The Social Organization

Enterprise 2.0 Recap

Wow - Enterprise 2.0 is not done yet but I am. Despite the potential for more great content this morning, I had to step away from the swirl.

I also must confess that in the blur of catching up with old friends and colleagues and meeting both new 'old' Twitter friends and new people, I didn't attend very many of the sessions... which is a shame because I missed some good ones. I did make it to a few panels that I thought were particularly interesting, however, and well worth the time. So for me, the value of Enterprise 2.0 was very skewed toward the people vs. the content. Below are my highlights:

Themes

- The debate over "Is this a revolution" vs. "Is this an evolution" rages on. It doesn't really interest me other than to say that 'revolution' is a scary word if it is happening to you so... I don't think it necessarily furthers the cause when talking to people about change.

- I was on a panel last year about Twitter in the enterprise - this year the subject seemed to infiltrate many of the panels and yet still a lot of discussion about its benefits and what its value is. I heard two interesting use cases - one was that a company I spoke with introduced Yammer under the radar and had seen significant adoption (thousands of people) and the other from one of the vendors (maybe SocialCast?) who feeds in data streams from enterprise apps so employees get alerts and notifications in their individual streams, side by side with conversational chatter.

- One of the more interesting things that I heard came out of a discussion with someone at IBM about the need for large enterprises to fund 'marketing labs' the same way tech companies fund pure research labs on the technology side. The next day on a panel with Allstate, Jet Blue, & Humana it turned out that in the case of Humana and Allstate at least, their teams are separate and have more flexibility than the core marketing teams - along with their own IT support. I think this a great trend for large enterprises to figure out the new communications environment.

- Another thing that I heard - from both Humana & Comcast - was an awareness of their need to become, in essence, product managers for software solutions. Instead of taking the technology at face value and using it in the way it was presented to them, they are both thinking about how they want to manage... and figuring out how to get their solutions to adapt to those needs. Both consider themselves to be in the application development business as a way to support their core business processes.

- Semantics are tricky. I spoke to a woman at a large services business struggling to define what a group/community/network was. There are user generated groups, well defined groups that align with lines of business, affinity groups, functional groups - all with potentially tens of thousands of employees. How do you distinguish? I don't have a great answer but I know she is not the only one struggling with this topic.

Quotes

Nate Nash "ROI is kinda like envisioning your funeral: Who'd show up? What happens when you don't have it?" via @rawn

@stoweboyd "In a risky economy, people are willing to take more risks because they seem less risky...relatively speaking"

@Armano "If your company is 1.0 and it's using 2.0 tools externally, it's going to be transparent about how 1.0 it really is"

@MikeLefebvre: This morning I'm beginning to gather one male and one female of every species of animal on the planet. Just in case [this was not in particular reference to Enterprise 2.0 but it nicely summed up the weather situation in Boston!]

@benphoster from Allstate talking about trying to avoid "A cure looking for a disease"

"Email domesticates thinkers" [sorry, missed the attribution here - but I believe it was the CEO of BrainPark]

@comcastcares "We need to get back to Helpful1.0, not Sales2.0" & "You have to earn the right to sell to customers"

People

I can't begin to document all the fascinating discussions that I had but this event was great for catching up, reaching out, and connecting.

I got to reconnect with: @mwalsh @goodridge @schneidermike @rawn @marketingprofs @sirmichael @geechee_girl @amcafee @peterkim @laurelatoreilly @elsua @chrisbrogan @srog @dhaslam @johncass @jeffcutler @MaThurrell @justinmwhitaker @bostonmarketer  @robertcollins @joselinmane @gradontripp @sarahbourne @CarolineDangson @mlevitt @AmberCadabra

