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Predictions Social Business in 2012, Part III: Transforming Your Organization
This is the last of three posts I’m writing on predictions and priorities for Social Business in 2012. You can read the first and second prediction posts for more context.
Prediction #3: Connected leaders and employees will create sustained competitive advantages through a culture of sharing. This year will see some companies pull ahead of others because they are able to collaborate, innovate and execute better and faster thanks to an ingrained culture of sharing.
This is the year that companies get serious about investing in their internal social business capabilities, simply because it helps create and sustain a fast-moving, innovative and collaborative culture. It’s one thing to have a Facebook or Twitter presence run by a small social media team in your organization. It’s a totally different ball game that truly social businesses are playing when thousands of employees are connected externally as well as internally.
Culture is often dismissed as the “soft” underbelly of business. But as business leaders like Jack Welch (GE), Howard Schultz (Starbucks), and Herb Kelleher (Southwest) have written, culture is what creates and sustains a great company. And while a company can be successful with a “command and control” culture, I believe that companies that embrace openness (see my book “Open Leadership” for details) and encourage a culture of sharing will be much better positioned in the long run.
There are two ways I see culture changing because of increased sharing enabled by social technologies. The first revolves around connecting your biggest advocates – your employees — with your customers. The second is connecting your employees with each other.
Empowering Your Employees To Connect With Customers
No matter how many people you have on your social media team, it won’t be enough to meet the groundswell of customer interaction demand. To do that, you have to create your own internal groundswell, embodied in your employees.
Let’s go back to Dell. In my first prediction, we saw Dell dealing with flaming notebooks in the summer of 2006. Since that time, Dell has made it a mission to get closer to customers. One way they’ve done this is to train employees on how to use social media on Dell’s behalf. To date, over 5,400 Dell employees have taken one or more social media certification class and more than 2,000 have taken the full 8+ hours of classes to become fully “social media certified”.
According to Altimeter’s benchmarking surveys, advanced social businesses have roughly 20 people working on their social media efforts. That means that Dell effectively has 100 times more people engaged in social media than the most advanced social businesses.
This means that Dell understands customer needs at 100 times more points throughout the organizations, and has 100 times more people poised to jump in and support customers. It’s also 100 times more people looking at ways to improve and innovate the business on multiple fronts.
Many organizations will look at the immense costs (and risks) of training even a significant minority of employees and take a pass. It’s beyond their ability to comprehend so many people freely speaking on behalf of the company, beyond the grasp and control of corporate communications.
But look at the huge benefit to companies that do make that investment. Dell is building a competitive advantage deep into the organization that will difficult for competitors to emulate. It doesn’t replace great products but in the long run, 2,000 points of connection will give Dell a better way to facilitate faster agile design processes.
What’s the actual cost/benefit of social media training and empowerment? Here’s a back of the envelope calculation. Let’s assume that those 2,000 Dell employees had 8 hours of training at the opportunity cost of $50/hour. Add in trainer time and being generous, it’s roughly $1 million or about $500 per employee. I’m pretty sure Dell is realizing at least $500 in value just this year from the engagement of those connected employees.
And what if you are worried about something going wrong? Two ways to get your mind around this. First, your employees already interact each and every day with your customers – and you train and trust them to do the right thing and exercise good judgement. Second, things always and inevitably go wrong. To my first prediction about practicing every day transparency, you have to be able to feel comfortable with this new level of openness in order to have the confidence to empower your employees.
Connecting Employees Throughout The Organization
A hot trend right now is the adoption of “enterprise social networking” (ESN) where a company uses software to connect employees socially within the enterprise. This can be either as a standalone service (like Yammer or Socialcast) or integrated into a collaboration platform or suite (like Salesforce.com’s Chatter, IBM Connections, or Sharepoint with Newsgator). Think of it as Facebook-like status updates behind the firewall.
I’m finishing up a report that looks at these ESNs and one of the most interesting findings is that it’s increasingly the leaders of the organization that are behind the adoption of these technologies. The reason: They see it as a way to transform their organizations, simply by creating the opportunity for people to share.
The result of sharing is that barriers between departments fall. Silos get broken down and the power distance between leaders/managers and front line employees becomes smaller. And it also creates opportunity for new leaders to emerge, where they are defined not by their title or how much budget they control, but seen as a leaders simply because they have amassed followers.
