F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 3,Six social-media skills ,ever y leader needs,Roland Deiser and Sylvain Newton,Organizational social-media literacy is fast becoming a source of competitive advantage. Learn, through the lens of executives at General Electric, how you and your leaders can keep up.,The problemEven as individuals increasingly embrace social technologies, many leaders fear the r isks of unbridled information and see difficulties meshing the open dynamics of social media with existing communications processes.,Why it mat tersWhen leaders shy away from social media, they inhibit collaboration, knowledge sharing, and the tapping of employee capabilities that collectively can create a competitive advantage. ,What to do about itLeaders need to develop new social-media skills and help their organizations do the same. ,At the personal level, leaders must be able to produce compelling, authentic content; master the new distribution dynamics; and navigate infor-mation overload.,At the organizational level, leaders should encourage usage through thoughtful orchestra- tion and role modeling, become architects of a social-media-friendly infrastructure, and stay ahead of rapid technology shifts. ,2,Few domains in business and society have been untouched by the emerging social-media revolution—one that is not even a decade old. Many organizations have been responding to that new reality, realizing the power and the potential of this technology for corporate life: wikis enable more efficient virtual collaboration in cross-functional projects; internal blogs, discussion boards, and YouTube channels encourage globa l conversat ions and knowledge sharing; sophisticated v iral media campaigns engage customers and create brand loyalty; next-generation products are codeveloped in open-innovat ion processes; and corporate leaders work on shaping their enterprise 2.0 strategy. ,This radica l change has created a dilemma for senior execut ives: while the potential of social media seems immense, the inherent risks create uncertainty and unease. By nature unbridled, these new communicat ions media can let interna l and pr iv ileged informat ion suddenly go public v ira lly. What ’s more, there’s a mismatch between the logic of participatory media and the still-reigning 20th- century model of management and organizations, with its empha- sis on linear processes and control. Social media encourages horizon- tal collaboration and unscripted conversations that travel in random paths across management hierarchies. It thereby short-circuits established power dynamics and traditional lines of communication. ,We believe that capitalizing on the transformational power of social media while mitigating its risks calls for a new type of leader. The dynamics of socia l media amplif y the need for qua lit ies that have long been a staple of ef fective leadership, such as strategic creat iv ity, authent ic communicat ion, and the ability to dea l w ith a corporation’s social and political dynamics and to design an agile and responsive organization. ,Social media also adds new dimensions to these traits. For example, it requires the ability to create compelling, engaging multimedia content. Leaders need to excel at cocreation and collaboration—the currencies of the social-media world. Executives must understand the nature of dif ferent social-media tools and the unruly forces they can unleash.,Equally important, there’s an organizational dimension: leaders must cult ivate a new, technolog ica lly linked socia l infrastructure ,33,that by design promotes constant interaction across physical and geographical boundaries, as well as self-organized discourse and exchange. ,We call this interplay of leadership skills and related organizational-design pr inciples organizat iona l media literacy, which we define along six dimensions that are interdependent and feed on one another (exhibit).,Our clearest w indow on the development of these new forms Q 1 2013Media Literacyof literacy is Genera l Electr ic, where one of us is responsible for Exhibit 1 of 1leadership development. Witnessing GE through this lens is ,Exhibit,The six dimensions of social-media-literate leadership.,Personal level,Develop creative competence (authenticity, storytelling, and artistic vision),Hone technical skills (especially video production) ,Enable and support 360-degree environment in social-media usage,Coordinate and channel activities within span of control,Strategic/ organizational level,Understand cross-platform dynamics and what causes messages to go viral,Build and sustain a body of social followers,Producer,Adviser,Distributor,Architect,Recipient,Analyst,Balance vertical accountability and horizontal collaboration,Leverage social media for key business functions ,Create resonance via selective replies/linking,Make sense of the noise through intelligent filtering,Monitor dynamics of social-media industry,Understand cultural and behavioral impact,4,par t icularly interest ing; unlike Google or Amazon, GE isn’t a digital native, and its 130-year tradition of reinventing businesses and itself makes it wor th watching. So does GE’s status as a “leadership factory.” ,GE’s commitment to social media is perhaps most visible through its digital platform GE Colab, designed by GE employees for GE employees to facilitate global teamwork and collaboration. GE Colab combines the capabilities of Facebook, Tw itter, and other social applications, allowing easy networking, information sharing, instant communication, advanced search, blogging, v ideoblogs, and more. Launched in 2012, the platform has already attracted more than 115,000 users.1 ,To get a sense of how executives deal w ith these new realities, we interviewed GE officers of various businesses and regions. These leaders and their organizations are at dif ferent mileposts along the journey to social-media literacy, just as dif ferent companies are. In aggregate, though, they described a rich range of ef forts to build personal skills, experiment w ith