When it comes to the social enterprise, don't ask "why?", ask "why not?"

In a recent research survey, consulting firms Gagan MacDonald and APCO Worldwide found that 51% of companies of 500 employees or more have already implemented some time of Internal Social Media (ISM) tool. Perhaps more importantly, their research found that 58% of employees would prefer to work for a company that uses ISM.

This quantified information comes in handy for me as I continue to find myself working to justify the value of ISM to business leaders.

As I've blogged here before in previous posts, many leaders are still not ready to be as honest (read: vulnerable) as ISM requires if they are to attain the level of authenticity that employees clearly crave. (In fairness to these leaders, employees apparently have similar apprehensions as documented in this post by Jacob Morgan.)

Too often leaders are accustomed to keeping the decisions they face, and their reasons for their ultimate choice on those decisions, behind closed doors. I understand why they would, since these decisions are often difficult because they will lead someone to be unhappy, no matter what choice they make.

But when it comes to business decisions, employees and the public are increasingly expecting more and more transparency.

Therefore when discussing the implications of ISM with business leaders, one thing I always prepare them for is the necessary shift in mindset from "why should we share this?" to "why should we NOT share it?".

Make no mistake, this shift is not insignificant.

The best leaders understand that they never had "control" of communications, and instead see the benefit of ISM because it gives them to opportunity to "direct" communications by engaging in ISM conversations. Leaders who participate in the discussions have an incredible impact in the effectiveness of internal communications, as demonstrated by the Gagan MacDonald and APCO findings that executive leadership accounts for 75% of an employee's perception of internal communications.

So the lesson here is, when it comes to ISM and leadership transparency, don't ask "why?", ask "why not?".

Have you had a similar conversation with one of your business leaders? Are you struggling to convey this message to your own clients? Or are you perhaps a business leader with a different perspective? I'd love to hear your thoughts so please share them in the comments below.

Don't let #McDstories McRuin your enterprise social media plans

In my line of work, I spend a lot of time allaying fears.  


I'm constantly reassuring my clients that they should take a chance and get involved in social media. "You've got to let your guard down," I say. "Be honest, transparent and humble, and constituents will reward you with loyalty and support. Put yourself out there." 


Usually it's good advice.


That's why the recent #McStories gaffe by McDonald's on Twitter is tough to watch. Because unfortunately, it's mistakes like this that serve as the perfect excuse for any business leader to NOT try something new. I can already hear my next client's response when I give her the advice above - "What are you, kidding me? You think I want to be the next McScrewup?" 


Ultimately such response would be a cop-out... a weak excuse to choose not to do the right thing for fear of the risk.


Yet this fear is more than present, it's pervasive. Client after client, experience after experience, I inevitably get the same question from business leaders I'm advising, usually in the form of "Can we delete negative comments?". (I blogged about this topic back in September 2011). This is effectively a question about risk and, ultimately, exercising control.


So I've decided to compile a list of reasons why this Twitter folly by McDonald's is different than the situation in which I'm advising my client, to prepare myself for the inevitable day when one of them references this as a reason not to take my advice. (Be sure your situation really IS different before using any of the arguments below).:

• Consumers are a different lot than employees. Employees have a vested interest in your success and therefore want you to succeed.
• While I don't advise censorship, you DO have control over the social environment in an enterprise, and therefore you can remove personal insults or profanity if they arise.
• With the above stated, employees generally want to remain employed, so they'll keep their criticisms constructive. And even if you allow anonymous posting, most employees feel you can still find out who they are if they state anything too negatively (and let's be honest, they're probably right.) 
• McDonald's brand has, for better and worse, come to symbolize ALL fast food, and fast food has legions of haters out there. These haters are just waiting for an excuse to pounce and talk trash about McDonald's, or fast food in general. You don't have this problem in the enterprise space.
• This campaign was ill conceived in that it doesn't address a legitimate issue. The original purpose of the campaign was to share the pride that McDonald's farmers have in providing quality food; however I would argue that most fast food customers know the food isn't good for them, and DON'T CARE. Why try to put lipstick on a pig when everyone's happy with the pig as it is?

Do you have additional arguments to the ones I've listed above? Please use the comments section below to add them.

Have social media statistics and authority lost their value?

After reading an interesting blog post in the Harvard Business Review titled "Return on Influence, the New ROI", I was feeling quite proud of myself for actually keeping up with the HBR.

I was taken in by the author's claim that she had created a new metric ("Return On Influence", or ROI - I know, it's confusing), whereby she identifies the value of a single fan/follower of her client, which can in turn be used to demonstrate the value of investing in said client to potential advertisers. Sounds like a good idea, right?

Then I read the comments. Yikes.

I kid you not, the first line of the first comment reads, "Respectfully, this is complete nonsense."

