Creative Class

Every year, Computerworld asks people in the geek community for their New Year’s predictions. The full article is here.

My responses included:

We will see social networking fatigue, but savvy users will continue to use platforms to build their personal brands. For most people, updating Facebook gets tedious, and your “friends” really don’t care which Hogwarts faculty member you are. Twitter takes a lot of work, although it can be a great personal brand-builder, with enough effort. LinkedIn is improving, mostly because of its Answers section; users can become well-regarded authorities in their subject areas by investing an hour or two per week posting thoughtful questions and responses. Plaxo? Please stop pestering me. You’re too far down my social networking depth chart for me to spend any time with you.

And

While the concept of a social networking guru might seem quaint by 2013 (do you have a photocopier guru in your office?), there is an opportunity in 2010 for people who really understand how to make social networking happen within the enterprise. While there are still a lot of carpetbaggers and “gee-whiz” cheerleaders playing in this market, I still find that there are a lot of people who don’t have a basic understanding of social networking and are reluctant to ask for help.

What are your thoughts? What will 2010 have in store for social networking?

There were some interesting comments on my last Creative Class post about the value of one’s social media presence and possible positive and negative effects on a career. One of the readers suggested that having two Twitter accounts makes sense – one that publishes professional material and the other is more personal and restricted to family and close friends.

When I deliver speeches on social media, I often explain the difference between social media platforms in terms of your closet. LinkedIn is a grey flannel suit and Facebook is a Hawaiian shirt. It’s important to have both, but if you show up in a boardroom in a Hawaiian shirt you look like a goof and if you show up on a boathouse roof in a grey flannel suit, you look like an ass. As a side note, several people have pointed out that often the guy wearing a bright floral shirt in a boardroom often owns the place, but that might be the exception that proves the rule.

Generally, LinkedIn should have the reserved, dignified tone of a resume but with fewer restrictions on format and length. Good profiles provide lots of search terms and plenty of recommendations. Although my personal profile might have gone too far in this respect. Beyond 50 recommendations takes someone a few exits past “let’s hire this guy”  and is careening towards “desperately insecure attention seeker”-ville.

Facebook allows more leeway for frivolity in the form of cheeky update status, personal photos, and non-business links (although, trust me… people aren’t interested in what Hogwarts faculty member you are). There are some downsides to inviting colleagues as Facebook friends. For example:

• Violating work-life separation.
• Constantly have to monitor content to make sure others aren’t tagging you in the vacation pictures you don’t want the guy in accounts receivable to see.
• Appearances of favoritism – why did my boss friend my colleagues and not me?
• “Banter competition” – if Facebook walls become the water cooler, am I putting myself at a disadvantage by not showing up?
• Offending people (maybe a customer or your boss) by not accepting them or putting them on limited profile (if they are paying attention, it’s easy to tell).

What are your guidelines for friending colleagues?

Many of us had the advantage of committing most of our really stupid behavior before the days when everyone at, say, a keg party had the ability to record and publish said misdeeds. There are lots of stories of people losing opportunities for jobs because of inappropriate material posted on social networking sites. In a well-publicized case, someone lost an opportunity after tweeting “Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.” Someone noticed it and responded “Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.”

On the other hand, having an impressive social media presence can be a huge asset for a job seeker. For example, being LinkedIn to important people in the field or people with buying authority builds one’s gravitas, regularly retweeting interesting articles makes one a useful resource, even clever Facebook updates give an insight into one’s creativity and personality. A good social media presence also improves traditional resume fodder,  a hyperlink to “please visit my blog” is better than “excellent written communication,” and “I am proud of the recommendations on my LinkedIn profile” is so much better than “references available on request.”

Have you experienced any social media snafus?

Social media, communications technologies, and more flexible workplace attitudes have been driving changes to the way we view our personal and professional lives.

A recent Knowledge at Wharton article examines the evolving etiquette as well as challenges surrounding the rise of mobile technologies, such as the Blackberry, as well as social media websites like Facebook and LinkedIn.

As Facebook, Twitter and 24-hour Blackberry access blur the lines between business and personal lives, managers and employees are struggling to develop new social norms to guide them through the ongoing evolution of communications technology. Wharton faculty and other experts say the process of creating rules to cope with the ever-expanding reach of modern communications has just begun, but will be shaped largely by individuals and organizations, not top-down decrees from a digital Emily Post. Generational differences in the approach to openness on the Internet will also be a factor in coming to common understandings of how and when it is appropriate to contact colleagues, superiors or clients.

The article then details some dilemmas – where do you stand?

1.  First, is there a time when “work” should stop and “personal life” should take over?  From the Wharton article:

For example, a Blackberry can allow parents to attend their childrens’ soccer games while remaining in contact with colleagues at the office in case an emergency comes up. But, [Nancy Rothbard] adds, “you have your Blackberry at your kid’s soccer game. That’s another … line you may be crossing.”

2.  Is it healthy to blur your personal self and professional self ?

…says Wharton marketing professor Patricia Williams, “There is the self we are for our friends, a self for our family [and] a professional self. What’s interesting is the degree to which we are comfortable playing all of those ’selves’ at one time.”

“I’ve heard people say that Facebook is for personal friends and LinkedIn is for professional contacts,” Williams notes. “But many of my Facebook friends are my colleagues – people who work just down the hall – and I don’t have a problem with that. I do, however, have some discomfort being ‘Facebook friends’ with my students, because it gives them access to my personal self that’s not normally available to them.”

3. Are younger people, today’s children up through college students, growing up with no separation between these different “selves”?  And what will this mean for the way we work?

Typically, business norms evolve through official policy disseminated by organizations and by “reality” that bubbles up from the organization’s grassroots. [Wharton Professor Monica McGrath] asks “The question is: How accessible do you want to be? [Today,] young people want to be very accessible, and in an international corporation you are expected to be available [around the clock]. Time zones mean nothing. The norms will continue to develop based upon generational leadership.”

To sum up, I expect that the line between personal and professional will become increasingly blurred. First, knowledge work is highly collaborative and it’s hard to work with people who you don’t like – therefore, people will forge friends through collaboration at work. Second, younger generations will have grown up with limited separation between their different personas.

How do mobile and social media technologies enhance or detract from your personal and professional life?