The Next Great Extinction Event

Change typically percolates for a long while in the distance somewhere, then sidles into the periphery of the mainstream but doesn't catch on all that fast, and then, eventually, what was "change" a while back starts to gain steam and become accepted. In other words, change is often slow, as most processes are.

Except when it's sudden.

Sudden change is called an extinction event. Think of the dinosaurs. 65 million years ago, they were everywhere, these lumbering beasts that ruled the land, the sea, and even the air. 64,199,000 years ago (give or take), all we had left were some lizards, some little birds, and a few gators, their cousins. There was nothing gradual or gentle about the end of the dinosaurs at all. They were here, and then an asteroid* smacked into the earth, and then they were gone. Just like that.

Extinction events aren't that common, but when they occur, they're scary and exciting, all at once. They're unrelenting. And nothing is the same after the event. Nothing.

Social Media is an asteroid. It has struck the earth. 20th-Century businesses... those are the dinosaurs of our time. And their time has come.

The business climate is changing at such a pace that few people can even recognize it yet. Say the words social media, and most people will reply, "Oh yeah, Facebook," without a second thought, followed by, "So what?"

So what? Here and in future posts, I will tell you so what. I've been playing with and studying this dramatic trend closely for two years now, and it's much bigger than I originally realized. To begin:

1. Customers aren't just getting empowered; they now have all the power - and they have only begun to flex it. When a company screws up, they tweet and post and broadcast it throughout their networks in seconds. Within hours, the offending company has a huge, very public black eye that wipes away the effects of millions of dollars of paid advertising.

2. Out of necessity, companies are changing to actually be better, not just seem better. This transformation seems like a glacial event for those of us caught up in it, but just a few years from now, mark my words, we'll look back and the social revolution will astound. "How did companies ever get away with their 20th-Century shenanigans?" we'll ask ourselves. "Why did we ever put up with that?"

3. Recruiting talent is going to transform right before our eyes, as if by magic. For all time, employers have promised the world to new recruits and often delivered very much less once new-hire training lets out. No longer. Though slow emerging from the freeze of the Great Recession, people are once again on the hunt for better situations - and they're relying on their social networks to find out the truth about potential employers. Like it or not, management will have to become more enlightened just to stay in business.

4. One important aspect of this is that management will have to ease its grip on the reins of power. Before this brave new century, information was power. Now, information is ubiquitous. Savvy companies are already using the full brain-power of their staff, solving business issues with social collaboration tools that bring a competitive advantage that old school, command-and-control organizations simply can't compete with. In order to stay alive, firms will have to embrace social for the human talent it unleashes.

These are just a few of the ways social media is already transforming the global economy for the better. Short of the eradication of the Internet (and of electricity?), there's no going back. Dinosaurs, you've only got a short window left to evolve, or it's all over for you.

Your comments, below or via Twitter, are always immensely valuable to me as I continue to develop my thoughts in this direction.

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Read Three Trends, One Direction for an earlier post on this topic.

*Asteroid? Disease? Whatever the cause, something killed those big beasts.