The Common Thread

Okay, I haven’t been posting here as often as I should, but it’s because I’ve been a bit pre-occupied with writing a book. Maddie Grant and I are in the final editing stages of a book called Humanize: How People-Centric Organizations Succeed in a Social World. The book was born out of conversations that Maddie and I were having for about a year, both online and offline, about the “social organization.” Social media is a big deal for organizations, but not just for marketing and communications. It is changing the way we run our organizations.

But as we started writing the book, we realized it’s not really even about social media. Social media just shines a light on the fact that we have been running our organizations like machines for at least a century, and that is no longer serving us. We argue that being human–being open, trustworthy, generative, and courageous–was one of the keys to the success of social media. More importantly, though, those elements also provide a set of organizing principles that can guide the way we run our organizations that is much more powerful than the status quo.

In the book we dig into each element in detail, discussing how human organizations address each issue at the levels of culture, process, and individual behavior. Once the book is out (in September), we will also have a set of worksheets that you can download–one for each of the four main chapters on open, trustworthy, generative, and courageous–to help you get started changing things, no matter where you are in the organization.

The book is available for pre-order now, and we do have the book website set up (though the worksheets won’t be there until September) at www.humanizebook.com. And I promise now that the book is done, I’ll have more time for blogging!