A social business captures value by empowering its people – employees, customers, partners – to contribute to its processes, products and services. Opening up to new resources allows businesses to incite new ideas for innovation while deepening relationships with constituents. Social technologies enable employees, customers and partners to have a voice in business matters. By allowing more people to participate in processes, businesses must learn to relinquish control.
Over the past few months, I have been writing about how a command and control management style acts as a barrier to socializing a business. Command and control management styles demotivate employees and it prevents them from speaking up. This style, which has its foundation in the military, protects the power of a select few while suppressing groundswell movements. Hence, command and control management styles appear to be at direct odds with social business. Social business is egalitarian by nature, and everyone participates and has a voice. This openness to opportunity and fresh ideas is what leads to moments of serendipity.
I had previously viewed command and control as the same until Charlene Li of Altimeter Group offered a different perspective during her presentation at our recent Social Business Summit. Charlene asserted that leaders of modern organizations must master giving up control, but not command. The distinction between the two words is slight, but critical. Control is having the power to force someone into action. Command is having the authority to direct someone into action. Compared to command, control has a more negative connotation. Leaders who seek to control events often do so by leveraging fear tactics or by limiting access to information. This tactic will backfire with social technologies, which are built to empower all participants to share information.
Leaders who command, do so from a strategic position. Establishing command feels much different than taking control. A commander guides people into action, not coerces people into action. This means leading by example and motivating employees, customers and partners to act positively on behalf of the business and of their own will. Our own social psychologist Kate Niederhoffer spoke at the Social Business Summit about the power of promoting positive behaviors in nurturing a social business. In this scenario, a leader maintains order by reinforcing desired behaviors while ignoring those deemed undesirable.
Unlike operational control, operational command requires trust. In fact, trust often eliminates the desire to control. Building and maintaining trusting relationships with employees, customers and partners is critical for business leaders. This is why I believe that trust is the key element of social business. Once a leader trusts his or her people to do the right thing (assuming people will do good most of the time with proper incentives), he or she can establish command by guiding and supporting behaviors that will bring desirable results.
How is the trust level in your organization? Is your leadership about control, or are they in command?
