Teblog

Euan Semple's "Manager's Guide to the Social Web"

My holiday reading included Euan Semple's, Organizations Don't Tweet, People Do: A Manager's Guide to the Social Web. It inspired me to write a review which I'll also submit to Amazon.

Here goes:

A simple question mark, for me, symbolises the difference between the old way and the new way of managing and working.

The old way is about command and control and hierarchies while the new is about personal responsibility and networks. The old way was predicated on authority (whether deserved or not) and the new way on inspiration.

The question mark I mentioned represents the difference between being closed (do it my way) and open (how do you think we should do this?).

Given a choice, who would you prefer to work for - someone who bosses you or someone who inspires you?

These, and numerous other thoughts, are what Euan Semple's "Guide to the Social Web" triggered. I reckon that if a book shifts your thinking in a significant way, then it's worthwhile. That makes Semple's book extremely worthwhile. It's a book about management thinking much more than a book about the tools available, although they can't be totally avoided. And it's rooted in practicalities, although you may find yourself resisting some of them. I'd say, "keep an open mind until you've read the whole book."

I'm someone who's been actively involved in social web stuff since just before I first met Euan in early 1985 and I've held several management jobs as well as being a writer and a columnist. (Yes, that's partly a disclosure - I interviewed Euan for a magazine article about his experience of introducing social networking tools to BBC employees and we've stayed in touch ever since. I also mention it to show that I have lived through the old way and the new way and have a certain perspective.) 

I've always, right until I read this book, been a bit wary of Euan's evangelistic tendencies. But he's drawn his conclusions from the university of hard knocks and tends, when conversation time is short, to be long on conclusions and short on explanations. But this excellent book changes all that. It is a book of profound depth which reveals his innermost thoughts on each of his conclusions and practical suggestions while staying humble enough to acknowledge that other ways may suit certain organisations.

He's convinced, though, that successful organisations will all adopt social tools to a greater or lesser degree. This book is a way to accelerate management's insight and understanding of what the social web means and the potential it holds for transforming the workplace. It is not a black and white book that says, "do this, or you're doomed". Semple knows that companies have their own systems and their own ways of doing things and, indeed, that social web tools can be complementary rather than replacements.

It is a business book, aimed at business managers. And it's written in a way that each short chapter is designed to stand alone and can be read on the train, in the bath or wherever else takes your fancy. This inevitably causes some minor repetition, which you notice if you read it straight through (as I did). And, one chapter left me slightly puzzled about something, but this was the topic of the very next chapter. So I was only puzzled for a few minutes.

Have I got any complaints about the book? Well one; I really don't like the white type on a grey background which is used to introduce each chapter. Anything bigger? Hmmm. I wondered why he didn't mention 'search' very much. Then I realised that he's much more in favour of asking questions and getting recommendations than wading through search results of variable quality.

 

The book is 296 pages, it's published by John Wiley & Sons.

ISBN-10: 1119950554. ISBN-13: 978-1119950554.

Online Marketing 101

If you need a crash course in online marketing, you could do worse than browse my recent collection of articles and blog posts by experts on the matter.

I had started off, a month ago, intending to investigate what's out there on the subject of 'web-based business to business collaboration' but, as I collected the links on Scoop.it, I found that 'marketing' was the theme that bound most of my discoveries together. Hence the title of this blog post.

When I was a journalist, I didn't really like having to interview marketing folk because they were too sanitised, too in control of their messages and hard to get real stories out of. (Good stories to a journalist are those which carry at least a hint of disclosure.)

However my Scoop.it investigations gave me a new respect for marketing, it really does seem to belong at the centre of B2B collaboration activities. 

Here's a snap of part of my Scoop.it collection (click on the image to see it full size):

It was 'curated' by looking at hundreds of suggestions from Scoop.it, reducing them to fifty or so, then throwing out the four or five that didn't live up to the promise of the extract.

The result is a neat little package of pieces, admittedly of variable quality, but all of which helped to round out my existing perceptions of how to approach online B2B collaboration.

Since so much work went into the curation, I thought it would be silly to keep it to myself.