technologies, invest in new tools, expand employee participation, and shape organizational structures and governance to capture emerging social opportunities. We drew on those experiences to illustrate the six-dimensional set of sk ills and organizat iona l capabilit ies leaders must build to create an enterprise level of media literacy—capabilities that will soon be a critical source of competitive advantage. ,1. ,The leader as producer: Creating compelling content ,With video cameras achieving near ubiquity and film clips uploading in the blink of an eye to YouTube or other plat forms, the tools for producing and sharing rich media are in everyone’s hands. GE’s Video Central now houses thousands of v ideos, many created by top leaders. More than a few executives have started to incorporate v ideo streams into their blogs. As v ideo communication rises in importance, effective leadership will increasingly require the kind of ,1 See Ron Ut terbeck, inter v iew by Rober t Berkman, “GE’s Colab br ings good things to the company,” MIT Sloan Management Review, sloanrev iew.mit.edu, November 7, 2012.,55,GE Colab combines the capabilities of Facebook, Twitter, and other social applications, allow ing easy networking, information shar ing, instant communication, advanced search, blogging, v ideoblogs, and more.,creative skills we know from the world of “auteur” filmmaking—an authentic voice, imagination, and the ability to craf t compelling stories and to turn them into media products that make people take note and “ lean forward.” To engage in rea l t ime on a persona l level, executives will also need the technical skills to master the basics of digital-multimedia production, including how to shoot and, if necessary, edit v ideos.,Mark Begor, who runs GE Capital’s real-estate business, was nervous when he shot his first “unplugged” v ideo message. “I was used to a studio environment where I could do several takes and have editors polish what I wanted to say.” That unease soon vanished w ith practice. He now routinely produces a weekly five- to ten-minute video for his division. “I talk about what I learned during the week, about a great dea l we’ve closed, and the status of the business. I a lso add comments about employees that I want to recognize.” Begor says that this routine forces him to crystallize his thinking and that creat ing shor t stor ies people can relate to makes him more aware of his strategy and communication.,As Begor and others have discovered in this process, the logic of par t icipator y media is str ik ingly dif ferent from that of tradit iona l corporate broadcast media, where each and every piece of com- munication gets perfectly craf ted. Too much perfection is actually a barrier to collaboration and cocreation, as it disinv ites participa- tion. To thrive in the world of social media, leaders need to acquire a mind-set of openness and imperfection, and they must have the courage to appear “raw” and unpolished—traits that may be as ,6,cha lleng ing for them as developing the creat ive and technica l-production skills. ,2. ,The leader as distributor: Leveraging dissemination dynamics ,Business leaders have traditionally disseminated information along a controlled, linear chain that begins af ter the development of a forma l meaning-creat ion process—think of how your company creates and distributes memos explaining new initiatives. While tradit iona l distr ibut ion pathways won’t disappear, socia l media revolutionizes the standard information process by reversing it. Social communication makes distribution the starting point and then inv ites company audiences to cocreate and contextualize content to create new meaning. Messages are rebroadcast and repur- posed at w ill by recipients who repost v ideos, retweet and com- ment on blogs, and use fragments of other people’s content to create their own mash-ups. ,As the (vertical) broadcast media and the (horizontal) participatory media converge, leaders need to master the interplay of two fundamenta lly dif ferent paradigms: those of the tradit iona l chan- nels, which follow the logic of control, and of the new channels, where it is essent ia l to let the system’s dynamics work w ithout too much direct intervention. Since executives won’t be able to govern or control a message once it enters the system, they must understand what might cause it to go v iral and how it may be changed and annotated while spreading through the network. Distribution com- petence—the ability to influence the way messages move through complex organizations—becomes as important as the ability to create compelling content. ,Equally important is the skill of creating and sustaining a body of social followers who help to spread and reinforce the message. It becomes cr it ica l to know who an organizat ion’s key—and of ten informal—influencers are and to leverage their authority to push content through the right channels. Finally, leaders must recognize their role as redistributors of the content they receive, so they can leverage the communication continuously happening around them. ,7,Lorraine Bolsinger, v ice president and general manager of GE Av iat ion Systems, acquired these sk ills through exper imentat ion. She began blogging a few years ago but initially didn’t get much response. “It took t ime to get my audience act ively involved,” she recalls. “I had to find my voice and become more conversational, more easygoing.” To increase the a llure and sustainability of the dia logue, she eventua lly created a “360 blog,” where a ll her direct reports blog w ith her on the same platform. This networked blog, w ith 12 regular contributors, prov ides additional points of v iew on issues, promotes more frequent communicat ion, and attracts broader participation. Bolsinger says that the quality of her group’s dialogue about strategy and operations has improved thanks to these ef forts. ,3. The leader as recipient: Managing communication overflow ,Social media has created an ocean of information. We are drowning in a never-ending