Internal Social Networs - Behavioral Change Before ROI

Intranets are everywhere, and companies are rapidly adding social networking features - wikis, blogs, tagging... Yet satisfaction with these tools is stunningly low.  Prescient Digital reports that only 23% of executives rate 2.0 tools as good or very good, and 38% rate them as poor or very poor.  (http://ww.prescientdigital.com/articles/intranet-articles/intranet-2-0-becomes-mainstream)

Technically, a LOT of good tools are out there.  So what's going on???

•  Tools increase efficiency

• Tools improve productivity

• Tools make it easier for employees to find information and the experts they need

• Tools alone don't work

Prescient points out, "Those organizations that don't have intranet 2.0 tools are not getting executive approval to proceed as they don't have a proper plan or business case that convinces senior management of the need."  Is the failure to achieve the promised savings the reason behind the dissatisfaction of those who do have intranet 2.0 tools?

Maybe in a few cases.  But overall it's not execution or the lack of a plan or business case that is the problem.  The problem is the core need to justify internal networks with business cases.  ROI is critical, and I have written about it many times (see, for instance, http://bit.ly/internalROI), but the anticipated ROI will not be realized if the social network does not reflect fundamental shifts in organizational and interpersonal behavior.

The objective of social media is lifestyle, not initiatives (http://bit.ly/kYsQ6u).  And lifestyle within the corporate walls needs to change before internal or external social media strategies have lasting and measurable value.

When Starbuck's introduced MyStarbucksIdea.com, the driver was CEO Howard Shultz's belief that the company needed to reconnect with its customers.  Look at the site (really, even for non-coffee drinkers, it is a great site).  Yes, Starbuck's is engaging its customers.  It is also engaging its baristas, those rarely listened-to front-line employees who see it all, who talk to and listen to customers, who execute the policies and operational procedures and know what works and what doesn't.  Effective social media ignores hierarchy and organizational silos.  The results probably do drive greater employee efficiency, but that is a by-product of the new social lifestyle. 

One of my favorite corporate activities was the "feel good" campaign by Canadian credit union Servus.  Servus gave 20,000 people $10 CDN and asked them to create a "Feel Good Ripple" by giving the money to someone else.  Buy flowers for the grocery store cashier; buy coffee for the person behind you in line at the drive-thru; give $10 for a lunch to a homeless shelter.  (http://www.springwise.com/financial_services/feelgoodripple/)

To have a positive impact, internal social network initiatives similarly have to change the interpersonal dynamic.  

• Reward employees for sharing what went wrong so that others can learn.  
• Reward people for helping others when it didn't affect their own jobs.  
• Have people track how much time the intranet saved them, and allow them to donate that time to help someone else. 

Internal social networks work when they help corporate lifestyle and culture to change.

What has your organization done to make the intranet a lifestyle change agent? 

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?

The objective of social media is a lifestyle, not initiatives

Social media is a new way for us to get back to what matters.  It is an opportunity for companies to become amalgamations of people rather than “corporate entities.”  At its best, social media is simply a way for people to engage with one another across the expanse of a big world. 

That is why I believe that organizations cannot succeed in social media until they have built a social media culture internally.  Employees are both the first target market and the drivers of social media strategy success; they learn to share more openly, listen more carefully, and engage more fully with the entire operation.  Then they can do the same with their customers and vendors and partners.

Most organizations today believe that they “have” to be in social media.  They are partly correct.  Success demands that organizations be more social, that they manifest the underlying reason for the success of social media. 

But most organizations seem to view social media simply as a new business tool for selling, or sometimes for lower cost customer service.  The statistics are overwhelming.  eMarketer forecasts a 55% increase in ad spending on social networking sites, from almost $2B in 2010 to over $3B in 2011.  SaleSpider found that 75% of small and medium business owners they surveyed planned to increase the percentage of marketing dollars allocated to social networking in 2011.  The statistics go on and on.   It’s like the moves from print to radio to television…bigger, broader, but with little change to the underlying operations or objectives.  Those results are short-term and need continuous spiking. 

Umair Haque said it in his article in The Harvard Business Review, http://ocvets4pets.com/archive21/From_Social_Media_to_Social_Strategy_-_Umair_Haque_-_Harvard_Business_Review.pdf   It’s good to go back to the basics.

Internal Social Networks: Electronic Face-2-Face

Irwin D. Simon, Chairman, President, and CEO of Hain Celestial Group, could be the poster person for social corporate culture, at least based on an interview in the NY Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/business/20corner.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2 .



Given his comments in the article, however, I am betting that Hain Celestial Group uses social networks very sparingly internally.  Simon commented that he is “a big communicator by telephone and by person…I’m just big into communicating face-to-face, eye-to-eye and not through e-mail…we lose a sense of communication because everything is done electronically.”

I agree that personal communication is the gold standard.  It enables leaders to share their passion, to expand their vision, to grow.  But ongoing face-2-face communication with a broad and diverse group of employees is simply not feasible in a large organization. 

Hain Celestial reported a little over 2000 employees in June 2010.  How many of those employees ever actually talk to the CEO?  Communicating one-to-one with employees might be a high priority, but it’s not the only priority.  Establishing relationships with vendors and customers are also important for the CEO.  The FY2010 Hain Celestial annual report includes as one of its risk factors its dependence on the services of the CEO, and notes that “the loss of the services of Mr. Simon could harm our business.”

Internal social networks help create organizations that are not dependent on any single individual.  The team captain will always be important; leadership counts.  But the internal structures, culture and processes should both support the leader and enable the organization to operate without him/her. 

Internal social networks enable bigger organizations to maintain the open, engaged culture that Simon describes by:

·        expanding and enhancing the conversation 

·        enabling the CEO to engage with more people

·        forging stronger team bonds across a bigger team

·        opening doors and keeping them open

It’s about acknowledging and respecting that even the CEO doesn’t have all the answers.

5 Challenges Implementing a Social Media Strategy

In a cross-industry study that I conducted, companies identified 5 key challenges to developing and implementing a social media strategy.  Interestingly, 4 of the challenges were internally focused, including:

Ø  Culture

Ø  Governance

Ø  Technology investment and emerging technologies

Ø  ROI

Only the fifth consideration, channel selection, involved external considerations.

The ability to manage the shift in organizational culture to greater opennesss to effectively engage employees in social media was a major consideration.  A social media policy was seen as necessary good corporate process, but the cultural shift was perceived to be a major driver.  And the cultural shift begins with clearly articulated, employee-embraced core values.

Zappos built their culture on 10 core values, which drive their interactions in social media.  Much like the marines who tell the corps “In the absence of guidance: do the right thing,” (see the socialmedia-insideout blog post of March 6), Zappos says that “ Our core values are always the framework from which we make all of our decisions.”  (You can see all 10 of Zappos’ core values at http://about.zappos.com/jobs/why-work-zappos/core-values)

Core values need to go beyond the standard basics to define what makes the company culture unique.  When core values change and adherence is required, the culture will shift as those employees who are a good fit flourish, and others leave.  Enabling social media is about trusting the people in the company.