MAD Perspectives Blog

I was recently in a meeting with a client when the marketing manager stated that all social media updates are reviewed by her or her team before being posted externally. After a bit of probing, I came to understand that her concern was about maintaining the company brand and the unintentional sharing of intellectual property. These are fair concerns, but they raised alarms for me. 

To be clear, my engagement with this client is not specific to social media.  They have hired an agency to help them with their efforts.  My concern is that with too much control, their social media communications will be flat and uninspired. Regardless of who helps them develop their social media plan, they will need to think about the company culture.  Her comments made me realize that this company does not have a culture of empowerment. They have been through many acquisitions and spin-offs, and the culture has been impacted by the continual shifting of leadership and ownership,

Like a symphony orchestra, each individual brings a unique tone to the overall production.
Social media is about being transparent and authentic. If the director, stifles the soloist, the performance seems lacking. The role of the director is to infuse his musicians with and understanding and passion for a particular piece of music. Companies should consider a similar model.  If companies are concerned about their employees sharing inappropriate content, they should inform and educate their employees on the company goals for using social media, provide guidelines for content and ramifications for employees if they show poor judgement.  A company's culture and organizational structure can provide two of the biggest hurdles to social media success.  Take the time to understand your company's culture and the impact on communication style and channel, is critical when initiating your social media efforts. 

Recommendations for addressing these challenges include strategic planning to align the use of social media with clear goals and metrics, employee education, organize a hub and spoke social media team and constantly listen, review and assess.  Everyone I have talked to about social media shares that their experience has been trial and error.  It's ok to make a mistake.  Own it and move forward.  Your goal should be to orchestrate the efforts of your organization in such a way as to let individual personalities emerge and shine.  The content they share will reflect positively on your organization

How are your social media efforts proceeding?  What are your biggest challenges?  I'm interested to learn from you!

What's your perspective? 

Are you afraid that your corporate culture and/or hierarchical organization structure are stifling your attempts at social media?  Then you need to take a step back and consider how to leverage social media in a way that balances culture, organization and open communication.

If your hurdle is related to culture, you must accept that it is not easy to change the corporate culture.  But, you can adapt.  For example, if your culture is one that struggles in the adoption of new technology, you probably haven’t even started using social media yet.  Your first goal should be to gain executive commitment for the use of social networking platforms as an additional communication channel.  You should be clear in your goals for using social media (i.e., thought leadership, market awareness, lead generation, etc.).  You could also find examples of other companies in your industry that are using social media.  You will want to have a clear, measurable strategy that will demonstrate clear benefits for adopting social media.

If your culture is one of privacy and protection of intellectual property, there is still a place for social media.  Employee use of social networking platforms is not an automatic disclosure of corporate secrets!  However, your overall social media plan should include definition of a social media policy that provides guidelines forwhat platforms the company will use, how employees use thesesocial networks, what kind of information can be shared (or not), and ramifications for violating these guidelines.  Innovative companies often create market shifting technology and want to protect this technology.  However, these same companies often have unique perspectives on the industry or intriguing histories of bringing products to market.  Social media provides a forum for sharing perspectives, without giving away IP, and inviting conversation that may lead to the next big innovation.

If your challenge is related to organizational structure, it is likely that the primary concern is one of employee empowerment.  Employees that do not feel empowered are unlikely to be comfortable with the open communication style required.  While the marketing department could be empowered to lead the effort, there are other options.  An option that will begin to build cross-company employee interest is to gain executive support and sponsorship.  Once you gain that support, work with your executive sponsor to develop an internal communication plan regarding the company’s development of a social media strategy.  This will provide employees with an ongoing view of the goals of the strategy and executive support for it.  By the time it is time to implement the strategy, some employees will be eager to participate thus alleviating the pressure on the marketing department.

These are just a few examples of overcoming cultural or organizational challenges before implementing a social media strategy.  Social media provides many benefits that make it well worth the effort to knock down internal hurdles.  What are the hurdles your company is facing?

What’s your perspective?

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the Facebook privacy issue and questioned whether it was about privacy or control and discussed the corporate focus on operational issues when commencing their foray into social media.  Thus, addressing the legal, security, network and business goals around their foray.  However, the question of control in a digital media world goes beyound that initial discussion.
 
Company business models have been based on control - control of all aspects of their operations, financials, product and messaging.  Why?  Companies want to build meaningful products, build market leadership and sustain competitive differentiation with the overall goal to create profit and margin.  Companies protect their intellectual property, technology and business processes as they often provide that competitive differentiation.  Companies have controlled the flow of information about their products and their product roadmaps.  However, there is a major shift that has been underway for some time, but that is exaggerated by social networking.  Customers want information whenever and however they can get it.