I got to meet (so fun!): @comcastcares @dhinchcliffe @stales @stoweboyd @theRab @cflanagan @KMHobbie @benphoster @itsinsider @marciamarcia @DanYork @Armano @dougcornelius @michaelido @cbensen @gialyons @lehawes @Greg2dot0 @Ed_Sullivan @danlarsen @amber_rae  @cmajor @GeorgeDearing @wacom @robincarey @maggiefox @jyarmis @Matthew_T_Grant @jamiepappas @mwthomasSCRM @robhoward @MikeG514

I'm sure I'm missing a bunch but these people are what made the event fantastic - whether talking shop, discussing The Community Roundtable, or fooling around - see some fun Twitpics: Fun with micro-celebrities @comcastcares & @jimstorer; Three stages of hair growth; snorting shrimp (they were that good!) - and some pics from our Crab Tweetup.

New Terms

Breakfast Bingo - when you're in a hotel lobby looking for someone that you have never met but have arranged to have breakfast with... you could play Lunch Bingo and Dinner Bingo but the alliteration is not as good. Reminds me of the children's book "Are You My Mother?"

Twitter Litter - any superfluous use of Twitter, specifically pertaining to extraneous RTing or bots.

Oy - so much in just three days. What a blast... but glad I'll have a few months to recover until the next big event!

Building Models And Understanding Reality

The wonk in me loves models - over the weekend someone asked me for some help with Excel and I was disappointed that they just needed help with some formatting and basic calculations because I love a model that separates out and compares different data sets and uses a variety of measures to create aggregate performance metrics. It's a lot of fun figuring out which numbers have what influence on the whole and there is an analytical purity that you can achieve which is a beautiful thing.

Years ago I worked for PRTM collecting huge reams of operational data related to product development and supply chain performance. After the data was calculated we would use the metrics to tell a story about the business we were analyzing based on how their data compared to a similar set of companies. I remember that many an executive was a bit surprised at how much we could know about their business just looking at the data. Then as an analyst at IDC, I was introduced to systems dynamics modeling which takes modeling to a whole new level - multiple variables can feed into complex feedback loops that represent behaviors. It's really cool and also really instructive at testing hypotheses.

However, way back at PRTM I learned a really critical lesson about models. Models don't and can't tell you what to do. They should not be used to make decisions - at least not on their own. A very common reaction I got when I presented results to large companies was "So that means we are bad/good/average and we should invest/change direction/etc."  I was always a little confused by the question because while the data definitely pointed to possible issues or opportunities, I had none of the other business context to make a good decision. Models are good at identifying potential issues and opportunites and for showing improvement but they are one data point and are pretty dumb when it comes to strategy and relationships.

This frustrates me to no end when I see banks melt down because they thought sub-prime loans were a good idea. Their models told them that the price of houses, on average over the prior decade, grew in value by x such that even for people that put no money down, the increase in housing prices had the probability of giving them equity in a few years - based on historical trends. But even ignoring the ethical responsibilities they should have felt, they forgot to think about the assumption that home mortgages were a good idea to give to people who had no skin in the game. There is something about spending years to save a downpayment that makes one think long and hard about just how much they can afford - and take that responsibility a little more seriously. It seems like they let their models do the deciding for them. I'm not sure why.

In a different area, Google takes a very model heavy approach to everything it does, from its search algorithm to it HR practices. This bothers me in a vague way that I can't always articulate. But it hit me yesterday when someone emailed and told me that I, Rachel Happe, had as many search results as Tina Fey. That makes no sense. They were using it to show how important social media and personal branding is. The problem? Google 'corrects' my typing so when I type in 'Happe' it pulls up those results but also assumes that I really meant 'happy' and pulls up all of those results as well. I'm sure that 99.9% of the time when people type in 'happe' they mean to type 'happy' and the model holds. But what about me? The mode doesn't work all that well for me. Clearly this is kind of a stupid example but it demonstrates how we use models every day that don't always work.

My plea? Use numbers but don't just blindly follow them. Double check, they can be at best usually right and at worst misleading in dangerous ways.

