Servant of Chaos

PCN Connect: A Little Something I Prepared Earlier

About two years ago I wrote that Social Media is Not Sexy. This post was about the business challenges of social media and just how complex, challenging and incremental it can be within large scale, enterprise sized businesses.

About eight or nine months after writing this post I took on a new role with SAP’s Premier Customer Network. I’d already launched an online platform for SAP’s education team with a heavy social media element - and this new opportunity to work closely with the world’s largest companies in a social media focused role sounded fantastic. But what would it really take? How far could we go? Would it be as unsexy as I thought?

I can recall speaking with Mike Hickinbotham who suggested that there WAS a deep down sexiness to getting big companies to engage in social media. And he should know, working with one of Australia’s largest companies, Telstra – but his point was not necessarily about the glitz and glamour that comes with flashy campaigns - it was about the slow burn that comes from changing the nature of the relationships that we have with our customers.

Over the last 12 months or so, we have been working with some of SAP’s most strategic customers in this way – creating a secure, closed community called PCN Connect. It is still early days – but it is exciting – and maybe even a little sexy - to see this site come to life.

Here’s a taste of our journey so far. But like any social business initiative – there is still a way to go – and it gets more interesting with every step.

Social Business Maturity Model

Almost every day there is another way that social media encroaches upon our businesses. It could be a new technology designed to help us reach new customers or something to help us target buyers more accurately. It could be a new device, some software or a must-have community building platform.

Similarly, in our so-called “personal lives”, we are seeing a blurring of the boundaries – between home and work, work and play, friends, colleagues, connections and family.

But while many of us have been weaving social media into the fabric of our lives, most businesses are at the very beginning of this process. Their efforts are ad hoc, barely repeatable and hardly defined. There is confusion, miscommunication – and even misinformation.

So what then would be a model that enterprises – large scale businesses – could look to? I thought I’d try my hand at putting a “social business maturity model” together. Running vertically are the five stages of enterprise maturity. Each of these stages have key process areas which provide milestones and evidence capabilities that mark the transition to a new level of maturity. It’s a draft, but I’d love your input and suggestions. How can we make it better? What would you add or change?

Social Business Maturity Model

View more presentations from Gavin Heaton

A Living Company

Here is a neat presentation from Dachis Group’s Dave Gray on organisational systems – contrasting the way we live with the way we work. On the one hand, we have our communities, neighbourhoods and streetscapes – and on the other we have our workgroups, our teams and business units. Why don’t we envision our workplaces in a similar way? Would this improve our sense of belonging, our productivity or our customer satisfaction scores? Take a flip through and let me know what you think.

The connected company

View more presentations from Dave Gray

Ten Ways to Kill Community

Sometimes the best way of understanding HOW to do something is to think how NOT to. In this fantastic short presentation, Marilyn Pratt steps through the 10 things that you can do to kill off the community that has begun to grow around your brand (or products, services etc). There is some great insight that can be applied to any business’ community – and each point is backed up with the hard won experience of working in, building up and evangelising a large corporate community.

Marilyn is one of SAP’s community evangelists and knows first-hand what works (and doesn’t) – but does this accord with your experience? What other ways have you found to kill your community?

Social Media is Not Sexy

While Web 2.0 and social media tools provide great opportunities for businesses from a branding and marketing point of view, there are also a raft of other opportunities which are easily overlooked. The very same benefits that can be achieved through your social media efforts can also be applied across your enterprise – from employees to partners, vendors and even shareholders. Sounds great, right?

But let me tell you a little secret. This sort of social media (and almost every aspect of social media) is just not sexy. It doesn’t have the glitz and glamour or even the spotlights of advertising; and there’s not the breathtaking scale of large format outdoor advertising. But if you can get past this, you will find that your social media efforts really will transform your business.

But where do you start?

I always start with people and with their behaviour. What sort of relationship does you business have with them? The thing about Web 2.0 or social media is that it is participatory – and many, if not most, businesses and brands base their stakeholder relationships around transactions. In fact, we have built our entire businesses around this – just look at the success of that once new-fangled concept of “ebusiness” or “ecommerce” – and now think about whether you would ever open a bank account that didn’t have an online banking option. Even my mother uses online banking. To me, that makes it ubiquitous. It makes it mainstream.

