Social Accountability:
Social Accountability has been gaining traction as a term other than that used by MBAs for companies showing good will to employees and stakeholders. Social accountability as a term used by millennials is used to describe stay answerable to your goals and passions by pledging them publicly to your social networks. The power of Social accountability lies in three main areas.
Social Influence
The galvanizing tenant of Social accountability is the social influence. Social credibility is of the upmost importance in the online social media arena today. Even with the all of the noise of much of the useless social contributions in the forms of tweets, status updates and the like, users (especially millennials) have created filters to be able to mine useful data from all of the nonsense. The important data often in the form of milestones or declarations from users to their social networks are burned into the minds of the consumers of those messages. Contributors of these declarations in the form of goals, hopes and dreams know this and feel a sense of obligation once they have stated such a message through their social channels. This fact gives them a greater sense of accountability they would have never otherwise have before the dawn of this digital age.
Accountability On Steroids
Alcoholics Anonymous, Jenny Craig, and countless other companies that have products to manage addiction and will power issues, use the power of accountability to create results in their customers. In times of temptation, alcoholics are instructed to call their accountability partners to help them deal with the temptation at hand. Social accountability builds off of this paradigm and takes it to the next level. Instead of a single partner you may or may not call, you have an entire network of your family, friends, and peers watching your activity to see that your will power is in alignment with your public declaration. When you declared to your social network that you would lose 10 lbs in the next 6 weeks, it is difficult to post that picture of you eating a molten lava cake at your favorite restaurant. This type of psychological reminder that everyone is watching your progress is accountability on steroids.
The New Support Group
The powerful synergies between social networks and the accountability created by the mass decimation of publicly declared goal is creating the next evolution of the support group. A new kind of omnipresent support group is burgeoning which is more powerful and more effective than any group people sitting in a room. Social accountability will only grow more and more effective as social networking platforms evolve and users comfortability with declaring their goals increases. It is at the zenith of these events that a new motivated and socially accountable group of individuals will take rise.