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.

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.

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?

Frozen Peas: More than Good for You

If you're interested in how to score a wow in creating an overnight web sensation and a dedicated web community, you should know about Frozen Peas.

Susan Reynolds came up with the brilliant idea of using a bag of frozen peas to her breast instead of icepacks to reduce the pain following a biopsy and again, after a mastectomy.

We first learned How Frozen Peas Started a Movement when we came across it the story when it was reported online and decided to check it out Boobs On Ice.  Who can resist checking out a blog with a name like that?

I'll let you check it out on for yourself. After all, why take the fun out of it?

We always use this example in our Web 2.0 management seminars of brilliant viral marketing and the power of the web to mobilize a community of evangelists and fellow cancer patients, survivors and family members virtually over night.

Check out where it all started: Susan's Twitter site.

Check out the all the supportive photos and the growing number of  "peavatars" shared on Flickr.

And you haven't lived until you've seen Surrounded by Peas or the awesome Susan Reyonld's story on YouTube.

Visit  the Frozen Pea Fund site to make a contribution to cancer care or to find resources.

Today, I read a post at  Media Bullseye  talking about an event this week that raised $30,000 for the cause.  Very cleverly, the name badge of a fellow Twittr-er who couldn't make it to the event but kept in the loop  all evening  on Twittr by attendees was raffled off.  The winning bid raised another $500 for the cause.

This story, in a nutshell, encapsulates the power of building community on the web - whether the rewards are deeply personal or financial.

Bloggers@Zanzibar

Last evening Charlie and I enjoyed an evening meeting bloggers. It was a gathering at a NYC restaurant organized by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff to publicize Groundswell.  (Thanks for the advance copy!)

We are knee-deep researching the impact of Web 2.0 and social computing on the relationships between organizations and people, both internally and externally. So we are always really pleased to meet folks who want to share their experiences with us.

The evening reminded me a bit of speed-dating and it was great fun... once my eyes adjusted to the cave-like atmosphere. I worked clock-wise around the firepit and Charlie counter-clockwise.

Words of  Experience shared with us:

• Separate your professional from your personal blog-life.
• Even better, don't tell anyone at work (translation:  especially your boss) about your blog -- unless it's a blog designed to attract business and has a disclaimer that it represents your personal views. (A corollary to that would be to avoid talking about a blog intended to pump your own business.)
• Innocuous comments (for example, referring to the difficult state of the economy) can be viewed as bad for business by your employer.
• Companies (at least those in tech, PR and media) are getting quite comfortable with these technologies... not making them available would be like giving you a desk without a phone.
• A blog is a great place to share your ideas and get feedback from others. It's exciting, creative and thought-provoking.
• The trick is to keep the entries short.

On that note, I'll stop here.

If you have an experience you'd like to share about how your company uses blogs, wikis, virtual reality, podcasts, webcasts, forums - or any other form of social media - especially those aimed toward or for use by employees, please share your story by email anne@cognetics.com or comment here.

It's Hard to Remain Presidential While Engaged in a Brawl

Watching Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton duke it out on last night's presidential debates reminded some spectators of watching a boxing match.  No TKO's but plenty of blood.

We heard audible "boos" and gasps of disbelief from the dignified Myrtle Beach audience.  John Edwards just stood there taking it all in, waiting for his opportunity to rise above the fray.

The irony is that the brawl was over who has more (or maybe less) integrity: Hillary (accused of being a former board member of Walmart and recipient of big company financing) or Barak (who apparently represented a slum lord and worked the Illinois legislative process by voting "present" rather than "no" on 100 bills)?

The content of the accusations didn't seem to matter nearly as much as the venom with which they were hurled.

The American public knows everyone has skeletons in the closet; no one is perfect - most especially, it seems, elected officials. (Although, personally, I think Hillary's got some explaining to do about her Walmart connection.)

Business leaders come under fire and personal attack all the time; it comes with the territory. They learn to develop a thick skin facing irate employees learning of cuts to their health care benefits one week and executive bonuses the next.  They hang tough when their email is jammed with links - from just about everyone they know - to YouTube videos re-enacting customer experiences with their company's customer service department.

