Beyond social CRM : social stakeholders management

August 31, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Last week I wrote what social CRM meant to me. It’s the inevitable step toward the implementation of a customer relationship management of a new nature. Clients are not only marketing objectfs or elements of a sales pipe anymore but people with whom businesses built things on a long term perspective, beyond the sacred purchase order. Moreover, a relationship that should strenghten even if no purchase order is signed : a prospect who does no buy is not someone who make you lose your time but someone you’ve got a lot to learn from.

It’s obvious that social CRM goes far beyond the implementation of new processes and action plans. It’s, according a me, a principle every action from the company or its employees has to be in conformity with. “Is Deciding / doing such things compliant with this corporate principle ?”. It’s easy to understand that paying more attention to customers and leaving employees in a “shut up and work” logic is a nonsense, and is even dangerous. So, internal practices has to be aligned with the new way of managing customers. If not, backfire may happen quicker than expected.

In such an approach, why should partners, suppliers, sub-contractors be excluded ? They also have their part to play in this virtuous circle.

Add that the challenges that are addressed are not only economic or product-related. Marktes now have tremendous ethical expectations toward businesses that seldom had an exemplary nature. Social business is not, as some may think, a word for social media uses within businesses, but a real societal fact.

Social CRM is a small part of a wider trend. It’s the extension of the stakeholders scope, their involvement in a new governance model that has to be factually implementend in day to days operations.

This looks like “social stakeholder management”. A global approach that has to be implemented both internally and externally, and not only micro-projects tinkered here and there, without any consistency regarding to overall operations. I can’t remember who said “progress is worth only if shared by everyone”. Maybe the better way to achieve it is to built with all the stakeholders, not only with words but through day to day operations.

Filed Under: Management & HR, strategy Tagged With: , , , , ,

The twilight of enterprise 2.0 and the emergence of process socialization

July 7, 2009 By 10 Comments

The last Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston sounded the knell of many illusions. It won’t be a surprise for anyone, we’ve been talking about that for months and feeling it was coming. First, the beginning of a move of enterprise 2.0 toward the real enterprise, then a try to integrate the social phenomenon in the existing production models in order to give it the place it desserves instead of trying to justify its existence using tricks that won’t fool people for long. Recently,  Andrew McAfee,  Tom Davenport and Dion Hinchcliffe wrote about complementarity, articulation, reconciliation with the existing.

The vision of enterprise 2.0 as a a big fair between colleagues where everybody would embrace one another and sing in unison is gone. No, your company will never become an annex of Woodstock. Many understood that very quickly, some needed more time. Don’t worry, you don’t have to feel ashamed, it’s a little bit like Santa Claus. We all used to believe he really existed, and one day we understood he didn’t. But that doesn’t mean people stopped giving and receiving gifts. (Ok…if you are a 40+ manager and still believe in Santa Claus, there is possibly a problem).

So we have the choice between two solutions : keep on believing in Santa Claus or try to understand how companies like such as Booz Allen Hamilton , Lockheed Martin and many others to join Cisco in the club of those who successfully managed to deploy and adopt social software.  .

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Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Management & HR, strategy, Web & Usages Tagged With: , , , , ,

Even in downturns, human capital has to be protected

February 19, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Because they didn’t have the time (or the will) to make the structural decisions that would help to face a downturn, companies often react by acting on the easiest adjustment variables :

• Cuts in bugets

• investments putt offs

• employees lay offs.

It makes it possible to attend to the most urgent things first even if I think it only defers what’s unavoidable. The focus is on cost and not on revenue, and  costs can’t be endlessly cut except if you want to turn a company into an emplty shell. Any cut expenditure won’t be able to be cut again the next quarter or the next year because it won’t exist anymore.

I’m one on those who think that the goal of any enterprise is to make money and that thinking only in terms of expenses only makes it possible for directors to act like firemen. But it’s easier to cut costs instead of trying to find an innovative way to drive incomes.

Whatever, this kind of policy also have dramatically bad effects for the future.

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Filed Under: Management & HR, strategy Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Boards in the mist

February 11, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Boards have to be mobilized in order to make the right decisions to survive the crisis. Nothing new. But according to this essay from McKinsey, it’s far from being that simple.

Three reasons are put forward

• Boards follow unchanging procedures and ritualss. Defines shedules on a yearly basis, documents  and agendas fixed many weekds ago.

It may seem absurd that people who make strategic decisions are traped into such straitjackets but this is facts. With all the consequences we can imagine on adaptability.

