Leaders In the Know

Social Media: More mindset than media

Charlie and I are developing a course for American Management Association called Making Sense of Web 2.0: Levaraging Social Media in Your Organization.  (The consensus was that social computing - while perhaps more accurate  than social media - sounds too geeky.)  But regardless of  what you call it, the modern web is mostly about mindset.

Web 2.0 is familiar turf for marketers, project managers, consultants and developers. There are many, many fantastic examples of how it's used with internal and external audiences.

But when you cut past the flash, Web 2.0 works best when we stop selling and telling and engage in listening and learning.

It sounds so simple: we need to treat customers as people with something valuable to say. We need to treat employees as responsible adults. But how many organizations actually do? After all, there aren't any extra "Hay points" in it. And it could get us in trouble.  Not much of an incentive there for the average corporate soldier.

You may want to look into Pfizerpedia (Pfizer's version of wikipedia). You can read about it on a number of sites. I'd like to suggest Karl Kapp's blog. Considering the sensitivities of large corporations, with signficant investment in intellectual property, in a highly regulated industry in which compliance dominates behavior,  accustomed to strictly following processes and protocol -embracing Web 2.0 is nothing short of a major shift in mindset.  Even though I've given away the plot, I still highly recommend the movie:

meet Jessica

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: web_2.0 enterprise_2.0)

The current economic crisis may reveal that companies really see Web 2.0 as a "nice to have" rather than the necessity it is for "keeping the lights on." If so, those companies may have snazzy Web 2.0 sites - but not a Web 2.0 mindset.

Keep the BlackBerry!

Barak Obama shouldn't fold and give up his BlackBerry - the iconic symbol of connectivity... unless he gets an i-phone or BlackBerry Storm for Christmas. 

How can a modern leader function without a sure-fire, unvarnished, direct connection to the real world? There's nothing better for reaching out anytime, anywhere  to anyone than the ubiquitous mobile device.

Without that connection senior executives are destined to live in their own real world: where no one likes to be the contrarian in the room,  no one wants to be the messenger carrying bad news, and no one  likes to tell the emperer he forgot his clothes. Even if he's a really nice guy and doesn't lose his cool.

Can't we trust him not to disclose any top-secret stuff?  And if he were to slip up, wouldn't encryption be a less-drastic solution?

Mr. Obama is a role model for other execs not only for his use of technology but as a working parent. Without a BlackBerry, how will his kids be able to text him during an important meeting?

Perhaps the new president can promise not to disclose the details of his daily life on Twitter, or to post impromptu photos from the Oval Office or Air Force One on YouTube.

Why www.change.gov is a paradigm shift

The election demonstrated the power of Web 2.0 and social media to change a country.  How many presidents -- oh heck, how many people - could claim over 3 million Facebook friends?  

The  Atlantic wrote earlier this year that in February the Obama campaign "raised a record-setting $55 million—$45 million of it over the Internet—without the candidate himself hosting a single fund-raiser."  That's some ROI.

For those of you working in organizations who have struggled to get a new home page up in less than six months, you've got to admire the transition website. It was up 24 hours after the election. 

Without missing a beat, the deep, personal relationship people had with their candidate can continue with their President.  Even those who didn't vote for him can feel like they have access to the new chief executive.  How many of us can say the same of our relationship with the executive team inside the companies we work in?

I heard that one of ways the site will be used is for 24-hour online "town hall" meetings to hear public comments on issues directly from the public.  This gives us an unprecedented opportunity to be heard on issues we care about. It also carries greater personal responsibility to learn enough to have an informed opinion that can be taken seriously.

The leader sets the tone for the rest of the organization. If you want to set a tone of transparency and genuine interest in hearing what your employees, customers and others have to say, follow the lead set by www.change.gov.

You may be surprised at the level of excitement and support you can create, how much faster people get on board with what you're trying to acccomplish. People will rise to the occasion once they know your interest is real - and that their "vote" can make a difference.

MoveOn.Org Takes Viral to New Level

There's no way to describe what it's like to receive an email of a video featuring you on what appears to be a totally legit news clip.  First thought: I didn't know we had a CNN i-reporter in the neighborhood. 