Eight Competencies to Socializing Your Organization

The social media and community space is transitioning from a nice thing to do to an operational discipline across teams/groups/the organization. That transition is actually pretty difficult and disruptive because it requires cultural, leadership, strategy, workflow, and operational changes. However, it is critical if organizations don't want to have their social efforts isolated from everything else, which doesn't work very well anyway. The other thing that this transition requires is a common framework for the different competencies involved to give everyone has a common taxonomy and visual for thinking about all the issues included in being 'social'.

I developed the Community Maturity Model to help people and organizations make sense of the complexity of what socializing their organization means. This model is the basis for how Jim Storer and I are categorizing content and conversations at The Community Roundtable. It's a good tool to discuss the issues related to community management, a good structure for benchmarking and tracking operational improvements, and a great framework for training or certification.The competencies laid out in the model are:

1. Strategy
2. Leadership
3. Culture
4. Community Management
5. Content & Programming
6. Policy & Governance
7. Tools
8. Measurement

Michael Chin (who, as an aside, really gets the culture of the social media world) from KickApps invited me to share my thinking today in a webinar - I'm grateful for his support but also for getting me to put my thinking together in a cogent slide deck. You can find the recording at the KickApps blog but the slides are below.

Eight Competencies to Socializing Your Organization

View more OpenOffice presentations from Rachel Happe.

What I Learned About Social Media from the Streets of India

If you are a social media or community manager and have the chance to go to India, GO. I found many lovely things there but what really fascinated and alternatively freaked me out, was the traffic.  First there is such a wide range of things in the flow of traffic: cars, people, bullock carts, pedicabs, buses, cows, mopeds, camels... you name it, the sea of humanity is on the streets of India. Secondly, there are no lanes and few traffic lights on the majority of city streets - the sea of humanity moves along like an amoeba. Thirdly, it is a total cacophony of sound - mostly incessant honking.  Fourthly, drivers do insane things - our driver actually hit someone (albeit mildly) who would not get out of his way. To my western eye, it was total chaos.

After two weeks of this - in cities from New Delhi to Goa -it actually sort of started to make sense to me. Thinking back on it now, the lessons translate well to social media because, like Indian traffic, it looks like complete chaos to the untrained eye.

The good news is - it does self-organize. Here's how:

• One person has no hope of managing it which means everyone has to play their part. In traffic, everyone identifies gaps and fills them. If you tried to put a western traffic cop in Indian traffic, they would get run over.
• By understanding cultural cues, the noise starts to make sense. The honking in Indian traffic actually has patterns, for example three short beeps is to indicate that you are right behind someone and passing. By understanding these cues, you can avoid accidents.
• Cows are sacred and unpredictable. Just go around.
• There is no auto insurance in India so if you screw up you are going to get hurt. You pick yourself up, wipe yourself off, sort it out with the other driver, and move on.
• Suspend your disbelieve. It all kind of works... go with the flow.

All good advice for those of you tackling social media and online communities. There are patterns and there is a culture but you'll be better off if you adjust to it. If you try and force your expectations on to it, you'll get a lot of friction... and you may even get run over. In particular, follow these rules and you will learn to:

• Build an educated army - everyone needs to be on the look out for opportunities to educate and respond. Are you still trying to do everything by yourself? You may get run over so what are you doing to make everyone able to identify and fill gaps?
• Have a sense for what cultural signals trigger problems. The better you understand what activities or topics may trigger blow ups in your community, the better you can nip things in the bud.
• Identify people and organizations who will not budge on the social media issue. Don't waste too much time trying to move them. Just figure out how to go around.
• Not dwell on accidents - they happen, especially if you are learning how to navigate the new environment.
• Not to spend too much time trying to organize things.Your community will self-organize if you let it - and it is actually more powerful that way.

Good luck. Be careful out there!

There is nothing like seeing it for yourself but @JoeCascio inspired me to go find a video on YouTube. Here is a little sample:

Flurry of Events

I've been working on a number of events and presentations. The good news? Many are virtual so you can join.

