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.

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.

Social Media Profiling Tool

Kudos go out to Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff from Forrester.  Their upcoming book Groundswell is bound to be a must-read if you're interested in social media.

On the book website is a social technology profiling tool that is very cool.

You can select an age group, country and gender you're interested in.  Based on your selection, you will see a profile of that demographic group's level of participation in social media based on data from Forrester Research Technographics® surveys, 2007. 

Using this tool you can begin to learn about consumer behavior on the web in different countries, which is important if you want to use social media to reach a particular demographic.  For example, 8 percent of women my age in the United States are "creators" of social media - blogs, web pages, posting videos, etc.

Social media participants are designated by where they are on the "rungs" of what Forrester calls The Social Technographics Ladder:

• Creators who generate and contribute content
• Critics who post comments to web content generated by others
• Collectors who organize web content produced by others for themselves
• Joiners who have a profile and connect with others on social networks like Facebook
• Spectators who consume content generated by others
• Inactives who do not participate at all

You can find further details on the Social Technographics profile at the Groundwell website. 

Charlie and are looking forward to meeting Charlene and Josh at the Blogger Dinner in New York next week.

Should CEOs blog?

We've been doing a number of webinars on the Impact of Web 2.0 and Social Computing on Organizations over the past several weeks. One of the questions we are routinely asked is, "Should Our CEO Blog?"

Great question.

The simple answer might be sure, why not? If the CEO has a blog, wouldn't it send a signal to everyone else that blogging is now an acceptable way of communicating?

I can hear the nay-sayers now. The floodgates will open. Everyone will want to blog.  I remember the same argument when job sharing was first introduced over 20 years ago. I ask you, how many job sharers do you know?

Well ok, the naysayers concede, maybe everyone won't start a blog.  But how will we control what our employees say on blogs; what if they give out lousy or confidential information? What if they spread negative comments or post links to unflattering portrayals of the company on YouTube?  What if someone posts photos of the department when they're out for drinks after work? Won't this mean everyone will be spending way too much time on their own blog or commenting on others? 

Weren't (aren't) similar concerns raised against telecommuting? The troubling thing is that lo these many years, there are still many managers who aren't comfortable with folks working at home.

The trust factor raises its ugly head once again: How will we know they're really working and not doing laundry? How can you really judge performance or form a relationship if you can't see the person?

So maybe the decision as to whether or not your CEO should blog or not goes deeper than whether they are great communicators, or whether they won't resort to ghost bloggers.

The bigger question is about trust.

What do you think?

Lessons From the Webinar School of Hard Knocks

Every consulting company seems to be jumping on the webinar train.  Unfortunately, many turn out to be "salesinars".  I hope the scales tip in the right direction: where webinars truly offer deep content and the potential for communities of interest to gather.   

As a presenter and as a participant, I really like webinars. As a presenter, it's a great way for me to connect with a large audience of folks who are interested in the same thing I am and I learn a lot.  I learn a lot being on the receiving end as well, and it gives me time I seldom find otherwise to de-clutter my desk, files or email.

Webinars illustrate why social computing is so tough. two of the five webcasts I was involved with this week had technical problems (both audio and visual) that actually never did get resolved during the hour. 

If your're thinking about presenting a webcast, here are some personal observations:

• Have something meaningful to share. The web is all about rich content - whether text, video, podcast or webinar. Thumbs down on salesinars.
• A rehearsal walk-through is a must - especially if you're not hosting the webcast yourself - but it isn't a guarantee. 
• Webinars resemble radio or TV news more than they do live seminars. That translates to brief self-contained segments and lots of visuals that keep changing.
• Webinars may not be for you if you hate the feeling that you're talking to yourself. There's just no way to describe the sensation of talking into a black hole.
• Webinars test your ability to engage in entertaining banter and storytelling when you're the only one in the room. It helps if you're not the only presenter.
• Answer questions submitted through chat as you go along rather than wait until the end. If one person's thinking it, probably others are too.

This week, Charlie and I had a terrific experience. We gave a Web 2.0 webinar for The Marketing Executives Group (MENG) where we engaged in conversation working from the same presentation deck. It was a lot more fun for us and I hope for the audience as well.

Web Advice for the Harried Business Owner

Check out my guest blog post on the New York Times Small Business Summit page.

Click here to read the post.

The Hidden Value of Social Computing

For twenty years, usability has been an after-thought in all too many software development projects.  Web 2.0 completely changes the playing field. Usability is now a "make or break" for any web site or application - whether it's aimed at customers or used by employees.

Only 5% of InformationWeek readers responding to a recent poll on Web 2.0 technologies rate any kind of social networking as very useful. (October 29, 2007)  Too bad no one told Microsoft before they plunked down $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook. 

