• S = speed

• O = open. “If you don’t have an open environment inside your company or country, these new tools will blow you wide open.”

• C = collaboration. “This revolution enables people to organize themselves within companies and societies into loosely coupled teams to take on any kind of challenge — from designing a new product to taking down a government.”

• I = individuals. “People are able to reach around the globe to start something or collaborate on something farther, faster, deeper, cheaper than ever before — as individuals.”

• A = alignment. “The power of social media is that it is easier than ever to both articulate, and reinforce, the vision and values that create and inspire alignment.”

• L = leadership. “In a SOCIAL world leadership has to be a mix of bottom-up and top-down. Leaders need to inspire, enable, and empower everything coming up from below in a company or a social movement and then edit and sculpt it into a vision from above into a final product.”

From my observation working with large organizations, the greatest opportunity — and challenge — for companies is the Land the A. The I’s seem to be quickly  adopting the S, O and C.

As companies plan to roll-out internal social collaboration platforms like Sharepoint, Newsgator and Jive, they worry a lot about putting rules and guidelines around what employees can and cannot do.  Many fear what might happen if employees can connect freely. How are we going to prevent “them” from saying or doing inappropriate things, they ponder.

The bigger question to me is how is social changing how we lead? 

• How are we going to help and recognize managers to do and say more appropriate things that will make a difference to business outcomes?
• What new competencies will help managers tap into the extraordinary potential value?
• What traditional management practices are no longer as relevant — and what is emerging as more relevant?
• What might be possible if leaders were more passionate, and less fearful about SOCIAL?

How can we move from this…..

To this….?

In today’s competitive world the most effective way to attract customers and talented employees  is to offer something special and different that attracts people to seek you out. You don’t have to be an Apple or a Google. You just need to be a company that knows and cares for its tribes so well that those tribes, be they customers or employees, seek you out.  Your passion for their success attracts their passion for your company.

The old way of pushing messages onto people is akin to herding cows.  It’s a lot of work, costs a lot of money,  you have to continually push, and the ROI stinks.

Here are some examples of why pushing and herding fails.

Most leadership training is failing

In a conversation last week Case Western business professor and author Richard Boyzatis said that most leadership development programs fail. Why?  Most companies require people  to take courses (herding), but they’re just not really into them. Without the attraction and motivation to learn, people don’t learn. You can require training (herding) but it’s unlikely to stick.

Most brands are becoming commodities

A study by marketing strategy firm Copernicus found that people buy on price because they view most product categories as commodities; there’s nothing attracting to them to one brand over another. None of the 51 product and service categories analyzed in the brand trends study are becoming more differentiated over time and 90 percent are declining in differentiation. So if nothing is attracting people to your brand,  marketers resort to the herding strategy of promoting cost savings.

Most employees are job hunting

In a recent workplace study by Monster, human resource managers reported that employee loyalty has decreased slightly this year. Yet 82 percent of the workers surveyed said they have updated their resume in the past six months, and 59% say they’re looking for a job all the time.  Challenge and inspiration trumps salary and status: When asked what they want this year, nearly half (41%) of respondents want to be challenged and inspired by their jobs; a subset also want to make a difference in their jobs (17%)

Creating an attraction strategy

So as you step back and evaluate your marketing, HR, leadership and organizational development strategies, ask “what will attract and inspire people?” A better customer experience? New ways to work that challenge people? Training that is completely out of the usual training box?

For more insights into the power of attraction, check out the book, “The Power of Pull.“  My summary of the book is here.

“There are nine story themes that people like hearing about from companies,” I explained. “If you create content  based on those themes you’ll  be turning your messages into stories.”

I introduced these nine story themes four years ago when I published the book Beyond Buzz. This simple model is used around the world by companies and agencies of all sizes to get unstuck and come up with fresh ways to connect with customers, employees and analysts.   Guy Kawasaki included these themes in his new book “Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions,” writing,

“These story lines from Lois Kelly, author of Beyond Buzz, will help you craft a story that does your cause justice.”

Sean Moffit and Mike Dover also include them in their excellent new book “Wikibrands: Reinventing Your Company in a Customer-Driven Economy,” saying:

“People love to tell stories. When repeated they reinforce a message; when told well they become viral. Lois Kelly suggests nine types of stories in her book Beyond Buzz that get talked about.”