The first - a crew of marketing, social media, communications, and community people from Boston are running a series of webinars. Robert Collins, Frank Days, Jeff Cutler, and I will spar on whether this whole community thing is worth it. This won't be your typical presentation but rather a lively conversation (Frank is the skeptic BTW!)

The first - The Skeptical CMO and Friends - The Value of Building Your Online Community - will be next Tuesday, May 19th. To sign up, go here.

Secondly, I'll be presenting 8 Competencies to Socializing Your Organization hosted by KickApps on May 27th at 3:30pm EST. For Info and to sign up, go here.

And finally, The Community Roundtable is ready for lauch. Our initial roundtable will be June 3rd. We will be running roundtables for our members every other week. Our roundtable schedule has a complete list of experts and topics such as the state of community management, effectively developing and using eBooks, online video production, IP and legal issues, how to use twitter effectively in the enterprise, and more. For more information about membership (no, it won't be free but it will be worth it - I promise), go here.

For those of you who are not members of The Community Roundtable and are in the Boston area, Jim and I will be hosting TheCR Live! every other Friday for lunch at John Harvard's in Harvard Square. First one will be on June 12th.

It Takes a Village

As some of you may know - Jim Storer and I are starting a business called The Community Roundtable. I wasn't sure exactly what to expect since it is my first go at starting a company. We are still in very early days but already I've had some really interesting insights. The biggest by far is that to build a solid business, it takes a village.  And while it is common knowledge that executives need a large 'network' to make things happen, that always had a very sterile sound to me. It always sounded a little tit for tat and transactional to me. What I've experienced is anything but - it is people going out of their way and putting their reputation on the line to recommend me to others. It is maybe the best gift someone can give you - to believe in you and your vision to such a degree that they are willing to promote it without any direct reward for doing so.

What I've realized trying to get TCR up and running is that - as hokey as it sounds - I am blessed. I didn't realize until I was in a position to be helped just how many people were willing to vouch for me and in ways I never would have expected. Many, many people have helped us get the word out and continue to do so. Others have offered to help us out on discrete tasks like creating a logo or testing out our community. Others have enthusiastically offered to affiliate themselves with us. Others have offered to help us with PR and marketing. Others have offered to put us in front of their customers.

The other thing that I've realized is related. I've been through enough of life that I've known for a while what I'm good at, what I'm bad at, what really motivates me, and what I enjoy doing. The relationships that I've built - particularly over the past five years - have all been rooted in that self-understanding. I partnered with Jim and we are building The Community Roundtable on that understanding (see our mission statement for more). That means my business is very aligned with my virtual 'village' of people. My values have driven my relationships which is now driving my business and the same is true for Jim.

People can succeed in a new business without a village but it's much more expensive and not nearly as much fun. I can't tell yet whether The Community Roundtable will be successful but I can tell you there are a lot of people who are excited about it and that is the phenominal first step - and a great foundation for making it through what will no doubt be a rocky first year as we try to keep up with everything.

While I don't want to call out people publicly here I do want to say THANK YOU! We'll figure out how to do something useful to thank them each individually. And my question to the rest of you - whether you are starting a company or just managing an initiative - is this: Do you know who is in your village? Are they the people you need to help you in whatever ambition you have, professional or otherwise? Is there enough diversity to provide the resources you might need? Will they hlep you celebrate your success?

After all, No Man Is An Island to quote John Donne. Don't deceive yourself that you can do it alone.

The Naked CEO

Today I gave a talk at PRSA's Digital Impact Conference.  My topic was how social media, communities, and user-generated content is changing organizations.

What I was hoping to impart was the following:

- Social media is not only something to 'deal' with but there is a way to thrive in this new environment

- Having customers and employees is no longer enough - you need to convert them to engaged members of your network so you they can become your army of online advocates.

