In a forthcoming book, “Social Capital at Work,” Burrows and Rachlin provide compelling examples of when social capital succeeds and a lack of that capital can lead to disaster. Most business books focus on financial capital and intellectual capital—and a person’s physical capital and maybe spiritual capital. But there’s a growing sub-genre of leadership treatises that deal with organizational leadership, dynamics and so on—a corporation’s social capital. Especially in a post-COVID age, when remote work peaked and all employees are struggling with how to be connected remotely, or onsite again or a hybrid of work locations. The plethora of team dynamic apps is also a new element for those generation of workers who are in their second, third or fourth decades of a career..
The authors describe eight “game plays” to grow and capture the benefits of social capital. They start with investing in people (just as you might invest in financial instruments or other capital assets). They end with notes on Artifical Intelligence. Each chapter gives you moves and action items to make for yourself and your team and your organization. It is a playbook. And as such you will learn how to “run” the play of drawing network maps to identify hubs, connectors, your “posse” and so on.
While they give voice to the importance of trust, they don’t provide a playbook for building trust. Without understanding the dynamics of trust and laying its foundation, all these plays may appear manipulative and backfire on the leader, sabotaging meaningful connections between coworkers. If the leader isn’t trustworthy, this book will not work.
Also, the reader using this book needs to dig deeper into solid corporate communication techniques. Burrows and Rachlin don’t spend time on the need for spaced repetition of aligning, mission-driven messages: repeat a thousand times and just when you’re sick of saying “it” that’s when the team will finally get “it.” Also, audience members singly need to hear different perspectives on the same message: the analytical background for the analyticals, the security and acceptance of failure in attempting change for the amiables, the immediate and intermediate action plan for the activators, and so on. They also need different media and different venues (large group, small group, one-on-one) in order to feel comfortable asking questions and expressing buy=in of the plan.
The book assumes an open door policy, but most leaders investing in social capital need to practice open tours: get out of the office and into your team’s work spaces to be available and to learn what they do, what they know, what successes and obstacles they experience. Perhaps if a social capital leader had practiced “open tour,” the stark, horrifying opening incident could have been avoided. A woman died at work and wasn’t discovered for several days. A team leader should have been making the rounds, or calling family to check on the employee. Besides the woman’s isolation at work, it’s also apparent she didn’t have social capital with anyone outside of work, where a frequency of communications (e.g. texts) and the lack of answer would have alerted a friend or family member that something was wrong. There’s more to this unfortunate accident than a lack of social capital at work. And don’t get me started on the ignorance of undercover bosses suddenly learning what the work is like in their organizations because they’ve never driven with one of their truck drivers, or waited tables in one of the restaurants or stocked shelves in their convenience stores.
For those who need to get new ideas in how to reap the rewards of investing in social capital, this book is helpful. If you’ve built trust, your teams will appreciate the new efforts.
I’m appreciative of the publisher for providing an advanced copy of this book.
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