The first point that caught my attention was that “the real Geek Squad secret sauce is the people and how they collaborate.” The authors go on to describe that the reason the company is able to retain such talented workers is because of branding and the fun workplace ethos that Stephens, the head honcho, has cultivated. As we discussed in class, I think an important part of getting the most out of a group of employees to create competitive advantage is incentivizing those individuals for motivation. Professor Kane said that “even if you build it, they may not come…” meaning that people won’t work extra hard to improve business if they are not being rewarded or recognized for what they are doing. In this particular article, it is explained that Stephen’s has “learned to engage his agents in a continuous process of innovation and improvement that keeps agents motivated to perform at their highest level.” Even as a person who is not intending on entering the business world, I have taken away from this course as well as Computers in Management last year the important fact that you always need motivation, encouragement, and incentives for success. The best part about learning this is it actually applies to my desired career as well—I’m going to school to be a teacher which depends tirelessly on those three elements to get students to do their best in the classroom. The only difference is employees are helping to better a company and expand business while students are working to better themselves and expand their knowledge. That said, a great lesson taken away from this article.
Going off of that point, the article notes that “agents” of the Geek Squad never cease to surprise and amaze their boss. One can speculate that this is because of the encouragement and incentives for innovation and improvement. However, I was surprised to find out that while Stephens was expending time and energy on creating a wiki to use for internal collaboration, the employees had already established their own way of working together, sharing ideas, spreading knowledge, and formulating new ideas. I am not surprised that people came up with it on their own, because that is the brilliance of this age of social media, but shocked that their boss had no knowledge of the collaboration they were engaging in on a regular basis. This, too, relates to Professor Kane’s presentation in that Stephens was trying to build a wiki and it wasn’t gaining impetus through the company because, in reality, the employees had no need to use it. They found something better that worked for them and enabled hundreds of people to communicate at once. Live video games…who would have thought. Just a few weeks ago I was making fun of my 21 year old brother for constantly chatting with friends and strangers through a video game platform.
In recognizing that employees uncovered an undoubtedly clever way of collaborating, Stephens claimed that “instead of trying to set an agenda…[he would] discover their agenda and serve it.” This brings me to my last point. In class we discussed that while social media tools for business use have to be accepted and supported from the top, they are often introduced, adopted, and leveraged from the bottom up. Employees will, whether we like it or not, collaborate and communicate in the way they want, when they want to. This is undeniably a grassroots movement, and as future managers, we should not stifle their creativity. As summarized by Tim Bray at Sun Microsystems, “the technologies that come along and change the world are the simple, unplanned ones that emerge from the grassroots rather than the ones that come out of the corner offices of the corporate strategists.” This fact, along with many other realities regarding social media, challenge traditional notions of business and render them obsolete.
Thus begs the question, are old ways of conducting and managing a business being completely flushed down the toilet, or will society revert back when the hype of social media has escaped its citizens?
I give this article a 9 out of 10!
That is an excellent question that you raise at the end of your blog. I think companies will find some sort of balance. Social media will be used in companies when it is necessary but I don't think it will do away with all of the old ways of doing business.
ReplyDeleteFrom this article I found reinforcement for the point that it is not always the technology but how it is used that best benefits a company. Rather than use a company Wiki that was surely pretty handy, the workers just utilized a technology that they all already had to collaborate. In reality the usage of online gaming really saved Geek Squad a lot of money. Instead of learning to use a Wiki and learning how to on company time, the workers use their own time to play on a system they bought while casually discussing the things that their boss would have encouraged.
ReplyDeleteI also agreed with you that the old way of doing business or running organization would not be away; however, the real wiki workplace is happening at the moment, and workplace of organization is definitely changing. According to my experience, I worked at the digital marketing company over the summer, and we basically applied the change into our real workplace. We shared a schedule on Google.Docs, and discussed about books on Ning.com as commenting each other's opinions. I also believed that face-to-face communication and doing business is crucial, so it is not going to be away, but the wiki workplace will make the business web or workplace of organization more efficient in a certain way.
ReplyDeleteHeejin Kim
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ReplyDeleteAs technology is constantly changing, so is the society in which we live. In a society that is continuously evolving, it is human nature to learn and to adapt to our surroundings. As such I feel that we never completely do away with the old nor wholly adopt the new. Rather, we tweak and adjust new ways so that they are the most relevant and effective in the environment which we work.
ReplyDeleteJess I think yours is a great question, and one that has been raised over the years with the only difference being the context. When computers were new to the scene, many companies probably asked themselves whether or not paper and files were obsolete. Now with social media, companies might be questioning the necessity for face-to-face interaction.
Prof. Kane mentioned that social media is indeed a fad, and like any fad it rushes in and fades out with time. I think that in the workplace managers and employees are doing what they've always done: adapting. It doesn't mean they completely abandon old ways if they're working, but they learn to embrace new ways if it means improving their corporations or in this case, internal organizational structure and culture.