flood of e-mails, tweets, Facebook updates, RSS feeds, and more that’s often hard to navigate. “There is too much noise out there,” says Stuar t Dean, CEO of GE ASEAN,2 who is an active blogger and tweets regularly about issues in his market space. “I’d use Tw itter much more as a source of information if I could get exactly what I need.” ,Dean’s sentiment is echoed by most executives we know—many of them barely find time to catch up w ith their daily e-mail load. What to do? As a first step, leaders must become proficient at using the sof tware tools and settings that help users filter the important stuf f from the unimportant. But play ing in today ’s turbulent env iron- ment requires more than just filtering skills. ,In traditional corporate communications, consumption is a mostly passive act: you are pret ty much lef t a lone to make sense of messages and to assess their authent icity and credibility. In the social-media realm, information gets shared and commented on within seconds, and executives must decide when (and when not) ,2A ssociat ion of Southeast A sian Nat ions.,8,to reply, what messages should be linked to their blogs, when to copy material and mash it up with their own, and what to share with their various communities. The creation of meaning becomes a collaborative process in which leaders have to play a thoughtful part, as this is the very place where acceptance of or resistance to messages w ill be built. ,“You have to see the entire communication universe, the interplay of traditional and social media,” says Bill Ruh, head of GE’s Sof tware and Analy tics Center. Just as leaders suf fer from overflow, so do their people. “A s a leader,” says Ruh, “you have to develop empathy for the various channels and the way people consume information.” ,4. The leader as adviser and orchestrator: Driving strategic social-media utilization ,In most companies, social-media literacy is in its infancy. Excitement of ten runs high for the technology ’s potential to span functional and div isiona l silos. But w ithout guidance and coordinat ion, and without the capabilities we discuss here, social-media enthusiasm can backfire and cause severe damage.,To harvest the potential of social media, leaders must play a pro- act ive role in raising the media literacy of their immediate repor ts and stakeholders. Within this 360-degree span, executives should become trusted advisers, enabling and supporting their environment in the use of social tools, while ensuring that a culture of learn- ing and reflection takes hold. As a new and media-sav v y generation enters the workplace, smart leaders can accelerate organizational change by harnessing these digital natives’ expertise through “reverse mentoring” systems (see later in this article).,Steve Sargent, president and CEO of GE Australia and New Zealand, believes that social media is reshaping the leadership culture by pushing executives to span geographic boundaries, engage more closely w ith stakeholders, and amplify the impact of employees at the periphery. Over the past five years, as proof of concept, Sargent has established a mining-industry network that cuts across GE’s businesses and regions, linking informal teams that use social plat- forms to collaborate on solving customer needs. GE employees in ,9,Brazil, for instance, now work with colleagues in Australia to develop products and ser v ices for customers doing business in both countries. The network’s success led the company to elevate it to the status of a full-fledged GE mining business. “Markets today are complex and multidimensional, and leadership isn’t about control but about enabling and empowering networks,” Sargent says. “The type of leadership we need finds its full expression in the DNA of collaborative technology, and I am determined to leverage this DNA as much as I can.” ,To achieve this goal, leaders must become tutors and strategic orches- trators of all social-media activities within their control, including the establishment of new roles that suppor t the log ic of networked communication—for instance, community mentors, content cura- tors, network analysts, and social entrepreneurs. Organizational units that leverage the new technolog ies in a coordinated and strate- gically aligned way w ill become more v isible and gain influence in a corporation’s overall power dynamics.,5. ,The leader as architect: Creating an enabling organizational infrastructure ,Leaders who have steeped themselves in new media w ill testify that it requires them to navigate between potentially conflicting goals: they must str ive to establish an organizat iona l and technica l infrastructure that encourages free exchange but also enforce con- trols that mitigate the risks of irresponsible use. This is a tough organizational-design challenge.,Most companies have a defined formal organization, w ith explicit vertical systems of accountability. But below the surface of org char ts and process manua ls we find an implicit, less manageable “informal organization,” which has always been important and now gets amplified through socia l media. The leader ’s task is to marry vertical accountability with networked horizontal collab- oration in a way that is not mutually destructive. ,This challenge is reflected in GE’s policies, which embrace the value of shar ing exper t ise and perspect ives w ith family, fr iends, colleagues, customers, and other stakeholders around the world. ,10,Tools for producing and sharing videos are now in the hands of many executives, who can upload recordings of meetings (such as this one) to an internal server that employees can access.,© Image cour tesy of GE,With this openness comes a shared responsibility: employees must obser ve GE standards of transparency and integr ity, refrain from speaking on behalf of the company without authorization, and be clear in their social messaging that their views are personal. ,In this spir it, creat ing a socia l architecture that prov ides a mean- ingful space for internal and external interactions has