Tomorrow I will be speaking at the Social Business Summit in Austin, TX. This pre-event for SxSW, which starts on Friday, is being presented by Dachis Group. Dachis is a great example of a company striving to work in this new transparent environment. Have you ever checked out the Dachis website? They strive to be so transparent that they have developed a scroll on their website that shows exactly what they are doing. For example if a member of the team tweets a message, it will show up. It will even say when they are emailing someone and the domain they are emailing (not the name or full email address). I am looking forward to this event, because the topic is fun, culture change within businesses. I am also looking forward to seeing people like Charlene Li, who I have never met in person. Her book Open Leadership is about to come out, and I know it will be great. Anyway, over the past few weeks I have been doing a lot of reading, probably one of the causes for not posting as much as I would like. I hope to start putting a lot of these pent up thoughts into posts over the next few weeks. One of the things I have realized is their are a lot of diverse thoughts ... read more >>
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This is an interesting question that I see cropping up of late, since the news about the arrival of the new kid on the block - Social CRM - is reaching new ears. Is it just old wine in a new bottle or is it something more disruptive? I have been asked this when I meet people & strike a conversation around Social CRM, mostly from the CRM folks, who have just heard about it. The technologists are fine with it, its just another channel to be integrated to CRM, like an email or a call center, and they are happy if you give them the specifics on the integration modules. But then people who are not too deep in CRM technology or who are involved with CRM from a business perspective (the later I have been interacting more only in the past couple of years), are not too happy with yet another prefix to CRM - it brings to them memories of the previous attempts like eCRM & mCRM. In a recent post by John Bell of Ogilvy titled "What Defines Social CRM?", Tim Sanchez, General Manager of ABIS Consulting Group, asks in the comments section:"The more I hear it, the more I don't like it. ... read more >>
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The title of this post is the same as the title for the Editors note in this February’s Inc. – The Magazine for Growing Companies – magazine. I found it to be a very interesting Editors note, and wanted to highlight the closing point from Jane Berentson: “Maybe we should replace “the customer is always right” with a saying that is more appropriate for the times that we live in: Customers and companies should do right by each other.” The paragraph before that is actually better: …customers, too, have a responsibility to make a commercial transaction easy and pleasant, and if something goes awry, they should make their feelings known in a way that’s considerate – and considered. It’s always been possible to complain about a sloppy salesperson or a slow waiter or aggravating help lines, but the Internet makes it possible to criticize in a public forum, which increases the string of that criticism exponentially. The web shouldn’t be a tool for cleverness or cruelty at the expense of someone else. Care should be taken.” Now I understand that in some cases, emotions get the best of us, but time and time again I have also recognized the way that some of our expectations have ... read more >>
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I was going to do this long post about something but I decided instead to accumulate a few things in a shorter format and lay them out to you. They are both industry driven and highly personal. So here we go: STOP Stop the Vendors-as-a-Class Beatdowns I’m tired of industry pundits and others beating on enterprise software vendors simply because they are vendors. When I was in Amsterdam/Arnhem last fall to speak, I had an epiphany when I saw how they treated vendors. They were treated as citizens, not lepers with money. Vendors are companies trying to sell services and products, pretty much like the people they are selling to – or like whoever it is you work for even if its yourself. They don’t deserve to be attacked because they are stereotypically presumed to be crappy because they are big or ponderous. Ponderous does not equal evil. If they do something wrong, go after them. If they do something right, praise them. But don’t launch a cynical attack on them because you presume their evil ways. “Ah, you say, but they have a history of being pushy, selling what they can’t deliver, etc.” Then attack the practice. You know that I’m not one to ... read more >>
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In the first post of this series, we talked about listening for what people are saying about you, your brand, your market, your products and services, or market needs that your organization has an answer for. I intentionally didn’t dig into all the things you can do with that data – some are passive and some are active. The important part was listening. Turning that data into actionable insight is where the real magic can happen, but that’s a post for a different day.  A couple of weeks ago, well known social superwoman blogger Amber Naslund sent this surprised tweet out: 
It is very interesting indeed. But I think I have a good idea of where that hiring company is going. Today, I’m going to turn our attention to the second required role for your company: The Social Anthropologist. I don’t know about you, but when I hear that phrase, it immediately... read more >>
