EMEA Reporter: Julian Stodd on The Rise of Social Authority by Nic Laycock

“The ecosystem we live in has changed. The response to the new environmental pressures must be felt throughout the height and breadth of the organization. It is about co-created and co-owned change at every level. People will be loyal if we earn that loyalty. People will engage if we make learning engaging. People will stay with us if we are fair and kind.”

Co-creation, democratized communication, co-written stories—and more.  All of these are concepts Julian Stodd, co-captain of SeaSalt Learning uses to describe the new ecosystem he believes is the Social Age. Julian’s mission in life is to facilitate meaning and understanding in a new enterprise world. He sees a world where many, if not most, of the paradigms that used to shape and regulate the workplace have become redundant, overtaken by a new, fluid, and unexpected environment.

Figure 1: Julian Stodd

So, “Why SeaSalt?" I asked Julian. He says, “The simple answer is that we all live by the sea, but it's far more than that. SeaSalt  is about exploration, questing, questioning, and curiosity in the Social Age. Our new world is global, and the concepts of ports and harbors at stopping points on the journey provide great illumination of the changing world. We are not a hierarchy, we are a community, sailing together—a true crew, dependent on each other for performance and insight.”

So what is this new paradigm that Julian perceives? “Learning is situated in the workplace. Tribal knowledge is owned by the community. Even in the case of a formal learning program or a cycle of an online blended approach (such as an on-boarding campaign), evolution occurs through community interaction. To be engaging in this space, we have to revisit our core approaches to design, moving towards more scaffolded, co-creative approaches.”

That idea fundamentally challenges our traditional views of organizations, governed and regulated through hierarchy, structures, rules, and a fundamental direction of the enterprise through organizational power. The social authority that Julian now sees as the norm is contextual and consensual: granted and moderated by the community, not a hierarchy of power. It is fundamentally about reputation—created through humility, storytelling, and sharing. ”Knowledge is power” is an extinct idea. Life now is about doing something meaningful with the knowledge freely available and curated in our communities.

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