Doculabs

BP’s reaction to the worst oil spill in U.S. history is going to go down in the textbooks as a case study not only in how not to do environmental response, but also in how not to do crisis management. (See the Computerworld article: “BP, in crisis mode, misses social networking target”.) The whole snafu is an object lesson in why an organization should care about defining and implementing a social computing strategy – a strategy that includes both external- and internal-facing components.

External-facing use of social computing — social media — is the one that most organizations seem to understand. It tends to be regarded as an extension of the Marketing Communications function, used primarily to make effective online outreach.

And there are plenty of service providers to help them do it. Recognizing the transformation that the communications environment has undergone, public relations firms have transformed themselves to provide services in this area. Traditional journalism having taken a significant hit, the PR industry has geared up to exploit channels such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube as a way of shaping the headlines on behalf of clients (that would be the online headlines). They’ve beefed up their practices with social and digital media services such as “Online Crisis Management” or “Online Reputation Management” or “Digital Public Affairs.” Many PR firms are now relying on these new services as a way of building their businesses, as their clients struggle to figure out how to make use of these unfamiliar new tools as part of their overall strategies for managing brand reputation and driving positive messaging.

The J-schools and the B-schools have responded in kind, offering PR and marketing majors a wide range of courses in the new communications channels and social computing technologies, in addition to studies in traditional media.

So there are, and will continue to be, plenty of professionals to help organizations use external-facing social media. But only the most forward-thinking organizations seem to be considering the role that internal-facing social computing can play — in the form of social collaboration.

Social collaboration tools can be used to facilitate internal communications, sharing of information, and sharing of expertise within a company and with key partners. Wikis, blogs, microblogging, shared workspaces, expertise management: These are the tools that are touted for their ability to enable more effective collaboration in day-to-day operations. Doculabs has consulted for a number of global organizations that are looking to put in place social collaboration capabilities and are doing so with exactly these objectives in mind: to bring together the best practices from across the organization and to make the knowledge and expertise of the company’s best minds accessible to those who need it, when they need it.

I don’t know about you, but it strikes me that in the middle of a crisis or a disaster (e.g. the one now unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico), these are exactly the sorts of capabilities that could be the difference between success and muddling through – or not.

When BP oil began to enter the waters of Florida, one of that state’s U.S. Senators, Bill Nelson, had much to say about the poor quality of communications. “The information is not flowing,” he said. “The decisions are not timely. The resources are not produced. And as a result, you have a big mess, with no command and control.” There would appear to be quite a few constituencies involved in this particular crisis who are not getting the information they need, when they need it – for whom the knowledge and expertise are not as accessible as they could (and should) be.

(Of course, this presupposes the knowledge and expertise are there to be accessed. As Joe Nocera points out in his NYT column Talking Business – In 2 Accidents, BP Ignored Omens of Disaster …, during the years BP was acquiring oil companies, it had a habit of firing  the most experienced of their engineers. But that’s a whole other can of worms.)

In the meantime, the message should not be lost on other organizations, in other industries: These Enterprise 2.0 technologies aren’t just PR tools. Enterprise social collaboration tools have a critical role to play within an organization, serving the information needs of employees, wherever those employees happen to be stationed, whenever timely delivery of information is of the essence. And at times of disaster, that role can be to ensure the flow of information and the availability of valuable expertise, geared toward bringing efforts together to collaborate and solve a problem. Call it internal-facing crisis management.

After all, which crisis is the more critical one to be managed?