One of management's big fears about social business is that employees could use it to...socialize. The standard answer to this is to tell senior leadership "no, no, no, when people are at work they generally use social software for work related tasks."

Business culture tends to reward personal initiative. While at first glance this seems like a no-brainer, this emphasis on the individual can lead to a "me first" mindset. We focus on our areas of responsibility, on our own career advancement, on "what's in it for me."  This kind of focus can take our eyes off the organization's goals and outcomes - it can even make us less likely to collaborate.

In last week's Huffington Post IBM's Graham Kittle made this provocative observation: when used for business, social media can become a new type of production line. Kittle cites the success of Cemex, a very traditional manufacturer of concrete products with a culture rooted in old school management practices that was able to shift gears and roll out a very successful social business platform. Cemex wanted to become a more responsive, agile company and they saw wide scale collaboration as the answer.

When you roll out your social business plan don't be surprised if there's some grumbling in the trenches. "Oh great, they're just going to use this to spy on us."

When talking about social business it's not always clear if we're talking about launching social inside the organization or if it's mostly about marketing efforts outside the organization.

What's the burning question that senior leaders ask social business consultants? A study by the Conference Board and Stanford's Rock Center for Corporate Governance suggests that more than anything else today's C-level leaders want to know about LinkedIn.

Organizations pay a high price when they involuntarily lose employees. There are the direct expenses, such as recruitment and training; indirect costs, such as decreased morale and the effect on discretionary effort – directly linked to customer satisfaction, loyalty, and to lost revenues; and opportunity costs, such as project delays resulting from the loss of employees and the knowledge they take with them. Recognition translates to retention and increased effort. Employees are less likely to look for greener pastures and more likely to give more when they feel valued.

Fifteen years ago I expected certain things to be part of daily life - namely jet packs, flying cars and knowledge management. For the most part we have the technology to realize our dreams of the future, what we lack is the infrastructure.

Employee engagement is a problem for most organizations. Businesses around the world report declining levels of engagement with fewer than one out of three workers reporting that they are satisfied with their jobs.

When you open the enterprise to social media you are empowering individual employees to speak for the entire organization, both within the business and outside to the entire world. What happens if an employee decides to post something damaging about your company? For instance, like the now infamous Google rant.