• Interaction modes that are not constents with the purpose. Boards are the place for consensual discussions, members only validate what has been done in preliminary works. It’s in no way a place for brainstorming and reflection from which anything innovative will emerge.

It seems that the only conflictuous point in a board meeting may be power. Not strategic issues.

• Many board members are not in touch with what’s going on in the economy. They are more comfortable with “preservation” strategies, waiting for things to solve themselves rather than with trying to take the initiative.

As a result, they will find themselves struggling to withstand tough conditions and badly positioned in the new environment.

Conclusion : board have to get rid of received ideas, to learn to think differently in order to find the means for strategies heading to the future instead of to become ossified on the present. Unlike halves-strategies.

Filed Under: Economy & New Models, strategy Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Enterprises far beyond enterprise 2.0

January 20, 2009 By Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago I amused myself proposing a few tracks on what enterprise 2.0 may be in 2009. But I think pushing the reflection beyond would be worth : enterprise 2.0 is only a side of a much complex reality that is enterprise and will be of any use only in a global framework. Since enterprise, and economy in general, can be defined as the place where more and more numerous interactions melts, believing it can be improved by only cosmetic improvements. Evry initiative that’s not aligned with a macro vision that will take all these considerations into account won’t bring anything worthy.

So, let’s put ourselves in the main player’s place.

• The top management

The less we can say is that top management is very worried. Because of the downturn, CEOs are trying to protect the organization. It’s hard to find more revenue so, in order to preserve the result they want costs to be cut. Or spendings, which is not the same thing. In the other hand they know that if they keep on cutting costs, they will soon be unable to make any cent go in the bank so they try to find how to make work more efficient, to work on costs instead of expenses. And, finally, the idea of business networks comes to the surface. But how to make it happen ?

On the other hand, this crises is about something deeper that worries them a lot. Always promising more has its limits and now it seems that these limits have been reached.  Do they have to stop promising the moon since they know organization’s performance have its limit and trying to balance it with financial performance leads to the situation we now know ? Do we have reached the limits of a system and is this crisis the consequence of a management model failure. Do we have to reinvent the way we do business ?

In brief, an increasing demand for more responsability and sustainability in management, that is not so far from a tendency that brings many companies to think their development together with their human ecosystem’s in order not to ruin their tomorrow’s markets.

Many issues that have a lot in common and that, without forseeing the answers that will be given, will have to be taken into account this year.

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Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Intranets and digital workplace, Management & HR, strategy Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Enterprise 2.0 : the CISCO case

January 9, 2009 By 20 Comments

You must have noticed how many posts have been published about Cisco these late days. The US giant seems to be the first example of global enterprise 2.0 or, at least, to be the first to meet such a recognition for its success. Many things have been writen about that and it will be easy for you to find informations.

In order to understand more globally what happended at Cisco I found an interesting speech Cisco’s CEO, John Chambers, made on the 15th of october at the MIT.

What can we draw from thay ?

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Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Intranets and digital workplace, Management & HR, strategy, Web & Usages Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A crisis that’s not that economic

December 17, 2008 By 2 Comments

Many people agree to admit the time has come to built a kind of new economic order, the drifts of the current system having lead to the situation we all know. But, saying that, people often neglect what I consider being a management failure. As for the hen and the egg it’s hard to say who was responsible but we have to admit both successfully helped one another.

Weeks ago I wrote that logic without good sens leads to catastroph and worried about companies who only had halve strategies, that’s to say that focus on exploiting the present without thinking of allocating part of their ressources in order to prepare the future. Said differently, it’s like promising a linear performance when they only give themselves enough assets to follow a curve limited at its top.

Recently I was backed up by a note by Jon Husband who pointed at an  interview of Henry Mintzberg who was saying it was more a management crisis than an economic one. An opinion I share. A few points I bring out from this interview [Read more...]

Filed Under: Management & HR, strategy Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

CE0 concerns : network driven business models

December 16, 2008 By Leave a Comment

What are CxOs real concerns ? How do they undertsand current issues ? Lots of people are talking about the need for companies to change in order to evolve in the context that is theirs now but it supposes the “information” has reached the highest decision makers and that they really understand what it’s about if we want things to slowly happen.

It would be very usefull for all the people who are “pushing” ideas and evangelizing to know the gap (if any) between their ideas and what CEOs really think.

Fortunately the work was done by PriceWaterhouseCoopers in its 11th “CEO Survey”, titled : “Compete and Collaborate : What is Success in a Connected World”.

