Celebrating Social Media at EMC

Today is #smday --  Social Media Day in the Twitterverse.   Here at EMC, we're having our own version where we're celebrating (and promoting) social media internally.

I know, it sounds sort of fluffy (like most of the social media industry discussion!), but -- stay with me -- it's an interesting story on many levels. 

Ostensibly, the goal of our internal celebration is to drive social media awareness, engagement and proficiency across EMC.   

But there's more -- for me, it's both an acknowledgement of how far we've come -- and a sober look at the work ahead of us. 

My Connection With Social Media At EMC 

For those of you who follow me closely, you know this is more than a casual fling. I was one of the earliest "corporate bloggers" at EMC.  

Four years later, I'm still going and growing, and have been told I've helped inspire many others -- inside and outside of EMC -- to do the same.   

It still completely amazes me just how much influence and impact you can have by simply writing stuff on a regular basis. 

A few years back, I was instrumental in designing and helping to execute EMC's social media proficiency strategy.  The baton has long since passed to people who are better at this stuff than I am.  

I wrote a blog and published a white paper about the experience.  People still tell me it has value -- even these many years later. 

Internally at EMC, I guess I'm considered on of the exec "voices" on social media and why it matters to just about every aspect of our business.  Occasionally, I'm still asked to speak to groups on the how-and-why we invested in becoming socially proficient at a corporate level.

Did I ever imagine that all of this would come to pass?  

If I'm being honest, I had my doubts at times ... 

EMC Before 

Consider EMC in 2006.  

Not surprisingly, you would have seen a traditional -- and somewhat conservative -- technology company in the midst of transforming its business. 

All external communications were thoroughly reviewed and scrutinized by the appropriate groups using the approved processes and standards.  Most internal communications tended to be formal and hierarchical -- yet painfully inefficient.   All communications seemed to use this tortured and convoluted corporate double-speak dialect -- you'd have to scrutinize the words closely to try and extract any real meaning.

At one time, we used to joke that EMC stood for "email, meetings and conference calls -- squared".  My personal comment was "the oats looked so much better before they went through the horse".

Many more groups within EMC, many more audiences outside of EMC meant poor information flow, awkward collaboration and limited engagement with people inside the company, and -- more importantly -- outside the company.  

It was pretty clear to me that our overall approach to communication and collaboration was crumbling -- and fast.  

There were a few parts of EMC experimenting with social media, largely under the radar.  Wikis here and there.  A noble experiment with Second Life.  Someone who put up a corporate Yammer account just to see what would happen.  New acquired smaller companies who were blogging proficiently before EMC, and really wanted to blog after EMC. 

All good stuff, but there wasn't a plan, there wasn't a strategy.  And that bothered me greatly.

Personally, I saw an opportunity to get ahead of what was happening, and gain proficiency through intent vs. happenstance.  At its most fundamental level, a company is nothing more than a collection of people working together around shared goals.  

What if you could find a much better way to help people work together around shared goals?  That's what social media proficiency meant to me -- a potental competitive advantage that just couldn't be ignored.

 I believed it could transform our company.  It could change our very corporate DNA.  Heady stuff, indeed. 

We assembled a passionate team, got our initial mandate, and set about systematically making progress across the company in a relatively fearless manner.  Not just the marketing function, not just customer services, but across just about every aspect of the business.  

None of this would have happened without my partner in crime at the time -- Len Devanna -- who shared the vision, helped build the supporting processes and organizational capabilities, and conitnually being perhaps even more passionate about this stuff than I was.  I think Len should be extremely proud of what he's done here at EMC.  I don't think he gets enough recognition in this regard.  

No, you can't hire him, he works for us :)

At the time, we decided on an inside-out strategy: get good at this stuff inside the firewall, then venture out.  

We got the right mix of freedom and governance.  

We create a central core of competencies that could feed and support SM champions throughout our business.  We had just enough high-level exec support that we could make progress without it feeling like a heavy-handed corporate mandate.

Every day, we celebrated our small victories.  Some days, we'd slip back on one issue or another.  That's exactly how change initiatives go ...