From a business perspective, the transactional relationship works. You know what you want out of the relationship (ie money) and it is easy to measure (volume). But to enable a transactional relationship with a large audience requires technology – and with that comes complexity, long timeframes for implementation and a whole lot of work on your internal business processes. And because of the scale, complexity and cost, it comes from the top down – it is driven by your business executives.

Web 2.0, on the other hand, is simple to implement. Sometimes you can get extensive functionality for little or no up-front cost – you can use open source software, free or cheap web hosting or you can choose a hosted (software as a service) model. Once you decide to go down this path, you can implement your ideas very quickly. Within minutes you can have a blog setup and working, a wiki ready for team collaboration and Google Analytics ready to measure your traffic, goals and conversion rates. And did I mention that ANYONE can make this happen. All you need is a web connection. From the CEO right down the new intern, anyone in your business has access to the tools that can transform the relationships that you have with your stakeholders. That’s right – it is bottom-up transformation.

But there is a problem. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you SHOULD. And just because it’s available, doesn’t mean it will be ADOPTED. The challenge for brands and businesses who want to shift the needle on their business relationships is to move from transaction to participation – to create an engagement layer that bridges the transactional parts of the business with the newly emergent participatory elements.

Those clever folks over at McKinsey’s have published Six Ways to Make Web 2.0 Work (registration is free) which points out some of the challenges (and approaches) which can can use. But for my money, it is that middle layer of Engagement that builds success. It is the messy, unsexy aspect of business (and marketing):

• Communications: Keeping your stakeholders up-to-date with improvements, road blocks, outcomes and risks is an essential element. This can also flow over to other aspects of marketing/advertising.
• Change management: There is always a pre-existing way of “getting things done”. Helping people adopt new behaviours and new technologies means managing and measuring that change.
• Framework establishment: Many of your stakeholders will have had some exposure to Web 2.0 tools in their personal lives. You will need to provide frameworks which provide the context within which they can most effectively use them at work.
• Informal leadership: Nothing says “move ahead” like the CEO and leadership team informally adopting the Web 2.0 tools.

But while this is unsexy – with the right strategy, it actually delivers on the promise of Web 2.0. And that is good news for businesses and for brands. Hands up for some unsexy marketing?

The Secret to Marketing

I read the Cluetrain Manifesto when I was in my first official marketing role. I had been “doing” marketing for years before this – building marketing plans according to the rules, following branding guidelines, keeping and enforcing the exclusion space around the logo to a consistent 36 points.

But the Cluetrain was astounding not because of the challenge it presented to existing marketing - it was astounding because there was no CONTEXT in which it could brought within business practices. The conversations that we were having between the MD and the marketing department – and between the Board and the marketing department - went something like this:

Me: “we need to re-do this website”
Everyone else: “what’s a website?”

But soon, this conversation changed. It changed because the website project I was heading delivered results. We got something done and it changed the way that our employees thought about the company and it changed the way that our customers thought of our employees. And perhaps, more importantly, we measured what we did and we focused our continuous digital strategy around the outcomes that we set up-front, and refined along the way. We did this not because it was expected, but because we wanted to know what worked and what didn’t (hey, no one even really thought a website was important, so measurement was not on the agenda). But this conversation seems to be re-occurring – just replace the word “website” with the word “blog” and add water.

These days, the Cluetrain IS the context through which we conceptualise marketing innovation.

A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.

These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can't be faked.

So, if we take this at face value, we would think that company or corporate blogs would be on the must-have list of every marketing director across the country (or across the world for that matter). But this is hardly the case. Why? (Check CK's blog for some ideas.) While a number of companies may use a blog to publish news, they are not really “blogging”. In fact, Mike Hickinbotham on one of the Telstra blogs has a theory:

My working theory (based on anecdotal stories) is that generally the greatest push to explore the use of social media comes from the middle versus the top end of most Australian corporations/organisations.