MoveOn.org has set up a site where you can send a "CNNBC" news clip to a friend about  your friend's failure to vote next Tuesday - resulting in Barak Obama's one-vote loss to John McCain.

Not only is it attention-grabbing, slick and clever, it's a top-drawer demonstration of how effective social media can be. Whether you're rooting for Obama or McCain, you'll be just amazed. It's positively brilliant.

What makes it interesting from a "business use of web 2.0" perspective:

• It's too intriguing to delete without at least giving it a look.
• It's so well done, you actually want to send it on.
• It's important to make it very easy for the viewer to e-mail it to lots of others. 

Personally, I'd rethink the bleeped comments.

You've got to experience this. If you have to, send it to yourself! Click here to go to the site.

Big Brother, Virtual Ombudsman or Change Agent?

If you're a Comcast customer, chances are you can relate to the postings on the  comcastmustdie website.

If so, you've got to read the article posted earlier this evening on the New York Times website entitled, Complaining Bloggers Have a Cable Company's Ear. You betcha, it's about Comcast.

Comcast has adopted a new strategy for reaching out and touching someone. Frank Eliason, a digital care manager at the company, monitors public comments on blogs, message boards and social networks about the Comcast.  Complaints result in the writer receiving a message back, pronto, from Frank.

Wait, there's more. According to the article, within a half hour of posting a negative comment on his blog, not only did an aggravated customer receive a  "Can I help?" message -- within a half hour there was a technician at his door. 

Social media experts believe that one of its great strengths is to bring companies and customers together in deep and meaningful ways. This is a great example of what we mean.  Can you imagine how transformational this could be to a company?

No doubt this was a risky experiment for Comcast to undertake.

Most of us do not expect to interact with a company to resolve a complaint unless we initiate the discussion with them directly. For some, this form of  reaching out may seem intrusive, even creepy.

What's really brilliant is that this employee can connect with people and actually solve their problem, not just placate them. Frank has the ability and authority to act. This eludes customer service reps and their supervisors, who are often reduced to order takers and sounding boards. When was the last time you called customer service and a tech came out within the hour?

The big question is whether this experiment will fundamentally change the way Comcast and its customers interact. Will it lead to more empowered customer service reps, be they digital, virtual, telephonic or inperson?

I ask you:

• Has Comcast gone too far? Is Big Brother watching?
• Is a digital care manager nothing more than a virtual ombudsman?
• Or, will this use of social media make a systemic change in Comcast's relationship not only with its customers but also with its employees, entrusted and empowered to make decisions and act?

Links to Leaders

Check out Not Necessarily Genius: Reflections from the Wharton Leadership Conference  by Saurabh Madaan in the current Wharton Leadership Digest as well as interview you shouldn't miss, all courtesy of The Wharton School's http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu.

                                  

Mike Useem's engaging interview with Southwest Airlines' Colleen Barrett. The video is priceless.

                                    

You can also watch the video, listen to or read the interview with J&J's CEO William Weldon.

                                                

And David Gergen's thought-provoking  observations on the leadership qualities of U.S. Presidents.

Can Leaders Be Internet Illiterate?

"I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself. I don’t expect to be a great communicator."  (John McCain, New York Times Transcript 7/13/2008)

I'm sure there are executives out there  - others who, like John McCain, haven't felt much need to surf the web - who don't get what all the fuss is about.  They just don't see the benefit in reading the news online or checking out the blogosphere. It's easier to just pick up a phone  than be inundated by email.

Does the phrase, "You don't know what you don't know" come to mind?

On a purely intellectual basis these folks understand that others find it useful.  Just not them.  Wasn't the same said about the microwave oven when it first came out?

So the question being asked is, can someone who is Internet illiterate be president of the United States?  I would add, more generally, is web literacy now a core competence expected of any leader?

While it's true that leaders can surround themselves with others with greater hands-on experience and knowledge than themselves, I'm coming down on the side that says web literacy cannot be delegated.   It is rapidly becoming as essential as reading, writing and arithmetic in terms of basic skills necessary to function effectively in daily life.

