Kickstarting Your Corporate Social Revolution
Every revolution needs a revolutionary. Have you identified the Mohandas Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, or Che Guevara who is going to lead your corporate social revolution?
This is the effort to forge new, interactive engagements with both your customers and employees using social technologies such as blogs, wikis, consumer ratings, social networking sites, user-generated content, and podcasts, to name some.
Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li says you probably already know this revolutionary-in-waiting -- and you may find her a little irritating.
It may be the technie who brags that she's been blogging since 1999, or the corporate communications person who loves to talk with customers on external bulletin boards. This person is probably also a bit a thorn in the side of management, constantly agitating for under-represented customers who are suffering some sort of injustice at the hands of management that just "doesn't get it".In her Harvard Business blog, Li says this is just the passionate person you need to help figure out the best strategy for developing and executing a social technologies strategy.
To find these people, managers must do three things, according to Li. Define the organizational boundaries in which they can act; encourage experimentation and failure; and accept that this endeavor might make you feel a little uncomfortable.
She advises the revolutionaries themselves to be smart about dealing with management and be ready to demonstrate concrete results from their efforts.
If you've been contemplating first steps to create a social strategy for your business, Li's piece marks a good starting line.
(Reenactor image by flattop341, CC 2.0)