This statistic underscores the skepticism CIOs have about the long term impact of user engagement on their companies.  Author Andy Dornan got it right:

Forget outsourcing. The real threat to IT pros could be Web 2.0. While there's a lot of hype and hubris surrounding wikis, mashups, and social networking, there's also a lot of real innovation - much of it coming from increasingly tech-savvy business users, not the IT department.

Business leaders: seize the day!

There are many often-discussed, legitimate concerns that are immediately raised whenever Web 2.0 comes up: security breaches, restricting access to information, trade secrets and other nasties making their way around the Internet -- and last, but not least, employees wasting time on line.

The real reason for the disconnect is that Web 2.0 technologies - especially social computing - puts the spotlight on areas that do not play to most business' strengths.

Corporate America doesn't "do" relating to people very well; Web 2.0 technologies are most valuable in how people use them:

• people connecting with others
• people engaging with companies they do business with
• people interacting with web sites and web tools
• people adding their own content
• people personalizing their own screens

Like its ability to deal with people, Corporate America doesn't "do" handling exceptions very well either. Web 2.0 is also about customization, personalization and, by extension, being able to handle exceptions.

Anyone who has searched a website in vain trying to get an answer or to resolve a problem has experienced this shortcoming first-hand.  Assuming you actually get that far,  is there anything more annoying than working your way through numerous automated choices to be allowed to talk with a person? It's not like it's much easier for the rep who fields the call - especially if the situation calls for any deviation from the script. It's small comfort to know that customers and employees struggle equally to use the system.

The competitive advantages for mastering the user experience required by Web 2.0 technologies are not necessarily in the technical domain alone. Companies that get it right will be better equipped to deal with problems that plague them in the non-web world.

They will be skilled at the process and art of engaging people, internal and external audiences alike. And they will acheive the power that comes from having the flexibility, knowledge-sharing and resiliance to handle exceptions as gracefully as they do transactions.

 

Web Basics People Hate to Ask

If you're reading this, I'm confident you have a very good understanding about web technologies. What may surprise you, though, is how many people around you don't - but want to.

A number of years ago, we started offering executive coaching and seminars on what we called for lack of a better term, "technology fluency." Certainly, we reasoned, business leaders who invest in and rely on technology for their success would want to have more than a cocktail party level understanding of what they were getting into.

We were wrong. They didn't.  What we continue to hear behind closed doors is that they don't want to seem foolish. Or be bored. Or that it's an age thing. Or how hard it is to keep the vocabulary straight. What they don't realize is that even people who are comfortable using software don't know enough to build it, deploy it or bet the ranch on it.

We wondered whether there was any other domain in which seasoned managers would be as willing to take as much risk (to the business or to their bonus.) Especially when their decisions have such a wide and long-term impact. I guess others did too. MIT was on it early, but now many universities include a technology course in their management curriculum. But if you know someone who skipped that course, you can help.   

My husband and the CEO of Cognetics, Charlie Kreitzberg, has gotten an incredible response to an article he wrote for our local business paper, US 1, entitled, "Web 2.0 and You." A great way to describe it is: everything you want to know about what's happening with web technology and wish someone who understands business could explain to you in a way that makes sense. We hope you'll read it and pass it on. Please let us know what you think.

To read Charlie's article:

Download Cognetics.web2andyou.pdf

Great Minds Don't Always Think Alike

It doesn't take a linguist to figure out that geeks and suits speak a different language - especially when emotions run high (or meeting fatigue has set in.) But just as it's important to be mulit-lingual in a global community, managing a technology-dependent company makes it incumbent that business and IT people learn to understand one other more clearly.

In my early days of working with IT people, I learned the hard way the difference between sort and select, and the importance of specifying what "alpha" order means. (Like who would ever think that first name would be an option?) Oh, if only it were as easy as memorizing vocabulary words or having IT folks embedded in other departments.

The difference between geeks and suits illustrates what can happen when two great minds not only don't think alike, they don't work or define success in the same way. 

"Process," "requirement," and "project," for example, encompasses far greater detail and specificity to IT than it does to the business. IT is worrying about architecture, constraints, dependencies and resources, while the business folks are thinking operating cost, end result and ease of use.

Working together can also be a painful experience. The IT folks work in an iterative way, thinking things through, trying to understand all the implications in a world that is very complex. Business people, I hate to say, more often than not prefer the "point and shoot" method: make the best decision you can with the best information you've got, and go.

IT folks declare victory when a project comes in on time, on budget, and doesn't crash. Business people take all of that as a given; for them success is when the technology is easy to learn, makes their lives easier, and lead to a better business result.

Like my friend, Paul Glen, I spend a lot of time thinking about this phenomenon. Paul wrote a terrific book called, Leading Geeks; he has a neat newsletter and lots of tips on his website www.leadinggeeks.com.

I am not optimistic that this chasm between geeks and suits will disappear soon. There's a big difference between being proficient using technology and having the deep knowledge required to build it. When geek-ness and suit-ness occupy the same body, it's a beautiful thing. But it's also extremely rare.