This, I think, is one of the secrets of marketing – and that is getting things done. You see, for years those who wanted to DO things - to make a difference in the way that we talk or engage with customers or partners or employees – knew that words and actions go together. And “getting things done” takes some effort in a large organisation. It takes a level of seniority – but you can’t be too senior. It is the role of the Business Designer that I wrote about here:

The Business Designer does not sit in a creative studio. Rather, she operates across business units -- touching marketing, customer service and new product design. The BD has a finger on the pulse of finance and lives cheek-by-jowl with the legal team. There is the touch of the management consultant in the way that the BD navigates the org chart -- but also the fervour of the evangelist. She may be T-shaped. She may be a green egg. But above all, she is an experienced business professional. That's right -- she knows how to get things done.

But “getting things done” is not the only secret to marketing. There is one other. You have to “get emotional”. You have to tap into the emotions of the people around you – whether they are customers, bosses or the dreaded legal team. Mike says you need to “seek like-minded people out” – and he is right, because they will be on that same emotional wavelength as you – but you also need to go beyond that. You need to find the secret of the secret – the trigger that opens the flood gates.

As Clay Shirky explained about his own emotional involvement with the mini-crisis that was tagged as #AmazonFail:

When a lifetime of intellectual labor and study came up against a moment of emotional engagement, emotion won, in a rout.

And that’s the secret in action. Emotion wins everytime. Hands-down. A best-kept secret is just that – and it will do no one any favours. Isn’t it time you pulled a rabbit out of your hat?

Social Media Hits the Fortune 1000

Some time ago a group of Fortune 1000 companies got together to understand, discuss and evaluate the impact of social media on their businesses. The Blog Council, operated by Andy Sernovitz’s Gas Pedal, has 45 big business members – including my own employer, SAP. And although I have no input to the Blog Council, there are clearly benefits for large businesses to collaborate, share best practices and work through the opportunities and challenges that social media presents for large businesses.

In yet another indication that social media is mainstreaming, the Blog Council has announced that Bob Pearson, former VP of Communities and Conversations at Dell, is joining the Blog Council as President. Bob’s work at Dell is often discussed as a model for the kind of transformation that businesses dream of – moving from Dell Hell to Web Darling – indeed, I use this story as a case study whenever I speak about social media. As Bob explains:

Social media represents a disruptive set of technologies and techniques that will transform a company’s business practices, improve conversational capabilities with customers and empower employees to learn and share their knowledge in real time.

And while this sounds a little jargonistic, there are some serious objectives underlying this announcement. Not only does this signal a rapid maturing of social media in the enterprise space, it also goes beyond the marketing cauldron – with Bob clearly targeting cross-line of business capabilities. It will be fascinating to see how Andy Sernovitz – author of Word of Mouth Marketing and CEO of the Blog Council – will team up to accelerate the adoption of social media in the enterprise. As Andy explains:

Social media is no longer experimental. It is essential for every company. Bob's practical experience will help our members implement effective social media programs.

I look forward to seeing this happen on a global stage – but hope this announcement also provides encouragement for Australian businesses considering a move into the social media pond.

Implementing Web Technologies to Transform Organisations

This week, a one day executive forum on Enterprise 2.0 – is being run here in Sydney. Building on Ross Dawson’s ongoing exploration and analysis of the application of web technologies to organisational structures and processes, it combines panels, case studies and workshops in what sounds like a fluid and energetic day.

With local case studies and a host of local and international participants, it promises to be a great primer for executives wanting to learn what, where and how to start with an Enterprise 2.0 initiative. And for only $800, it could be the best investment you make this year. You can register here.

Don't Fall in Love with Your Campaign

You know what it’s like.

The words leap from your mouth. Eyes widen. Smiles broaden and the room comes alive. And as the heartbeats quicken and the enthusiasm begins to mount, you know that THIS project is going to rock. A love affair is beginning, and yet you don’t even notice it.

When we turn our attention away from strategy and planning and take a deep dive into implementation, the challenge is to maintain a focus and direction – to guide and channel the creative energies of your team. After all, we all have ideas; and we all like to “contribute”.

