Social Business Implications

The Royal We of Social Business

We talk about the power of social media.

We talk about how we have to become more transparent.

We talk about how we have to become more authentic, more human.

We talk about how social media enables us to get closer to our customers, to have a dialog vs. a monologue.

We talk about how we have to become a part of the conversation, to be where our customers are.

The Royal We

The problem is that the ‘we’ in these examples is rarely, if ever, truly viewed as ‘the organization’. It’s departments like marketing, customer service, or social media consultants looking through their own lenses instead of the ‘Royal We’ of the organization itself.

And that is one of the primary differences between social media and social business. A social business understands that for marketing or PR to ‘be transparent’ means that it has to first become an organization which can afford to be transparent. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Change Management, Creating Gravity, Social Business, Social Media, Strategic Planning Tagged With: change, change management, culture, culture change, empowerment, engagement, making the case for social business, social business, social business adoption, social business implications, social business leadership, social business models, social business planning, social business strategy, social media, social strategy, stewarding change

Social Business Farming

By Matt Ridings Leave a Comment

Sometimes it’s difficult to communicate exactly what a firm like SideraWorks does. We focus on items that are considered the most important indicators of whether you will succeed at a social business initiative. Yet, they are also the most overlooked.

To that end, I often lean on metaphors to try and make that mental ‘click’ happen (my business partner would say it’s more like I ‘abuse’ metaphors too often, whatever). During the Superbowl, Dodge ran an ad entitled “God made a farmer“. It was a powerful ad, many would say the best in a night of bests. It brought to mind one of the metaphors I’ve used in other situations about the role that SideraWorks plays in organizations and why.

For our metaphorical purposes here, ‘farming’ is our equivalent to ‘becoming a social business’. OK? Ready?

Let’s Get Farming

Let’s say that you’ve decided you’re going to be a farmer. The first thing you’re going to do is go buy yourself some land. That land represents your organizations people and partners. The next thing you’re going to do is decide what crops you want to grow. Those crops represent your products or services. With me so far?

The problem you’re having is that things have begun changing, perhaps your yield is going down or perhaps your neighbor is getting a lot more yield than you are. There are all these changes taking place that you don’t fully grasp yet, but without question they are impacting your farm. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business Culture, Change Management, Leadership, Social Business, Strategic Planning Tagged With: change, change management, culture, culture change, planning for success, social business, social business implications, social business planning, social strategy, strategic planning

Social Slam and SideraWorks

By Matt Ridings Leave a Comment

Our CEO, Matt Ridings, will be doing a special workshop at Social Slam this year. After the incredible praise we heard about the event from people we respect, we knew we wanted to be a part of it and do something special. After spending some time collaborating with the amazing Mark Schaefer and the fine folks at the University of Tennessee we came up with this workshop.

Part of the mission of Social Slam is to make it accessible to everyone, so we’re really excited to announce we’re going to be doing a workshop like this at an incredibly low cost (less than 1/25 our normal workshop, how can you beat that?). Attendance is extremely limited however, so if you’ve been looking for a way to get into one of our workshops or have been prohibited by the cost this is a great opportunity.

We’re honored to be a part of the event and to be able to offer a little something special. In addition, our friend John Jantsch will be keynoting the event and you won’t want to miss that.

The workshop description from the Social Slam website is below, you can see the full details and register here: Social Slam Plus

Beyond Social Media: Creating the Social Organization – With Matt Ridings

Level: Advanced
Price: $299
Time: 2 p.m. – 5 p.m. on Thursday, April 4

This is an extraordinary opportunity to study with one of the true visionaries in the field of social business and social media marketing, Matt Ridings of SideraWorks.

In this “advanced” section, Matt will look at the sociological and organizational implications of creating a successful social media business initiative. In this highly interactive event, Matt will help participants:

Explore the deep implications social media has throughout an organization (how it impacts their internal business processes, the workforce/hiring implications, the challenges and opportunities).

The internalization of social value (collaboration, knowledge management, culture initiatives, utilization outside of engagement (R&D, Research, etc.)

Look at real world examples of how to work through social implementation issues.

Using SideraWorks proprietary facilitation methods to demonstrate how you can build more effective social media policies, processes, and governance using real world scenarios to prepare for the inevitable PR crisis.

