The Social Organization

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:

The Best Social Strategy: First Know Thyself

I've been asked a number of times (and most recently for one of my favorite SXSW content projects by Crystal Beasley) what I would recommend to people starting to blog, twitter, etc. I typically recommend that they first follow a group of people they find interesting through blog and Twitter directories and then jump in to the conversation. Other people recommend doing a lot of listening first and I don't disagree but I think to really understand the culture and find your 'voice' in a new medium you need to just start trying things, albeit slowly at first.

The corollary to "How did you get started" is "What is your strategy? which to be honest, always leaves me a bit at a loss for words. My first thought is always "Oh *^&^%, I should have a strategy!". After thinking about this topic however, I don't really need a strategy and here's why: I am an individual so my online presence is obviously scoped by that fact but more importantly, I know myself fairly well - and I know what I am comfortable sharing about myself with others and what will likely get me into uncomfortable situations.

However, companies are a very different beasts than individuals and therefore the advice has to be different. Just like individuals however, the better you know yourself the easier it will be to participate in all types of social media conversations. So my first piece of advice would be for companies to figure out who they are before they start down the social media path. In the majority of companies this is different from the brand. Brands are often an abstraction created by the marketing departments or agencies, not a personality based on the aggregate employee values. It's why Tony Hsieh is such a bellweather leader for the social age - he is leading the charge to hire on values and make those values the brand. I would bet it is a much easier process for Zappos to create new conversation channels than for other companies to do so. 

So how does a corporation understand who they are? Likely a bit of cultural anthropology would help. Understanding yourself as an organization includes understanding where fine lines exist between what is acceptable and what is not. Things like publicly apologizing to a customer - some companies will be OK with that idea and others will cringe at it. What about sharing booking numbers internally? What about externally? How transparent are you as an organization - is everything laid out and accessible? It it theoretically accessible but not easy to find? Is it controlled?

Understanding the boundaries of what is comfortable for the vast majority of people in your organization is critical to understand what you should be talking about and sharing in different online environments.

The second part to me is listening for what your customers, prospects, and influencers want to know. This likely doesn't line up with what the organizational culture is comfortable sharing. Identifying this gap and then negotiating how to respond to what people want to know is the critical key in navigating the online world. Ideally it is a dance between pushing people to share a little more than they typically would want to and not giving the audience everything they are asking for but enough to satisfy them. Navigating the gap takes a skilled facilitator - just another reason companies should not just go 'hire a blogger'.

How do you approach this exercise of really understanding the organization for which you work?

Massive Multiplayer Online Innovation

Last week I got the opportunity via Ehsan Ehsani (@eehsani) to interview Dr. Robert Chapman Wood, a professor of strategy at San Jose State University who had studied IBM's first Innovation Jam in 2006 (a second one was held in 2008). It's a great case study to read about - the original article was published in the MIT Sloan Management Review. A couple of things that really stood out for me were:

• The scale - 150,000 individuals, 104 countries, & 46,000 ideas
• The involvement of customers and partners - 67 companies were involved
• The openness of IBM to share its internal innovation process so publicly

One of the more interesting challenges that I discussed with Dr. Wood in the podcast was the issue of brainstorming vs. consensus. Turns out that wrangling 150,000 people online is quite a challenge - you don't have some of the same facilitation tools (voice, tone, physical signals, a whiteboard 'parking lot' at the ready, etc.). Brainstorming and consensus/decision-making are also two very different processes and play different roles in the innovation process - and different online tools are optimized for each of those processes.

Here's the whole podcast (warning: it is about 45 minutes long and available on iTunes - search E-Novation or Ehsani - if you want if for your drive):

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Measuring The Marketing Vortex

Being out on my own has given me the unique opportunity to start thinking about how I market myself - and how I might measure that. There are a couple of interesting things that have some good cross-over best practices for any kind of marketing. Because I am embedded in the social media/community world, I have not used traditional methods at all (i.e. sending out resumes, cold calling/emailing, etc) - other than creating a pipeline of prospects that evolve into concrete opportunities.

To me the new social marketing methods are about creating a marketing vortex (this is not a new idea - HubSpot and New Marketing Labs call this 'Inbound Marketing'). But I like the image of a vortex - you want to create an audience compelled to move into your field of view and then compelled to egaged with you. Personally, my audience was pulled in through my blog, Twitter, speaking engagements, events, and work relationships. That audience is the people on my pitch. Generally speaking, they are there to play the same game I am. I can count the number of people on my pitch even if I cannot identify them by name.