The web is not a spectator sport. McCain's comments that his wife and staffers read his email or go on the web for him are analgous to being an armchair traveller. You can read about going to a foreign country but it's not the same as experiencing it for yourself.

It's impossible for a leader who is not personally engaged in it to deeply understand why the web is so transformational to all aspects of our society and our relationships with others around the world. 

We haven't heard nearly the same level of buzz about the part of McCain's statement in which he says that he doesn't expect to be a great communicator. Does that  mean that the American people no longer have an expectation that leaders be good communicators?

What do you think?

Trust in a Web 2.0 World

If leaders don't have the trust of those who follow them, are they really leaders?

After following the election in Zimbabwe, well, I guess it's possible. But in a business setting, it's hard to imagine they'd last very long. Think Carly at H-P or Bob Nardelli in his Home Depot days.

Being trusted is not the same as being nice, or well-liked.  While maybe not fun to work for, you can still trust their judgement and their ability to lead the company to success.

In its most simplistic form, it seems to me that two important components of trust are around competence, judgement and integrity. In other words, people trust leaders if they believe they have the mental acumen, knowledge and experience; have demonstrated that their decisions are sound; and have a track record of saying what they mean, doing what they say, and doing the right thing.

An interesting article about a research study on trust is in the Summer 2008 MIT Sloan Review, Unconventional Insights for Managing Stakeholder Trust by Michael Pirson and Deepak Malhotra. (You need a subscription to read the whole article, but this link takes you to a nice summary.)

A brief excerpt of the summary gives you the bottom line:

The research analyzed the relevance (if any) of various factors: benevolence, integrity, managerial competence, technical competence, transparency and value congruence.In essence, the study asked what matters — and to whom.

Some of the results were unexpected, and a few were even counterintuitive, leading to the following key insights: Transparency is overrated; integrity is not enough; the right kind of competence matters; building trust with one group can destroy it with another; and value congruence matters across the board.

Trust is one of four essential elements we have identified as critical to building relationships on the web. Charlie's written a terrific article on our E3T(tm) Model which will be in Website magazine next month. More on that in another post. Suffice it to say that the T stands for trust.

I'm very  interested in learning how people and organizations earn, create and maintain trust in the Web 2.0 environment. How do they demonstrate competence and gain a reputation of high integrity through their web presence? This involves not only the content they put up themselves, but what others say about them in the far-flung reaches of the web.

Influence, which grows out of trust, is an important component of web success.

Given the nature of Web 2.0 to be transparent and where one's integrity can be closely scrutinized, I found the results of the research intriguing.  If, as the research suggests, building trust with one constituency can destroy it in another, this has a huge impact on how we build trust over the web.

It''s reassuring that competence and congruency still hold sway. Here again, though, we run into a snag. Many people have trouble determining if a site contains accurate, competent information or just sounds like it does. Is Technorati really the best judge of that?

Much to think about and discuss. Any thoughts?

Think Your Job Is Not about Marketing and Sales? In a Tuned In culture, think again.

“It may say HR on the door but make no mistake; this department is all about Marketing and Sales.”

I believe this is one of the most important lessons I learned as a corporate HR executive and the advice I share with my HR management students at Wharton.

BTW, I have found that this applies to lots of departments – IT for example – where the name of the game is your ability to identify real problems and solve them in a simple, clear way that makes sense to people. It’s not enough to be an expert or even a well-intentioned guardian of the corporation.

If you’re in a role where you find it a herculean task to convince everyone to do the right thing, or you find yourself answering questions with some flavor of “no,” then I’ve got a great book for you to read.

Working in the user experience and Web 2.0 space, I read a lot of books about marketing. Having had the pleasure of receiving an advance copy, I liked Tuned In a lot and I recommend it – not just to marketers – but to HR, IT, general managers and any one else who wants to understand more about why some good ideas sell and others don’t.