See what you think. It's at http://www.scoop.it/t/b2bcollaboration

 

An evening with PR/Marketing Guru, Larry Weber

Back in May, I trotted off to meet with marketing/PR guru, Larry Weber and a bunch of other interesting people, including Jack Schofield (IT man at the Guardian for donkey's years and erstwhile competitor - we both edited PC magazines in the early eighties) and Bill Nichols an academic and marcomms/reputation consultant who, when Jack and I were competing, was Clive Sinclair's PR man. They were both on the speaker panel with Larry. The other notable people were in the lively audience.

The occasion was the UK launch of Larry's (then) most recent book: Everywhere. It's about social networking being at the heart of the future of business. He calls this 'anytime, anywhere' access the the fourth wave of computing. (I ought to know what the three earlier waves were, but I've forgotten. Maybe it was brains, internal networking and internet, or something.)

No surprises so far then. But I don't think Larry set out to surprise us particularly. More that he wants to share his familiarity with the subject matter in a non-frightening manner. After all, the people who really need his insights are those who are probably the most fearful of openness, transparency and genuine dialogue. You might think of them as the 'command and contol' brigade. While this has its place, it's probably not where the rubber of the corporation hits the road of the marketplace.

Sorry, I should be talking about Larry's evening. (And, if you're wondering why it's taken me so long, it's because I was suddenly pitchforked into a new company and I've been more than a tad busy. My conscience was pricked by a Facebook post about his recent presentation to the Public Relations Student Society of America. The headline of the post was "Social media’s impact bigger than television’s.")

At his book launch, he predicted that, by 2015, "you'll be hard pressed to find any newspapers or nightly news on TV." He says, "TV ads have got to die sometime." He may not always provide answers but he knows how to provoke fresh thinking. Let's hope the revenue replacement doesn't put the TV companies even deeper in hock to corporate sponsors.

With regard to the Fourth Generation thing, he told the story of how he sent off for brochures from all the prospective colleges for his daughter. She didn't look at one  of them. She'd already done her research online. Except she didn't refer to it as online. When Larry once said to her, "I'm going online", she replied "Oh Dad, we don't go online any more. We just are." Online, that is. And a lot of people reading this will know what she means. If you're not one of them, then it's likely that his book will interest you.

Another thing he talked about was Innocentive. Companies give it problems and money and it gets its community of 'solvers' to apply their brains. Larry gave examples of $100,000 here and $25,000 there. It's all online (of course). And the winning contributor exchanges their IP for the cash. That's a great commercial application of crowdsourcing. Related to this were his comments on how social networking allows for the intense, focused, sharing of knowledge. I think his book goes further and talks of micro-segmentation of the internet so that you can find a community and go deep into just about any subject that interests you.

He is very clear that successful companies (especially consumer-facing) will have to become radically transparent, be willing to share and also to stand for something that will resonate with customers and prospects. Core values that permeate the company's business. Larry doesn't claim it will be easy, but he sprinkles his conversation with stories old and new of how companies have turned on the proverbial dime. Dell, of course. BP to a certain extent. And so on.

I was quite taken with the idea that, "big sites will die under their own weight." He said this because he believes that all the power is now in the network. Not sure that a behemoth like IBM would totally agree with this sentiment, despite its strong advocacy of social networking values. With statements like this, the evangelist in Larry seems to pop out of the closet. (My views of evangelists are here.)

Let's turn to one of the other speakers, Bill Nichols. He scored a hole in one for me with his observation that "People respond to emotion and fairness."

I have the sense that the former has been faked and the latter missing for a long time.

If Larry and Bill are right, we would seem to be heading towards a better and much more harmonious world.

Let's hope so.

Homo Imitans. People do what we do, not what we say

The human body has two circulatory systems, the veinous and the lymphatic. They are connected, but largely independent.

Leandro Herrero's latest book, Homo Imitans, reminded me that the body corporate also contains two circulatory systems, the hierarchy and the networks. And, while each plays an important role, the networks - rather like the lymphatic system of the body - have incredible power which is underestimated, if not ignored, in most organisations.

This is a mistake, says Dr Herrero, describing the two systems as 'World I' and 'World II'. His book is mostly about World II, with the occasional nod to the enabling and encouraging role of World I in enlightened organisations.

