In my last post I talked about how all media is social. Before I get to my examples in the next few days, I want to talk about the implications of these changes on institutions. Essentially, the process goes like this:

1. Institutions emerge, develop, become successful (or at least sustainable), and eventually become complacent.

    

2. Progressive and resourceful people develop new tools and methods to fulfill needs in an innovative way and do so outside the mainstream institutions and bureaucracy.

    

3. Constituent needs evolve and, eventually, institutions increasingly fail to fulfill those needs.

    

4. Some of those tools and methods evolve and are built upon until sophisticated constituents adopt them.

    

5. Popularity of these new constituent actions reaches a mass audience and institutions recoil in fear because their way of doing things is threatened by the new actions.

    

6. Constituents don't wait for institutions to catch up and continue to push forward.

    

7. Institutions make several failed attempts to change.

    

8. Eventually the change happens, albeit in a slow and painful way.

    

9. Constituents eventually adopt the institutions' solution, possibly with an unexpected player.

    

10. The process starts over again (see step 1).

     

When institutions try and fail to meet the new constituent needs, we witness a deceptive width of the chasm between the current state and the emerging state. In reality, the chasm isn't that wide. The real obstacle is the process and philosophical shift required to operate in an entirely new way.

As my colleague, Pete Kim, so eloquently said it, "many brands secretly fear that connecting with the community will lead to dilution and destruction."

So the real challenge is changing the organization, not meeting the new needs. We see the distance between these types of events get shorter every year, especially in recent years. The 'new organization' must embrace change as part of it's DNA — it's underlying structure must embrace an operating paradigm that enables ease of adaptation.