been an ongoing mission for Andrew Way, v ice president of GE’s Oil & Gas Drilling & Surface Div ision. “I love the social-media stuf f,” he says, “so I surround myself w ith an organization that supports it.” ,In Way’s last role in the division, he and his team launched a video project about the history and current timeline of the business. Since the v ideos are shared w ith customers, team members must make choices about which content can cross external boundaries. “It’s an ,11,evolv ing thing. Every quarter, the team adds a new segment that features important things that happened in the last three months. It has resulted in a continuing story, and people look forward to every new version.” ,Way says that the v ideos have united div ision members around common goals, helping to bring new employees on board and making everyone more proficient in using new media. “Three years ago, an ef fort like this would have used PowerPoint w ith a standardized font. It clearly has created a new culture.” Boosting engagement with stakeholders such as customers is an added benefit, since videos of ten include them in segments to help tell stories. ,6. ,The leader as analyst: Staying ahead of the curve,A s companies star t to digest the consequences of the Web 2.0 revolution, the next paradigm shif t is already knocking on the door. The next generation of connectivity—the Internet of Things—will link together appliances, cars, and a ll k inds of objects. A s a result, there w ill be about 50 billion connected dev ices by the year 2020.3 This transformation w ill open new opportunities, spawn new business models, and herald yet another major inflection point that leaders must manage. ,It ’s imperat ive to keep abreast of such emerg ing trends and innovations—not just their competitive and marketplace implications, but also what they mean for communications technologies, which are fundamental for creating an agile, responsive organization. Execu- t ives who monitor weak signa ls and exper iment w ith new tech- nologies and devices will be able to act more quickly and capture the advantages of early adoption. ,GE’s leadership university, Crotonv ille, is leading a number of initiatives to help top executives stay ahead of those changes. One example is a program called Leadership Explorations, launched in 2011 to suppor t cont inuous learning for top execut ives and ,3 See Michael Chui, Markus Löffler, and Roger Rober ts, “The Internet of Things,” mck inseyquar terly.com, March 2010.,12,The next generation of connectiv ity w ill link together appliances, cars, and all kinds of objects. This transformation w ill open new opportunities, spawn new business models, and herald yet another major inflection point that leaders must manage.,organized in locales connected w ith a specific strategic-leadership theme. In Silicon Valley, leaders are immersed in a range of cutting-edge technologies. Part of the program there involves “reverse mentoring,” which connects media-sav v y millennials w ith senior GE leaders to discuss the latest tech buzz and practice. Many partici- pants continue to exchange insights long af ter the formal session is over. Exposing seasoned leaders to the millennial mind-set encourages them to experiment w ith new technologies—which, in turn, helps them better engage w ith up and comers.,Clearly, these are early days. Most companies recognize social media as a disruptive force that will gather strength rather than attenuate. But social-media literacy as we define it here is not yet an element of leadership-competency models or of per formance rev iews and reward systems. Equa lly, it has not yet found its way into the cur- r icula of business schools and leadership-development programs. ,This needs to change. We are conv inced that organizations that develop a cr it ica l mass of leaders who master the six dimensions of organizational media literacy will have a brighter future. They w ill be more creat ive, innovat ive, and ag ile. They w ill at tract and retain better talent, as well as tap deeper into the capabilities and ideas of their employees and stakeholders. They w ill be more effective in collaborating across internal and external boundaries and enjoy a higher degree of global integration. They will benefit from tighter and more loyal customer relationships and from the brand ,13,equity that comes w ith them. They w ill be more likely to play leading roles in their industries by better leveraging the capabilities of their partners and alliances in cocreation, codevelopment, and overall industry collaboration. And they w ill be more likely to create new business models that capita lize on the potent ia l of evolv ing communications technologies.,It takes guts to innovate radically in leadership and organization, for legacy systems, cultures, and at t itudes are power ful forces of inertia. Fortunately, the inherent quality of social media is a power ful transformat iona l force. Socia l-media engagement w ill confront leaders w ith the shortcomings of traditional organiza- tional designs. Leaders who address these shortcomings w ill learn how to develop the enabling infrastructure that fosters the truly strategic use of social technologies. When organizations and their leaders embrace the call to social-media literacy, they w ill initi- ate a positive loop allowing them to capitalize on the opportunities and disruptions that come w ith the new connectiv ity of a net- worked society. And they will be rewarded with a new type of com- petitive advantage.,Roland Deiser is a senior fellow at the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University and author of Designing the Smar t Organization: How Break through Corporate Learning Initiatives Drive Strategic Change and Innovation (John Wiley & Sons, October 2009). Sylvain New ton is the GE Crotonville Leadership Senior Leader for Business and Regions. ,Copyright © 2013 McKinsey & Company. All rights reserved. We welcome your comments on this article. Please send them to quarterly_comments@mckinsey.com.,