His fundamental thesis (building on his earlier Viral Change book, which I reviewed here) is that people are more inclined to change their behaviour by copying peers that they respect than commands from on high. And, since behaviour is the only thing that counts when it comes to real change inside organisations, this is where (change) management should be focusing its energies. Dr Herrero gives due credit to authors of social networking books which cover a lot of similar ground, but his talent is in directing his thoughts and guidance slap bang into the heart of organisations that want to change but don't know how. It is also, very occasionally, a 'sell' for his Viral Change^TM practice, should you not want to go it alone.

Influence travels through networks completely independently of the company hierarchy and, in many cases, without the hierarchy even being aware of what's going on. In an organisational example, we saw it when Greg Dyke left the BBC after the stink around the 'sexing up' of the Iraq dossier - the crowds of staff, some in tears, seemed to appear out of nowhere but they were actually galvanised by the internal network.

In a non-corporate example, the recent rioting and looting in England came about largely through social networking and many people caught up in it were simply copying others who appeared to be 'getting away with it'. (The book contains a very useful 40-page annex which describes in detail many examples of social contagion with references to Dr Herrero's source material. It's called The Human Condition: a guide for the perplexed.)

All of which brings us back to the title of the book (Homo Imitans, if you've forgotten). We see what others do and we copy them. If others who respect or like us, see us doing something in a new way that makes sense to them, they copy us. If just three people copy what 'someone like them' is doing, then it's clear that such a social infection will quickly reach epidemic proportions.

The trick espoused by Dr Herrero is to find those key people in organsiations, wherever they are, and persuade them that a new way of behaving is good for them. (Obviously, it has to be good for the organisation, otherwise there's no point in doing it.) Much has been written about finding such 'champions' but less has been written about focusing on their behaviour.

Words alone are not enough. Dr Herrero likes to collect "Don't do that" posters which usually have little effect but can actually encourage whatever it is they're trying to stop. ("ABUSE OF STAFF WILL NOT BE TOLERATED", etc.) People will respond much more readily to what others do than to what they say.

The book is rich in structure and entertaining in style. It hammers home its messages and suggests new practices from a variety of perspectives. Each chapter reinforces what went before but, maybe because I've spent the the last 35 years as an enthusiast of behavioural psychology and the last seven deep in social networking, I felt I'd well and truly got the message before the end. Nevertheless, I notice I've still made margin notes right up to the last page.

I particularly like his encouraging penultimate paragraph:

"Viral Change^TM ... doesn't depend on behavioural sciences, network theory, social sciences, storytelling and leadership studies. Or even us as consultants!"

Leandro Herrero provides a wealth of persuasive examples and evidence which will help you make the case for socially-driven behavioural change in your own organisation.

Recommended.

Here on Earth

I finished reading Tim Flannery's Here on Earth a couple of days ago.

It lays out a fascinating history of our planet, the flora and fauna and their effects on it (including mankind, of course) and what we need to do to ensure our own species survives. We're the only ones with the intelligence and understanding to change our ways.

His recipe for global cooperation - a shared 'mneme' which acknowledges the harm we're doing and how to reverse it - is plausible in the abstract. But the book contains all the seeds (no pun intended) of why this is a tall order.

As a provocation, the book is excellent. If you're of a defeatist mind-set, you could end up very depressed by it. Especially if you have children and grandchildren. On the other hand, if you have a grain of imagination, it could start you thinking very seriously about how we get from an unacceptable 'here' to a desirable 'there'.

It will mean change, and that's the threat to religions, nations, different strata in society, business, politics, and so on. All have to find ways to put our common interest ahead of their own.

The book is very readable for the most part - at its best when describing our world and its mechanisms and, understandably, at its weakest when suggesting a way forward.

But, unlike the alarmist books which simply annoy, it gets you thinking. And, for that reason alone, I think it's worth a read.

Managing Brand and Reputation in a Social Media World

Last week I co-presented a BrightTALK webinar on the impact of social media on branding and reputation for an audience of media and marketing professionals.

The lead presenter was Cathy Pittham, MD of the European arm of global PR company, the Racepoint Group. (Its chairman, Larry Weber, is something of a new media marketing guru and has been writing books on the subject since before most of us knew it was a subject.)

I went to Cathy because I felt she'd have far more practical advice to offer than I possibly could. After all, I was a bit of an outsider to marketing and PR - mainly an observer or a victim, depending on your point of view. So it ended up becoming 'her show' with me asking questions on behalf of the audience.

