Author Archives: echristensen42

12.11.12
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Social will fast forward you from the Stoneage to satellites

Not all of us may want to ride a satellite. But we certainly would not survive for very long in the Stoneage. A year ago, at a conference with the Group CIOs of Europe’s biggest companies, a CIO had the courage to stand up and tell us how his organization made the journey to complete business transformation. How they did it, is not as remarkable as the speed at which it happened: “6 months ago we were in the Stoneage – now we are trying to figure out how to make our satellites move faster”.

The propellant was social. By breaking down the internal boundaries on the new platform, they made the leap from transactions to engagement. Not only internally, but even more so when interacting with customers and business partners. Now you might think the company in question was one of those agile, high techs who are used to all things digital and the Internet of things. It wasn’t – it was a hard core manufacturing company with traditional products and traditional markets. And French.

You raise your arm in the audience and ask the obvious question: But how?

R. “Ray” Wang from the Harvard Business Review has one really good explanation: people-centric values, delivery and communication style, and timing. http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/05/how_to_engage_your_customers_a.html)

And salesforce.com Chief Scientist JP Rangaswami explains it with warmth and humour in this recording from Cloudforce Nordics in Stockholm on October 23, 2012:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgE7NbViu38&feature=plcp

Social is about people. Business is about people. Transformation is about people.

By building your journey on what matters to people, you will engage both employees and customers. Running your business will no longer be a series of data transactions; with the help of the many available social tools it will be run by data driven conversations .

12.07.12
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Social – the ultimate acronym

Did you ever think about the best way to describe what social disruption is all about? To move the discussion away from the channel (not social=Facebook page or social=Twitter account) and to what really matters, I have come up with this inspired by JP Rangashwami @jobsworth :

s = sincere

o = open

c = collaborative

i = interested

a = authentic

l = likeable

There are many excellent examples of organisations, companies and individuals who can subscribe to all of the above. One great example is the Danish TV&Broadband provider YouSee

Another – from the other side of the world, Toyota

But even if you only identify yourself with a subset of these letters, I would still categorize you as “social”. Let me elaborate:

Sincere

If you don’t mean it, don’t post it. Or retweet it. Or spread it. As a company or an individual it must be what you stand for.

Open

Be open to feedback and suggestions. Make yourself approachable and transparent and make sure to engage when someone reaches out. If you don’t they will stop trying. And that was not the intention.

Collaborative

At the end of the day, you and your audience are in the same boat. If you do not collaborate on moving the boat forward, you will ride in circles. Join initiatives that make sense to the common goal and be generous in sharing them to evangelize.

I nterested

Do you care? Do you want the audience to care? Show it. Respond, engage, reflect. Don’t just retweet other people’s content. Show who you are and that you care by commenting and making suggestions.

A uthentic

Your brand equals the sum of conversations about your brand, a @Radian6 executive told us when they joined salesforce.com – and we embraced that. So we joined the conversation to listen and engage – never hiding who we are and who we work for. But we joined as individuals – being true to our selves.

L ikable

It’s easy to be angry, to criticize, to rant. But let the others do that – those who want to interact with you and your company don’t need to hear what you are upset about, they want you to share their pains, not yours. Be the kind of person/company you would like to invite for dinner and enjoy having at your table.

Social disruption means that you as an individual or as a company engage along these lines, by showing that you care, by being true to yourself, by sharing for the benefit of a common objective: Ultimately, the success of everyone involved. – that is being social.

12.05.12
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Social Disruption

With complacency comes stagnation. That is why we need disruption to continue to evolve; whether it is climate change, an earthquake in Japan, or a fundamental change in how technology is used to interact between people. Social is such a disruption. To be truly social, however, you must understand that it is another element of human behaviour, not a technology. So whether you want to create a company Facebook page, a Twitter account, a LinkedIn group or whatever platform you select – it’s the people behind it and what they post and think that matter. And who’s perspective and thoughts we value.

Remember when we said “where did you hear it first” when major events shook our world. Well, not sure about the rest of you, but I hear it first on Twitter.