The date is February 14th 2012, and something extraordinary has just occurred in Toronto. Jeremy Lin, newly promoted point guard for the New York Knicks, hit a buzzer-beating three point shot to win a basketball game. Never before has this been done, except for every other time it’s been done (several thousand, on a ballpark estimate). But what’s extraordinary about this particular moment, is that nobody expected it to come from the Asian-American, Bay-Area native and Harvard graduate who in a matter of weeks had morphed into a “Linsationally” revenue-generating asset for the Knicks’s organization. A month ago he was sitting on the bench. A year ago? Sitting on another bench. Presumably, the kid was capable of making that three-point shot all along. Missing was the platform to demonstrate said capability.
This essay isn’t about basketball (just written by an analogous-prone basketball nut who can’t throw away an apple core without doughtily stating “Jordan, fades back…!), it’s about the cultural restrictions placed on individuals, as well as organizations, when platforms to demonstrate talent aren’t readily available. We live in a demonstratively hierarchical society in which patience is a virtue and opportunities are earned. I don’t propose to discount the value of working towards opportunity, but there is certainly an argument to be made against doing so on mute. In a rapidly innovative business world, no asset holds more potential value or ROI than the “idea”.
Every speck of human capital held by a company is an investment in its purest form. However, too often do companies view these investments like a fixed-income bond with a predictably given return, grossly underestimating or even neglecting the potential for extraordinary underlying value growth. From lowly intern to lionized executive, each and every employee is an innately idea-generating asset viewing an organization’s operations from a unique perspective. It would be insane to think that all great ideas are only internally unleashed in the human mind once a given human has reached an “executive” title amongst peers. And yet that’s the cultural norm in many businesses: pools of untapped talent, lingering in the hierarchical climb. Fortunately for me, and fellow recent graduates, things are a changin’.
The social media revolution is an organically youthful movement. Everyone knows the story of Zuckerberg not exactly waiting his turn to capitalize on an idea. While “social media” can be interpreted as many things, at its core is a simple vehicle to express voice and character. Suddenly everyone is a celebrity in their own right and everybody has a window to display talents. Social media has clearly accomplished a marked changed in socialization. However, there is still far more potential in the overall movement, primarily on the business spectrum. Enter David Sacks, and the team at Yammer.
In bringing social media to the corporate world, Yammer not only fuels a necessary revolution in operations-enhancing symmetrical communication, but fully fosters an atmosphere where ideas can flourish. I was immediately intrigued by a story I heard when watching (via YouTube) a presentation by Yammer CEO, David Sacks. The story was about a young employee at a global research company who was located in Perth, Australia, far away from the rest of the enterprise. This individual was particularly motivated with a passion for sharing his insights and ideas. As a low-level engineer, in a very remote area of Australia, his Yammer profile became the second most viewed in the company, trailing only the CEO. Clearly this was an immensely talented young man, but without Yammer as a platform to display these talents, it’s unlikely his potential would have been granted the opportunity to flourish at that level. From my perspective, without going into the logistical details of what Yammer offers as a product, this is exactly the value Yammer offers: a vehicle empowering the individual to reach full potential, and subsequently do the same for the enterprise as a whole.
Imagine the innovative evolution our entire business culture would experience if full value could be received from each employee across the economic board. Combine these individuals into team-oriented companies and the potential for serendipitous idea-generation is boundless. Looking at Jeremy Lin, the New York Knicks probably saw a given level of athleticism, field goal percentage, and propensity to score. In normal operations these factors all marginally attribute to the ultimate revenue-generating goal: winning basketball games. What was unforeseen is the massive publicity and ancillary revenue generated by that particular individual through the ensuing “Linsanity”. The great unknown potential within any organization is impossible to see when the opportunistic lights are dimmed. Now, given the natural five player restrictions of a basketball game, it’s reasonable that Jeremy Lin didn’t immediately receive his opportunity to shine. However, in a typical business, these personnel limitations should not, and don’t have to exist. Yammer unleashes, and fosters, the plentiful seeds of ideas held in any given enterprise. By opening communication across the board, hierarchical limitations are significantly diminished to the point where every individual is granted the opportunity to prove their immediate value. So when in (analogous) need of a three-point shot at the buzzer, Yammer puts everyone in the game.