So the recent debate about whether the Social Business is dead or not has been entertaining and mildly diverting for those of us deeply involved each day working with organisations who are only now coming to terms with what becoming truly social will actually mean for all aspects of their businesses.
Social media, social technology and social business are still staples of the typical CXO Strategy Away Day agenda and they will be until executive teams across many diverse organisations fully grasp the implications for every line of business. The situation is, in some ways, similar to green and sustainability agenda items which, five years ago, strategising executive teams were trying to digest in between working lunches and the first nine holes.
At first many execs didn't really accept the need to invest in and support green initiatives and often opted for lip-service and green-washing, using comms to convince the market that they were taking it seriously. After a while though, it became clear, particularly to the CFOs in the room, that doing the green thing was, in many cases, doing the right thing for the balance sheet and looked a lot like good old-fashioned cost-cutting as infrastructure replacements were pushed back and reuse, recycling and slicker, more efficient business practices were eventually ushered in.
Sadly, just when, businesses were beginning to grasp the importance of green and sustainable activities for the future of their organisations, the issue dangerously slipped right down the agenda due the global financial crash, which refocused the minds of corporate execs worldwide overnight.
Today though, social business is still very much taxing C-Suite minds and many remain to be convinced of the need to adapt and transform through the adoption of social behaviour, culture and technology.
So what can we learn from what has gone before?
Well, if you're looking to convince a sceptical CFO of the merits of social media, then warm tales of community engagement and collaboration might not cut it, much like the planet-saving messages of the green and sustainability consultants a few years ago. However, what worked then, works just as well now. Demonstrating the impact of green and sustainable programmes on a company's bottom line eventually convinced the CFOs of a few years ago. They need to be convinced of the merits of becoming a social business in just the same way... and it works.
For example, just mention to the CFO who has just been asked to sign off on brand new contact centre how GiffGaff has completely stripped these costs from its business by engaging a motivated and committed crowd of customers to provide support for each other. See if that piques their interest in becoming a social business!
Just a thought.
photo: innpictime
Great post Tim. Here are some thoughts I've shared with Justin Kirby (@juzzie) in his considerations over the untimely death of #socbiz.
ReplyDelete'Social Business’ is a difficult term for leaders (of a certain generation) to understand. For a demographic struggling to understand the value in being ‘social’, hectoring language about the boundless benefits of a ‘social business’ is easily dismissed as meaningless and worthy. And yet for those of us helping large organisations make the transition to operating models that are social, it is shorthand that conveys plenty. ‘Social business’ is not self-explanatory and invariably demands immediate qualification, but it has meaning beyond worthiness. It’s the state of a business successfully exploiting the value of a connected world. What you call it is up to you.