We expect leaders to remain cool under pressure.  We want our presidents - of a country or a company - to look the part no matter what.  But what does integrity look like when the first punch is thrown?  Or when the gloves come off?

Hillary Isn't The Only One To Find Her Voice

I'm hooked on watching the Presidential debates on CNN.  Reality TV at its finest. 

Unlike American Idol viewers who had to vote and wait until the next episode to find out whom the country found lacking, the web has made putting your two cents in by phone or text message antiquated. 

Now, anyone can go on the Facebook politics site  to watch the debate, vote or even comment in real time.  And that's what 1 million of the 60 million Facebook members did. A small group, for sure, but this is the start of something really, really big.

Polling the voters is no longer limited to pollsters. Offering one's assessment to the public is no longer limited to pundits. Focus groups are no longer the only way for candidates to refine the message.

The genie is poking her nose out of the bottle. This site  - along with others, including those put up by the candidates themselves - demonstrates that participating in social media is not just for teenagers or people with nothing better to do. 

The web is where thinking people, people who care, can get in the game and be heard. 

The early adopters are doing their thing.  Slowly but surely, joining online conversations and communities will be the norm for all sorts of people. And not just for presidential debates but in the workplace as well.

Did you go on Facebook during the last debate? If not, why not? If yes, tell us about your experience.

Brush Up on those Apologizing Skills

Andy Greenberg had an interesting post today on Forbes.com, entitled, How Silicon Valley Says Sorry. It's all about the spate of public apologies we've seen coming out of tech firms this year. The most recent brouhaha, of course, is Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's blog entry apologizing for getting so swept up in the profit-making game he put advertisers before customers. Imagine that.

Zuckerberg's apology has been deemed a PR "best practice" in damage control.  I see it as illustrative of how the web is changing corporate behavior.

• There's nowhere to hide.  What used to take days, months, maybe even years - and if you were very lucky, maybe never - to discover is all over the Internet in a matter of minutes.


• The good of  the few is as important as the good of the many. Facebook was forced to retreat based on the outrage of a mere .2% of its 50 million subscribers. When was the last time your company worried about the concerns of such a small percentage of its customers or employees when rolling out a new program?


• Executives need to slow down on the Kool-Aide. Facebook execs touted Beacon as an advertising breakthrough. You have to wonder if anybody involved in the decision raised the possibility that no one would want to have to opt out of having their purchases broadcast online, even if it was to 500 of their closest friends.


• It's all about trust.  Apologies only work if they're sincere and people trust you to do the right thing - not just talk about it.

When Your Family Turns Into A Virtual Team

You know you're in trouble when you start thinking of your family members as part of your virtual team.

It wasn't that long ago when Sunday afternoon meant the entire extended family somehow ended up "passing by"  just in time for dinner. But now, with family members far-flung and leading  complicated, busy lives, little by little we've gone virtual.

Sometimes it works just great - as it did in organizing my mother-in-law's 90th birthday party.  OK, it wasn't her fault that her birthday fell on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.  As it turned out, the Thanksgiving-air-travel-gods were with us and were we ever grateful. No huge security line! No sitting for 3 hours on a plane waiting our turn to take off! No lost luggage! Talk about managing our expectations.

But getting back to our virtual team.

Technology is the life-line of virtual teams and we used it all in the various stages of planning the event and handling the logistics for getting everyone there: phone, fax, email, web meeting, conference call, instant messaging, photo and file sharing.  I wanted to suggest using In the Know!  to keep track of all the moving parts but thought maybe that was a little over the top.

One example illustrates a typical family project. Charlie and his sister decided to produce a bound book containing photos of the birthday girl, her family and friends dating back way before she was born, when her parents were kids. We're talking hundreds of photos, going back well over 100 years. Each one had to be scanned, electronically shared, cropped and cleaned up to be suitable for reproduction (thank you Adobe Photoshop).  The last of a series of  web-conferences (thank you  Citrix GoToMeeting) was a final edit and off the book went for online production (thank you Peecaboo.com) and delivery directly to our hotel, the Jupiter Beach Resort and Spa, right on schedule. 