Look at Apple's veil of secrecy around every new product launch...and the hoopla around Gizmodo's "lucky" and early access to iPhone 4.  Steve Jobs seeks to control the introduction and messaging around every new product.  However, the internet buzz around the product(s) creates demand for insight and discussion, and we can imagine, product.

Companies control access to their products and solutions to create interest and demand.  In the 'old" media world, broadcasters created programming and determined the schedule for when each program would be broadcast.  This created demand for the program and allowed advertisers to target ads to the programs audience based on their demographic.  We have seen this model challenge on multiple fronts as advertisers sought incremental outlets (i.e., the internet) and consumers sought alternate channels to access content (i.e., the internet) or new devices allowed consumers to watch content when they wanted (not when the broadcasters wanted them to).

The tide has turned and B2C companies are responding.  Broadcasters make their content available via multiple distribution channels.  Airlines offer discounted tickets to followers on Twitter.  Local businesses offer coupons to consumers in their neighborhood (i.e., Groupon, Foursquare).  Consumers are using social media to "get what they want,  when they want".  If you have a question, you tweet or facebook about it - and, you get an answer.

How will B2B companies respond?  While they will (and should) protect their core assets of IP and technology, they are figuring out how to leverage social media.  They are uncomfortable with ceding control to their customers, yet they are beginning to see how customers can give them an instantaneous opinion on products, support and company.  B2B companies can gain great insight on product features, customer satisfaction and company image.  Whether their customers are actually gaining control is still an unanswered question, but customer influence is growing. 

How is your company addressing social media impact on control and influence?  Are you listening?  Do you particpate in social platforms, communities, discussions about your industry or niche market?  Do you actively engage your customers to prioritize your product roadmap?  Do your customers have an online community to discuss support challenges?  Do you enable your customers to help each other?  Ceding a little control can gain great benefit.

What's your perspective?

So you’re thinking about jumping on the Enterprise 2.0 bandwagon.  You’re not only thinking about incorporating social networking into your marketing plan, you are thinking about how Web 2.0 and social networking platforms can facilitate the way you do business.  You may be thinking about enhancing your customer support capabilities through customer support forums.   Or, you may be considering how you can create an internal social network to simplify the ways employees connect, collaborate and communicate with each other.  Or, you may be considering a plethora of other ways that you can enhance the way your business works.

If you believe that Web 2.0 tools and platforms can help your business, you are right!  However, be prepared to invest the necessary time to build a strategy and consider the organizational impact.  OK, now you’re thinking, am I biting off more than I can chew?  No!  It’s only that in many ways implementing these solutions can change the way your current business processes work.  In fact, it can streamline many of them.  This is why it is important to think about how these solutions may change existing formal or informal organizational structures and processes.

The organizations that we work within have evolved based on number of norms.  These norms are institutional, social, community and individual.  They informally define how we process information and interact with others.  They are the underlying factors that drive the structure of an organization   Look at the differences between how Baby Boomers and Gen Y work, learn and motivate:

	Baby Boomer (born:  1946- 1964)	Gen Y (born: 1978-1994)
Work Style	Time management	Multi-tasking
Learning Style	Instruction	Experience
Collaboration	Collaborative	Independent (resists collaboration)
Motivations	Independence	Competition
View on Authority	Respect for others is earned	Respect for Authority
Structure	De-centralized, non-hierarchical	Centralized, hierarchical
Information Access	Access for all	Access to those in power

   Source:  http://ekarine.org/wp-admin/pub/IAMOT_DN_2008.pdf

Today, much of corporate America reflects organizational structure and business processes that reflect the influence of the Baby Boomer mindset.  However, with the increasing adoption of digital media solutions which inherently broaden communication, increase collaboration and expand employee connectivity, traditional structures will need to adapt.  There has been much talk within the Fortune 100-500 in the past decade about the Adaptive Enterprise.  This term was coined by Stephan H. Haeckel in his 1999 book the Adaptive Enterprise.  Much of Haeckel’s theory resonates today when speaking of sense and respond organization.  However, have organizations really adopted employee empowerment,  de-centralized hierarchy and open communication, only to retrench to what is familiar and comfortable.

Digital Media, through its use of video, instant messaging or chat and blogging, increases the capacity for any company to quickly understand shifting market trends, customer concerns, product adoption, technology innovation and more.  When moving forward with digital media solutions think about the impact on your information systems, organization culture, communication practices, employee abilities and reward structures. 

The knowledge you can gain as a business and as an employee is increases dramatically when using social networks.  As the saying goes, “knowledge is power”.  Think about how to engage to gain beneficial insights and how this will shift the conversations in your business.  How will it impact your organizational structure?  How will it provide process improvement?  How will it improve employee productivity?

What’s your perspective?