There were bumps and lulls and the usual zigzags, but we got to place that I'm quite pleased with.  As should the many people who've helped EMC get to this point. 

EMC After 

I put EMC up as a decent example of what a socially-enabled corporation looks like.  More interestingly, we certainly didn't start there!

We have a vibrant and thriving internal community platform: EMC|One (sorry, not visible externally)

We have a vast and dynamic external community federation: the EMC Community Network. 

We have our employees blogging -- some of them *very* proficiently.  And more joining the party every day. 

We are better at understanding communities: how they form, and how they thrive.

You'll see our global gang out on Twitter every day -- some corporate accounts, yes, but far more people who are doing it as passionate and engaged individuals.  Ditto for Facebook, LinkedIn and probably a bunch of other platforms as well. 

As a corporation, we are learning to engage.

Our senior executives have become amazingly comfortable with this whole transparency and engagement thing.  Not that we don't occasionally have an unpleasant moment from time to time, but that's what happens in the non-SM world as well. 

The majority of the new corporate initiatives bubbling up have a well-defined social component, using either the internal or external platforms as appropriate.  It's not new and exotic anymore -- it's the way business is done here. 

We're now engaged externally as never before.  Customers, partners, press, analysts, pundits, competitors, employees, prospective candidates, etc. -- they know us, and we know them.  Just about everything we're doing is out there for public scrutiny and comment.  

I'm rather proud that it's not entirely the robot-like "on message" marketing hype you see so often -- there's a richness and honesty to the discussion that I think is priceless.

Artifacts To Consider 

For exhibit 1, I'd like you to consider this "official corporate social media training video" we recently pushed to our employees.  Trust me, if you've read this far, it's worth a watch (watch for the Joe Tucci cameo towards the end).  

More kudos to Len for this one. 

 

Now, think for a moment just how many Really Big Companies take this sort of "hey, let's have (responsible) fun!" to social media?   

Not too many, I'd offer.  More should, I think. 

For exhibit 2, please consider this poignant piece from Lee Dallas, entitled "Writing A Blog And Keeping Our Job".  I think Lee does a good job of speaking for all of us who blog while working for EMC.  Literally hundreds of us have found that it really isn't all that difficult to work for EMC and retain a somewhat independent voice.  

More importantly, the company *wants* us to do what we do.

And, finally, I'd offer up the EMC Community Network -- a thriving federation of passionate EMC-related communities with over 250,000 participants.   

What This Means 

I can vouch that working for a socially-enabled company is far more fun and rewarding than working for one that is not.   I will never be able to work in an organization that is old-school.  It would be just too painful to even consider.

I also can pesonally attest that investing in becoming active socially online can pay incredible rewards, both personally and professionally.  Yes, there are mean and stupid people out there – so what?  True in the physical world, also true in the virtual one.  

That’s their problem, not yours. 

And, if you're reading this, and wondering "why isn't my company more like that?", I'd like to categorically state that all it takes is a handful of passionate and fearless people and a bit of persistence.

You can do this for your company.  You can do this for other people.  You can do this for yourself.

 

Comments

[twitter.com/adamcohen]

Chuck - Many thanks for the shoutout and kudos to the EMC team. The video is a great mixture of value and humor, and is a simple way to tell the story. I expect this will be a case study video that others use to get people thinking about social media in the enterprise in a different way.

[Polly Pearson]

Well done Len, Chuck, and team! Enjoyed history lane, the vid, and the JT-likeness! He is a sport, as well as a great leader. Glad to see things moving forward and the wings spreading further. Polly

[Duane (D.A.) Burman]

Chuck, I've admired your transparency and openness; so it is only fair that we do the same. I am:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/duaneburman
I have dedicated my career towards implementing the "latest & greatest" technologies available to achieve maximum Customer Satisfaction and ROI in nearly all industry verticals, within all functional departments throughout the Total Usage Life Cycles of Products & Services.
Tomorrow I am going to get the opportunity to discuss provisioning specialized professional services to support & enhance the utilization of Isilon by an industry leader in the High Frequency Trading world--maximizing competitive advantage as well ROI through leveraging such amazing technology!
Thanks for all you do, Chuck.