In the beginning, business and commerce were social exchanges—if you sold poor products, people would bad-mouth you and shun your operation, forcing you out of business or pushing you to improve your offering. We have always bought things based on who else bought the same product. That is why the most popular songs are also the most successful. Perhaps more important, we buy things based on the opinions of others who observed the original buyers. But as commerce scaled (and by scaling, we mean growing exponentially), and firms and multinational organizations arose, the social infrastructure did not expand with them. You could still bad-mouth a bad product, but the impact of that social action remained very local and had little effect on the success of that product. Buying because of what others bought or because of what others thought of the buyers became a little easier, but it was still fairly local in nature as well. The social disappeared from business and commerce, allowing some companies to develop bad habits in how they sold their goods and how they treated their customers, prospects, and employees.
With the rise of social media, which provides a massive platform of participation and a social infrastructure that is finally catching up with the commerce infrastructure, the social element is reentering commerce and business with a vengeance. People can now claim a share of voice that is equal to or larger than that of companies, employees can now develop support networks that cross the traditional hierarchical organization charts, and people can once again behave the way they were hardwired to behave in business and commerce—tribally, humanly, and socially.
To understand the changes that are afoot in the world of business, you are better off understanding Human 1.0, which took tens of thousands of years to develop, rather than Web 2.0, which took merely a decade. Throughout human evolution, we developed characteristics and reflexes that allowed us to behave Hyper-Socially—to become the only Hyper-Social species that could work cooperatively with individuals who were not our brothers or sisters or otherwise related to us. There are other species that are Hyper-Social, such as bees and ants, but within their very large societies, they are all brothers and sisters. There are also species that can act socially across kinship lines, but they do so only in small groups. Humans can be social across kinship lines on a city, national, or even global scale, resulting in our being the only species that can act Hyper-Socially on a large scale, without everyone being related.
Humans are not a species that is characterized by individual action, nor has our species been so successful solely because of individuals. Humanity’s development has been characterized more by our innate drive to live in groups, to work together for common goals, to compromise, to extend favors, to value fair treatment, to care what others think about us, and to bond with others more often around common beliefs or goals than around common genes. This Human Hyper-Sociality surpasses even the intensely cooperative behavior of other social species because we are not constrained by having to be related to other members of our pack or hive. We can belong to multiple packs or hives simultaneously (we call them tribes), and therefore we can communicate with, innovate with, and cooperate with far more individuals. Given the flexibility, scalability, and fluidity of that sort of Hyper-Social behavior, it is clear why humanity has managed to create what it has.
It is the growth of this Hyper-Sociality, enabled by social media and new communication platforms, to levels never seen before that is changing business as we know it. So, then, what should you and your organization do about it? After all, Hyper-Social human relations can be pretty messy and unpredictable, and companies like order and predictability.
Our research shows that those companies that embrace Hyper-Sociality and those executives who drive their organizations to become Hyper-Social will likely be best positioned to deal with volatility, marketing effectiveness, uncertainty, globalization, growth, innovation, and other issues that are currently top of mind with most CEOs. It will be Hyper-Social organizations that are poised to emerge from the current deep economic recession as the new titans.
This book is about doing business differently in a Hyper-Social world. We will define what a Hyper-Social organization looks like and how you can transform your organization to become fit for the future. Based on the extensive research data that we have collected as part of our annual Tribalization of Business Study (sponsored by our respective companies, Human 1.0 [formerly Beeline Labs] and Deloitte, as well as by the Society for New Communications Research), in which we surveyed and interviewed more than 500 companies to understand how they leverage communities as part of their business, we will review the benefits that major companies are deriving from leveraging tribes and communities and from becoming Hyper-Social.
While anthropologists talk about “tribes” and sociologists talk about “communities,” we will use the terms interchangeably. We will use case profiles of well-known companies to highlight the perils of resisting these inevitable changes. After reading this book, you will better understand the impact of Hyper-Sociality on your human capital needs and your organization chart, and grasp the management skills that you will have to develop. We will also arm you with tools to benchmark your company’s “Hyper-Social Index” against that of your competitors and your different business units.
This book also relies on the research, scholarship, and innovation of a number of scientists, thinkers, and academics. Taking our concept to heart, we knew that only by Hyper-Socializing the researching of this book would we be exposed to all of the implications and opportunities presented by Hyper-Sociality. So we have drawn widely from others’ thinking on a number of topics, including behavioral economics, brain science, evolutionary sociology, and management theory, to build out our hypotheses. In addition, we have presented the ideas in this book at a number of conferences and to a number of business executives, and have used their insights to improve our theories. Many of these leaders in their respective arenas have graciously agreed to speak with us and to be interviewed, and you will see their thoughts appear often in the pages to come.
Finally, we agree with what Alan Webber, the cofounder of Fast Company and author of Rules of Thumb, told us when we spoke with him: “And one of the things that I’ve seen over and over again, is a change from leaders who have all the answers to leaders who know the best questions to ask.” In the spirit of this, we will end most of the chapters with guiding questions instead of classic summaries. We don’t profess to have all, or even most, of the questions when it comes to the Hyper-Social shift, but we hope that the ones we have will provoke discussion, collaboration, and further research. So whenever you find us starting to ask too many questions, bear with us. It’s our Hyper-Sociality showing.