Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A How to Be Book, 28 Jan 2012
At the heart of Euan's wonderful book is the context for why anyone should take the risk of going public with their lives and their organizations's lives. Euan talks about what you do so that by the doing you can learn to BE a more grown up person or organization. "Growing Up" is a central theme. For most of us - me back in my corporate stage - are so child like. So much "Look at Me!" And the "Me" is not you but what you think it should be. Euan shows us how you can find the real you again by using social media well. He reminds us that being vulnerable and compassionate in public enables us to "write ourselves into being". So the person who does this reclaims what actually makes us most attractive as a person - that we are who we are - and this does the same for an organization. This perspective is what is so valuable. Most of the so called Gurus miss this and focus only on the doing. I think that this reveals that they don't really understand. It is only "Look at me" on steroids. Also most of the so called Gurus also have never achieved anything real in the field other than to collect fees. Euan is the real deal. A true pioneer whose work at the BBC in groundbreaking. This is a book born from the real struggle and the ups and downs of finding out what works or not at a time when all of this was new. Finally Euan is true to what he asks us to try. His own humanity shines through very page. Like the true master he is, he does not have to shout out. His deep understanding also is revealed in how he has distilled his thoughts. There is a quotable gem in nearly every paragraph. I all but blew up the commenting system with my own favourite moments . [...] My fave quote - "By changing within we can change what is outside. In fact this is the only way we can change what is outside - despite decades of management theory to the contrary. Blogging can help people to understand themselves and their work better and by doing so help them to change at a profound and fundamental level. Once more people become more self-aware you will be amazed at what starts to happen. Sure there will be an initial period of awkwardness, but over time tensions will reduce, energy will increase, and disputes will be resolved more quickly. In effect we will start to grow up and take responsibility..." If you seek to find out how you can be more of who you are - this book is for you.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant guide to making social media work inside organisations, 22 Feb 2012
This review is from: Organizations Don't Tweet, People Do: A Manager's Guide to the Social Web (Kindle Edition)
OK, let's get the declaration of interest out of the way. First, I consider myself a technologist and second I have met Euan, just once, a few years ago at an event where he was speaking. My organisation was trying to understand what to do with and about social media and I was fortunate, subsequently, to be involved in the project that put some of Euan's expertise to good use. We did a few of the things he described in this book but we also made lots of mistakes - classics, all of them. I have also worked in and with many organisations also trying to either exploit or banish social media - all of us could have done with this book to guide and challenge our approach. 'Social media' is a phrase that can certainly get most IT professionals going. Challenged as they are to do more with less, embrace the cloud, allow staff to plug in their own devices and have access to work emails on their iPhones. Then some nutter turns up and starts asking for a corporate Facebook site and demanding to use Twitter, blogs and wikis at work! Euan presents an interesting take on this scenario. IT Departments, often seen and cited as a barrier to social media use at work are a child of the organisations they work for. As God (allegedly) made man in his own image, so did the corporate hierarchy with the IT Department. Euan presents powerful arguments as to why these structures are fundamentally flawed and explores a number of aspects of normal human behaviour. He considers why the workplace of today seeks to suppress these behaviours; getting us to act in a very dysfunctional way. We substitute management speak for natural language and we use process and protocol to eradicate the risk of an emotional response. We labour long over "dust-covered strategies that paint compelling pictures of a world that never happened." Lord knows how many of those I wrote or contributed to over the years! So this is not a technician's guide to the social web, such a book would probably be out of date before the ink was dry. "Start small, aim high" is the message. Euan talks of cultural change: "a social revolution made easier by technological change"; not of a technological revolution. So why, as a technologist, should you read this book? Euan has an important message for us: "The goal of conventional IT has been to manage information in structured ways that reflect the business models of their organizations. The loose, networked, unpredictable environment generated by social tools is a considerable challenge to them. Indeed if there is a single biggest block to making social media happen encountered by my clients in large organizations it is their IT department." This is a challenge to which the IT industry needs to respond positively. Euan's book is primarily about people, fundamental human behaviour, corporate thinking, the lost art of conversation and revolution. This book is a challenge and an opportunity, to those of us with the chance to help define the kind of work place the next generation will inherit. I for one would like it to be different from the one I have occupied for most of my career. And, if this is all a bit too 'soft skills' for you and too far removed from the bottom line; Euan closes his book with the assertion that `social computing is capable of taking 25 per cent out of the running costs of most businesses.' So this book will not give you the answers, but it does ask some difficult questions and will hopefully prompt you to do the same. Available as an ebook or conventional hard cover, it is an easy read with - as Euan himself says - each chapter "intended to be just long enough for a visit to the executive rest room". I read the entire book on a smart phone a few chapters at a time (but not in the rest room I hasten to add)! I highly recommend this book to those who are already in tune with social media for business, those who think they are and of course to the naysayers who think social media has no place in the world of work.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
5.0 out of 5 stars
Old way, new way, hybrid way - you choose, 13 Feb 2012
A simple question mark, for me, symbolises the difference between the old way and the new way of managing and working. The old way is about command and control and hierarchies while the new is about personal responsibility and networks. The old way was predicated on authority (whether deserved or not) and the new way on inspiration. The question mark I mentioned represents the difference between being closed (do it my way) and open (how do you think we should do this?). Given a choice, who would you prefer to work for - someone who bosses you or someone who inspires you? These, and numerous other thoughts, are what Euan Semple's "Guide to the Social Web" triggered. I reckon that if a book shifts your thinking in a significant way, then it's worthwhile. That makes Semple's book extremely worthwhile. It's a book about management thinking much more than a book about the tools available, although they can't be totally avoided. And it's rooted in practicalities, although you may find yourself resisting some of them. I'd say, "keep an open mind until you've read the whole book." I'm someone who's been actively involved in social web stuff since just before I first met Euan in early 1985 and I've held several management jobs as well as being a writer and a columnist. (Yes, that's partly a disclosure - I interviewed Euan for a magazine article about his experience of introducing social networking tools to BBC employees and we've stayed in touch ever since. I also mention it to show that I have lived through the old way and the new way and have a certain perspective.) I've always, right until I read this book, been a bit wary of Euan's evangelistic tendencies. But he's drawn his conclusions from the university of hard knocks and tends, when conversation time is short, to be long on conclusions and short on explanations. But this excellent book changes all that. It is a book of profound depth which reveals his innermost thoughts on each of his conclusions and practical suggestions while staying humble enough to acknowledge that other ways may suit certain organisations. He's convinced, though, that successful organisations will all adopt social tools to a greater or lesser degree. This book is a way to accelerate management's insight and understanding of what the social web means and the potential it holds for transforming the workplace. It is not a black and white book that says, "do this, or you're doomed". Semple knows that companies have their own systems and their own ways of doing things and, indeed, that social web tools can be complementary rather than replacements. It is a business book, aimed at business managers. And it's written in a way that each short chapter is designed to stand alone and can be read on the train, in the bath or wherever else takes your fancy. This inevitably causes some minor repetition, which you notice if you read it straight through (as I did). And, one chapter left me slightly puzzled about something, but this was the topic of the very next chapter. So I was only puzzled for a few minutes. Have I got any complaints about the book? Well one, I really don't like the white type on a grey background which is used to introduce each chapter. Anything bigger? Hmmm. I wondered why he didn't mention 'search' very much. Then I realised that he's much more in favour of asking questions and getting recommendations than wading through search hits of variable quality.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
