Business Model Innovation at the Abbey - Monks Embrace Social Media

Social media both demands and creates the opportunity for Business Model Innovation.  The Monks at Portsmouth Abbey understand this. 

The monks are not known for seeking outside attention, nor has their fundamental purpose changed over the years.  But the world around them has changed, as has their ability to recruit and influence.  Like many socially conscious non-profits, Portsmouth Abbey has a higher calling, but they still need to “hire,” reach “customers,” and drive revenue to achieve their objectives. 

With the number of monks dwindling from a high of 24 to 12 today, one objective of Portsmouth Abbey is to “promote vocations to this monastery.”  Word of mouth and the simple physical presence of the monastery generated interest and “recruits” for the first 50 years or so.  Established in 1919, the monastic business model relied on being an integral part of the community.

Today, the abbey is simply making itself part of the modern community through social media.   

The underlying business and mission of the monastery hasn’t changed, but the business model is changing.  By adapting how the monastery interacts with its stakeholders, the monastery is creating a new infrastructure to support well defined objectives and a constant mission.   

• They are making themselves more accessible 
• They are engaging and listening   
• They are humanizing the abbey.

Portsmouth Abbey set up a website and began blogging in March, 2011.  They also established a YouTube channel and a Facebook page.  With some publicity from the mainstream media (CBS News, New York Times…), the impact of the social media effort was evident early on.  On the Portsmouth Abbey blog, David Moran commented:

“We have heard from 25,000 persons around the world; have nearly 100 sign-ups for our newsletter; our facebook visits are up 2000%;” and, perhaps most importantly, “we have a score of visit requests needing to be qualified.” 

The new business model seems to be having a positive impact on the business – more visits to the monastery.

Social media enables old-fashioned relationships.  It creates a way for organizations to become a community participant again, to become a collection of people rather than an impenetrable four 4 walls.  As we hear in one of the Portsmouth Abbey YouTube videos, “monks are human.”

So the old is new again...

And if you like Gregorian chants, you might want to download the ring tone from Portsmouth Abbey.

Don’t Follow the Rules: 3 Contrary Actions to Create a High Performance, Social Media Culture

How do you change the culture of an established, successful, mature organization?  

An “old” culture that once worked well might no longer be aligned to today’s demands. But a manager can hardly mandate that the culture be open, trusting, and collaborative!

Adapting a culture to create a social media-friendly organization involves 3 behaviors that go against established rules:

v     Don’t Reward Results – Social media is about doing things differently, engaging differently; it’s not really about a different outcome (companies still want strong revenues and profits; mission driven organizations still want to expand their impact while ensuring cash flow…)  To change the culture, reward new behavior, not outcomes.  For example:

o       Do you reward employees who fail fast?  Social media is about testing, trying, sowing a lot of seeds.  

o       Is “sharing” a nice-to-have or a rewarded behavior?  Do employees who spend time helping others succeed get rewarded?  Would you reward an employee who gets 5-star ratings on an internal discussion site and does good work over one who produces great work but doesn’t share?  

v     Don’t Optimize Your Current Operating Processes and Procedures – You need to change them!  Use new means of working to reprogram thinking.  If you don’t understand social media inside, you can’t deliver with conviction outside.  Internal social networks change how employees interact, who they tap for expertise, and how work gets done.  Opening up discussion forums and making comments easily accessible can fundamentally change knowledge management and customer service.  Wikis change the relationship up-and-down and across teams.  (Cisco takes great advantage of these new ways to work, http://socialmedia-insideout.blogspot.com/2011/03/connecting-touchpoints-internally-cisco.html ).  Don’t optimize; revolutionize.

v     Don’t Hire for Cultural Fit – Most organizations include screening for cultural fit in the recruiting process.  But you want to change the culture, so hire the future, not the status quo.

Culture is important to the financial and economic success of companies.  Employees themselves recognize the importance of culture.  In a recent study, two thirds of working adults (66%) identified company culture as being very or extremely important to the success of their organization, including 29% who found it extremely important (Ipsos Public Affairs-Randstad survey http://www.ipsos-na.com/news-polls/pressrelease.aspx?id=4980 )  Olu Ojo, in a study reported in Business Intelligence, found “a positive relationship between organizational culture…and organizational productivity.” (http://www.saycocorporativo.com/saycoUK/BIJ/journal/Vol2No2/article9.pdf)

Culture matters.  It drives performance.  Culture defines not only how employees work with each other, but how they relate externally – with customers, suppliers, partners… Significant changes in the external environment demand cultural shifts, and social media has created just such a significant change.  Have you gone against your old cultural norms yet?

Who Me? Social Media? I’m an Engineer!

It’s a cliché that a company is the sum total of the people who work there, and clichés are so often true!  Social media enables companies to give each person a voice, and to demonstrate the superiority of the company by showcasing the employees.  This approach also creates greater employee engagement. 

The Clover Architecture model of social media (http://socialmedia-insideout.blogspot.com/2011/04/clover-architecture-4-leaves-of.html ) is built on the 4 leaves of leadership, governance, culture, technology.  Inherent in each leaf is the idea that social media is integrated throughout your organization.  What does that mean?

v  Executives are actively involved with social media.  They blog (http://socialmedia-insideout.blogspot.com/2011/03/passionate-leadership.html); they deliver podcasts; they participate on internal and external social forums.

v  Central policies and processes define the guidelines, but social media activities are dispersed throughout your organization.  You might want to have a social media guru on-board, but s/he does not function as an approval log-jam.

v Collaboration, sharing, experimentation and transparency are part of the core culture.  The organization rewards process as well as outcome.  Individuals are incented to reach out to colleagues and customers.  Their individual voices and personal brands are valued as representatives of the organization.

v Technology platforms are easy-to-use. 

How do you actually implement these goals?

IBM helps employees to share their passions, their personal interests, and their professional and technical insights on personal IBM blogs.  (I love that “personal corporate blog” is no longer an oxymoron!)  As IBM notes:

 “…the opinions and interests expressed on IBMers' blogs are their own and don't necessarily represent this company's positions, strategies or views. But that doesn't mean we don't want you to read them! Because they do represent lots of business and technology expertise you can't get from anyone else.”

Then IBM lists the individuals’ blogs.  (Check out the blogs at http://www.ibm.com/blogs/zz/en/ )  The impact?  More engaged employees who are also professionally growing; more engaged customers who create personal contacts and recognize the depth of expertise in IBM employees – and in IBM.

As part of an effort to enhance customer experience, a high tech product company  with whom I worked decided to make their engineers more accessible.  At first, the engineers had mixed reaction – they aren’t social media wonks; they aren’t great communicators; they don’t have time!  On the other hand, they are passionate about their work and the products, and they love sharing their enthusiasm and knowledge.  We created discussion forums, and the key product engineers conducted live-chats at designated times.  The result exceeded the goals.  What happened?

v Engineers felt recognized and appreciated; they were virtually signing their names to their research and product designs and establishing their personal value.  They found that sharing their knowledge was fun.

v Engineers were re-energized; customers and other forum participants had interesting ideas and good questions.  Innovation began to expand beyond the limiting four walls of R&D; new ideas created more new ideas. 

v Customer service and customer satisfaction rose significantly; customers loved having access to the experts.  In addition, capturing the discussion threads and making the answers easily accessible drove down the number of calls to the customer service center.  The number of calls is the primary driver of cost, so customer service costs plummeted. 

Enabling employees to share internally and externally is a win-win.  What approaches have you found most effective?