He goes on to express his disappointment in HBR for publishing the article at all.

As I scrolled through the nearly 50 comments posted at the time, I was not surprised to see a familiar debate unfold - questioning the process of determining statistics, accusations that the statistics are valueless, stating that this is nothing new, and so on. Eventually the comments question the validity of the author's professional credentials, and finally HBR for even allowing the article to be published.

For me it begs the question - have statistics as they pertain to social media, and to some degree, the notion of "authority", virtually lost their value?

Don't get me wrong, I understand there must and always will be value in measuring statistics... I mean it's not as if I don't track how many readers I get on this blog. But some of the other statistics - the fancier, more compounded ones (ie, Return Of Influence) - are always so debatable. And the more that social media flatten our world such that more opinions are heard, does that threaten the whole notion of authority? 

For example, we have blogs, both liberal and conservative, dedicated to exposing the bias of the mainstream media (MSM), however both sides insist the bias is in the opposing direction. Is that even possible? But I digress.

My point in this post is to pose the question - would we do better to collectively acknowledge that there is value in social media, and stop searching for that "perfect metric" that proves exactly how valuable it is? 

I don't have the answer to this question, but I must say, I think about it a lot lately.

Ironically, one of the commentors on the HBR post referenced a website called ROI of Social Media. I'm pretty sure their "ROI" is the one most of us are familiar with - Return On Investment. I'm going to read it now to see if they're onto something.

In the meantime, please share your thoughts. Do you have a standard set of metrics you find convincing? If so, why? And if not, why not?

Unisys leverages social media to share knowledge and increase engagement

I just read a well written article in Bloomburg Businessweek about how Home Depot is using social media to engage their customers. (Special thanks to the Social Media in Organizations group on LinkedIn for the reference).

I've read similar articles in the past, and always wondered, how can these lessons be applied to businesses for internal use? What are some creative ways that businesses can use social media to engage employees to share knowledge, increase morale and improve productivity?

So I was intrigued when I read this article in the Harvard Business Review. Seems the folks over at Unisys have jumped into the fray and are leveraging social media internally with great success.

I especially like author Jeanne C. Meister's  break out of the 8 keys social media to implementation, obtained from this infographic on Prezi.com. It's really good content presented in an easy-to-digest format.

Note also how the success of this rollout began with Unisys CEO Ed Colement leading by example. As the article and infographic point out, executive support is absolutely critical to making social media tools work, and I believe the more open and transparent leadership is by nature, the more likely they are to really support social media (as opposed to only stating they support it because "everyone else is"). As I've said to clients in the past: if you don't really intend to support this effort, then don't move forward. You can do more harm by implementing social tools and letting them die on the vine than by not implementing them at all.

Again, this often comes down to a sincerity issue. Employers want to get employees engaged, but they must be prepared to do the engaging. Old school leaders assume the technology will do the engaging for them, and that too often only compounds the lack of engagement said leaders are trying to break down.

New school leaders not only join the discussion, they put themselves out there and start it. That's the first step to engagement, knowledge sharing and productivity.

Technology doesn't engage people, people do

I recently rolled out a social media platform for a client to improve internal communications and, among other things, further engage employees with senior leadership and the company overall.

After a couple weeks of limited responses from employees, one leader asked me, "Why aren't our people getting more involved in the blogs?"

I quickly responded, "Because blogs don't engage people, people do."

After weeks of pushing and prodding these leaders to post to the new blogs and initiating discussion threads, it became clear to me that I had overlooked a critical misperception by leadership - that the technology alone would be sufficient to get their employees "engaged".

Furthermore, when pushed to leverage these new tools, many of my clients (the very leaders wondering why employees weren't participating) passively resisted with responses like "we can't say that", or worse, "can't you draft it for me first?"

As the author of this blog, I'm obviously a huge proponent of leveraging new technology to improve internal communications. Yet the slickest tech on earth isn't going to do much if leaders aren't actively using and advocating it. Their participation is critical, not only to show their support for the new media, but also to demonstrate through example that they sincerely want to engage with employees.

Technology is a useful tool through which leaders can connect with their people, but it's not a magic bullet. It can't do the work for them. Business leaders who are serious about engaging employees will put forth the effort necessary to do so.

That means taking risks by being more honest than they've ever been before. It means allowing employees to disagree with leadership in a public forum, and allowing those disagreements to stand in black and white. It may even mean changing course due to valid opinions expressed by those who disagree.

But this is also the advantage of the technology. If leaders are willing to take those risks, they can reap the benefits of the collective knowledge and thinking of their employees, and that is truly engaging.

Anything less, and you might as well not bother.

Have you faced these or similar challenges in your work? And if so, what do you think are the major roadblocks preventing leaders from trusting your advice and participating actively?