If you’ve ever tried to sell a concept, strategy, approach, solution or program, you know how tough it can be, especially if adopting it means a significant change in the way stuff gets done. Tuned In was written by three colleagues: Craig Stull, Founder and CEO of Pragmatic Marketing; Phil Myers, President of Pragmatic Marketing; and David Meerman Scott, a well-known online viral marketing strategist and author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR.

You may be wondering what it means to you, the individual employee, to be Tuned In. If you’re Tuned In, you work outside–in. You reach out to the marketplace (or, outside your department) to try to understand people’s problems so that you can build products that people want to buy.

The authors of Tuned In lay out Six Steps for becoming Tuned In. Borrowing from the book, I’ll capture them in short hand here.

Step 1: Finding Unresolved Problems – that their buyers had that were urgent, pervasive and they were willing to pay money to solve.

Step 2: Understanding Buyer Personas – to identify specifically who had the problem and what audience were the best targets for change.

Step 3: Quantifying the Impact – of change.

Step 4: Creating Breakthrough Experiences – that the market appreciates and identifies as a competitive advantage with lasting value.

Step 5: Articulating Powerful Ideas – to establish memorable concepts that cause buyers to act.

Step 6: Establishing Authentic Connections – that speak directly to buyers’ problems and enable them to trust you.

You may think these are pretty obvious. But if they are, then why don’t we see it happening more frequently? Why do we always feel bombarded by sales pitches for stuff we don’t need or want?

One of the ideas outlined in the book rings true for me. Truly great products don’t need a hard sell – they resonate with the market for which they provide an obvious solution to a real, nagging problem. The buyer takes one look and is struck immediately by the value. Because you hit the nail on the head, they feel an authentic relationship; they trust you enough to buy from you rather than someone else.

Next time you have a concept, a new process or any other big idea you need to sell, take the time to pause and get Tuned In if you want to be successful: If it doesn’t resonate with your audience, find out why.

• If it’s not compelling and solving a worthwhile business need or a thorny problem facing real people in your organization, why are you “selling” it?


• If you haven’t established an authentic, human connection with the people you’re asking to buy your idea, how can you expect them to trust you?


• If you’re not enthusiastic about– or struggle to come up with a great story or visual way to describe – its value others can see immediately, why would anyone else want to invest time, energy or resources in it?

A sure fire way to recognize if you’re Tuned Out is when you’re surrounded by experts who “know better” - you know, the “build it and they will come” folks. I hear this a lot about HR and IT folks, who are thought of as telling people what they need. I’d like to suggest that they would be well-served to adopt a page from Tuned In.

Adopting a Tuned In thought process will eventually turn into a Tuned In attitude and a Tuned In culture. To learn more, you’ll just have to read the book and check out the site.

Check out David Meerman Scott's blog post  "Facebook and YouTube blocked by paranoid corporations at their own peril" .  You've just go to read the comments!

If you missed my webinar on how to build a Tuned In Culture you can still check it out!

What do you think?

Blame it on the user

In his post Is Management the Problem? Andrew McAfee talks about his surprise at the responses of early adopter, big-corporate panelists on a panel he moderated at the recent Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston.

His question: "If Enterprise 2.0 tools and approaches really are so beneficial and powerful, why haven’t they spread like wildfire?" 

He expected to hear that the bureaucracy-clinging managers in these large organizations (Wachovia, Pfizer, SONY Computer Entertainment and the CIA) get in the way. Despite his best efforts to tease it out of them, the Web execs on the panel said they did not believe this was the case.

I mean, really, did he think that there be any juicy stories told of managers berating employees for going on a discussion board, collaborating online with a project team or contributing to a wiki? With all the time they spend in meetings and the pressures they themselves are under every day, employees checking Facebook is way below the radar screen -- unless something blows up.

As McAfee summarizes, "Entrenched practices and mindsets, some degree of technophobia, busyness, and the 9X Problem of email as an incumbent technology combine, they said, to limit the pace of adoption. These factors slow the migration from channels to platforms and necessitate continued patience, evangelism, and training and coaching." It's not about not bad managers per se (managers, they say, are just another user group).

Is it really all that surprising that these technology-savvy execs identified users as the biggest barriers to faster and deeper adoption of Enterprise 2.0? I don't think so.