What Open Really Means

Apr 14, 2009 | blog

It’s hard to be a medium or large corporation these days.  The demands are not small, with expectations of investors, disappointing market performance, employee needs, government regulations and oversight… there’s almost no time left for the most important part of any business: customers.

Of course, that’s where the current craze around social media comes in.  The expectation is that any company can use all sorts of free tools to stretch marketing and PR dollars, and maybe make the customer feel more welcome picking up your brand at Wal-Mart.

But that whole scenario is bound to bust as surely as your pick of economic bubbles.

The reality is that to really engage using social media and realize honest benefits requires more than a passing interest in new shiny things.  Social media requires real openness, and if you’re not willing to be open, people can tell.

The power of this new ideal comes from the willingness to have an open culture. That means that there are no artificial barriers between departments, positions, business units, or people. It means that interacting with the public is a part of every position, not just the domain of marketing, PR, and an occasional press release from the CEO.

Openness means that the C-level is talking in public forums alongside the shipping department, or accounting, or human resources.  Bringing openness to a culture means that everyone is able to talk about nearly anything.

With that being said, it’s ok to still have intellectual property and protect that.  You’re right in protecting developing business plans, or new products, or several other types of information an organization holds and makes money from.  However, beyond that, an organization can talk openly about the challenges it faces, or hold up a consumer enthusiast group as a model, or any such thing that shows a human side of a company.

Sometimes we, that is companies, worry too much about what the competition may think.  Organizations can get wrapped up in being too professional.  Being open about things doesn’t take away from any of this.  When done from a position of transparency, and honest intention of open interaction, a company can grow a much more loyal consumer base, and open source their own PR army. But that’s another post.

Enabling Trust in the Organization

Apr 1, 2009 | blog

'trust' by Jerry Vo We’ve all been there.  You’ve got a great idea that you wish you could find a way to share with the appropriate team at your company.  You’re not able to, because you’re not part of that team. Or that department.  Heck, it’s not even a field you’ve specialized in or worked in much, but you’ve got that idea – a good one – and you’re sure that it’ll help in some way.

How do you share that idea? How do you get a chance to talk to folks on that team or present that idea without someone saying “gee that’s great” and then ignoring it because you work in another part of the company? How do you make your voice heard?

Unfortunately this is all too common in corporations today because of various institutionalized barriers.  Different departments, protective fiefdoms, overzealous paperwork, and draconian process and procedures.  These all contribute to the problem we have today of large, slow, companies that make incremental improvements rather than large bold ones.

Cut Out The Middle Man

This is where cutting through the organization from another angle is beneficial, and while it’s not a new idea, its facilitated by social media tools.  Call them “Enterprise 2.0” or some other Gartner approved term if it helps you out, but it’s all web 2.0 tools and with social interactivity built into the technology.

These new tools foster that important cross-organization conversations that help promote sharing the institutional knowledge that is part of each employee.  Allowing them to forge new relationships and new communities within the organization.

This lets people – the most important resource of any organization – to feel more welcome to share and trade ideas, just like sharing anecdotes and stories.  The workplace becomes less rigid in it’s communication allowing everyone from the bottom up, or the top down, to be more receptive to comments, ideas, questions, and suggestions coming from other parts of the organization.

Getting There

Getting to that point is a lot of work, and simply making the executive decision to try something new is a large step in the right direction.  That first step is a doozy though, because its all about trust.  Not just trust in a new CFO, or in a Director of “This Or That”.  Its trusting every employee at every level.  Trusting that they’ll do the right thing.  Trusting all those intelligent folks that were hired to do those jobs in the first place.

That’s the first step… the next is almost as hard.  Accepting feedback.  But that’s another post.

Photo credit: Jerry Vo

Twitter Is…

Feb 27, 2009 | blog

twitter-2 Since Twitter is the current social media darling, I thought I’d record a few thoughts I’ve had about one of my favorite online tools.  I’ve had the privilege of using Twitter for two years, and each and every person I’ve followed or had follow me along the way has taught me something new.  So here we go.

Twitter is…

  • a place for friends
  • a news outlet
  • a place to share your greatest failures & your most stunning achievements
  • an attention getter
  • a publishing platform
  • a customer service tool
  • a researcher’s dream
  • vulgar
  • the ace up your sleeve
  • brilliant
  • a new entertainment channel
  • a social network
  • a micro-blogging platform
  • a marketing tool
  • your community
  • overwhelming
  • 24x7x365 (always on)
  • a level playing field for your ideas
  • a sounding board for your thoughts
  • a comment reel for your new book
  • your starting place for your online excursions
  • the place for your organization to learn about it’s customers
  • a multicasting instant messenger
  • a game changer
  • a PR tool
  • a messaging infrastructure
  • a simple way to share & trade information
  • can be inane
  • is faster to publish to than anything else
  • is where you go to learn
  • your online “water cooler”
  • a conduit into the lives of others
  • a conduit into the idea stream of smart people

I’ve got a lot more input on what Twitter is than I could fit in this post, so I’ll work on fitting that into another format of some type.  What is Twitter to you?  I mean, what has Twitter brought to your life that you can’t believe you lived without before you discovered it?

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/rickmahn

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