It occurs to me that one of the the biggest, and seemingly ignored, benefits of social business tools is the benefit to team dynamics. In simpler terms -- how well the team get along is a contributer (or hinderance) to team performance. Research shows that for geographically dispersed teams and virtual teams, social interaction is key to helping the team acheive high performance. (citation needed) It's genuintely important to have those water-cooler conversations and build relationships between team members. For the hardcore skeptics of SocBiz, there may be no direct value in personal micro-blog updates - but the improvement to team relationships and espirit de court translates into better performance in project work, better hand-offs for transactional work, and better general communication. The net effect of social media in the organization may be most powerful just in raising this soft, indefinable productivity.
More to come...
More to come...