The next step is engaging with the people on your pitch. This takes the form of pageviews, Twitter conversations, comments, and conversations at events. The people I engage with show an increase in interest in the areas I care most about. I can count them. In my opinion it would be a mistake to weed any of these people out because they do not have an opportunity for me or are interested in areas that are not 100% aligned with mine. It's a mistake to ignore them mostly because I learn a lot from them but also because you cannot know when a situation with any of those people will change.  I also never directly ask this crowd for opportunities - I'm mostly interested in encouraging more engagement. These are cool leads in the world of marketing but this is actually the area of richest opportunity - these people will make connections for me that I don't even know exist. Those connections might simply be sharing one of my blog posts with a colleague. Regardless, these are the people that will increase the number of people on my pitch. Immensely valuable.

The tension in the vortex continues to increase when I start having a relationship with someone. I've had multiple conversations, I've likely met them, and we always get something out of speaking to each other. How does that conversion happen? More touch points. Here's where I think corporate marketing can learn something from personal relationships. Transitioning people from people you engage with to people who are really interested in what you are doing is not about getting them to read more of your blog, whitepapers or attend more webinars. That can certainly be part of it but most of this relationship building comes from less formal interaction. Tweetups, BBQs, lunches, breakfasts, and one-on-one interactions are really what move the relationship forward. Why? Because you are not just using their time to tell them something - you are developing a give and take. Listening and responding. Referring them to others (because you don't do everything...really). That give and take is absolutely essential in building trust. If you just try and force people through the tunnel the way you want it to work you make people uncomfortable by reducing their control over the situation. This also doesn't need to be expensive to do - just create opportunities to casually interact. This will help create your inner circle. But not everyone in your inner circle is necessarily a lead - but they are likely a fan.  You can count these people.

And how do you get conversion? If you do all of the above well, opportunity will come to you. If it doesn't, you are not selling something people want and need to rethink your product. Practice will help you understand how many conversions you get based on the size of your pitch...no one else can tell you that because your product and service are unique (unless you are selling a commodity in which case you shouldn't be considering using social marketing). If you have a huge number of people on your pitch, a product targeted at those people, and low conversion you likely have a product issue. Nothing new but in the traditional marketing approach you could often mask product issues by spending more on marketing. That world has not gone away but will slowly disappear over time for markets with plenty of competition.

I don't think I am describing anything a lot of us don't already realize. I think the challenge is transitioning tradtional marketing departments from the formal to the more interactive and transitioning market expenses from big formal, expensive campaigns to people that spend time forming relationships. Paricularly for large companies, that can be a disruptive process and the people skilled an formal programming are not always the same as people skilled at relationship building so it's not just changing your perspective it means changing resources, changing the tool set, changing policies, and changing the expectations of the rest of the organization. Not easy and in this economic climate it is likely the capacity does not exist to make a complete transition so you need to find specific product lines or market segments that are more likely to benefit from a conversational approach. But don't say it isn't measurable - it is the traditional marketing funnel, just with different activities.

Photos by fatcontroller & Gobbo1000

Snake Oil Salesman, Evangelist, Consultant, Leader?

There have been a few different posts in the past couple of months questioning social media expertise, gurus, consultants, etc. - all perfectly valid. See Jennifer Leggio's,  Dan Morrill's or Jim Storer's excellent posts on how to evaluate social media consultants.

In any hype cycle and new market with a lot of potential you get a lot of people joining in. Nothing wrong with that except that it does get a lot noisier - the people that were around first start getting nervous and there are people who get in to the fray that are just trying to take advantage of the confusion.

This 'social' space is also new enough that those who have a vision should occasionally feel like freaks - evangelizing a world that doesn't quite exist can be a little lonely. A great quote from a TED video of Benjamin Zander goes something like "If Martin Luther King Jr. said 'I have a dream but I don't really believe people will be able to make it a reality', he wouldn't have been a leader". So there is some selling of vision that doesn't necessarily jive with reality - even and especially with the best thought leaders.

I'm not entirely sure what the answer is. Having been a consultant, an analyst, and a business manager I can see more clearly the value that good consultants can bring.  Consultants bring with them experience from multiple companies and clients and the ability to 'see' more broadly then you can when you are managing part of a business. Consultants are less emotionally attached to one truth which is also hard to do when you've got your head down in an operational role. But sight unseen, consultants are also hard to trust and difficult to evaluate. In the shaky economic climate consultants also allow you to get great experience without adding headcount. And - just because a particular consultant is well known doesn't mean they are a good fit for every situation.

So - I am not going to add my advice.  Business managers are smart enough to figure out if a consultant would be valuable to them and smart enough to find one that is a good fit (or phase them out quickly if they are not). I did think it would be useful, however, to start a list of consultants in the space. You can find it and download it on one of my blog pages here.  Is it comprehensive - no - so I've added a form to allow others to add their names. Is it accurate? I've allowed the consultants to describe their services but I have added website addresses and Twitter accounts so you can find them yourself.

Read their stuff, have a chat with them, decide for yourself.

