I get a lot of "my organization won't let me..." comments in training that I do. Steve Radick offers a wonderful response. Here's part of his post from yesterday. Visit him to read the whole thing:
"Don’t tell me it’s too hard or that your boss doesn’t know YouTube from an iPod. Those are excuses, not reasons. If YouTube is blocked where you work, get it unblocked. Write a white paper justifying why it shouldn’t be blocked. Meet with your boss about it. Meet with your boss’s boss about it. Start a blog where you talk about it. Volunteer to give a brown bag presentation to your office. Just DO something! Take the initiative and work on changing how your organization works - don’t just sit there sulking, saying, “I wish we could do social media here, but we can’t even get on Facebook so there’s no use.” Bringing social media to your organization isn’t something that happens from 9-5. It happens from 5-9, after everyone else has gone home...
Social media and government started not with some policy or memo from the senior leadership, but from regular people sitting in a cubicle who saw an opportunity and decided to do something about it. They didn’t see a policy prohibiting blogging and say, “oh well, I guess that ends that.” No, they pulled together briefings on why blogging was needed. They found examples of others who were doing it. They told anyone who would listen about the power of blogging. They got meetings with his bosses. They eventually changed the policy.
It’s time for you to be that guy and to step up, take the initiative and not let red tape and bureaucracy stop you. Don’t accept no as an answer and don’t let a couple unenlightened colleagues stop your drive to effect change. Stand out from the crowd and actually do something about it."
And I say A-men to that!!
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Jane - thanks for the shout-out and pingback. Glad you liked the post. That's one of my personal favorite posts that I've done because it really hits home for me. I lived in that world for my first two years at my company - "I can't do that because so-and-so said no, or that's against policy so, darn, I guess I can't do it."
I finally got so tired of all the red tape that made no sense to me that I started sounding like a little kid, asking "why?" to everything. Why is Facebook blocked? Why can't we use IM? Why can't we blog under our real name? A lot of times, there was no real answer - it was just "the way it's always been done." I've since taken it upon myself to effect real change wherever I'm working, to ask those questions and force organizations to constantly change and adapt to their people. In this day and age, we all have to realize that we no longer work FOR a company - we ARE the company.
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