Rogier Noort, Author at Rogier Noort

Connection Ownership and how to settle this?

It’s nothing new that employers and employees or business partners face each other in court to battle over who gets what. When ‘divorce lawyer’ can be a career choice, you can assume there is plenty of business in settling break-up disputes. Now, with social media and on-line connections, the break-up process has become even more complicated.

The wonderful Jillian Jackson wrote a post about this subject, and it should keep every business and every professional busy.

Who owns the professional connection?

This is a very fair question to ask. And I’m not sure I can answer it to full satisfaction.., but I’ll try. The way I see it, there has to be a clear mutual agreement and a clear guidelines.

With the ever more increasing on-line connectivity of employees in a modern social business it gets very difficult to differentiate between personal connections and professional connections. It seems a good place to start.

Personal Connections

This can be defined as a connect with no ties to the company one is working for. But, what if you work for, let’s say, Nike. Every body has a pair of Nike’s in the closet. By that rational, a good friend who runs a lot and connected with you via LinkedIn can be a potential asset to Nike.

You can post something, a latest blog post, on LinkedIn and he can be influenced by that. Despite the fact he knows you work for Nike and has been running on them from even before you met. Still, because of his demographic, Nike could claim the connect.., especially if the connect was made during your employment with Nike.

Tough, huh?

Professional Connection

When you have an on-line presence, you create connections. Further more, your company should want you to connect. It needs brand ambassadors and employees can be the best. Providing preciously useful content for its customers. And we use our own accounts for this.., because we want to be ‘genuine’ and ‘keep it real’.., and extend our personal brand while we’re at it.

Sure, for official communiques there are the corporate Twitter and Facebook accounts.., of course. But, the 150 or so employees who are active on blogs, in forums, on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and all the other available communities are impossible to regulate. And you can’t create a ‘corporate’ account for every eventuality. Well, you can, but it kinda defeats the purpose of having your employees willingly contribute to your social business.

Legal Battles

In 2011 Noah Kravitz was sued by his former employer over his Twitter followers. He created a, to me, impressive following of 17.000. But, did this with the handle @PhoneDog-Noah. Although Kravitz claims the separation was amicable, PhoneDog came down on Kravitz like a ton of bricks. The Social Sphere was keeping an eye on the precedent that would be set via the ruling on this case.

Well, I don’t how it ends. I don’t want to know. I dug a little deeper and find [they] were suing, counter suing, trying to get stuff dismissed, which then didn’t get dismissed.., it’s a farce and a waste of our time.

One word.., SOCIAL. Why do we need a court ruling on every single fart we inadvertently let escape. I mean, really, do we need to set a legal precedence here.., I say we can settle this like grown ups.

Between Partners

Jillian’s question was more between business partners than between employee/employer. But, I think there can be an equally satisfying solution.

Imagine there is a breakup between partners.

If you take ownership of ‘friendship A’, what does your partner do? Un-friend that person? That’s just silly.

I think “owning” the real account to the client can be detrimental to deciding ownership. Or, the one retaining the rights to the brand or ownership of the company should have first dibs on ‘connections’

And, I do believe that this is only a matter when earnings are involved. A ‘connect’ on Twitter holds little weight. A signed contract for a service a lot more.

The Twitter account connected to the contract is a free for all, nobody can deny you the right to connect. How you communicate is a different matter.

Prenup

But, here we assume nothing is set up front. That no contract was signed or agreement was met.

It should be settled up front (i.e. prenup). In any case, whether it’s a two person partnership or a larger company. In order to avoid problems, you should settle it up front.

Still, the exact content of such a contract be another legal tar pit.., and even then, you cannot anticipate every conceivable break-up scenario.., always leaving some room for a law suit.

Personal Accounts are Personal

It’s a merry-go-round. But, in the end a personal account should stay personal, at all cost. Any connection made on that personal account belongs to the owner of that account.., period.

I know, what about connections made during working hours? Yes, them too belong to the employee (or partner), not to the company, even if the account is a customer or a partner.

The point here is.., does the employee does her? If ‘yes’, than the connections are hers. If ‘no’, then not.

Get Your Stuff Under Control

Employers should get their lines straight. If they supports an environment where employees can be free to develop, to innovate, to communicate and be proper brand ambassadors.., then there is no need for legal battles.Even if an employee should leave, she’d leave on good terms. Then, there is no problem, her name is still under a lot of blog posts (or not), but she’ll still be a brand enthusiast.

Bottom Line

I do not have a solution, and I do not believe there is a ‘ready made’ one available. Even when a legal precedence is set.., companies or disgruntled employees will always find a reason or a way to sue each other, regardless.

The only way I see to settle this is to create an environment where this situation does not apply. An environment where trust and respect are the main motivators, not greed or retaliation.

I know, Utopia.

But, we’re not that far away from such working conditions. Social business is able to reduce intrigue and office politics, leaving openness and honesty as default behaviour.

Join Mark Harai and me for a discussion on this topic.., it show the solution is not as forthcoming as you might think:

Do your business goals and social goals align?

We know by know Social Media/Business is something you can’t “just do”. Or, you can, but that’s missing the point and wasting time, effort and money.

