Well, Salesforce.com said it first: the social organization is to become THE NEXT business model and we all better adapt to it. Now analyst firm Gartner Inc. agrees and will explain their point of view at their current Orlando Symposium (going on now till Oct 20).

The presentation at the Symposium is backed up by “The Social Organization: How to Use Social Media to Tap the Collective Genius of Your Customers and Employees”, a new book by two Gartner GVPs. The book/ presentation in Orlando include thoughts like:

• Being a social organization goes far beyond experimenting with social media technology tools such as Facebook and Twitter.
• A social organization addresses significant business challenges and opportunities using social media platforms to enable mass collaboration, i.e. how work will get done around the world in the future
• Mass collaboration extends beyond social media to enable employees, customers, suppliers and all other stakeholders to participate directly in the creation of value.

However, few executives and managers know how to turn opportunities for greater collaboration into meaningful business results, concludes Gartner. Actually, my view is that so far close practically none actually does it right, other than perhaps companies like Facebook and Salesforce.com themselves who are extremely agile and adapt swiftly in response to social information to implement their long term strategic plan.

In their brandnew book, “The Social Organization: How to Use Social Media to Tap the Collective Genius of Your Customers and Employees” (Harvard Business Press) , which came out just earlier this month, Anthony J. Bradley and Mark P. McDonald, both GVPs at Gartner, reveal how executives from CEOs to managers can make mass collaboration a source of enduring competitive advantage in their enterprise.

“Deployed effectively, social media unleashes the collaborative power of employees at all levels and locations in your organization, customers and prospects, and partners anywhere in your company’s value chain — while minimizing the constraints imposed by the specialization and compartmentalization that inevitably creep into businesses as they grow,” says Bradley.

“Organizations can achieve unprecedented business results by using social media to effectively tap into the power of mass collaboration,” McDonald added. “New mass collaboration capabilities are irreversibly redefining what it means to be a highly productive organization.”

In the book, Mr. Bradley and Mr. McDonald share insights from their study of more than 400 organizations around the world — including Xilinx, NASA and CEMEX — that have used social technologies toward these ends. Mr. Bradley and Mr. McDonald identify a set of core disciplines that managers need to master to translate mass collaboration into results:

1. Vision: defining a compelling vision of progress toward a highly collaborative organization
2. Strategy: taking community collaboration from risky and random success to measurable business value
3. Purpose: rallying people around a clear purpose, not just providing them with technology
4. Launch: creating a collaborative environment and convincing customers and employees to embrace it
5. Guide: participating in and influencing communities as they pursue their purpose, without stifling collaboration
6. Adapt: responding creatively to change by modifying the organizational context, in order to better support community collaboration

“The Social Organization” highlights the benefits and challenges of using social technology to tap the power of collective effort. Packed with practical advice and compelling examples, this new book reveals how leaders can make collaboration a management imperative to help guide and nurture employee communities and in turn, create social organizations.

Both Mr Bradley and McDonald will present a session at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo titled, “The Social Organization: How to Build a Corporate Competency in Social Media” at 11:30 a.m. EDT today. During the session, Mr. Bradley and Mr. McDonald will discuss the specific capabilities that organizations must develop to compete in an increasingly interconnected social world. The authors will sign copies of the book following the session.

Additional comments from Mr. Bradley and Mr. McDonald from Gartner Symposium/ITxpo are available on the Gartner YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hrc70vc8ow and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmKEi3teGr4.

Social Media-based Q&A

In addition, the authors will host a Q&A session via Twitter on Thursday, October 20, as part of Harvard Business Press’ HBRChat series. To attend and/or participate, log on to Twitter from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. EDT on October 20 and follow #HBRChat. Questions can be submitted for the authors to answer by sending a direct message to @HBRexchange during the chat.

Buy the KINDLE VERSION now: The Social Organization: How to Use Social Media to Tap the Collective Genius of Your Customers and Employees Or get the HARDCOVER for your corporate library: The Social Organization: How to Use Social Media to Tap the Collective Genius of Your Customers and Employees