ROI of Internal Social Networks? Zero if the Network isn't Used

Just about a year ago, I discussed the factors driving ROI of internal social media networks.  But most companies are NOT realizing the benefits they expected.  The reason is fairly simple.   

Employees aren't showing up.

The InformationWeek 2012 study of enterprise social networking revealed that 87% of participants had an internal social network.  Only 13% rated the usage success as excellent.  The likelihood that a company viewed its success as average to poor?  A chilling 62%.

What makes an internal social network successful?  There are many details, approaches, and stories to success.  Primarily, though, a company has to embrace the change that the network will both enable and cause.  A social network functions most effectively within a social business; it does not attract adoption within the old, bureaucratic, staunchly hierarchical business models.  What's critical to success and what standard thinking doesn't work?  Here are my top 5:

1.  Flexibility, not strategic goals - Having a strategy and an objective for implementing an internal social network is important, but flexibility is more important.  By their very nature, social networks evolve and adapt and find their own reasons-to-be.  Organizations too focused on achieving a specific goal, on determining ahead of time how the network will be used, tend to flounder.  The social network becomes just another system that employees need to use; it becomes a burden rather than a benefit.  Deloitte Australia, a winner of the Forrester Groundswell Award, began using Yammer because they thought it looked "cool."  Three years later, Pete Williams, CEO Deloitte Digital, says "we're finding new value in the tool everyday."
2. Leadership, not grassroots -  Social media is the tool of the 99%, and successful internal social networks flatten hierarchy.  Social networks do not flourish under a command and control management model, but they do require leadership.  The active involvement of senior executives is critical to the effectiveness and usage of the system.  Unisys CEO Ed Coleman was an early adopter in the company, using the social network to communicate with employees, to listen, and to engage.  His executive team quickly followed, and employees began to use the network and then began to develop new uses for it.  Internal social networks, like external social networks, emphasize respect and collaboration across all levels.  Leadership needs to be willing to engage with employees without fear.  Deloitte Australia CEO Giam Swiegers talks about a first year analyst who challenged his point of view, and the debate was visible to all employees.  Swiegers liked knowing what employees were thinking and appreciated having the opportunity to discuss the issues; the ability to engage with leadership drives loyalty in employees.
3. Organic Evolution, not controlled growth - Staying up-to-date with the latest in social media is a challenge; new applications and uses appear frequently, because users keep trying out their ideas - and some stick.  It's the same with internal networks.  Should an executive team have some idea of how a network might be used before implementation?  Of course.  But then let it evolve.  "People are trying to rationalize, police, and control the tool," says Chris Laping, CIO of Red Robin restaurant chain, but "the power of information technology is sharing information.  What we naturally do with systems is lock them down, which prevents us from sharing information."  As more employees join a network, uses and needs also change.  Smaller groups form around projects or interests; new connections drive new ideas.  Users need to be able to adapt the network to meet their needs.
4. Communities of Interest, not just work - Employees with friends at work are happier and more productive (lots of data on this issue that I will spare you at the moment), and work issues are often intertwined with personal considerations.  Many companies strictly limit internal social networks to looking up data, working with project teams, or posting official pronouncements.  Yet communities of interest create friendships, help develop new policies and introduce new perspectives, and often both align with and drive corporate objectives.  Deloitte Australia employees have created a variety of communities of interest, from a "Mums Group" to "Audit Specialists."  At IBM, the gap between employee-produced content and corporate-produced content is large and still growing.  Leaders need to be actively engaged with the network, but users need to have a strong hand in shaping it.
5. Operational Virtue - Less controversial than the 4 points above, but also important; an internal social network must operate well in 3 ways.
• Ease of Use - If the system is not largely intuitive, if employees need a separate sign-on, or if the network does not integrate with e-mail and other critical enterprise platforms, employees will stay away.  The internal social network must be user friendly and agile, not cumbersome.
• Productivity - Social networks should improve the daily work of employees.  Project teams might work more efficiently and with greater speed; employees might be able to locate information more easily; work flows might be streamlined.  Not only should a social network create greater engagement and community, it should enable employees to be more productive.
• Measurement - While the uses of a social network will morph over time, it is always important to measure the real business results.  A McKinsey survey found that social business reduces time to market by 20% and increases the number of innovations by 20% on average.  Several companies that I have worked with have measured decreases in the amount of time spent finding information and, as a result, more efficient workflows.  Measurement is critical.  It just needs to evolve with the usage.   

What have been your keys to success?  What have been your pitfalls?