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In 1762 Jean-Jacque Rousseau wrote a little book called The Social Contract. As stated on the Wikipedia page for the book, Rousseau theorized about the best way in which to set up a political community in the face of the problems of commercial society.  The Social Contract argued that the people (and their general will) were divinely empowered to legislate – not the monarchs who ruled over them with an iron fist. Once again, the Wikipedia entry sums it up pretty well:
“The heart of the idea of the social contract may be stated simply: Each of us places his person and authority under the supreme direction of the general will, and the group receives each individual as an indivisible part of the whole...” The book, and the “radical” thoughts put forth in it, would help lead to the French Revolution and the overthrow of the monarchy. While Rousseau’s focus was on political philosophy, the theme of the masses taking back control of their lives from the few resonates today in what we’re seeing in business. Social technologies are allowing individuals from around the world to come together and form communities (virtual ... read more >>
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The Social Media Olympics, Sponsored by Penn State's ISBM & A Chance Meeting with George Bush Senior
Pennsylvania State University’s Institute for the Studies of Business Markets (ISBM http://isbm.smeal.psu.edu/ and part of the SMEAL College of Business) is another example of academic thought leaders who are working directly with industry to understand and capture competitive advantage in B2B marketing. Ralph Oliva, the Executive Director is what I call a “cosmic bondini” in that he connects the dots between what industry needs, and addresses those needs by building his network and foundation on rocks called research and B2P networking. Ralph, brother of my friend Vinnie Oliva at Gartner, assembled one of the first ever B2B conferences focused on social media. This ISBM conference was genius in the sense that it not only presented research that clearly shows where social media is going; but also... read more >>
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The Olympic gold medal hockey game last week between Canada and the United States was among the most entertaining sporting events I've experienced in a very long time. In fact, the entire tournament was highly enjoyable. What made it such an amazing experience were the very things that are missing from the major professional sports leagues, with the exception of the NFL and PGA. As a customer experience, the Olympic tournament excelled because it put the absolute best product in front of the fan every game. Every game meant something. And there there was a highly emotional connection between the fan and the experience. Pro sports leagues, on the other hand, have largely lost that emotional connection with their fans that is at the root of any superior customer experience. Sure, there are meaningful games. And, fans are generally loyal to their team. But, business decisions over the past twenty years in baseball, basketball and hockey have focused less on connecting with fans and more on short-sighted profit motives. Product lines have been overextended and the quality of the product has been degraded through geographic over ... read more >>
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Theres a great debate/discussion going on about Whuffie & Social Capital and how it applies to the social media & online networks/communities on blogs & twitter. It all started with a post by Brian Solis, a very well reputed leader in the PR world & social media, titled Social Capital: The Currency of the Social Economy. He deeply derives on the book called The Whuffie Factor by Tara "missrogue" Hunt. Venessa Miemis kicked off an animated conversation on twitter around the difference of Social Capital (as suggested by socio-politico-economists) & Reputation economy (as suggested by Whuffie). She topped it off with an excellent post titled: Social Capital is not the same as Whuffie that I highly recommend everyone to read before proceeding further. Worth every minute you spend reading & digesting it.
In the language of game theory, social capital is the excess propensity to play cooperative solutions in prisoner's dilemma games. Venessa deliberates in detail about the concept of Social Capital, so I will not write redundant stuff. Instead lets consider ... read more >>
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I had an excellent lunch with my friends at Simplybox (great company, killer idea, well implemented enterprise collaboration- not a client) on Wednesday and we had a sensational discussion on solving problems. They are going through a growth phase and are trying to position their product better based on their customers feedback. We discussed several things, but we ended up talking about the title of this post. As we began to discuss the different things that the product can and should do an idea came to me — which I’d like to get your input so I can understand it better and see if I am right or wrong. Software is not a solution, we all know that. Software is a tool, an aide to solving a problem. The question that always arises is what is the problem we are solving. The best way to look at this is to say that there are two types of problems: pain-points and inefficiencies. Bear with me for some definitions, it is important to distinguish them. Pain points is what we all think of when we think of using software: a very specific function or process that is not working well and it is either costing more than it should, or not yielding as much as ... read more >>
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