Give a Community Gift for the Holidays

As an adult I’ve always had a conflicted relationship with gifts. Interestingly I enjoy giving rather than receiving but not because I dislike getting attention…it’s really more of that I get a lot of presents that I have no idea what to do with. That may make me sound unappreciative but that’s not it – I am honored  that I have friends and family who want to show me their affection. But I also really dislike getting bric-brac or tchotchkes because I think that there has to be some better purpose for $10-20.

Here is my husband’s post on Give a Crap. Don’t Give Crap. Here’s How. I second the sentiment and I’ve got some additional ideas, some of which I’ve been trying to practice over the years:

• For a number of years, my mother has given an animal in our name to the Heifer Project and she gives us a small ornament or toy of the animal to put out at Christmas…we’ve got a menagerie at this point and it really makes me feel good. My husband and I took this a step further when we got married and registered at Heifer Project and Changing the Present for our wedding. We felt that changing the lives of people in real need was a much better way to celebrate our happiness than having another vase (we are older so that played a big part in our decision – we have most of the household items we need already). Somewhere there is a herd of llamas helping families in need along with Koester the Pig (named in honor of my grandmother) and some geese, rabbits, and other assorted animals.
• Another thing that I like to do if I feel the need to give a gift is to give something that is consumable. My step-mother’s brother, to honor the memory of her father who loved smoked turkey, always sent one for the holiday. It was a gift that was both very yummy but also had a powerful emotional tie. My father-in-law eats smoked salmon religiously every morning. For a man who is extremely hard to buy for, a smoked salmon of the month club was perfect. It gives him something he will definitely use and something special that he would not buy for himself. A good friend of mine and I have often exchanged tickets to events that we attend together and results in a great memory.

This year, although gas and oil prices have come down, I am considering giving the gift of warmth. Citizens Energy here in Massachusetts is a good option as is Salvation Army’s Coats for Kids program. Other things that I am considering are local Food Banks, Dress for Success, and Big Brothers Big Sisters.

I am by no means against gifts but often we seem to get gifts because we feel obligated but we don’t really know what would be appreciated. If you are fortunate, as I am, consider helping your community. It may result in fewer gifts under the tree but may make us appreciate each one a little more and focus on the things that matter more – spending time and taking care of each other. This year, we are asking our friends to make a donation to their favorite charities instead of giving us a gift…but we’ll always take baked goods!

What's your favorite way to take care of your community during the holidays?

Executive Blogs Don't Need to be Difficult

 When I meet with executives I often ask if they blog and the answer is often no - followed by a variety of reasons, some valid, some questionable. But one thing is often true: blogging can take a lot of time. Some executives get around this by having someone in their communications group write their blog posts.  Not really ideal and probably less than authentic.

Jeff Schick - IBM's VP of Social Computing - has come up with an ingenious solution. He blogs internally to his team but his posts are simply his daily schedule (most of it anyway) followed by a couple of lines about his impression of the meetings or the outcomes.  This gets him out of the endless cycle of "What am I going to write about today" and gives his team some interesting reading.

I like this approach for two reasons: One - what a great tacit training tool.  Ambitious employees who want to move up have a great way of seeing what an executive really does all day and of understanding what they might want to start paying attention to within the company.  Two - large teams often rarely see their executives and have no idea what they are doing until they show up, ask some questions, and go away again. That can lead to a lot of speculation and even resentment if employees feel like they can't get the attention they need to solve problems.  Jeff admitted that since he started publishing his schedule publicly he actually now gets sympathy from many people on his team.  That sympathy helps a lot when you've got to turn around and ask the team to do something hard.

Simple. Brilliant. Easy.  I like it.

Flickr image by Arthaey

Community Velocity: A Metric for Measurement

I've been thinking a lot lately about how a community owner can measure how well they are doing - both against their own past performance and against others.  That requires one to track over time the things that are important indicators of community robustness but it also requires a way to normalize for different sizes of communities.  I also wanted to make sure the metric didn't require anything too esoteric or complicated since most community managers are still trying to figure out what the basic measurements mean for them and really complex metrics tend not to be understood and therefore, not used.

So here is my first stab at this - I've calculated this against the actuals of a few communities that are wildly different in size but would love to hear from others whether is works for them as well.

The inputs:

• Total members for a given month
• Total active members for a month
• Total posts (this can be a blog post, a wiki post, a discussion item, a link) for a month
• Total addressable market (how many members would you have if everyone was in the community - this will be a rough estimate)

The Community Velocity Metric:

• ((% of active members * # posts/per member/period) + total members ) / TAM

By including both active members and posts/per member/period you can account for everyone that participates but also your very active contributors since it is important that more people contribute but equally important that new content (no matter who contributes it) is flowing into the community.

By putting the total addressable market in the denominator and total current members in the numerator the metric normalizes across different size communities but it also gives the community increasing credit as it grows closer to the TAM. 

Results for me tended to start at 0.001 - 0.01 in the early stages of a community and reach the 0.3 - 0.4 area for very robust communities.

Thoughts?  What am I missing or calculating incorrectly?