The 9 themes

1. Great aspirations (Patagonia believing a company can grow big and sustain the environment in innovative ways)
2. David vs. Goliath (Southwest Airlines taking on the big, established players)
3. Personal stories (Fred Smith on why he started FedEx, and why investors funded the company after they met the janitor)
4. Contrarian/counterintuitive (BestBuy deciding to fire some of its customers. What? A company doesn’t fire customers?!)
5. Avalanche about to roll (Spotting, forecasting early trends before they’re big and in the mainstream)
6. Anxieties (Does your child have what it takes to get into a good college?)
7. How-to (How to do things related to your service/product to help customers)
8. Glitz and glam (What you can learn from Sara Jessica Parker about investing money)
9. Seasonal/event related (Financial and tax advice leading up to April 15; vacation deals just before he summer)

Download the eBook, check out Guy Kawasaki’s post

Not in the mood for reading books to learn more?  Click here to visit the Foghound resource center, and download a copy of the eBook, “Beyond Buzz: Let’s Talk About Something Interesting.” Or check out Guy Kawasaki’s post, “How to Change the World: The Nine Best Story Lines for Marketing.”

As Seth Godin points out in his post today, “Bring me the stuff that’s dead, please,” the real work is focusing on what we’re saying, not how or where we’re saying it. It’s creating new value with all the tools at our disposal.  Not just using the tools willy-nilly.

Much deserved attention — and too much undeserved hype — has been spent on the need to have social media.  It’s an amazing way to communicate.  But what are you communicating?

Edward Murrow wrote more this than 60 years ago. Replace “the newest computer” with “social media’ and his advice is still relevant.

“The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem of what to say and how to say it.”

Management consultants Diana Whitney and Amanda Trosten-Bloom believe that there are six conditions for the liberation of power in organizations — and as we’re seeing today, for liberating power in countries.  The “six freedoms” are:

1. The freedom to be heard.
2. The freedom to dream in community.
3. The freedom to choose to contribute.
4. The freedom to act with support.
5. The Freedom to be positive.
6. The freedom to be known in a relationship.

Social communications are activating and empowering people  in  countries, in companies, in government, in activist organizations.  Whether you agree or disagree with Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks, it’s another example of how  social technologies are  liberating power when there is a desire for these six freedoms.

Great leaders always ask an essential question: What of the dreams of the people?

Extraordinary leaders involve people in making those dreams real. They create corporate or civic cultures that encourage and support these six freedoms.

My hopes and dreams are for the people of Egypt today — that they  can quickly and peacefully begin the collaborative journey to the type of country they dream of.

________________________________

To learn more about Diana and Amanda, check out their excellent book, “The Power of Appreciative Inquiry: A Practical Guide to Positive Change.”

Just as Twitter is changing how news and information is gathered and shared. So will social communication change business communication, eliminating the need for a centralized employee communications function.

In an interview this week NYU journalism professor and media critic Jay Rosen said, “Because of Twitter, the news system is tending toward a state where every user is a node in the news gathering network. And a distributor. That’s a very different system.”

Employee communications will quickly evolve into a very different system as well. With every employee a node in the company information network. Whether it’s Twitter, a private company social network or some other social form of communications, people will want to find out what’s going on in the company — not just from executives and department heads but from one another.

A Fortune 100 company called this morning to talk about new skills and competencies for corporate communications professionals. There are many, which I’ll try to address in another post.  But this got me to thinking that perhaps we need to elevate the conversation to what communications skills and competencies executives need in this evolving world.

Soon — or maybe it’s already here — executives will need to be direct communicators, like all team members. How they participate will determine the effectiveness of workplace communications and how well they attract talent.   Not the Intranet, the employee newsletter, the beautiful posters or the occasional and well-scripted town hall meeting.

While this transition like all transitions will be full of uncertainty, I hope it is not full of fear. Leaders with a clear sense of purpose and passion for their employees, customers and community  have all they need to be superb communicators. Just be yourself. And help people see the way forward.

The use of smart phones and social networks in the workplace is expected to double in the next three years, according to an IDC/Unisys study of 2,820 people employed in companies with 500 or more employees. (“A Consumer Revolution in the Enterprise”)

What people use at home, they expect to use at work. And if their company isn’t providing them the devices or access to social networks, they’re using their personal devices to communicate at work in new ways.

