I often forget that I am one of the few folks out there promoting the use of social tools in business who has actually spent most of their working life in a corporate environment doing a line management job. I tend to underplay just how much I learned by doing annual appraisals for fifty staff (yes 50), or writing endless strategy papers for John Birt, or ploughing my way through the annual budgeting process. It is no place for the feint hearted and understandably resistant to the idea that "getting real" or "finding your voice" will make much of a difference.

But I also remember donning my collar and tie for the first time, starting to talk management bollocks, teetering on the brink and then pulling back. There are a lot of brave souls in organisations who know it can be different and to whom the lifeline of the word "social" is worth reaching out for.

Understanding where people are rather than getting frustrated at them for not being where you think they should be is something I should remember to do more often.