My experience since I started working in the social media field is that the failures are where you learn the most as a community manager, a social media manger, a change manger, a professional and as a person.

Yet, organizations tend to have a low tolerance for failure even though it is failure that often leads to innovations and improvements in products, services or processes. Leaders often blame change managers or teams who do not control the source or circumstances which cause the “failure.” Having a low tolerance for small failures can actually lead to more catastrophic failures.

Though many orgs flaunt their “lessons learned” they are not all written down, distributed, or accessible depending on the enterprise architecture. Too often, these lessons end up on individuals’ computers, shared drives or locked away in portals and are not shared in order to prevent repeated mistakes. Most organizations lack the enterprise 2.0 tools that they need to help their workers become more efficient at their jobs.  This lack of tools can prevent individuals from learning from their previous missteps and reaching full productive work potential. There is also general lack of integrated risk management systems in business for employees to submit risks to the organization for tracking, sourcing and mitigation. The workers on the front lines of the change are often the first to see signs of trouble yet, in most org structures, they have the least interaction with upper management.

I think that the previous blog post by Tom is a great lead into this month’s discussion and #4CHANGE chat topic.  The 4Change Team thinks that this topic is a really important.

#4 Change September Chat Topic: Change Failure / Change #Fails

#4Change Chat Questions on Change Failure:

1. What is the value of failure?
2. What roles do change failures play in furthering larger change campaigns in organization?
3. What constitutes change failure / success inside and outside of your organization?
4. As a change/community manager, how do you handle separation / transition issues with the community and the organization?
5. How do failures in society, business and government affect change in non-profits?

Here are some background definitions to stir your thoughts about this months topic.

Failure (definitions from Visual Thesaurus):

• an act that fails
• an event that does not accomplish its intended purpose
• lack of success
• a person with a record of failing, someone who loses consistently
• an unexpected omission
• inability to discharge all your debts as they come due
• loss of ability to function normally
• condition in which there is a disturbance of normal functioning
• a mistake resulting from neglect
• your overall circumstances or condition in life (including everything that happens to you)
• an event that happens
• an act that does not achieve it’s intended goal

Success:

• an event that accomplishes its intended purpose
• an attainment that is successful
• a state of prosperity or fame
• a person with a record of successes
• the condition of prospering; having good fortune
• the act of achieving an aim
• an event that happens

Change:

• an event that occurs when something passes from one stat or phase to another
• a relational difference between states; especially between states before and after some event
• the action of changing something
• the result of alteration or modification
• a thing that is different phenomenon that follows and is caused by some previous phenomenon
• something done (usually as apposed to something said)

Please feel free to leave question and comments on this subject and if you have open case studies or links to resources on the topic. Cross-posted from Todd’s Zero Strategist  Blog.

WHY

Technology is exciting. It creates new possibilities, new platforms for expression, information-sharing and collaboration. And these new possibilities give rise to the hope, sometimes realized, often not, that we can move past old problems, hurdle the barriers to a better world in a sudden triumphant leap.

Technology does, indeed, change things, and those of us who have come together to organize the #4change twitter chats and write this blog are fascinated and excited by the changes social media is catalyzing. We believe that social media has given rise to the most explosive increase in human creativity and expression the world has ever seen, and that in this explosion there is the possibility to fundamentally remake some of our most intractable institutions and traditions: organizations, corporations, universities, government. And not just government but democracy itself. Not just universities but the way that people are educated. And, perhaps, not just corporations but capitalism itself and not just organizations but how social change happens.

But we are also mindful that technologies do not, on their own, a better world make. It is only the conscious, committed and creative uses of new technologies that will realize our hopes and fulfill our dreams, that will bring people together in new ways to together create a world more democratic, sustainable and equal than the one we found. Call us cautiously, hopefully, optimistic. That’s why we are here; because we are committed to this work and we recognize it as work, something to be honed and refined and improved by practice. This is the way change happens.

Not so long ago a new communications technology was born, conceived in university labs and fueled by military funding this new technology slowly began to pick up adherents, initially the geeky few but eventually a mass market was created. The possibilities of this new technology led many to naturally imagine the democratizing potential of the medium. Here are some things they said:

The new technology was “capable not only of transmitting but receiving, not isolating [the user] but connecting” them. Users would “jump around the world and wipe out for all time the age-old barriers of race and language and distance”. Government would become “a living thing to its citizens” and this would give us “a new kind of statesman and a new kind of voter.”
The technology being discussed here is radio and the quotes are from the 20’s and 30’s (and taken from “Future Active: Media Activism and the Internet” by Graham Meilke 2002). The radio spectrum of today is unrecognizable in these claims, overrun as it is by conservative talk radio and bland chart music.

Could this happen to the internet? In a word: doubtful. The internet is too open, too diffuse and too decentralized to become the barren landscape most radio has become. But it could fall well short of our ambitions. We, however, have a vote in how this plays out. we strongly believe that all of us, connected in ways previously unimaginable, can work together to create the future we seek.

Everywhere around the world social entrepreneurs, activists and organizers are using social media in new ways, experimenting in a vast social change laboratory, seeking the formula that will move their cause forward. #4Change seeks to document and contribute to this experimentation by creating a space for people from diverse backgrounds to discuss how to use social media to bring about change, bringing together experience of what has and hasn’t worked with imagination for what should be tried next. By sharing our collective knowledge, creativity and passion we can help ensure that social media lives up to its potential.

WHAT

#4Change emerged from a series of conversations about how to better connect social media for social change practitioners around the world using Twitter. The team now involved came together organically and magically, people gravitating towards the same idea and seeking each other out to work with. It’s a true honour to be working with all of them and we also welcome the contributions from everyone else, whether in the twitter chats, or in the form of comments or guest posts.

The centerpiece of our efforts will be the monthly twitter chat, taking place from 5-7pm US Eastern Daylight time, GMT-4. We have tried to find the best compromise between the worlds unyielding time zones and believe this is it. It requires those in Sydney to get up a little early to participate from 7-9am and those in London to stay up late for a 10pm start but it seems do-able to the maximum number of people. Of course it still falls very awkwardly for many and we’re sorry about that. We’ll look into moving the time around if there’s interest. In addition to the chat we’ll be using this blog to identify take-aways and key themes from each chat, announce upcoming topics and further explore issues, ideas and examples around social media for social change. We have also set up a delicious account where we will be collecting links of interest (if you’re a delicious member please tag suggested links “4change” and follow the tag).

WHO

Finally, who are we? We are Tash Judd @tashjudd, an old colleague from Vibewire who is now the Marketing Manager for YouthNet in the UK, Joe Solomon @engagejoe in Seattle, a well-known doer-of-good-deeds, Morgan Sully @memeshift who is organizing We Operate Best Together, a travel project documenting social innovation in creative hubs, blogs at http://www.memeshift.com (and is kind enough to host our blog) and is looking for a backers willing to support his project , Amy Sample Ward @amyrsward, the Global Community Builder for NetSquared, Todd Pitt @zerostrategist, Social Media Manager at MetroStar Systems and blogger at http://www.zerostrategist.com and Edward Harran @edwardharran, a social media consultant based in Brisbane, Australia. Oh and me, @tomjd, I’m the social media guy at Ashoka:Innovators for the Public in Washington DC and formerly founder of Vibewire in Australia. Read more about us on the Authors page.

We look forward to talking a lot more about these important issues with all of you!