The average survey respondent already uses four devices for work, and the proliferation is growing fast.  Much faster than enterprises’ IT support and security, governance policies, and communications training. This is somewhat like the early days of PCs, where enterprise IT departments were slow to introduce PCs so individuals in departments went out and bought them. the difference? Change is happening much, much faster.

In a time of such rapid change, there are few “best practices,” and there may be greater risk in waiting for these best practices than proactively establishing some fundamental enterprise communications behavioral guidelines, especially:

• Who can communicate about what with customers? With employees on an enterprise-wide basis? How do you coordinate efforts to prevent customers or employees from feeling “spammed”?
• What is an acceptable response time to interactions in the company? With the lines between work and personal life blurring people  respond at night, on weekends, and vacations.  Do you want a 24/7 norm for your enterprise — or are is there a need to set more human guidelines.
• Education: what device/channel is best for communicating what kind of information? In other words, when is an instant message or email called for — and when is a posting on the internal social network a better communications alternative?
• Security: what should be communicated within an enterprises’ VPN — and what  can be shared via instant messaging?

There are many questions to consider. I urge you to form a group and get to work laying down some communications fundamentals, carving out the time to think through how to provide communications guidelines  that reduce risk. But not so many guidelines that you suffocate people and add too much complexity.  (I’ve been guiding a number of enterprises in these discussions. Write me if you’d like to talk more about this approach: lkelly@foghound.com)

At the same time IT organizations need to quickly figure out which new apps, devices and Web-services are needed for your organization and customers — and how to introduce those in a way that provides the security and scalability for this new communications tsunami upon us.

The good news in all this, of course, is that employees are becoming much more productive, are having an easier time accessing resources and expertise important for their work, and are willing to blur the lines of work and personal, working more “off hours” if it’s easy to do so.

Here’s the problem. The customer is getting confused. So many different company Twitter handles, Facebook pages, multiplying blogs.  Customers feel like they’re hearing from five different companies rather than one.  That’s because your five different organizations have only been thinking about their organizational strategy — without thinking about the customer strategy.

You’re not alone. I could name five big companies who this month are sitting down to try to make sense of how they’re engaging with customers. Things have gotten out of hand amid the social media exuberance. Every organization wants a “social media presence.”  And every ambitious marketing and communications professional wants social media accomplishments on their resume.

But what do customers want? If you keep one marketing New Year’s resolution, make sure you lay down an enterprise strategy for how your company/brand will connect with customers based on building a valuable relationship with the customer.

Then establish the processes, workflow, and internal rules of engagement. Keep it clear and succinct, make sure it’s easy to follow, and honor it as you honor the revenue that comes from each customer.

Then everyone can succeed.

There’s no way I’ll forgot what a big professional learning year this has been. Like tectonic plates moving around in a good way. The older I get, the more I learn.

Other highlights:

Swimming in January rain: swimming in the rain while at  St. John for  a wedding. Not sure if sun would shine, but the warm water was there, so why wait.

July snow drifts: hiking Whistler in British Columbia in July only to find most paths at the top of the mountain closed due to snow.  The heat and cold was a beautiful paradox.

September one-two punch: going to a innovation conference  one week, a Harvard Medical School conference on coaching the next and having big business ahas, meeting influential people way outside my marketing world.

Artober: my 15 year-old son came home one Saturday from his Rhode Island School of Design with illustrations that stunned me in their beauty and originality. Better yet was seeing a child step into  to new levels  of self-confidence.

December hospice joy: this morning I was in a strategy workshop brainstorming a clients’ go-to-market strategy for a $1billion new market. This afternoon I was speaking to the Visiting Nurses Association of Rhode Island about end of life — at their holiday party!  (There is joy in helping a loved one die believe it or not.) I was honored to share  my family’s story and hear theirs.  Hospice nurses and CNAs are the most talented professionals I’ve ever encountered.

___________________________________________

This post is part of a 31-day blogging challenge called reverb10, responding to writing prompts that are designed to elicit reflections on 2010, and hopes for 2011. You can find out more about it here.

To my marketing readers: while posts these months may seem “off marketing topic,” they’re helping me deepen my understanding of how to create community with social media, which has several marketing and employee communications implications. And it’s just so much fun to write every day!