Employees want to work for companies that excel at social business

Organizations don’t tweet people do¹. Business Managers are faced with increasing use of Social platforms by their employees, customers and competitors. Managers still aren’t sure of the context to make better decisions about Social Web and its impact on them.
Business Leaders are challenged and they are eager to know, how to make a quantum leap to derive best value out of newer emerging technologies for best business outcomes. The Answer is Social Business.
This year’s MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte² global survey found clear evidence that

1. Companies across industries are creating value with social business
2. Employees want to work for companies that excel at social business.

What is Social Business³? How can an organization become a Social Business?

When companies move itself and its clients well beyond social media into a new era of collaboration, insight sharing, and lead generation it is called Social Business.”

When companies take full advantage of social media to drive business benefit while managing the potential risks associated with employee use of social media.
Companies which leverage only external Social Media platforms rely on uni-dimensional approach to managing business. Social Business looks at the ways people interact in Digital Experiences holistically (inside the firewall and on external Social Media platforms). The insights derived are applied to a variety of different business processes.
Social Business impacts all areas of a business eg. Human Resources, IT, Marketing, Sales, R&D, Product Development, Operations.
Technology implementation would be a small portion of the overall spends on the Social Business implementation. The most important aspect is Community Management and this is one of the most vital Capabilities, organizations need to develop in-house and allocate resources for. HR Leaders play a critical role to ensure their Organizational Development Function does not ignore this crucial aspect. Usually the path to becoming a Social Business is a phase-wised approach.
So how do you eat the Elephant? One bite at a time

1. Encourage your employees to become Digital Citizens
2. Failing early is allowed and ok too
3. Have a Strategy in place. Reactionary approach never works
4. Follow and Learn from Experts. Learn from the businesses and organizations that are doing it well
5. Find out what stage of the maturity continuum you fall and have a mid to long term plan to becoming a Social Business

Reference Links

1. http://www.amazon.com/Organizations-Dont-Tweet-People-Do/dp/1119950554
2. http://sloanreview.mit.edu/projects/moving-beyond-marketing/#ref1
3. http://www.ibm.com/social-business/us/en/

P.S-  First published in People Matters
http://www.peoplematters.in/article/2014/09/09/technology/going-social-business/10221

Inspirational Stories and rise of Social Media

I am sharing my thoughts on Rise of Social Media which i shared in the form of a comment on Sukumar's blog. Wow. Reading this blog post itself was so inspiring .

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Allow me to digress and propose a Theory. For sometime I have been pondering over the real reasons for phenomenal rise of Social Media , so called Social Media Revolution, in our Society , all over World from last few years. We can say, It is a very recent phenomena . I guess, as I read more and more blogs, I have found answer to my own question. Leaving Commercial & Economical reasons aside, i guess , People all over the world were really fad up of depressing stories like Corruption, Crime , Stock market crash ( while some of it may be real, more often it is seen that truth is far far behind and wrapped up in several layers to benefit certain sections of society ) . People want to hear stories which are authentic, real, genuine, inspiring. What other way could be better than to give publishing power to every individual on this planet. And the ability to connect people to each other via networking platforms. Combine it with the people’s ability to choose. So now people can hear real stories in the form of blogs ( hearing, passing on and sharing stories which is an age old tradition in itself across cultures ), create their own "media" and collaboratively consume it too via Networking platforms. Coming from such forums, say blogs, we know, we are listening to genuine stories from real people who have no other motive but to share their own stories and personal experiences which appeal to mankind. One may argue, why not books serve the same purpose. I understand , the main distinction why blogs are popular is the power to network . While books provide great content , blogs provide content, context and the network. Had it not been for this blog, I would not have had heard the stories which need to be told and preserved and cherished forever, not just by select few but across cultures, geographical locations. Every now and then , I visit this blog, in search of a great story and i am never disappointed any time . I usually don’t spend more than 5 min on a website, not only I stroll here , I comfortably bring my chair and sit here for long hours going through posts, comments to the extent of having conversations with great minds. You would have noticed, I am often tempted to leave my footprints here cause of the truly absorbing blog posts which I get to read.

Sukumar, once again, Thank you for sharing the story of this event you attended. Truly inspirational.
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Sukumar (subscribed) said October 9, 2011, 8:32 pm:

Thanks for the kind words Ruchi. Glad you liked our posts. This particular event was a spectacular one and very inspiring. Your theory on blogging is insightful. Good one.