I have thought for a long time that for society to gain the maximum benefits from social media many current cultures in a typical corporate structure would need to change. From legal to finance, HR to PR, the ways of the last 100 years would need to change if transparency is to be rewarded, and improvement was to be an accepted continuing process.

I also believe that social media is more a movement than a marketplace. Not just a tool for someone to exploit, but an opportunity to engage in more of our shared humanity. Today, the actions of one courageous healthcare leader solidified that belief.

Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, has been a prolific blog writer since October 2006. Levy’s blog is called Running a Hospital.

On it he has had an open discussion about his hospital, its work, and his own performance. This openness about successes and failures has received acclaim in the press, praise from many and murmurs of dubious wonder from others. I know from speaking with many in healthcare during presentations and meetings there are some who wonder how Levy can get away with being so transparent.

It’s simple, he is about improving, every day, throughout his hospital, profession and life. He is also, it seems, sincere about caring for people, both those in the care of BIDMC and those employees who are on the frontlines of healthcare delivery. This has infected the other cultures around him so that they too are committed to a cause of caring in an environment that rewards improvement.

Paul Levy, President and CEO Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

credit Globestaff/Pat Greenhouse

This however, is not a rose colored glasses story about how social media is improving medicine, while it maybe true, this story is about how social media is making better people of us. It is a story about the human desire to be a part of something larger, to be acknowledged as of value and connecting to each other.

Levy doesn’t use corporate speak; his writing is about real situations, from surgery procedures to improving the use of protective equipment, from the joys of a moonlit backyard to numerous stories of hospital employees.

It is with this foundation of candor, this unprecedented transparency that Paul Levy stood at the front of an auditorium full of employees who came to hear his decision about laying off workers during difficult economic times.

Instead of an announcement, he asked for their opinion of a potential solution that may avoid layoffs. Levy travels his hospital corridors plenty, enough to know how many people it takes to deliver quality care. To keep the level of personnel that he believes necessary to deliver quality care, he asked the following as reported by Kevin Cullen of the Boston Globe.

“I’d like to do what we can to protect the lower-wage earners – the transporters, the housekeepers, the food service people. A lot of these people work really hard, and I don’t want to put an additional burden on them. “Now, if we protect these workers, it means the rest of us will have to make a bigger sacrifice,” he continued. “It means that others will have to give up more of their salary or benefits.”

The reaction according to Cullen was “Thunderous, heartfelt, sustained applause. “

The seeds of this applause were sown in the many places and people that Levy has touched. A fertile field for all to see is his blog with hundreds of posts. I believe this body of work, the hundreds of comments, and the dialogue he has participated in with patients, employees, supporters and critics are a measure of the man.

Which brings me to the cultures that need to change, for transparency to work in an organization, there needs to be a mutual respect and a commitment to improve. In reading the comments submitted to the blog from the Boston Globe story, listening is a major quality of Paul Levy. It’s not a coincidence that listening is also an important quality to have in a successful relationship and I believe social media is merely a channel for relationships.

Much of America has a very long way to go to eliminate the culture of “gotcha,” of confrontation, a culture of “keep the info, keep the power.” All these insecurities and tactics of greed will hinder the benefits of what social media can bring to an organization and our society. With each blog post, each honest answer to a criticism, each good idea raised and implemented, the organization becomes stronger.

This defining moment is an example of how powerful social media can be in the hands of people who are committed to make things better. Thank you Paul Levy and the wonderful people of BIDMC.

Time 12:48

A misnomer of social media is how some interpret the definition of transparency of information. It doesn’t mean opening your kimono for all to see your company’s warts. (For some this can be an unpleasant experience both on the opening end and on the viewing end) Transparency does mean to give insight, context, and comment on company strategy, industry trends, global events, internal personalities, and other topics of interest to your stakeholders and audiences.

Shel Holtz and John C. Havens thoroughly explore this topic in their new book Tactical Transparency: how leaders can leverage social media to maximize value and build their brand. Social media allows for deeper discussions about a wide range of topics. I liken transparency to a sports color commentator.

Let’s take football for example. Forty years ago when I watched football with my dad, it was a Sunday afternoon event. I grew up in New York so it started around noon. Today football has become a daily stream of information, from game day strategy, nickel packages, and counter treys to injury reports, weather impact, and nutrition regimes. Teams are not giving away their plays, signals, or secret weapons, but they are providing or allowing insights to the game that has made it more engaging for the fan.

Bottom line, transparency gives more for your stakeholders, customers, and other potentially interested parties to engage your company. You become a more interesting party with which to have a relationship, and business is all about the relationship.

Note: If you are interested in buying the book, Havens has created a super deal for Tactical Transparency. www.ttoffer.com – read this first, then make your purchase.

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I enjoyed George Colony and Forrester’s exceptional work in research and analysis for more than a decade. Like Colony, I have lived through the 90s enterprise tech ascent and the ‘01 free fall. Recently Colony listed 5 reasons this tech recession will be different.

