There is a distinction, a not-so-subtle one, between disruption and destruction.

Social media is often touted as a disruptive influence. It’s a belief that leads many people to leap to the conclusion that social media’s unstoppable growth will ultimately destroy existing organization hierarchies and lead to new, networked models.

This assumption has a polarizing effect. On the one hand, there are people like my friend Geoff Livingson, who argues (correctly) that industrial business structures keep companies from being as nimble as they need to be. He also says (in a comment to one of my previous posts), that social media “underscores the need to restructure from industrial to information age business models.”

The opposing point of view is articulated by Paul Seaman, a

-Zurich-based PR counselor who recently wrote, “I see the world looking more or less as it always did, but busier with communication. In particular, I am struck how all this communication hasn???t altered some fundamentals about, as it were, the centre of gravity, of orgination (sic), of power.” He added that businesses still need customers and invoices (and, presumably, the structure to produce them).

Seaman actually lists 10 business rules that, he believes, reign supreme over social media. ZDNet commentator Dennis Howlett puts it more bluntly: “Like it or not, large enterprises—the big name brands—have to work in structures and hierarchies that most E2.0 mavens ridicule but can???t come up with alternatives that make any sort of corporate sense.”

Compatible concepts

The problem with both points of view is that the disruptive force of social media and ingrained corporate hierarchies are not mutually exclusive. Social media does not force new structures on organizations. It routes around existing structures. It establishes a communications infrastructure that business silos can’t impede.

Despite the utopian dreams of social media champions of flat, open models, the real work of real businesses require the structures that traditionally and inevitably lead to silos. Consider a large organization: I’ll pick energy, since I spent 6-1/2 years working for one of the biggest energy companies in the world. There’s a silo that explores for oil and pumps it out of the ground. Another group transports the oil from the pumps to refineries. Another group refines the oil into products like gasoline, jet fuel and motor oil. Another group markets it. On the staff side, the legal department strives to minimize risk, HR recruits and retains talent, and Public Affairs looks after the organization’s reputation with a broad range of constituent publics.

Social media has no prayer of forcing a new model onto these distinct operations, nor should it. On the other hand, social media does grease the skids of communication between groups—groups of employees, employees and management, company and customers, company and interest groups, and so on. Social media also enables the formation of secondary groups, such as communities of employees who share common interests. That is, social media removes the barrier to the smooth flow of information within and between people in these organizational constructs.It breaks down the silos while leaving the functional structure in place. It’s the smart bomb of business.

That this is incredibly important and game-changing seems lost on Seaman and Howlett. The ability for people in the oil and gas unit to have relevant and useful conversations with the people in marketing, for all of them to talk directly to the customer, and for the customer to have a voice in the organization alters the way businesses make decisions. It makes them nimble.

But it does not mean that suddenly geologists will work in a flat business structure that includes the fleet of tankers, or that corporate attorneys will start trading oil on the spot market because it sounds like an interesting way to pass some time.

Even middle managers still have a role to play, albeit a different one than in the past when they served as the communication conduit between higher-ups and their own staffs. In the networked world, they become facilitators, taking in all the various input and figuring out how to harness the best ideas so their departments can contribute most effectively to the company’s goals.

Constructive change

Some things will change. Many departments don’t need to be situated in the same physical location. Communication to multiple departments can happen concurrently and on the fly. (In fact, the models that truly are exploding are communication models, not org charts.) Collaboration and innovation will drive new business and revitalize existing operations. Startups, of course, have the luxury of kicking things off with new models, but even Zappos has a call center and other departments that are responsible for accomplishing specific objectives best suited to a group of people with complementary skills and common tasks.

I’m not sure why so many fans of social media are bent on the kind of destruction Zuul wanted to bring down on the world in the form of the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man in the original “Ghostbusters.” I doubt any of those advocating the tear-down of such structures in Fortune 500-sized companies have ever been involved in an organizational reengineering initiative, where months and months or torturous change is required just to shift reporting relationships.

There’s no need to destroy structures that serve a genuine purpose when social media makes those existing models work better.