In the end, culture is defined simply the by the values, norms, and practices of how we get work done each and every day. The intractable nature of some cultures means that in order for culture transformations to happen – and to happen quickly – the new norms and mindsets not only have to established and trained, but also reinforced over and over again. Here are just a few ways that a culture of sharing can help achieve real business results:
- Share information about a project to reduce duplication.
- Find experts who have solved a similar problem before.
- Solve problems together, faster.
- Streamline processes in real time.
- Identify innovations, big and especially small. And just as importantly, execute them quickly.
- Gain confidence in distributed decision making because of greater information sharing and transparency.
These benefits as well as action plans will be included in the ESN report (sign up to be notified about the report when it is published).
The crucial action for leaders in 2012 is to make the commitment to these ESNs and to participate by simply sharing *how* you achieving your business goals. The practice of leadership requires constant focus on the important while addressing the urgent. Culture is important and can’t become a sidecar to the pursuit of hard goals. It’s just the other way around – culture becomes the foundation through which you will achieve those crucial goals today and in the long run.
So if you have these tools in house, share something every single day to support and grow your culture of sharing. And if you don’t have an ESN yet, look into how you can quickly get one in place
Your Social Business Journey
That’s it for my 2012 predictions and priorities. To summarize:
Prediction #1: Consumers will reward transparent companies with their loyalty. Companies must get courageous with transparency and make it an every day occurrence. Or they will face the wrath of outraged customers.
Prediction #2: Your customers want to be known. Your customers don’t merely want you to understand their needs or pain points. They want you to know them as individuals anywhere and anytime they engage with you.
Prediction #3: Connected leaders and employees will create sustained competitive advantages through a culture of sharing. This year will see some companies pull ahead of others because they are able to collaborate, innovate and execute better and faster thanks to an ingrained culture of sharing.
One thing I hope you see is that becoming a success social business has at its core being a successful business, period. The tactics and etiquette of social business may be unique, but the foundations are rooted in solid business strategy and practice.
All the best to you in 2012 and be sure to share examples of how you are doing on your social business journey. We will all benefit from your generosity and insight.
Google+ leverages Google’s strength as a communications platform
I’m watching the Google+ “launch” with great interest because at its center appears to be great “friend management” tools (see links below for the best detailed reviews).
Friend managment has been the bane of my Facebook experience because I don’t want to share everything with everyone. I also made the mistake of accepting far too many friend invitations with the result that I share very little on my “personal” account. While there are tools like Facebook Groups and friend lists, they are incredibly cumbersome and difficult to use.
Google+ leverages the fact that you already have your “real” friends listed and possibly even organized in your address book. This is especially true if you are using Gmail. Take a look at your Gmail address book and you’ll see your top 20 contacts already identified. Google knows this, and also knows who you frequently email together as a group (parents of your child’s class, book club, family reunion email list, etc.) and uses that information to drive the insight needed to suggest natural groups for you to form inside of Google+ Circles.
Google can leverage all of that behavioral information into helping you easily manage your relationships. Because face it–who you share with, how often, and with what other people you do that sharing provides valuable insight into the nature of the relationships.
Now for the scary privacy part — remember that Google also “reads” the contents of your email to show you ads on the side of Gmail. For the most part, we’ve gotten over this. But what if I gave permission (note: permission is crucial!) for Google to make recommendations on if and when I should add someone to a group? If I’m emailing someone frequently about biking trails, Google+ may suggest that I add that person to my biking Circle. Fundamentally, you would have to have a deep, trusting relationship with Google at a different level for this to happen. But the benefits could be tremendous. (See my post “In Google I Trust” for more discussion on this.)
Take that level of trust to a different level if you have an Android phone. Would you be OK with letting Google mine the contact, call, and texting data on your phone to help you build a more social experience with those people you communicate the most? What about your Google Calendar or Google Voice data?
I say this because most of my communications, both personal and professional, are run on Google’s platforms. Facebook does not have insight into all of the “real” sharing that I do in real life, while Google does.
My take on how this will play out is that Google has the natural ability to pull together groups based on communication patterns, and to also leverage the natural groups that already use communication platforms. It will be a no-brainer for Gmail to start using Google+, a much harder sell for non-Gmail users.
The result will be unified sharing, as opposed to unified messaging, on Google platforms. This won’t happen overnight and it will be far from being a “Facebook killer”. Rather, it’s a smart move by Google to leverage its strengths in communication platforms, algorithms, and trust of core users to move into social.