Virtual teaming gurus say nothing substitutes getting the team together face to face.  Sounds right to me.

Wharton Wisdom on Developing Leadership Talent

There are many amazing things about teaching at the Wharton School. One of them is attending the Annual Wharton Leadership Conference, which was held this past week. The theme of this year's event was Developing Leadership Talent: How Organizations Prepare Their Present and Future Leadership. Masters of Ceremony Peter Cappelli and Michael Useem kept the day moving, no small feat with a line-up of nine of the most interesting speakers I've heard in a long time.

Having attended the conference for the past several years, this one is at the top of my "don't miss" list. Just as you're thinking there's no way you can sit through nine 50-minute talks, you can't help but get hooked: each is so different and passionate. Most of all, they're memorable.

Thomas Stewart, Editor and Managing Director of the Harvard Business Review, talked about the three tests every leader goes through - whether it's Indiana Jones, Jeff Bezos or you. He calls them the initation test (when they become a boss/CEO/leader for the first time), the crisis test (when they go through their first business or personal crisis) and the rejuvenation test (when they realize it's time to move on.) "Organization life is the only place where square pegs can actually fit into round holes."

Jennifer Deal, Research Scientist at the Center for Creative Leadership, gave what I call the research portion of the program. She presented data from her survey of 3,400 employees mostly working in large companies, representative of all generations. You can read more about it in her December 2006 book Retiring the Generation Gap: How Employees Young and Old Can Find Common Ground. What can everyone everyone agree on? "An opportunity to learn is about as important as pay."

Steve Harrison, Chairman of Lee Hecht Harrison, talked about his experiences and observations and the need for companies to move from legal compliance to a model of integrity, which he talks about in his book, The Manager's Book of Decencies. A gem of a job title: "Director of First Impressions."

David Nadler, Senior Partner, Oliver Wyman, and Vice Chairman of Marsh & McLennan, explained how CEOs lead their organization through the metaphor of a three-act play. They get on the stage stepping into the CEO role. They got the role having succeeded in another company faced with the same challenges. So Act I begins as the CEO figures out what's needed to meet the current crisis. The transition to Act II begins once the shift takes hold, and the CEO may need to change style or tactics to fully implement the strategy. Finally, as Act III begins, the CEO plans for the next generation of leadership to take the company to the next stage as the CEO leaves the stage. Nadler's article, The CEO's Second Act, in which he talks about the causes of CEO success and failure, appeared in the January 2007 Harvard Business Review. 

Richard Greene, Consultant and Author of Words that Shook the World, talked about the ins and outs of giving great speaches.       

Kirbyjon Caldwell, Senior Pastor,Windsor Village United Methodist Church, was no doubt the inspirational speaker of the day. Wharton undergrad leaves Wall Street to become a Pastor in Texas? You know that's got to be a heck of a story. "So all of you who do 360 feedback in your companies: does the feedback from the lowest level employees in the organization affect the compensation of the highest level employees? If not, do you tell them that their input doesn't count? That's where the rubber meets the road."

Dana Gioia, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, was probably the biggest surprise of the day. Stamford Business School grad leaves big General Foods marketing job to become a poet? The connection between poetry, leadership and managing turnarounds - whether it's the Jello brand or a quasi-government organization? It's all about creativity.

Tim O'Toole, CEO of the London Underground, was the last speaker of the day. His talk about the strength of every employee involved in the 2005 bombings. Unlike 9/11, the fact that they used 19 different radio systems to communicate with safety and Underground personnel was not a significant factor that day. The secret sauce: station staff had gone through so many drills, they knew what to do and courageously did whatever needed to be done, any way it could be done.

Which brought us right back to the start of the day: The one thing 97% of the workforce wants is to learn on the job - regardless of their age or job.

I hope you'll check out Knowledge@Wharton for interviews, articles and podcasts about each of the speakers -- and consider attending next year.