One year after predicting that three main trends will impact enterprises (Globalization, connectivity, communities), PWC follows the same way and focuses on the way business models will evolve and, most of all, on the way to create value with employees but also with competitors. With an underlying question : is building business networks a prerequisite to create value in today’s economy ?

Said in practical terms, companies are torn between two forces : collaboraton and collective actions in the one hand, competition and individualism in the other hand. The whole while considering the impact of a strengthened collaboration on power diffusion and control loss by management.

The report being freely downloadable, I’ll only focus on a few points.

1°) Current context

• New growth levers will be agility, talent and technology

• The downturn will bring many opportunities for mergers.

• An interconnected world is more exposed to risk but also offers much more opportunities

2°) Impact on business models

• Companies say their people are more important than ever but they still don’t translate it in concrete facts.

• Middle and junior management weakness is a real barrier to change

• In order to face this block, companies have to involve employees in the change process, build connected organization, develop people continuously, make people accountable at every level and make change become the norm.

• The HR function will have to work in front line, besides top management in order to drive change and not only being a support.

• Companies know of to collaborate on an opportunistic basis. But they still can’t “industrialize” that and learn from their experience. Opportunistic collaboration does not have to be an exception anymore but an organizational principle.

• Higer productivity will only be reached through new communication technologies, global networks and innovative management.

• Networks that were only use to transfer knowledge in a small perimeter will have to be deployed to deal with wider strategic issues; both internally (employess) and externally (partners,cliens…)

3°) Conclusion

• Growth must be responsible

• Defining the conditions for a long term success with clients is essentials. Short term objectives are not enough anymore.

• To make collaboration efficient, the objectives, the operating modes must be redefined, involving all the stakeholders?

PS : not a word on enterprise 2.0 : the evidence that the work around the concept has ended and the time of implementation has come. Lucky we are, it’s on CEOs agendas !

Filed Under: Management & HR, strategy Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Do You Know Social Business ?

December 16, 2008 By Leave a Comment

There was a lot of people at the “Theatre Marigny”, in Paris a few weeks ago. So many people that not everybody who wanted to attend managed to get a seat. It wasn’t the latest trendy show…or maybe yes. The first opus of a show that can be called “how to make business without breaking the machine” or “our present business must not destroy our future business”.

On scene : Martin Hirsch (membre of French gvt. active solidarities commissioner), George Pauget (President of the French Banks Fedeeraction and COO of Credit Agricole), Emmanuel Faber (COO Groupe Danone) and, last but not least, Muhammad Yunus (Peace Nobel Prize and Founder of Grameen Bank).  First thought : when an economist receives the Nobel Prize for Peace, it makes you wonder about many things. This was organized by Danone Group and HEC Business School whom I thank for the invitation.

What’s social business ? According to Yunus “A social business is a company like the others. Excepted that a standard company has one and only goals : make money and make more money. Like any enterprise it will have to find how to make money and balance its accounts in order to be financially viable. But it’s not its main purpose and it won’t seek to maximize its profits to the detriment of the “social” purpose it set to itself“. The whole relying on a principle : the current system can’t support intiatives that aims at reducing gaps, avoiding that a part of the population fail to keep up. So this role fails to the Sates. Yunus idea is to make it possible to invest on such structures in order businesses can assume a social role without relying on wellfare states.

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Filed Under: Management & HR, Misc., strategy Tagged With: , , , , ,

New jobs description for Enterprise 2.0 ? Try the Enterprise 2.0 job profiler

December 3, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Every day I notice that many companies, conscious that their move toward Enterprise 2.0 -like dynamics is a major issue, are beginning to hire people for new kinds of jobs. It’s both about aligning people-centric activities with corporate purposes, identify new opportunities, energize cross-organiszaiton dynamics, favor new practices and new tools adoption, re-align tools on practices.

A complex role that needs a mix between new knowledges and traditionnal competences. It’s generally devoted to internal people who discover this new complexity and have to be in two places ar once. As these organizations become more and more mature, they begin to build specific job description and hire a new kind of professionnals to manage these new activities as full-time jobs and rationalize what’s not an experimentation anymore but a new way to operate.

Wiser from their exprience in 2.0 tools implementation for HR and talent management projects, my friends from Talentys worked hard on this topic in order to formalize some job descriptions and key competences for these new issues. They propose

A « Community Manager » (CM

An« IT 2.0 expert » (ITE)

A « Chief Networking Officer » (CNO)

Feel free to download it and provide us with your feedback in order to improve it. And use it for your own needs if you need to hire someone… (Humm… this is a quick nighlty translation from the original doc but I think we did it well…)

Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Management & HR, strategy, Web & Usages Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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