As I waded into this space, I noticed that its most ardent proponents were simultaneously their own worst enemies when it came to explaining all this stuff.
I thought it was important that we set the tone and define the agenda using our own words and concepts, and not get blown away by all the blather in this arena.
The Problem With Cheerleaders
During the course of my explorations, I would run into many people who had this wild-eyed look. They had become intoxicated by this whole social media thing, and appeared to be hallucinating in public.
OK, that's a bit harsh, but look at it from the perspective from some poor person who's intimidated by technology already (not me, per se, but others), and here's this person just going on, and on, and on.
Not a productive conversation. And doesn't help your cause.
To make matters worse, when you start researching the topic, you'll find a wide range of opinions, concepts, ideas, examples, etc. -- absolutely no consistency, or even a common lexicon.
Having been through many waves of Tech Idealisms in my life [I grew up in Silicon Valley at the heart of the tech industry, so there's a story for another time], while I could agree that there's something going on here that's important, nobody outside the social media fanboy world could easily figure out what was going on, or why it was so important, etc.
To make matters worse, some individuals at EMC were so frustrated that no one "got" what was going on, they had started to make matters worse by going underground and becoming a bit of an anarchist.
Or they had developed that whining, frustrated tone that many people find annoying.
Doesn't help EMC, and doesn't help their careers when they do this.
The Problem With Experts
More than a few people are out there preaching the wonders of social media, Enterprise 2.0, etc. All very interesting stuff.
But I didn't find anyone who had a practical roadmap for how a company might think about getting from Point A to Point B in a logical, sane series of steps.
Other than "you really need a social meda strategy", there wasn't much on that topic.
Gee, guys, thanks for advice.
Going A Bit Deeper
I've always asked myself why things are the way they are. And this was no exception.
So, as I started to look at different companies that had done different things with social media, it started to dawn on me.
Yes, there were many examples that had used one aspect or another of social media for one part of their business, but no one of any size or scale (other than small startups) had seemdd to grasp the concept of using social media as an overall business strategy.
Or had demonstrated success in doing so -- at least as far as I could see.
OK, maybe Google and a few others are counter-examples, but you can't go around trying to be Google and expect to succeed at it.
Put differently, there weren't a lot of shining end-to-end examples to go look at, because nobody had really done it yet. Especially at old, fusty, brick-and-mortar companies.
And Therein Lies The Opportunity
So, as I started to realize that no one had really figured this thing out yet, I got very intrigued indeed. Here was something worthy to dive into, and have fun with ...
Getting The Message Straight
I am a fanatic of clear, visceral communication. Any big journey of this type starts with a message.
So, early on, I got my "pitch" together, and started trying it out on middle management at EMC. (Hint: if the message doesn't play to the masses, it won't play to execs either!)
- Definition: social media is any technology (blogs/wikis/forums/social networks/etc.) that enables people to interact and collaborate around shared interests.
- Social media is used to build informal communities driven by people with common interests. The value is in the community, not the tool (insert some popular examples of communities here).
- Community-oriented outcomes are an order-of-magnitude faster, better and cheaper than their traditional command-and-control counterparts (insert a few mind-blowing examples here).
- The ability to quickly design, build, grow and manage communities is a powerful business tool that cannot be ignored (insert a few popular business examples here, including EMC ones).
- If EMC does not become proficient in social media -- and the communities they enable -- we will face an order-of-magnitude business model disadvantage at the hands of companies that do, or (conversely) if we figure this out faster/better than our competitors, it will be they who are at a business model disadvantage.
Imagine if EMC was still using paper, typewriters and the postal service in a era where everyone used email, word-processing and the internet. We'd be at a competitive disadvantage, wouldn't we?
That's what's happening here, folks.
Now, there's more to the pitch than that, of course, but I can boil it down to a few key elements, a very visual example, and the stage it set.
No wild-eyed fanaticism required here, folks. It's a business problem, plain and simple. And it takes about 3-5 minutes to deliver it. And anyone can repeat the message.
About two weeks ago, I crafted this message, and set it loose virally. It's now working its way through the organization.
Now, we can move on to the fun part -- which is "what do we do about it?"
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