“Social business allows organisations to open up the strategy making process … to bring employees into deciding where the company should go…to bring customers into the mix to share their thoughts on how you can serve them better.”

Using Social Business To Hunt The Future, Social Business News

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Choose your social business strategy first.  A tool-first emphasis tends to wag the dog and is invariably a disservice to the work itself. It also will likely hold back organizations seeking to get the most from social business — the effort becomes constrained around what an individual tool is capable of, rather than trying to determine what the business actually needs. Via The BrainYard -InformationWeek 

Choose your social business strategy first.  A tool-first emphasis tends to wag the dog and is invariably a disservice to the work itself. It also will likely hold back organizations seeking to get the most from social business — the effort becomes constrained around what an individual tool is capable of, rather than trying to determine what the business actually needs. Via The BrainYard -InformationWeek 

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“Three “facts” about social business are accepted without question by most people. That any business with a Facebook page or Twitter account is considered “social”; that hiring a social media person constitutes a social “presence”; that implementing an intranet transforms the organization into a “collaborative” enterprise. Now that I‘ve used up my allocation of quotation marks, I’m going to explain why these facts are pure myths.”

The Myth of Social Media Tactics Versus the Reality of Social Business Strategies - Forbes

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How To Move Away from the Industrial Age Company Model - Forbes If Social Business is really transforming the way we do business why are most of the stories and cases out there focused on changes to a single business function like marketing, human resources, or customer service? Shouldn’t it act as a change across several of these functions, or for that matter will these functions go away or change so fundamentally that we can no longer tell them apart? It may appear to be a fine distinction but yet a very important one. Transforming a business process may involve one or two functional silos like sales and customer service. Transforming how a company is organized on the other hand asks use to review basic question of how a firm should operate. It asks if we need separate business functions to do production, distribution, marketing, or sales. I read author, thought leader and the ‘female James Bond for Innovation’ Nilofer Merchant’s great five part series on Harvard Business Review, Rules for the Social Era, that asks the fundamental questions of why organizations are designed the way they are. In particular, she refers to how organizations still operate according to Harvard University professor Michael Porter’s Value Chain model, a classic business strategy definition of  of how companies should be organized to determine their market competitiveness.

How To Move Away from the Industrial Age Company Model - Forbes

If Social Business is really transforming the way we do business why are most of the stories and cases out there focused on changes to a single business function like marketing, human resources, or customer service? Shouldn’t it act as a change across several of these functions, or for that matter will these functions go away or change so fundamentally that we can no longer tell them apart?

It may appear to be a fine distinction but yet a very important one. Transforming a business process may involve one or two functional silos like sales and customer service. Transforming how a company is organized on the other hand asks use to review basic question of how a firm should operate. It asks if we need separate business functions to do production, distribution, marketing, or sales.

I read author, thought leader and the ‘female James Bond for Innovation’ Nilofer Merchant’s great five part series on Harvard Business Review, Rules for the Social Era, that asks the fundamental questions of why organizations are designed the way they are. In particular, she refers to how organizations still operate according to Harvard University professor Michael Porter’s Value Chain model, a classic business strategy definition of  of how companies should be organized to determine their market competitiveness.

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Strategy for an accelerating world

Today, the brands that set the pace are the ones that build a deep understanding of the needs, desires, and motivations of their customers—and then engage their customers in authentic, two-way conversations. Investing in deep consumer insight and designing your organization to connect with customers in more meaningful, relevant ways always earn you an advantage over your rivals.