And when it comes to digital projects – whether you are considering a web based advertising campaign, a social media activation of some kind, or even building your own community – you will never find yourself bereft of ideas. But if you want to drive success for your project (and I am sure you do), you need to focus on simplicity – and the best way to do so is to focus on your market. Think about the PEOPLE who you will invite into your campaign or project. Think about the value that they will find, be surprised by, and share. And one of the best ways of doing this, is by STOPPING a focus on functions and functionality.

Ashley Ringrose shares these 15 tips for growing a community courtesy of Ben Huh from I Can Has Cheeseburger. And while the focus of the article is on taking communities to a new level, the same applies to almost any team-based endeavour. Think particularly about your next digital creative project or any Enterprise 2.0 efforts that you are considering (or engaged in), and then read item 5:

5. Stop Engineering and Start Thinking About the Market
People who work in the technology industry tend to over engineer things. Don’t complicate your problems, simplify them. If you need to add a commenting system to your site don’t build it from scratch, download one. Whatever you do, do it quickly.

To an extent, we all fall in love with the projects we work on. Just make sure you don’t overcomplicate it. Keep it simple. Let it connect. Because in the end, true love isn’t about you, it’s about someone who loves you back.

Enterprise 2.0: It's Not Your Dad's Company

Take a look around. Look at the people in your office, at the desk next to you. Look into the faces of the people who you pass in the corridor. They look the same, right? The same faces have greeted you year in, year out.

Well, get ready, because the workplace is transforming, and it is happening right under your nose.

Those peppy Gen Y kids who were brought into the business to inject some life and energy are moving up. That’s right, they have been steadily building their experience, lobbying the line management and pushing through the KPIs in the yearly 360 degree reviews … and guess what? They are now making business decisions. Yes, indeed, Gen Y are reaching the management level, and working the matrix -- and they will bring a new style and a new approach to your business.  This will transform the way that we all work. Indeed, it has to. 

And one of the biggest transformations will be right there on the desk in front of you. That locked down desktop that has served you well for the last couple of years will soon be replaced. Gradually that sparse Desktop will be replaced by a series of icons and widgets … and horror of all horrors, you will find the work computer looks increasingly like your kids PC (or dare I say it, a Mac!). The new management will be prising the dead-hand of the IT group off the controls and installing new applications and adding new links. There will be Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn and Friendfeed. There will be various shades of SaaS (software as a service) delivering on-demand enterprise scale business processes and systems that you can reach no matter where you are, all courtesy of “the cloud”. Sure there will be the in-house enterprise systems … but they too will play nicely with whatever you need them to. After all, it’s not your Dad’s company anymore. 

But while this sounds like a madhouse of change for the sake of change, stop again, for a moment. Get up and walk down the corridor. Your workplace is about to undergo a large-scale transformation … millions of baby boomer workers are set to reach retirement age in the next few years, and the next wave of Gen Y knowledge workers are stepping in to replace them. It’s not that the systems, processes and business models are being changed on a whim – they are being changed because the people who DO the work are changing. Like any living organism, the organisation is also transforming … shedding its skin in a kafka-esque tribute to the new age.

And while these new systems and processes may raise your eyebrows and your blood pressure, there is actually some as-yet unrealised business value in platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Aaron Strout and Joe Cascio clearly explain where micro-blogging platforms such as Twitter can deliver business value:

• Emergency broadcast system
• Knowledge management
• Training
• Expert identification
• Seeing the connectors
• Inclusion of external stakeholders

All of these elements will be of increasing strategic importance as the composition of the global workforce turns over on itself. And while there will be issues and questions around security, scalability and so on, they pale into insignificance against the larger challenges of global competition, attracting talent and delivering value to customers. And who knows, the widespread adoption of these tools may well inadvertently fullfil the promise of the Cluetrain Manifesto -- "humanising" the brands and businesses that we come in contact with every day.

It really is not my Dad's company.

Update: Marigo Raftopoulos has a great post encouraging us to understand this business transformation as a change from economies of scale to economies of (I presume personal/professional and social) networks.