As we went through the preparation, it became clear to me that operating effectively in the social media world requires many of the hard-won skills from the traditional media world. It also needs a cultural shift by all participants towards openness, giving genuine value and two-way engagement.

Nothing new there, I hear you say. Which is true. Which is why the presentation focuses primarily on what good stuff and processes can be nicked or adapted from tradtional PR and Marketing activities.

As we discussed the powerful combination of traditional and social media techniques, I desperately wracked my brain for a suitable parallel. All I could think of was a nuclear chain reaction, which is triggered by combining two volumes of fissile material to make a single 'critical mass'.

Which is what led to me slipping this final image into the slide deck.

The webinar (BrightTALK calls it a webcast)  lasts a tad under 45 minutes, unless you skip from slide to slide to make it quicker (and jerkier).

The social media world changes all the time but we hope that this presentation will offer you a durable 'framework' for your own planning.

Interactive Infographic: How To Handle The Media

Since 1988, Martin Banks and I have been running media skills training courses. Early on, we introduced an 'architecture' for the process. We drew it on flipcharts for a few years then, in 2004, we formalised it and started giving it out as part of our wallet-sized plastic business card. The model acts as an 'aide memoire' for all who've attended our training.

A few weeks ago, I was rummaging (as you do) some infographics - pictures that speak well over a thousand words - and took a shine to the interactive variety, where the graphic responds to the user's actions.

I'd just been doing some training work with the Racepoint Group and, coincidentally, one of its US staff Kyle Austin wrote a blog post: Are Infographics the New Slide Shows?  Good point, I thought, having just taken someone through our 'architecture'.

So I set to work to convert our flat image into something a little more lively. It's aim is to refresh the memories of those who've attended our training and to give others an appreciation of how they might set about handling the media.

The first attempt was an animated .gif file with text boxes to expand on each element of the image. Horrible. Boring. Sequential. No user interaction. Didn't lend itself to the web. Etc.

I wanted an interactive infographic that would work in more or less any browser and not depend on the presence of JavaScript, Flash or any other kind of plug-in. Just HTML and CSS. (I'd done some simple stuff before, here and here, so I was optimistic that it could be done.)

The second attempt was a graphic that the user could mouse over, highlighting image elements and showing the relevant text in a nearby box. The size was determined by my computer screen, which was a bit stupid because many of the people I'd like to share it with might have a smaller screen - an iPad for example.

So I reworked it with the iPad in mind. The hover can be achieved with a finger, even on the smallest graphical element. And while I was resizing everything, I added drop shadows and rounded corners to the text boxes.

If you're interested, the end result is at How To Handle The Media

I hope you enjoy it.

PS If anyone wants the gory technical details of how to do this sort of thing, I'll pen another post. Just ask.

Media Skills 101 (reprise)

First of all, apologies for radio silence. I've been on holiday. Very nice it was too. We hired a motorhome and stayed at four sites in Dorset. We hired the highly specced and almost new vehicle from Ferndown-based Abacus which turned out to be a very professional company. Highly recommended if you fancy that sort of holiday.

Before I get stuck in to blogging again, I thought you might be interested in some posts I wrote over five years ago about handling the press. While a lot of the press appears somewhat emasculated these days and the new media folk are largely more kindly, the suggestions I made then are no less valid for shaping your outlook and approach to the media of any kind.

Unearth, Write, Polish, Share

Well, the die is cast. It took a while but my new life is well and truly sorted out. The idea that I'll spend the rest of my working life helping others to be better communicators feels really good. The ego's parked and the doors are open for business at Tebbo Towers. Actually, the 'Towers' is a joke. I live in a bungalow.

Before I say anything else, I have a ton of 'thank you's and I hereby grovel if I've left anyone off the list. These are to people who, wittingly or not, have helped me gather my thoughts this year: Adriana Lukas, Al Tepper, Anne Marie McEwan, Brian Smithson, Cathy Pittham, Dale Vile, David Terrar, David Topping, Euan Semple, Luis Suarez, Marjolein Hoekstra, Mark Chillingworth, Martin Atherton, Martin Banks, Matthew Pudney, Nick Spencer, Robert Norum, Ronnie Simpson, Sophie Morrow, Tim Lawes, Tom Foremski and Tracey Poulton.