Related and of interest:
The ROI of Internal Social Media Networks
Behavioral Change Before ROI
IBM's Journey to Social Business
Deloitte Australia: A Yammer Customer Case Study
Increase Your Company's Productivity with Social Media

The Reluctant Leader - Corporate Culture & Leadership are Inextricably Bound Together

"Culture" seems to be growing in importance as a corporate buzz word.  Tony Hsieh famously made it the key to the success of Zappos.  Nordstrom differentiated on their culture of service years ago ("Hire the smile; teach the skill.")  It is one of my 4 leaves of the clover architecture of successful social media.  Culture is what makes companies great and what makes employees great ambassadors.

But the often exclusive focus on culture can be misleading and even damaging.  Culture change without passionate leadership is often chaotic and often a failure.  When a leader advocates or embraces change, the critical first followers can step up quickly, pulling along with them subsequent waves of followers.  I have seen Derek Sivers' wonderful TED talk on leadership ("How to Start a Movement") numerous times, and while we can debate whether the "lone nut" or the first follower is the true driver of change (there is no first follower if the lone nut doesn't first show the way!), culture change requires those one or two people out front.  

Culture change doesn't have to be explosive; sometimes it is evolutionary.  Some of the most difficult changes happen where the existing culture is not toxic, but positive.  Those changes require a leader with the vision to fight FOR, not just AGAINST.

One of my clients is struggling with the problem of a positive culture and a reluctant-to-change leader right now.  The corporate culture is social media friendly - warm, open and supportive.  However, the CEO doesn't understand social media.  (Those of us who work in social media sometimes forget that not everyone tweets, blogs, and shares over digital networks.)  She is coping with a stretched staff, a lot of exciting changes to products and services being offered, and a fear of diverting attention and resources by engaging in social media.  

Because the target market skews to young adults, she intellectually believes that she "has to" get into social media.  Her managers are eager and several are social media savvy; we have developed a great social media strategy; benefits are tied to corporate objectives.  But she can't let her team move forward in this space.  It's too alien.  Too scary.

So we are trashing the overall social media strategy for now and substituting a two-pronged approach.

• Cultural immersion for the CEO
• Narrow focus beta trial

Cultural immersion is a lot like language immersion in elementary school.  We are setting up the CEO on Facebook so she can play around.  We are showing her, in one-on-one sessions, how to navigate Twitter and find what interests her.  We are getting her comfortable with social media - not just intellectually, but practically and tactically.  Leaders need to touch it, to feel it, to use it in order to lead - or to allow - a revolution.

Rather than a broad  social media strategy that stretches across culture, governance, technology, implementation...we are focusing narrowly to start.  We have selected one new service where we will integrate social media.  Limited scope.  Limited number of staff.  Limited impact on total operations.  A great opportunity to showcase the costs and benefits of incorporating social media.

The CEO has been a good leader and has created a strong culture.  But as social media increasingly becomes an imperative for her business, she needs to learn again how to charge forward, how to leave her comfort and reluctance behind.

Peter Drucker's comment that "culture eats strategy for breakfast" is popping up everywhere these days.  Perhaps more relevant to the reluctant social media leader is Drucker's comment that "The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday's logic." 

Relevant posts you might like to read: 
Clover Architecture - the 4 Leaves of Extraordinary Social Media, bit.ly/r9oppb
Don't Follow the Rules - 3 Contrary Actions to Create a High Performance, Social Media Culture, http://goo.gl/fb/59Gdf
Passionate Leadership, http://goo.gl/fb/7RIZS

Integrating Social Media into Everyone's Job - Even in Clinical Health Care

I recently watched the COO of a health care organization get excited when she suddenly "got it."  We were talking about how the company could use social media to help achieve its objectives.  We discussed market positioning, and brand awareness, and information sharing, and friends and family support groups.  The column titled "Clinical" on my brainstorming sheet, however, got little attention.  Until the COO took a second look at my preliminary ideas and suddenly saw how some social media channels and concepts could be used to improve direct patient care.

In that moment, the discussion shifted.  We were no longer talking about how to USE social media.  We were talking about how social media could change the core business model and operations.  Social media was being made part of everyone's job, even the clinicians'.

Health care organizations generally play only tentatively with social media.  They are concerned about privacy; many are big and bureaucratic; openness and transparency are rarely cultural identifiers (apologies and kudos to those small, agile, and culturally open health care groups).  But when social media is recognized as an enabler to improved outcomes and performance, the opportunities multiply.