- Strategy, operations, culture, and leadership all need to change to adopt to this new environment.

Here's the slides:

The Naked Ceo

View more presentations from rhappe.

What Women Know and How it Drives Profitability

Forget about what women want - women may want a lot of things that have nothing to do with running a business (oh that cute pink handbag!). But let's discuss what women tend (and I say tend because nothing is absolute when discussing gender roles) to know and you can start to see why businesses with more women in senior leadership positions are more profitable and innovative.

In my experience, here's how what women know translates into business performance:

• Women know high risk comes with high potential upsides and high potential downsides. We tend not to get overly excited about what could be and focus on what can be today. That focus means we we more likely translate current market needs into solutions that will pay off today but we may not be as likely to go for the long shot ventures.

• Women know relationships and know that the more open and transparent we are, the closer the relationships are that we can foster. This allows us to form really persistent relationships with employees, partners, and customers - and not through the use of money and rewards - which is more profitable and less vulnerable. See Diane Hessan's excellent example of Return on Openness.

• Women know how valuable communication is - at all levels. That means a lot of us are chatty (it's been proven) but it also means the people around us are never left in doubt of what is going on. That means there is less distrust and gives others the chance to bring up any issues they see.

• Women know how to navigate emotional conflict better and interestingly have an easier time discussing deep rooted differences of opinion between colleagues in a more collegial fashion. This allows for conflict resolution before things escalate into business problems.

• Women know how to identify subtle social queues and can identify whether or not someone is being open with us - whether we choose to acknowledge that or not. This allows women to more accurately assess relationships with customers and others.

• Women know that telling people what to do is not the most effective way to lead. Showing by example and using Socratic methods of mentoring often facilitates the response we desire without the negative side affects of the other party feeling controlled.

• Women know complexity. We can never focus on just work, or just money, or just family. It is always about the best decision for everyone rather than the best decision for any one constituent. This gives us a balanced perspective of a business and keeps us from maximizing revenue in the short term if it damages relationships in the long term - thus preserving sustainability and long term profits.

This is not to say that women are better and that this is true for all women (or that men don't have these qualities) but bringing women into leadership positions will bring a diversity of approach, a different perspective, and some much needed skills to the board room. In a business environment where transparency and relationships are becoming core principals of business how can you afford not to bring more of those skills into your business?

From a personal perspective *not* having more of those qualities in companies is what has driven me to start my own. I don't want to work in an environment that doesn't understand balance, is driven to 'win' at all costs, and only values relationships while they result in revenue. It's not what I am about and the more senior I get, the more aligning my values with the businesses I associate with matter to me. Is that a zero sum rule? Of course not - women don't tend to view things that way and I certainly don't.

What do you think? Is this too generalized? Do you think this is a sexist perspective? Does it reflect the women leaders that you know?

Don't know the woman in the picture? That's Indra Nooyi wife of a former boss of mine (who was quite a smart cookie himself) and CEO of Pepsi - great to see!

The Value of Social Software and the Collapsing Cost of Content Management

The conversation around the ROI of social media/social software is one that gets batted around quite a bit and there are a couple of approaches to considering its impact:

• It improves existing metrics like awareness, positive brand association, lead generation, reduced support costs, etc.
• It improves relationships, increases serendipity, increases retention, increases innovation
• It reduces the cost of delivering the above performance

All of those approaches can be valid depending on what you are trying to achieve - a laundry list of metrics as well as some great commentary can be found here.

But I want to discuss a more fundamental shift that is taking place that is at the heart of social software's ROI - regardless of which metric you use to measure its effectiveness. Fundamentally social software does two things, it:

• Reduces the cost of content development and management
• Improves the value of the content

Content is what drives any business and the better the content, the better a business can align with its market.

First, social software collapses content authoring, cataloging, publishing, and distribution into one application. In the enterprise context that is particularly mind boggling. As an example, to publish a white paper, the process that I would go through in the past typically consisted of:

1. Draft the white paper in a desktop tool - transcribing notes and details regarding examples and case studies from other tools.