In different ways, whether it was feedback or inspiration, every one of those people has edged me closer to an understanding of what services I should offer and what my website should look like. Along the way, I've tried to give some value back to some of these people. It's been unevenly distributed and, for that, my apologies.

Tom Foremski deserves special mention for his understanding of the role of the organisation in new media terms. His slogan "Every Company Is A Media Company" may still be ahead of its time, even though it's already four or five years old. 

I take the view that we are in a period of transition: some organisations buy into Tom's story and they're out there delivering real value directly through (mainly) new media. Others are holding back and still getting their stories out indirectly through traditional journalists and bloggers. Yet others have a mixed model. No-one knows where this will end. I'd like to think that the value of real journalism will become appreciated once more. But maybe the checks and balances will come from the more responsible parts of the social media world. We'll have to see.

In the meantime, with the help of Tom and others, I have been lucky enough to construct a life that is based on one thing: enabling skilled communication. And, whatever the evolving shape of the media, these skills are universal and perpetual and they apply to other spheres of our lives.

If you have a moment and you're interested getting help with unearthing and sharing your valuable stories, then please drop me a DM, an email or give me a call. The details are on the website at http://www.tebbo.com/. I look forward to hearing from you.

Is authority the first word or the last?

David Weinberger was one of the co-authors of the Cluetrain Manifesto which looked at the impact of the internet on markets and organisations. He wrote his first blog post in 1999 but didn't hit his stride until 2001. That's probably years before any of us had even heard of a blog, or social networking, which is where this particular blog post is heading.

He's a genuine guy and a deep thinker and he's written some great books and delivered some brilliant lectures.

Last week he came up with a gem about authority being increasingly about having the first word rather than the last. His exact words were:

"...in the old days, we took expertise and authority as the last word about a topic. Increasingly, the value of expertise and authority is as the first word - the word that frames and initiates the discussion."

This is at the heart of the dilemma that traditional management faces when trying to figure out the role of social networking in the organisation. Assuming the value is understood, it becomes mainly a cultural issue. Some organisations - especially knowledge-based ones - are predisposed to sharing, openness and self-direction, while others are more into command and control. In the first instance, management might define the desired outcome and leave employees to decide how to get there; Weinberger's "first word". And in the second, the process will be rigidly defined.

The management of each type of organisation adopts its style because it believes that is the most effective way to get things done. Although, it has to be said, persistence with a command and control approach could also be a function of fear (of the lunatics running the asylum) or laziness (because it's always been done this way).

Some organisations realise that some departments are well suited to a more collaborative, networked, style while others are best run in a traditional way. Marketing versus computer assembly, for example.

The problem such companies face is social networking creep. It's as if one lot of employees have freedom to work where they like and when they like providing they achieve their objectives and the other lot are chained to their desks or their workshops and have little discretion over their use of time and (in particular) online resources. The deskbound ones are the ones who will be eyeing the socially-networked crowd with some jealousy.

So what's a company to do? Widen access to online resources and social networking, even to those who don't really need it, and trust staff not to abuse it? Some companies who have done this believe that a lot of time and IT/communications resource is being wasted doing non-work-related things. Downloading and watching questionable movies probably being the most extreme example. (In philosophical terms, it’s actually not so different to previous upheavals when companies abandoned switchboards for direct dial telephones or introduced email to all and sundry.)

One company solves the problem by allowing anyone to participate but it's thrown a firewall around all social activity - restricting it to dialogue between the company employees only, although it is about to invite some customers and business partners to participate. Another says, "do what you like, but achieve your work objectives." Another is trying to monitor all online activities in order to reprimand those who step out of line.

What's important is to figure out what strategy is best for your own organisation:

Do you keep communication behind the firewall? This would restrict access to valuable information and external contacts.

Do you let people do what they like as long as they achieve targets? This might work best if they pay their own communication costs.

Or do you monitor every move? Employees may find this distasteful, if not illegal in some countries.

In the end it comes down to trust. The social media evangelists will argue that it's only through openness, transparency and trust that organisations will move forward. Others will argue that this is nonsense and that some people simply cannot be trusted with these new tools.

The organisations that will have the toughest time are those that have embarked on the social thing, spread it too far and now wish they could stuff the genie back in the bottle. Perhaps an answer lies in ground rules and education...

To paraphrase Dr Weinberger, this blog is only the first word. If you have experience-based views on the foregoing, we’d love to hear them.