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Want more respect? Money? Don't talk content

The essence of strategy on the Web is customer centricity. The Web is about the rise of customer power. Social media is just one example of that. Is the organization truly going to focus on and organize around the customer? That’s the key strategic question. How do we frame content in that context? (via ragan.com)

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Why Recognizing Your Employees on Social Media Is Great for Business | Mashable Social media has opened countless new avenues for promotion of all kinds. As a result of blogs, Twitter, Facebook and more, it’s as if we all have access to a bullhorn, and thus, the ability to promote ourselves whenever and to whomever we choose. Within your company, surely you’ve grappled with the use, disuse and even misuse of social media. But have you thought about using it for employee recognition? Communicate your staff appreciation by employing social media as a positive acknowledgement tool. It’s a highly visible and yet low-cost way to show your support. Zoomerang interviewed 1,180 small to mid-sized business decision makers and 500 consumers for its study, “Marketing in a Digital World.” They found that the three most important reasons small businesses leverage social media are: To connect with customers. To increase visibility. To self-promote. It’s time to add employee appreciation to the mix.

Why Recognizing Your Employees on Social Media Is Great for Business | Mashable

Social media has opened countless new avenues for promotion of all kinds. As a result of blogs, Twitter, Facebook and more, it’s as if we all have access to a bullhorn, and thus, the ability to promote ourselves whenever and to whomever we choose.

Within your company, surely you’ve grappled with the use, disuse and even misuse of social media. But have you thought about using it for employee recognition? Communicate your staff appreciation by employing social media as a positive acknowledgement tool. It’s a highly visible and yet low-cost way to show your support.

Zoomerang interviewed 1,180 small to mid-sized business decision makers and 500 consumers for its study, “Marketing in a Digital World.”

They found that the three most important reasons small businesses leverage social media are:

  • To connect with customers.
  • To increase visibility.
  • To self-promote.

It’s time to add employee appreciation to the mix.

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“The difference between goals (targets set in the future) and small steps (things to do quickly to move in a desired and defined direction). This may be the single most important conclusion for progress in a complex world. If things are ever-shifting, then what’s clear today may not be so clear tomorrow. Focus on small steps, to be done quickly in order to find out more about what works (rather than in the expectation that everything will be instantly resolved) seems to give people a sense of control and purpose in a confusing and muddled world.”

Working with complexity, not against it: Emergence in real life and everyday conversations | Synthesis

Understanding emergence is a sine qua non for understanding the world we live in. Thank you @stevenbjohnson for the introduction all those years ago…

(via parkparadigm)

(via parkparadigm)

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Three perspectives on disruption, and strategies for surviving it | Delaney Turner, IBM Software Blog Is disruption the new normal? It seems like it lately, as my social feeds serve up the ongoing speculation about Apple’s future , the devastation wrought by tropical storm Irene and the continuing gloomy outlook for the world economy. Luckily, though, my feeds have also served up three great reads about how to manage through disruption as well. I’ve summarized them and explained why I think they’re important. Whitney Johnson: “No idea what will come next”The first is Whitney Johnson’s post in the Harvard Business Review blog, entitled “Disrupt Yourself.” A former investment banker, Johnson describes the risks and fear involved in walking away from a seven-figure salary to become an entrepreneur and shares the lessons she’s learned in the six years since. Briefly, they are as follows:If it feels scary and lonely, you’re probably on the right track Be assured that you have no idea what will come next Throw out the performance metrics you’ve always relied on Your odds of success will improve when you pursue a disruptive course Marc Andreessen: “Even books are software”The second read is Marc Andreessen’s Wall Street Journal piece, “Why Software is Eating the World.” Andreessen’s is a voice for optimism in a stream of gloomy economic news. Shunning the speculation of another “internet bubble,” he sees companies like Facebook, Zynga and Foursquare building high-growth, high-margin and highly defensible businesses. He explains: My own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy/ […] More and more major businesses and industries are being run on software and delivered as online services—from movies to agriculture to national defense. Many of the winners are Silicon Valley-style entrepreneurial technology companies that are invading and overturning established industry structures. Over the next 10 years, I expect many more industries to be disrupted by software, with new world-beating Silicon Valley companies doing the disruption in more cases than not […] Today, the world’s largest bookseller, Amazon, is a software company—its core capability is its amazing software engine for selling virtually everything online, no retail stores necessary. On top of that, while Borders was thrashing in the throes of impending bankruptcy, Amazon rearranged its web site to promote its Kindle digital books over physical books for the first time. Now even the books themselves are software.

