Reaching the vision of a truly social business is complex, there’s no denying that fact.  What often gets lost in our discussions of those complexities however is that where you start is less important than where you’re going.  After a few months of working with customers it’s clear that we’ve done a poor job as an industry (including SideraWorks) of letting companies know that you don’t have to try and tackle everything all at once.  We’ve instilled a fear in them that this stuff is just too overwhelming.  We’re in the process of changing our materials to correct that misconception, but in the meantime let’s try and provide some clarity around how you can start down this road simply and easily.

Where Are You Going?

Building a social business basically falls into two major categories of activities.

1. Dealing with the implications on your business of engaging in external social media
2. Taking advantage of the opportunities that applying social concepts within your organization represents

That’s it, nothing more nothing less.  It’s perfectly fine if you only want to do external engagement for a while.  What does matter however is that you deal with those implications.  Whether that’s through applying something like the SideraWorks Center of Gravity™ framework or another model of your own design you need centralized understanding and agreement.  [Read more...]