Health care organizations can expand the engagement with patients, whether in a one-to-one  or one-to-many environment.  They can engage with the patient communities that already exist, help create new networks, and even enhance some therapies.  They can improve internal communication among staff, which ultimately aids patient outcome and operating performance.  The opportunities only exist, however, if all staff members - clinical and not - are responsible for integrating social media thinking and lifestyle into their jobs.

The COO of this health care organization was using the clover architecture approach to implementation (see http://bit.ly/r9oppb):

• She was leading by sharing her insights and asking everyone to think differently, and by identifying how she would use social media in her own job.
• A distributed governance structure was being implemented, with each staff person assuming responsibility; there would be a social media guru, but no central social media department.
• The cultural change that was beginning was enormous.  Each person, including clinicians, was being challenged to figure out how social media could help to drive better results.  Multi-directional and multi-stakeholder collaboration became key.
• The technology was kept user-friendly and simple.

By recognizing that the objective of social media is a lifestyle not initiatives (see http://bit.ly/rb0P2i), this health care organization is improving patient care and satisfaction.  Every department and person is invited to participate.

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?

Herding Cats and Other New Norms

If you are a 21^st century-born organizations, you probably don’t need a social media strategy.  Social media is an integral element of your overall strategy; the two do not have separate lives.

But what about more mature organizations?  A non-profit celebrating its 125^th anniversary this year; a 75-year old global manufacturer; a 110-year old financial services institution with hundreds of billions in assets and ranked among the safest in the world?  What does a social media strategy mean to these organizations?  Why – and how – should they change a successful business model?

Social media is not a discontinuous technology change that demands attention and threatens the “old way” with a single blow.  It’s hard to define.  (Use the words “social media,” and many companies think only Facebook and Twitter.)  It is amorphous.  More than anything, social media reflects social change, not technology change. 

Over time, successful businesses do need to adapt to social change – in the way they operate both internally and externally.   Social media and social networking have evolved to the point that they are changing people’s expectations about how to interact -  person-to-person,  individual-to-business, and business-to-business.  Because, to state the obvious, “businesses” are just amalgamations of people with a common objective.  Once changes in personal interactions take hold, those changes leak into business interactions.

What are the big changes requiring significant shifts in business models?

·        Knowledge is a commodity. Remember when knowledge = power?  Knowledge is not only now available, it is freely shared. 

·        The quantity of available data has exploded beyond our capacity to process it.  Data and automated analyses are like an active volcano, constantly spewing out.  The lone hero with the data who could run statistical programs has a lot of competition, competition that is trumpeting different data and different statistical programs.

·        Engagement is not just the word of the day; individuals want a say; they want to be heard; they increasingly demand to be respected and empowered.

These fundamental changes demand shifts in what is valued in the workplace and how companies function.  Continued success in this century requires that organizations evolve to new norms.

·        The visionary composer is one of the most valuable employees.  The individual who can take all of the data and analyses and create a harmonious future vision, who understands how to integrate all of the information, is more valuable than the expert. 

·        Hierarchies are more porous; command and control is dead.  Corporate hierarchies will not disappear, but the leaders need to be the first among equals, one of the team.  Excellent corporate leaders will manage not demand.

·        The ability to herd cats, not sheep, will drive results.  Increasingly, employees want to control their own time and to have an impact.  Like cats, each wants to be recognized as an individual participating in a shared culture.

Organizations need to build these new norms into their processes.  How they recruit, train and review employees, for instance, needs to change.  The old performance metrics might no longer measure what really matters. 

What new metrics have you used to adapt to social changes?

Clover Architecture – the 4 Leaves of Extraordinary Social Media

Making social media an important and seamless element of an organization is like growing clover.  You get a lot of good efforts and almost-there’s, a lot of 3-leaf clovers. But 1 out of 10,000 times, you get a 4-leaf clover.  That’s when social media transforms an ordinary organization into one that truly stands out.

The four leaves of a clover traditionally symbolize hope, faith, love and luck.  The four leaves of the internal social media clover?  They represent:

§       Leadership (hope)

§       Governance (faith)

§       Culture (love)

§       Technology (luck J)

Each of these leaves is necessary for an organization to benefit as much as possible from social media.  Drop any one leaf, and the impact becomes ordinary.

Three veins keep each leaf healthy:

Leadership – Executives must be

v   involved

v   passionate, and

v   bought-in with strong ROI.

Governance – Strong social media implementation requires that silos tumble.  

v   Governance must be cross-functional

v   Expertise must be integrated across and within units, and

v   HR policies must take social media into account.

Culture – Key cultural characteristics of break-out social media organizations include

v   openness

v   trust, and

v   collaboration.