2. Send the white paper out to 10-20 interested parties. Remind them to edit. Remind them again. Get edits. 50% of reviewers are good about using the revision tool, 50% are not. 

3. Reconcile edits (or the other option would be to send it out to 10-20 people sequentially). Ugh. This takes longer than the original draft.

4. Send draft to 1 or 2 people for final business edits. Reconcile.

5. Upload document into content management application.

6. Create a ticket in a project management/ticket tracking application for MarCom/editing group to do final edits on.

7. Receive notification of final draft available in content management system.

8. Create a ticket for the web team to publish it to the website. Wait.

9. Receive notification that it is published to the website.

9. Create an email marketing campaign to let the core audience know that it is available.

10. Send email. Hope it's opened.

If lucky, this process takes 6-8 weeks. If the content and writing are being outsourced to a third party, it takes even longer.

With social software, the process looks something like:

1. Write draft. Incorporate content from other sources but also make certain sections of the draft available for others to contribute directly.

2. Alert 10-20 editors that the document is ready for editing. Remind them to edit. Remind them again. (sorry that part won't change). They make edits directly to document.

3. Review edits - accept them or go back to the previous text or edit them.

4. Alert the final 1-2 people to review. They make edits directly.

5. Create an alert for MarCom/editing group to do final edits.

6. Receive alert that the final draft is complete.

7. Change permissions on file and publish to website directly. People subscribed to RSS feed will get notifications immediately.

This change to the fundamental process of content creation and management is not only a cost reduction in the number of applications needed but it is also a reduction in the workflow steps and people needed. In any business process that involves content creation and management, social software can dramatically reduce costs - and ensure that content is stored and categorized centrally...no more losing tons of data when employees leave.  It's almost enough to recommend to IT departments that they not give employees MSFT Office apps - although we are not there yet because of the need to share documents with external partners and customers.

Secondly, once content is published, social software allows the audience for the content to add tremendous value to the original content. Simply by adding ratings and reviews, the value of the content is doubled. Think of the Amazon model - the publishers content is useful but the ratings and reviews are even more so. In niche markets these ratings and reviews increase even more in value. Why don't most companies allow for this?

Then think about enabling customers to create content about your products or services. That probably doubles again the usefulness and value of the content to the end customer. ExpoTV is exploiting this by allowing people to upload video reviews of products - essentially taking that value away from the manufactures and distributors of the products themselves.

So your executives are afaid of negative reviews? Clearly they are happening anyway and if a product is truly that bad...shouldn't it be taken off the market anyway since it will undoubtadly lead to high service costs and a negative reflection on the brand...don't they want to know that? It's happening anyway, the support and brand costs are just hidden from sight and impossible to track if you don't encourage customers tell you directly.

Content. It's what drives business. Making it easier and cheaper to create - and then allowing customers to add to it - will be the way businesses win. Win repeat customers, win new customers, win loyalty, win evangelism. And in this day and age you can't affort to not make your customers into marketing partners.

Nothing to Say Here

Maybe it's because I just wrote a 50+ page report on the social software market, maybe it's because I just organized my 200+ social media feeds but I can't think of a lot to say this week that would really add to the conversation. Chat, chat, chat - yeh, we all know that talking to our customers - and really listening are important by now (shouldn't we have already known that?!?)

What I did notice by organizing my feeds is that social media and community blogs focused on PR/Marketing Communication blogs far exceed the number of social media blogs focused on customer support, market research, product innovation, HR, or collaboration.

So - I'll ask you to participate this week. What blogs have you seen about social media or communities focused on something other than outbound marketing? What are the blogs the really discuss the practicalities of bringing more conversational tools into existing operations - dealing with the data implications, the cultural implications, the measurement implications?

Please leave a comment about your favorite non-marketing blogs. Thanks!