Lastly, I don’t expect Facebook to stay still for long. Look for them to roll out improved friend management tools in the near future. But regardless, they will always lack the behavioral intelligence to help me truly manage my friends, unless I am a devoted Facebook user.
Links to detailed reviews:
Leadership Lessons, with Charlene Li and Ken Blanchard, co-author of “One Minute Manager”
I’m very excited to announce Altimeter’s next webinar with special guest, Ken Blanchard (@kenblanchard), co-author of the “The One Minute Manager.” Like many people, I have a well-worn copy of the book on my shelf and it’s a reminder to constantly connect, share, and invest in relationships. This is all the more true today, with the many opportunities that new technologies provide us to do this not only easily but also at scale.
Tapping Ken’s deep experience in leadership, we’ll discuss the timeless lessons of leadership, and also what has changed. We’ll also look at what people as individuals need to do differently today in order to be more effective.
But most of all, bring your best questions as there will be plenty of time to ask questions. Don’t lose this chance to meet and talk with Ken Blanchard!
Please register below, and help us by forwarding this message to interested peers and colleagues.
Webinar: Leadership Lessons: The Power of Relationships in the Facebook Era, with Ken Blanchard & Charlene Li
Register for this webinar at: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/872433659
Date: Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Time: 10:00 AM – 11 AM PDT
Description: Join Ken Blanchard and Charlene Li for a conversation about how to apply the timeless lessons of leadership during a time when organizations are being transformed by social technologies. Ken, the co-author of “The One Minute Manager,” brings 30+ years as a renowned leadership expert, respected consultant, author, and keynoter.
Together, Ken and Charlene will discuss how the simple truths of leadership still hold true, even during this age of social media. That’s because both hold relationships at the center of their leadership and business philosophies. Specific topics include:
- How do you unleash the power and creativity of people inside an organization?
- How do you honor the contributions of your founders and long-time employees even as your organization grows and changes?
- How do you bring out the best in others?
- How can you successfully use social technologies to achieve these goals, while remaining true to how you are as a leader and as an organization?
Don’t miss this opportunity to hear Ken Blanchard and Charlene Li share timeless wisdom about human relationships, even as technology amplifies the speed and volume of interactions. Learn from two experts about how to keep relationships at the center of your leadership efforts.
Elect Charlene Li to the Harvard Alumni Board
I’m running for the Board of Directors of the Harvard Alumni Association, so if you’re a Harvard alum, you likely received a ballot in the mail recently. I’d very much appreciate your vote, and if you are so inclined, for you to encourage other alumni to vote for me as well.
Why am I doing this?
Well, I was asked. I got a call a few months ago to consider joining the board, primarily because they thought I could help push the alumni more into using social technologies. I was deeply honored to be asked so agreed to run.
Harvard made a huge difference in my life, not once, but twice (College ’88 and Business School ’93). And it continues to wield its influence in my life on a regular basis, from alumni connections to the research the University conducts. I see this as an opportunity to not only pay back my alma mater, but to also “pay it forward” and invest in a future that will benefit not only me, but also society and the world in general.
How I’ll help the Alumni Association
To be effective, Harvard has to extend and leverage its resources wisely, and one of the most exciting ways to do this today is through the use of disruptive technologies such as social media, mobile devices, and cloud computing. In particular, I’m energized by the possibility of tapping into the extensive Harvard alumni network, especially activating people who to this point have had limited engagement with Harvard.
Imagine if we’re able to get Harvard’s alumni base to interact and contribute just a bit more than they already are today, simply because the social affinity between alumni becomes greater because of these technologies. The implications are staggering – we could exponentially increase engagement on multiple fronts and provide greater support to Harvard’s mission of creating knowledge for the next generation of leaders.
There is also the issue of diversity on the board. As a woman and Asian American, I feel I bring a unique perspective that would benefit alumni programs. In particular, I frequently work with women who for very good reasons decided to take time off to raise their families — and then struggle to re-enter the workforce. I’d love to see the university develop more programs to help alumni – both male and female — as they go through the inevitable transitions in their lives.
How You Can Help
- Spread the word — tell other alumni to vote for me on the ballot. Send them a link to this post.
- Tell me what you would like the Alumni Association to do more of or do differently. If I’m elected, I’ll be using these tools to surface ideas for the Board to consider. Comment directly on this post, or email me at charlene@charleneli.com.
Thank you!
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