If your business is beyond the “dabbling” phase and is now looking to leverage social to its fullest, this workshop is for you. This is a “teach you how to fish” type of session that will provide specific tactical approaches you will be able to take back to your office or clients and apply immediately. Go beyond the theories and see how work is getting done in the messy real world of business.

Filed Under: Announcements and Events Tagged With: consulting, s, social business, social business implications, social business planning, social media, social strategy

The Conflict Of Social Business: Lipstick On A Pig

By Matt Ridings 1 Comment

I’m often frustrated with a lot of the pundits of social business. I’m not speaking of those who misunderstand what social business is and simply associate it to mean a business that is involved in social media, or those who opportunistically spin the word as a hot new replacement for the term social media. I’m speaking of those who actually do understand what social business means and preach the traits and benefits of a more collaborative, agile, informed, and adaptive organization.

My frustration lies not in their understanding of ‘what’ a social business looks like, but rather their lack of understanding in ‘how’ an organization can make that transition. The prevailing view seems to be that if we simply show companies what all the benefits and traits are that they will simply ‘become’ those things. ”The organizational culture must change!”, “The technologies must be put into place!”, “The hierarchy and silos must fall!”.

While all true to one degree or another, these are still statements of ‘what’ must happen and not ‘how’. The most important factor missing here is a ‘why’. Why have organizations evolved in the way they have? It is only through understanding that evolution that one can design and justify a means of effectively changing it.

From Social Media To Social Business – Expion Keynote

By Matt Ridings Leave a Comment

Here are the slides from the keynote talk at the Expion Social Business Summit in Raleigh, NC on September 11, 2012. If you view on the slideshare site you can read the notes pages which explain each slide (or click here to download a PDF version including notes)

Enjoy!

Social Media to Social Business (Expion Keynote Sept. 2012) from SideraWorks

Filed Under: Business Culture, Change Management, Leadership, Measurement & Analysis, Policies and Guidelines, Social Business, Social Media, Social Scenario Modeling, Strategic Planning Tagged With: change management, consulting, culture, culture change, empowerment, Framework, planning for success, Presentations, social business, social business adoption, social business implications, social business models, social business planning, social media, social strategy

Lazy Millennials And Social Business

By Matt Ridings 10 Comments

Those Lousy Millennials

The ‘Millennial Generation’ gets a lot of press, and not a lot of it good. They are portrayed as lazy, unrealistic, narcissistic, and uncommitted. Like a lot of stereotypes this is based upon partial truths, but those truths are given from the perspective of a traditional workforce.

Your Future Leaders

Whether you ascribe to, or can even relate to, their values isn’t really important. From a business perspective you cannot afford to ignore them. This incoming workforce represents your future leadership. The talent that your organization needs to succeed exists within this pool of individuals, if you cannot provide an environment that attracts and retains the best of them then someone else will. This is something you cannot allow to happen.

But if they really are lazy, unrealistic, narcissistic, and uncommitted how can you possibly afford to integrate them into your organization? The primary success factor in developing a social business is building an underlying culture that supports it. In this case, you need to ensure that you have a plan for developing an environment that understands the needs and values of this workforce and leverages those effectively to benefit both parties. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business Culture, Change Management, Leadership, Social Business, Uncategorized Tagged With: change, change management, consulting, culture, culture change, empowerment, human resources, social business, social business adoption, social business implications, social business planning, stewarding change, strategic planning

Social Business: The Difference Between Efficient & Effective

By Matt Ridings 2 Comments

David Armano wrote a great post on “Social Business: Where It’s Been and Where It’s Going“. I would highly encourage you to hop over there and give it a read.

He and I have similar pasts where digital is concerned and we view the space through much the same lens. So needless to say I wholeheartedly agree with his post. The only thing I’d add however, is that there’s also one big difference when you compare the historical evolution of digital within the business environment and the social business evolution of today. Looking back, the ‘Business’ portion of the web was, as he rightly states, a transactional one. Essentially, how do we take our known ways of ‘processing’ business and move that into new ways of interfacing customers to those operational processes. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business Culture, Change Management, Leadership, Social Business, Strategic Planning Tagged With: change management, consulting, culture, culture change, engagement, innovation, marketing, planning for success, social business, social business adoption, social business implications, social business models, social business planning, social strategy, strategic planning

Social Business: It’s OK To Start Simple

By Matt Ridings Leave a Comment

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.

Dealing with the implications on your business of engaging in external social media
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...]