There’s one big thing holding companies back from innovation, growth, attracting and keeping amazing talent, realizing the possibilities of emerging trends like social media: obstacles. (aka fears)
Reflecting on some recent experiences I see it everywhere.
- I spoke with a small group of Fortune 500 executives about social media and they zeroed in on what don’t like about social media: losing control.
- A group of brilliant IP attorneys got really involved in a session about conversational marketing, but suggested I spend much more time on one particular slide: overcoming obstacles.
- A workshop for a Fortune 50 company resulted in a powerful point of view that management, sales and marketing collaboratively created –and loved– but a then decided to stay with a safe, bland message platform. Why? The official reason was “internal politics;” the real reason was fear to have a point of view so different and evocative from the industry norms.
- A pharmaceutical company hired actors to pose as customers because they feared what real customers might say to their employees.
Going to fear school
Every year I do one big thing for my own professional development. There’s only one criteria: it needs to scare me, shake me out of my comfort zone so I really learn something.
This week I’m taking a workshop on how to design and develop transformational workshops at Kripalu. I’m the only business person among medical professors and educational activists, healers and shamans, ministers and coaches. Dropping into this touchy-feely environment where people chant in the morning instead of firing up PowerPoint made me feel very, very uncomfortable — so much so initially that I wondered whether I could learn anything at all. My own obstacles and judgments kept whispering in my ear, “Get in the car and get out of Yogi Dodge.”
Then in a session called “Going Beyond What Usually Stops Us,” David Silberkleit led us through an exercise where we had to articulate those obstacles (and the fears lurking behind them) that stop us from pushing forward to accomplish more, reach higher, take risks. Unarticulated fears/obstacles are what usually stops people. Acknowledge the obstacles, then you can go forward faster. (And David should know; he acknowledged his professional obstacles and walked away a sizable family business and inheritance — Archie Comics.)
During the program I thought about how thrilling social media is, opening up new business models, changing product development, innovation, customers service, CRM, marketing, public relations and leadership communications. Yet for so many companies and people the first step in realizing the possibilities will be acknowledging the very real obstacles of social media: eliminating job types and functions, reallocating budgets, losing control, lacking new skills, feeling irrelevant. I’m sure you can add more as there are many.
Mindset vs. toolset, human change vs. program change
Just as social media is a mind set as much as a tool set, success will require human change as much as functional and program change.
Just as we marketers know strategy and creativity, so we will need to learn how to guide our organizations through tremendous behavioral change.
So for my final project tomorrow morning I’m trying out a new workshop: “Burn Down the Obstacles.”
Oh yeah.
PS — warmest thanks to teachers Ken Nelson and Lesli Lang and my brilliant fellow workshop participants for teaching more in a week than I’d learn in a year of business conferences.
I recently faced such an obstacle. My college will be tobacco-free beginning in late May. A cross-functional task force is charged with promoting awareness of the new policy. One of the suggestions is a Facebook page where students and staff can learn about the policy and react to it.
I jumped right in. I talked about all the benefits of what would be, in essence, a consumer discussion forum as is found everywhere on the Web. We can influence the conversation. We can shape our point of view. Essentially, what I learned from reading your book!
Then the fear arose. I was surprised that it came from a faculty member. He said, “But what if they put negative things on it? How do we control it?” Wow. What happened to academic freedom and all that sort of thing I thought these folks stood for?
My response was, “Great! We can address those negative, and probably misinformed, comments right on the spot. And we give those people a place to vent. At least they’ll feel that someone listened to them.” The faculty member seemed to accept that, albeit grudgingly. No one else chimed in so I think the suggestion is still alive.
Lois!
I love this post and feel it’s truly important to keep challenging one’s self. I’m taking a mother/daughter knitting class and I’m going to do a meditation retreat in April in Austin with Deepak Chopra at the Crossings. Both of these things require an immense amount of me stepping away from the PowerPoint and into the end of a knitting needle or meditation mat and that’s much harder than I thought! Sitting still and not clicking!
Hey Tom,
Thanks for sharing your story. Great example of how you helped get over the obstacle/elephant in the room.
Lois