Defining the word SOCIAL

Tom Friedman had an interesting point in his column last Sunday in the New York Times (One Country, Two Revolutions).  Sort of the tale of two cities - - Wall Street is being rattled by a social revolution.  The 99% have become rather openly upset with the remaining 1%.  The other city, Silicon Valley, is being transformed by another revolution - - a techno-revolution taking the world from connected to hyperconnected and individuals from empowered to superempowered.

Friedman quotes Marc Benioff, the founder of Salesforce.com - - Benioff describes the current phase of our techno-revolution with the acronym SOCIAL.  Which stands for:

• S is for speed.  Everything is now happening so much faster.
• O is for open.  If you don't have an open environment inside your company or country, these new IT tools will blow you wide open.
• C is for collaboration.  This allows people to organize themselves within companies  and societies into loosely coupled teams to take on any kind of challenges.  From engineering a new product to engineering the takedown of a government.
• I is for individuals.  People are able to reach around the globe to start something or collaborate on something farther, faster, deeper, cheaper than ever before.  Not as a component in an organization, but as an individual.
• A is for alignment.  Per Benioff - - "There has never been a more important time to have all you ships sailing in the same direction.  The power of social media is that it is easier than ever to both articulate and reinforce, the vision and values that create and inspire alignment."
• L is for leadership.  Leadership in the techno-revolution is a mix of bottoms-up and top down.  Leaders need to inspire, enable and empower everything coming up from below in a company or a social movement and then edit and sculpt it with a vision form above into a final product.