfaction. How long before businesses realise that a failure to tackle the silo issue by encouraging a greater collaborative culture is very real, financially measurable and potentially damaging to the future survival of the organisation? As Jack said ‘The essence of competitiveness is liberated when we make people believe that what they think and do is important and then get out of their way while they do it’.

Facebook’s social context ads collect data on our likes and scans our content for  keywords.  This information is used to generate the ads on the right hand side of  the facebook page.   Google has been showing us context sensitive ads for many years now.

The difference in Facebook  is, that your context sensitive ads are being shown to  your network  with the intention of generating activity within your social group.  Along with the ad,  are the names of  your friends who have clicked the like button or generated some sort of social action, demonstrating an engagement with the item being promoted.  The Facebook equivalent of word of mouth advertising.

Social Networks are more valuable when there is activity along the nodes. Activity indicates emotional resonance, you have been moved  to take some action.  It is like participating in a conversation.  If you are not activley engaged you will listen quietly,  when something resonates with you, you will interject with a comment or ask a question.

Knowing what is able to trigger activity  in a social network is valuable.

A friend connection indicates you have a relationship.  The nature of that relationship can be determined by the information you have provided.   The  people in your network may be colleages, school chums or family. The aggregate of  what you and your friends value along with all the other information you have shared paints a picture of your shared culture.

What facebook is collecting is our values.   What do we value enough to like, follow a link, post on a wall or mention in our status messages.   The information can be used to track the changes in our cultural value systems.  As our culture changes so does our behavior.  According to  Peter Kruse, a German professor and psychologist.   There is a time  lag  between  our culture as expressed by our values and our behavior.  So if my friends and I impulsively agree that an iced mocha looks yummy.  We are likely to follow up with a purchase someday.

We know that social networks can have powerful effect.   Valdis Krebs’ case studies explore the role of our social networks in influencing  smoking cessation, obesity and divorce.    He has shown that Social Network Analysis  can  uncloak  the connections in the 911 terrorist plot and analyze the relationship dynamics of large companies.

We create culture.    Facebook collects it.

Imagine what we could do with it.

Partial notes from the video:

The most interesting part of reducing complexity is culture.  It is not the individual brain but it is already the sum of the individual brains.   When I`m looking at the individual brain.  I`m talking more or less abot the limbic system…

All these values … are in the value system of the limbic system.  This is absolutely  unconscious more or less and gives me the ability to decide without rational analysis.  I am in a very complex situation,  I am doing something and I`m doing this on the basis of all the intuitive knowledge of my own life…

The cultural value system is stabilizing the decision making process, not of one person but of groups of persons.  This is what the culture is all about.  Culture has the task to stabilizing people enough to  be able to interact, to be able to cooperate…

There are these underlying streams of value systems that are fare more stable.  So when I’m ready to measure the changing value system in the culture.  I’m two or three years ahead of behavior.  If you can get access to this data you can reduce complexity in the sense of anticipation not just the moment you are looking at…

Measuring the dynamics of the value system of groups.  Culture is nothing more than a word for this.  So when we are sharing value systems – we are sharing the culture.

We are able to understand each other.

Human networks are often represented as objects  linked through relationships.

Our natural inclination is to focus on the qualities and value of the object – the person.

What do we know of the connections – our human  relationships.

How can we assess and improve the value and quality of our relationships?

By focusing on the  development of the individual the organization as a whole benefits.  The personal assets of the individual shape the collective collateral of the group.  People benefit both personally and communally from the soft skills they acquire for building  quality human relationships.

Each person’s attentiveness to their interactions has a cumulative effect.  This is an essential component for the development of a healthy culture from which  collective intelligence can emerge.

A social organization is the characteristic pattern of relationships within a group. Developing competencies in relationship building and engagement help us navigate the cultures we  participate in.

Communities where individuals show up as themselves, and genuinely like the people they engage with, are better able to adapt, evolve and  flourish in a changing environment.

A framework which supports the growth of human relationships includes the following:

Intrapersonal Development

The first relationship to consider is your relationship with yourself.    Who are you?   What do you value?  What are your competencies?   Self awareness  guides our  personal development, helping  us bring our best, authentic self to every interaction.

Interpersonal Relationships

The way we interact with others builds trust and connects us.  The quality of a relationship is determined by  each interaction.  It is important to understand interpersonal dynamics and the behaviors that grow strong social relationships.

Group Dynamics and Culture

The purpose and culture of a group, shapes the roles we take and our behavior within it.  As we engage in groups,  mindful of our roles and interactions, we are able to contribute effectively.  Collectively we  have a fertile environment for innovation, one that is productive and adaptive to change.

Collective Intelligence

We come together socially to do or  build something that we could not do on our own.  The many become one.  The end result is collective intelligence, a shared intelligence, that emerges from the  interaction of many individuals.