Colony contends that technology will be down but not out in part because technology is more prevalent in our daily lives than in the past. Let me highlight his fourth reason by citing it directly here because it involves social media, Colony writes,

“4) Customers live on tech. The consumer landscape is very different than it was in 2001. Forrester’s consumer surveys show that each succeeding generation takes more tech into their day-to-day life. The delta between the Y generation (18-27) and the X generation (28-41) is extraordinary — Y spends twice the amount of time on cell phones and half the amount of time reading newspapers. For more on this, check out our report, The Gen Y Design Guide. In a recession, the use of Facebook, Linked In, eCommerce, blogs will increase, not decrease, as people look for jobs, companies stay closer to their customers, and easier-to-ROI Internet advertising accelerates. Companies will have to stay focused on their web sites, social strategies, and eCommerce this time around — or risk losing their next generation of customers.”

Colony accurately believes social media is a general platform upon which millions of people live and work. I however, believe business and sociey can maximize the benefits from these technology platform by expanding social media’s greatest contributions (freedom of expression, connecting ideas, allowing for deeper thought) to reach other corporate culture silos. What is missing from this observation, perhaps assumed by Colony, (I’m not one to doubt GC) are corporate culture shifts that are required to maximize the benefits experienced by society from this rich, broad space called social media. Here are three areas that need a different paradigm for companies to benefit from social media.

1) Hierarchical View - (Advertising & Marketing) The corporate view that the social space is more or less like a mass market with “A” listers, and media properties and through aggregation services to net the small fish, it can become something with which they familiar. This is an old and tired perspective. Allow social media to breadth within and around your brand so the company and its people can absorb the influential ideas surrounding it.

2) Short-Sighted View – (Finance) The 30 day and quarterly “make the numbers” rat wheel that was prevalent in the 90s, and led to all kinds of PR an accounting schemes to make the numbers work, (Enron seems so long ago doesn’t it) are an imposed deadline. ’

Tell me really, are innovators really driven by a deadline? Do cancer researchers really need another goal that involves a stock price for their reward or do they get up every morning to beat a disease that claimed their parent or child, or stimulates their intellect to the point of obsession? Patience is a human virtue that seems to have little relevance in an economic world. That perspective needs to change.

3) Human Capital View – (Human Resources and just general office politics) Let me preface this one by saying, it could be a naïve pipedream. The last 20-30 years has seen and escalation of divisive communications. It’s not limited to politics or election year cycles, these topics and times just call more attention to it. The divide and conquer mentality is a function of economics, in vogue trends, work environments, two generations of 24-hour news cycles, the entertainmentization (new word) of news, and plenty more. What it has created are cultures that hinder innovation and foster a “gotcha” environment under the guise of accountability.

In numerous companies bureaucracy is stifling innovation. In some cases their customers and employees circumnavigate the obstacles using social media, gain some wins to run up the flag, and pray those that see it will have enough backbone to be their champion. A skunk works mode of innovation to be sure, and not one that has been accepted by the corporate culture allowing it to multiply.

Transparency Continued

Admission of a mistake openly serves the greater good, e.g. Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital’s wrong side survey as blogged by their CEO Paul Levy. His leadership should be recognized as it was by US News and World healthcare editor and writer Avery Comarow he wrote, “Levy has been agitating for more transparency for some time… Others should emulate this. I doubt that many will.”

This transparency should also be held as an example across all of corporate America. Hhmm we can we begin, oh yes I did quick search in the social media monitoring tool Radian6 using a rather limited word combination of transparency + bailout, it was mentioned more than 20,000 times in the last 30 days. Yes more transparency may have prevented the Wall Street Meltdown, nice catch to all those concerned.

So if we are to be transparent we need to be what, less vengeful, less harsh, less quick in assuming that transparency = accountability that leads to punish by detractors waiting in the wings. That kind of environment defeats the purpose of transparency which is improvement and discussion. I’m not decoupling responsibility from accountability, I’m reinforcing that transparency is a function of improving, of shared learning, that makes something greater than the individual better.

Sometimes our divisiveness wants to conclude the case before hearing all the facts, understanding the intent, learning from the mistake. Sometimes human nature instinctually pounces on prey that is bleeding instead of supporting its healing.

Maybe I am a bit naïve about the transformation social media can help bring about in corporate America and society. Perhaps George Colony is wrong when he asserts that people will spend more time connecting online with Facebook, LinkedIn and the like, that the youth generation intensify their friend relationships by being constantly connected with their phones. And perhaps Forrester was wrong in 2007 when they said that Facebook marketing means communicating not advertising, as does all social spaces I contend. Perhaps T Boone Pickens is just a rich old man with nothing to do. (He is leading a huge social network of passionate followers of new energy)

If we are wrong, then all this social stuff is just another channel. Direct Mail, 1-1 marketing, email marketing, it’s just another one of those Meatball Sundaes to use Seth Godin’s term. Then have at it spammers of the world, congratulations because nothing will change, innovation will stay about at the same pace as always, unless of course the rest of the world catches up to us and then it won’t stay the same here now will it? It’s what my generation of wiseguys would call SSDD.

I, however, think differently. And you?