Three perspectives on disruption, and strategies for surviving it | Delaney Turner, IBM Software Blog

Is disruption the new normal? It seems like it lately, as my social feeds serve up the ongoing speculation about Apple’s future

, the devastation wrought by tropical storm Irene and the continuing gloomy outlook for the world economy.

Luckily, though, my feeds have also served up three great reads about how to manage through disruption as well. I’ve summarized them and explained why I think they’re important.

Whitney Johnson: “No idea what will come next”

The first is Whitney Johnson’s post in the Harvard Business Review blog, entitled “Disrupt Yourself.” A former investment banker, Johnson describes the risks and fear involved in walking away from a seven-figure salary to become an entrepreneur and shares the lessons she’s learned in the six years since. Briefly, they are as follows:

  • If it feels scary and lonely, you’re probably on the right track
  • Be assured that you have no idea what will come next
  • Throw out the performance metrics you’ve always relied on
  • Your odds of success will improve when you pursue a disruptive course

Marc Andreessen: “Even books are software”

The second read is Marc Andreessen’s Wall Street Journal piece, “Why Software is Eating the World.” Andreessen’s is a voice for optimism in a stream of gloomy economic news. Shunning the speculation of another “internet bubble,” he sees companies like Facebook, Zynga and Foursquare building high-growth, high-margin and highly defensible businesses. He explains:
 
My own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy/ […] More and more major businesses and industries are being run on software and delivered as online services—from movies to agriculture to national defense. Many of the winners are Silicon Valley-style entrepreneurial technology companies that are invading and overturning established industry structures. Over the next 10 years, I expect many more industries to be disrupted by software, with new world-beating Silicon Valley companies doing the disruption in more cases than not […] Today, the world’s largest bookseller, Amazon, is a software company—its core capability is its amazing software engine for selling virtually everything online, no retail stores necessary. On top of that, while Borders was thrashing in the throes of impending bankruptcy, Amazon rearranged its web site to promote its Kindle digital books over physical books for the first time. Now even the books themselves are software.

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Mid-Year Evaluation of Your Social Intranet | The Social Workplace So, technically it’s past the mid-year point, but in the HR technology world… this is the time that mid year reviews are completed. And it got me to thinking about the social technology goals that I had outlined for this year and where I currently stand with them. And I invite you to do the same. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not as far as I’d like: shrinking budgets, reorganized resources and modified priorities have slowed down my progress of creating a social experience for employees. I imagine that I’m not the only one in this situation. So, to break the ice, I thought I would provide a little insight into the projects I’ve been working on, what I accomplished and where I hope to go in the second half of the year (and beyond). What I did accomplish was a lot of movement and growing appreciation from my matrixed organization on the importance of creating an overall experience rather than siloed ones, and an overall understanding that sometimes the quickest and easiest route isn’t the most scalable by IT teams or adopted by the employee base. We have implemented what is considered to be “low hanging fruit” at the same time as taking our time and performing due diligence on more complex solutions.

Mid-Year Evaluation of Your Social Intranet | The Social Workplace

So, technically it’s past the mid-year point, but in the HR technology world… this is the time that mid year reviews are completed. And it got me to thinking about the social technology goals that I had outlined for this year and where I currently stand with them. And I invite you to do the same.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not as far as I’d like: shrinking budgets, reorganized resources and modified priorities have slowed down my progress of creating a social experience for employees. I imagine that I’m not the only one in this situation. So, to break the ice, I thought I would provide a little insight into the projects I’ve been working on, what I accomplished and where I hope to go in the second half of the year (and beyond).

What I did accomplish was a lot of movement and growing appreciation from my matrixed organization on the importance of creating an overall experience rather than siloed ones, and an overall understanding that sometimes the quickest and easiest route isn’t the most scalable by IT teams or adopted by the employee base. We have implemented what is considered to be “low hanging fruit” at the same time as taking our time and performing due diligence on more complex solutions.

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