social business Archives - Page 3 of 5

Social Business is not about Social, it’s about Business. And that’s not always a good thing.

I need to get this off my chest, then I’ll stop with the rants… it’s just been bugging me for a long time.

You see.., I think we’re missing the point. And not by a little bit either. We all know, or should know by now, that the way we live in a non-sustainable society. Meaning, it will end, probably in a very dramatic way.

Social Business is probably the best opportunity we have to create awareness and generate responsibility. People need to live more consciously, more awake. But, we’re missing the point and with that, a golden opportunity.

Wind Turbines

A metaphor then: You must have noticed these huge, ugly, noisy mastodons, polluting our horizons and beautiful views.

Although their net-energy is positive, I can’t help thinking about the motivation for building these things. In Holland, in the Flevopolder, farmers get paid to put them up, it’s a hideous sight. The landscape is littered with hundreds of turbines. Different in size and strewn all over the place. There is no ecological motivation behind this.., heck, there is no ecological motivation behind the whole Flevopolder, it’s all economical.

Where I live now (the south of Belgium), a councilman was pushing the placement of a wind farm nearby. Although he didn’t have the authority, and no wind study was made for the location, he almost succeeded in starting the project. Anything else than personal gain is difficult to imagine.

Focussing on generating and storing energy locally (in your home or neighbourhood) is much, much more sustainable. But that would mean, giving up grid connected, chargeable control. And that’s not going to happen.

Supermarkets

Talk about a prominent place in society. The biggest supermarket chain in Holland (again Holland? Yes, I’m Dutch, remember?) has replaced it’s “Organic” label for “Pure & Honest”. Very smart, “Organic” is a protected label in The Netherlands. You cannot put it on a label unless it really is 100% organic.

Now that ‘they’ don’t have to worry about the label, they can promote “Pure & Honest” as “with extra care for people, animal, nature or environment produced, grown or bought”. This is, of course, not true.., sadly. All sorts of taste enhancers, E-numbers and animal unfriendly, bio industry elements are found in the products.., and that’s just the things we know about.

They pretend to be social, but they’re really not. Despite their obvious responsibility.

Social Business

By now, I’m sure that many companies implement Social Business to gain an economical advantage. And yes, that’s important. It’s why you run a business, to make money. We have to please the stake- and shareholders.

And companies that sell “Social Business” need to turn a profit too. So, the one is sustaining the other, economically speaking. Both missing the point on real sustainability and societal responsibilities.

I’m generalising here. I’m sure there are those that really do have the individual in mind. That believe changing the every day goings on of employees could make them happy and more engaged in the company, resulting in all sorts of benefits for that company.

And yes, “happy” and “engagement” are quantifiable emotions. I’m sick of people saying these are unrealistic, unmeasurable and non-business terms. They are very real, they are very human, and they also have a very real impact on a business. A happy employee is an engaged employee, an engaged employee is a productive employee. H+E=P

One simple way to quantify this is to just ask.

Talk to them, find out what they think about the company and how it could change for the better.

Labelling

As with the “organic” label in Europe.., the label “Social Business” should be protected. Social Business Consultants should be certified through an open source qualification program. Proven knowledge and motivation.

“Social Business” is hyping at the moment and companies are sticking the label anywhere it can stick. Either, so they can sell it, or so they can claim to be one. But, SocBiz isn’t a hype, it’s a very real evolution. And if you don’t get it right, say you only focus on a piece of technology, you won’t get there.

If becoming a Social Business prevents your business from expiring, than you can’t just focus on the economical gain. Heck, economical gain and a higher ROI are (very beneficial) by-products of a successful change. They’re part of the plan of course, but not the driving force.

People are.

Mea Culpa

I’m a Social Business Consultant. And when I need to advice a company, the bottom line is, of course, the unavoidable issue; the ROI has to be met.

But, I just love the philosophy behind the whole thing. I even consider myself a Corporate Rebel and I truly believe Social Business can have a (very) positive effect on society. But in order to that, we need to focus on the right elements of Social Business.

