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Today I have been asking myself this question:

Who puts into practice all the top tips we’re gifted with through our plentiful social media streams?

Last year I conducted a little experiment.  It was motivated by a theme that runs through a lot of my work – choosing to be smart about how we manage our working lives and the vast amounts of information we encounter on a daily basis.  The experiment was this: I had booked a longish holiday but wasn’t savouring the thought of returning to an overly full inbox of emails to process.  Before I left for the holiday, I cancelled my subscriptions to updates, newsletters etc.  In short, I didn’t miss much of what was being delivered to me, and it was a good chance to refresh or ‘re-relevance’ the slate.

Now I am doing another experiment based on the question above. I read at least five to ten ‘top tip’ articles a week.  Some of them really offer little gems that we all could use to maximise our enjoyment of life and work. I am intrigued to find out how much of the advice we receive every day on Twitter and LinkedIn is put into practice.

Here are some of the titles of recent ‘top tip’ articles:

▪    4 ways to fast track that promotion

▪    5 ways to make your employees hate you

▪    10 tips to a more professional Linkedin profile

▪    11 rules of highly profitable companies

▪    12 tips for team building

▪    33 ways to be an exceptional entrepreneur

Jeffrey Pfeffer spoke about a ‘knowing – doing’ gap. We know what to do, we just aren’t closing the loop and doing it for better results.

Using the hashtag #DoingGap, through my twitter account (@gaylinjee), I am going to turn the ‘top tips’ from these articles into questions, to see who is actually putting them into practice and with what effect.  Join me and add your own answers.  I’d love to hear them.

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In Why Being Social Makes You a Better Leader, Geil Browning talks about a new era of leadership where relationships and social connectivity matter more than ever before for powerful leadership.
Agree?
She says a social, relational approach is going to take you places, and that’s characterised by:
  • intuitive thinking
  • care for how decisions affect people
  • orientation toward relationships and a desire to get things done through people
  • a collaborative, team focused approach
  • an ability to connect ideas and work to people.

The last 3 points are most interesting.  We have powerful new tools at our disposal.   Ideas, people and social technologies are all growing up together, creating something that’s different from before.  That’s powerful.  A leadership revolution is drilling its way up through the core of ‘the way things used to happen around here’.

I like these words from Jane McConnell (@netjmc):
‘Certain social capabilities disrupt the way organisations work, challenging hierarchical management.  HR no longer controls the definition of expertise: experts emerge in discussions in internal social networks.  Communication no longer completely controls the message, the target and the timing: employees share information and make announcements spontaneously in blogs and discussion groups.’
The bird at the top of the perch is no longer necessarily the leader.
Social leaders can be anywhere.
This blog was first published in Aug 2013