In “The Seven Success Factors of Social Business Strategy“, the latest publication from the Altimeter Group, written by Charlene Li and Brian Solis, the alignment between business objectives and social strategy is put front and centre.
Now we can say, with authority, that Social has come of age. That we no longer can treat it as something we “just have to do”. Time to grow up.

It makes sense when you think about it. Anything a company does, any effort it makes should align with the company’s goals. Even charity or pro-bono work should, in one form or another, fit into “the greater plan”. It’s the only way to make sure that everything you do, as a business, is worth the effort.

Have a Coke

Coca-Cola has created a strategy to rival most out there. Basically it states that any expression should fit into the overall story being told by the company. Creating a fluidity where anybody can add or use content, as long as it abides to a few rules.
And the overall story is aligned with the company’s goals.

Coca-Cola is one of the most recognized brands in the world and a huge enterprise. Their resources seem infinite and implementing a plan like this seems easy enough. But, Coke is a world-wide brand with almost 150 thousand employees, and despite its resources, aligning anything is not an easy task.., at all.

The message is; If Coke can do it on such a huge scale.., surely we can do this in a smaller (and more controllable) environment.

The Seven

This list is simply fantastic.

It’s one of those pieces of information that makes you go.., hmmmmm…. Silly really, because each point on that list is common sense for most major projects and changes. Yet, with social media we tend to ignore proper business altogether.

Here’s the list:

Define the overall business goals
Establish the long-term vision
Ensure executive support
Define the strategy roadmap
Establish governance and guidelines
Secure staff, resources, and funding
Invest in technology platforms that evolve

You need to read the book for all the details of course, but coming from Altimeter you can rely on a proper foundation of the information.

As said, it makes sense. For instance, executive support (3) is paramount to success. Especially if you want to secure staff and resources (6). To invest in technology (7) you need funding (6). And in order to define the roadmap (4) you need to know the goals (1) and you have to establish the long-term vision (2).

See? It makes total sense…

Align your Efforts

The point of matter is that when (not if) you decide to start the social business journey you (really) should make the effort to do it right. I know, this is easier said than done. The Why? is pretty clear by now, it’s the How? we get stuck on. The “The Seven Success Factors of Social Business Strategy” can help you create the vision you need to support the necessary passion.

So, just do it, but do it right. There is enough information out there to support you, and more and more professionals to guide you. No more excuses.

Do you have a Social Business Strategy?

Where do you put ‘Social’ in your business?

There is still a lot of debate who should be in charge of Social Media. I believe no department should be “in charge”, unless it’s a department run by the CSBO, the Chief Social Business Officer.

Let’s not beat around the bush. Social Media is not a fad, not a trend, not a fleeting gimmick and it’s not a bubble. Granted, some platforms may come and go, money will be made and money will be lost, Digg and MySpace are good examples, both are still alive though.

Ignoring Social as a company can be a fatal mistake. Unless you operate in a vacuum or are a true monopolist in a strict B2B market, then maybe you can ignore it. But, anybody else, simply cannot.

It never rains, but it pours

When Formula1 is racing, and the rain comes, the teams have to change to rain tyres. You can gamble on the weather clearing up, save your self a pit stop, or maybe two and win the race. But, by now we know, it will not stop raining. And keeping your cars out on slicks will, inevitably loose you the race. And, it no longer rains, but it pours.

We also know that “Social” goes well beyond just customer care, and well beyond marketing. Also, for communication or PR it’s just another channel. And this is just one part of where Social touches Business. For every department within a company there is a possible scenario where they themselves, independently, use Social to communicate with their audience. Whether that be via Tweets, a community forum or a blog (or some other platform). And we’re still only talking about ‘external’ communication.

Internal

All these channels and platforms must have an impact on the way people communicate. The more Social is being used, through company structures or through personal use, the more people expect to communicate like this all the time.

The structures that need to be in place to satisfy these needs are unified under Social Business.

A New Product

Wouldn’t it be cool with a the launch of a new service that all departments are on the same page at the same time? Yes, that would be cool.

Imagine, before the launch individual employees can drop hints with their audience, or get valuable feedback for the developers, that HR can recruit on specific set of skill, that PR can prepare the press release, that customer care can access the knowledge base with updated info, and that Marketing has its campaign all ready to go.

All these Social Business efforts need to be synchronised and coordinated. This can never happen when every department kinda just does what it wants.

One Big Happy Family

When a company has everything well organised and employees use new ways to communicate with each other and with customers, brand ambassadors and partners, then everything becomes one integrated system. A system that grows organically, because technology gives it the opportunity to do so.

But, as with all business processes, you need to be able to control it, or at the very least, monitor it. You need to know what’s happening. Giving employees the power to broadcast can be a powerful ally, but it also harbours potential risk.

The system needs to provide a way to control that risk. The system (whatever that may be) needs to be monitored. And depending on the size of your business, this can not be done by a single person, you need a department, run by someone who can wear many hats and can talk to every other department in the company.

Because Social touches every aspect of a business, it has to be, by it’s very nature, a department of its own. And every Social endeavour needs to be aligned with this department.