Technology – The final leaf of every 4-leaf clover is smaller than the other three, and for social media the fourth leaf is technology.  Technology is an important enabler, but without the leadership, governance, and culture, great technology is wasted.  Many platforms can be implemented that enable engagement and dialogue.  Keep them

v   simple

v   inexpensive, and

v   designed for social interaction, not for file sharing!

I have discussed each of the 4 leaves of social media in previous posts and will continue to delve into these internal issues.  (See, for example, http://goo.gl/fb/wthL8, http://goo.gl/fb/PBENn, http://goo.gl/fb/zUijJ)

What has been most instrumental in turning your organization into a social media model inside and out?

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.

The Comfort Level of Executives Drives Effective Use of Social Media

According to Socialcast and Web Analytics World (http://www.webanalyticsworld.net/2010/10/how-executives-use-social-media.html), over 80% of executives use social media sites every day.  Sounds good.  But digging a bit deeper, the data reveal that while 92% of executives use LinkedIn, only 5% have a blog, and only 3% access an internal network.  What’s going on???

Executives limit the value of social media by confining it to 3 main purposes:

·        Personal use

·        Checking backgrounds or contacts

·        Marketing and PR

Many executives fear losing control with social media, and even more simply don’t understand the detail or the potential of social media.  They didn’t grow up with it.  And they have had no compelling reason to become personally adept.

In a recent post, I identified 3 key actions to convince CEOs of the value of integrating social media into all aspects of the business:

1.       Get the executives personally involved

2.    Conduct show-and-tell education sessions

3.      Demonstrate the ROI

I previously discussed getting executives personally involved; now for show-and-tell. 

 Show-and-tell education sessions are often key to engaging executives, and Until executives are engaged, no one else will be fully engaged. I would like to say you can “teach it and they will come."  We know they won’t. 

I have found three great approaches to using show-and-tell to get executives involved and knowledgeable:

1.      When developing a social media strategy, devote the first 30-60 minutes of every meeting to sharing information on a single topic – social media policies, governance, technology, blogging…

2.      At each meeting, have staff develop and present live demos, show real on-line information about the company, make it about “here and now.” One executive team told me that they didn’t yet have a Facebook account.  They were wrong.  The company had one very active account with almost 1000 friends, and two moderately active accounts with their name.  TALK ABOUT LOSS OF CONTROL!!! 

3.      Work with the executives to use social media tools.  An executive at another organization planned to write an all-employee e-mail and hold a series of meetings to announce the new social media plan.  Instead, we used the e-mail to direct everyone to the new internal network.  The “town halls” were great, and then made available on an internal video channel and over podcasts.  More people “tuned in” than attended!

Social media might be transparent and more democratic in its respect for all opinions.  But organizational hierarchy still remains, and the comfort level of the executives drives effective usage.

Passionate Leadership

Forget the grass roots theories of social media.  Until the leadership of an organization believes in social media, it will remain a marginal marketing or PR or communications tool.  Employees might experiment with numerous, scattered initiatives, but without executive buy-in, little real organizational change occurs.   Worse, because the impact of the grass roots efforts is minimal, they can reinforce executive opinion that social media is not a major consideration. 

So how do you convince the CEO that social media is serious and should be integrated in all aspects of the business?

There are 3 key actions:

1.       Get the executives personally involved

2.    Conduct show-and-tell education sessions

3.      Demonstrate the ROI

Today, let’s consider executive involvement, and I’ll address education and ROI in later posts.

Connecting social media with a passion of the leadership positions social media as integral to the corporate objectives.  It becomes not just another technology channel, but a new means to achieve a vision or goal.  Personal involvement has been a key driver for many of the early successful companies. 

Bill Marriott, a great hotelier but not known for his technical expertise, loved the idea of engaging more directly with customers.  So he was enthusiastic when asked to write a blog.  He writes it himself as a way to talk with customers and employees. 

Not only did Marriott International use Twitter extensively to keep people updated at the time of the bombings at its hotels in Islamabad (2008) and Jakarta (2009), but Bill Marriott blogged to disseminate information, express sympathies, and ultimately share his perspectives and point of view.  Reaching out to people was important to Bill Marriott.  And dozens of people responded to the blogs. 

When Howard Shultz returned to Starbuck’s as CEO, he wanted to reconnect with customers.  MyStarbucksIdea was born, and it has become not only a major source of innovation and customer loyalty, but a major driver of changes to the internal culture.

Share how your leaders engage with social media – or how they don’t.