Call it societal gain over economical gain. I know.., I know. It’s so scary, letting the reigns loosen up a bit, transferring responsibilities, trust employees or citizens to do the right thing, very scary. But, if we keep fooling them, and we keep fooling ourselves, then we’ll simply won’t get there. We’ll simply never be able to create a (truly) sustainable society.

And if we can’t do that, there is only one other possible outcome.., societal collapse. And it wouldn’t be the first time either.., every other society before us has collapsed, no exception, none have survived the Test of Time and the Trials of Men.

We now have the knowledge and the technology to turn it around, to do it right.., just for once.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

Is IBM a Social Business, I doubt it

UPDATE (10 oct, ’13): After speaking with several IBM’ers in the real world and in the comments below, I have learned that the story below is not business as usual at IBM. Questions have been asked and people have been approached in order to rectify the faulty process.

It goes to show, that kicking up some dust is a good way of determining a companies intend.
I will leave the story below intact, as a reminder of how not to be a social business. But, by now, IBM has proven that it has every intend of being (or becoming) a social business, in all it’s facets.

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When I talk about Social Business, I regularly mention (and praise) IBM for doing it right. For being at the forefront of the “movement”, for providing many a company with SocBiz solutions and actually being a Social Business.

I’m going to stop talking about IBM. I don’t believe they are as social as they think they are.

Let me explain:

My wife and I make decisions which usually result in dramatic course changes. We do this because we like a change of scenery or because we want a change in career.., or whatever. We just leap.

One of the leaps is me finding my way into Social Business on my own, switching my ‘career’ into a higher gear and into a field which I’m passionate about.

There are many ways to earn a buck or two, and I’m not one to dismiss an opportunity. Reading about IBM and its views on, and practices of Social Business, made me keep an my eye on them (it would be a very cool company to work for).

At Bat

The first chance was the best vacancy I ever saw: Senior Social Business Consultant.., yup, that would be me. So, I applied, I even had a recently met on-line friend endorse me. My friend also confirmed that they received my E-book: “Why? Social Business“.

But, I never heard anything from IBM. I figured holidays and the like must get in the way. So I waited a bit.

First Strike

After not even receiving a confirmation I decided to call them, as a follow up on the application. All the way to London. A very friendly (they’re always friendly) person told me that if I applied for a vacancy (which I did), I’d be contacted.., maybe. I could not get anybody else on the phone.

Second Strike

Making a phone call is always a good idea. Getting a personal connection going is one of the better strategies. So, I called again, this in Belgium (closer to home and where the original vacancy was found).

After dealing with a menu, I talked to a person who could not help me with the application, that’s recruitment and no, I could not speak to them. But, I could send an email and she’d make sure, if it was a good email, that recruitment would get it.
By now I read that IBM and Dachis were teaming up to provide more and better social business services. I figured that they would need all the help they could get.

Third Strike

Not a peep after this email, not even a single automated “we’ve received your email” notification.., nothing. So, I called again.

This time the message was that, although they’re sorry, but the email could not be found. Say what? This is IBM, one of the biggest software companies in the world, and they loose email. Nobody looses emails any more.., not since 2009. Not ever, I still have every single email send and received since 2005, not one is “lost”.

Plus, this person said that it’s no use sending emails with an open application, because, you know, that’s like, just weird. Why would I want to offer my services to IBM?
No, you apply to a vacancy but, you only get a response (any response apparently) when they deem you worthy of an interview.

And I don’t know the status of the vacancy because a) it’s no longer on-line and b) nobody will tell me anything and I don’t get past their call centre.

And Your Out!

I don’t know IBM, I never worked for them, but everything I read is positive (I can’t imagine people are getting paid to write positive things about IBM), and the few people whom I know work for IBM are positive too.

It could be just me, but, if my interactions with the company stand for anything, than it’s quite the opposite of “social”. Maybe they can sell it really, really well to their customers and partners, but I’m not buying it.

Really, if you have nearly 3000 open vacancies (world wide) and your business is Social Business, which is, or will be, the hottest thing on the planet the coming decade.., then you want all the help you can get. Then you want to receive emails, phone calls, tweets or homing pigeons from people who have something genuine to offer you.

At the very, very least.., acknowledge an email (don’t “loose” it).

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.