Green Shoots of Social Business

It's easy (and fun) to declare something dead and then sit back to watch the reaction.  

So the recent debate about whether the Social Business is dead or not has been entertaining and mildly diverting for those of us deeply involved each day working with organisations who are only now coming to terms with what becoming truly social will actually mean for all aspects of their businesses.

Social media, social technology and social business are still staples of the typical CXO Strategy Away Day agenda and they will be until executive teams across many diverse organisations fully grasp the implications for every line of business. The situation is, in some ways, similar to green and sustainability agenda items which, five years ago, strategising executive teams were trying to digest in between working lunches and the first nine holes.  

At first many execs didn't really accept the need to invest in and support green initiatives and often opted for lip-service and green-washing, using comms to convince the market that they were taking it seriously. After a while though, it became clear, particularly to the CFOs in the room, that doing the green thing was, in many cases, doing the right thing for the balance sheet and looked a lot like good old-fashioned cost-cutting as infrastructure replacements were pushed back and reuse, recycling and slicker, more efficient business practices were eventually ushered in.

Sadly, just when, businesses were beginning to grasp the importance of green and sustainable activities for the future of their organisations, the issue dangerously slipped right down the agenda due the global financial crash, which refocused the minds of corporate execs worldwide overnight.

Today though, social business is still very much taxing C-Suite minds and many remain to be convinced of the need to adapt and transform through the adoption of social behaviour, culture and technology.  

So what can we learn from what has gone before?  

Well, if you're looking to convince a sceptical CFO of the merits of social media, then warm tales of community engagement and collaboration might not cut it, much like the planet-saving messages of the green and sustainability consultants a few years ago. However, what worked then, works just as well now. Demonstrating the impact of green and sustainable programmes on a company's bottom line eventually convinced the CFOs of a few years ago. They need to be convinced of the merits of becoming a social business in just the same way... and it works.

For example, just mention to the CFO who has just been asked to sign off on brand new contact centre how GiffGaff has completely stripped these costs from its business by engaging a motivated and committed crowd of customers to provide support for each other. See if that piques their interest in becoming a social business!

Just a thought.

photo:  innpictime

The Circle... the Social Business on Steroids!

You probably read a lot of business books.  I do too, but always interspersed with some great fiction. So it's great when a fiction choice merges into one of my favourite business topics... social media.  I've just finished The Circle by Dave Eggers and found it fascinating and frightening in equal measure.

The story follows Mae Holland, who joins the Bay Area campus of The Circle, a global search and social organisation a few years into our future.  To give you an idea of scale, The Circle has already swept up minnows such as Google, Twitter, Facebook and the like through acquisition and is continuing to grow at an astonishing rate as more and more users rely on its services for many aspects of their lives.

Mae's 'onboarding' at The Circle is friendly and frantic and offers a humorous insight into the West Coast start-up culture many of us recognise today.  We follow her (as do a steadily increasing crowd of customers/fans from across the globe) as she learns the ropes and struggles to balance the demands of life on campus with ailing parents and an already strained relationship with a former partner.  After a couple of hiccups, Mae soon becomes immersed in the hyper-social reality that is a job at The Circle, taking on more and more tasks and dedicating more of her time to the organisation.  Every aspect of her daily activities is monitored and shared globally and just when you think it's not possible to share any more... well... no spoilers here.

The Circle offers fascinating insight into everything that's exciting and enticing about the power of social technologies, but, at a time of major media concern re spying and and snooping and the relationship between tech giants and governments across the world, the book also offers some stark warnings about privacy and the implications for the global citizen, as people's reliance on social technologies grows increasingly prevalent.

If, like me, you're fascinated by social business and wonder what the organisations of today could be evolving into, The Circle is essential reading but tells us that, if mishandled, the decades to come could look more like some of the darker chapters of the twentieth century rather than a bright new social future for us all.

Have a read, then we'll work together to try to get social business right.

Rubber bands. Everywhere.

It feels like we're in changing times. Uncertainty is everywhere. Planning horizons are incredibly short. Confidence flips between fervent zeal and paralysing doubt in the time it takes to transition a powerpoint slide. The precarious economy is clearly a significant contributor to the change we're experiencing, causing us to question much of what we previously held to be self evident. But the void of uncertainty is being filled with new perspectives driving real changes in the way we work, the way we live.

Through technology, the way we work is becoming more social. This is a fact that is no longer denied (even in the conservative corporate world in which Tim and I spend much of our lives). It's encouraging that conversations in most boardrooms are now way beyond the 'Shall we be social?' stage. It's all about 'How are we being social?' And the speed at which this is happening within the glacial dynamics of corporate life is truly terrifying. 'Rubber bands' of change are everywhere, with pioneers earnestly thrusting out into the unknown restrained by the wary majority, held back by an unmet need to know where they are going and how to get there.

Managing these rubber bands is complex, so complex that Tim and I feel it's time to create a forum for sharing these observations. Through this blog and a companion magazine we curate on Flipboard we want to share experiences and ideas from those on the front line of social businesses. Socially, of course. What better way to release the tension in those rubber bands and get your organisation moving?

photo:  Larry Rosenstein