Leadership in the time of Social Media
Posted on 30. Nov, 2009 by Gautam in Trends
(Cross posted from Gautam Ghosh on Organizations 2.0)
As organizations get more and more linked to external stakeholders, and their people become unofficial spokespeople on social networks like Twitter and Facebook and become marketers whether or not it is their role.
In such times – specially for organizations that are living in this hyper-linked worlds – what are the leadership behaviors that should be adopted.
Not surprisingly, these behaviors are not new. As I mentioned earlier, the tools of web 2.0 promise real organization development, and therefore, the behaviors of leaders must reflect the tenets of OD and these times.
They are:
- Openness and Transparency – In the web 2.0 world there is little there is hidden, even vague terms of services cannot be changed without people noticing. A leader always has to remember and more importantly live this with the utmost sincerity – both within and externally
- Conversation – It is not just about being transparent, leaders should also engage with employees and external stakeholders about what issues they face and if nothing else – they should acknowledge it, and if needed communicate what they are willing to do about it. Of course, sometimes legal and stockmarket requirements can require executives not to make forward looking statements. In earlier non-internet times I reckon this was known simply within the organization as MBWA
Using social technologies to build Organizational Culture
Posted on 30. Nov, 2009 by Gautam in Case Studies, How To Guides
BUILDING AN ENGAGED WORKFORCE
The Story Until Now
(scenario 3 from here)
Over the last two decades LMN Corp has grown from a family owned business to a professionally run conglomerate with diverse interests in shipping, mining, IT, telecom and media. Growth has been robust as the diversifications have paid off.
Sumit Bangia, the 50 year old COO of the company, has been an old LMN hand. Over the last few years, Sumit has become increasingly concerned with the increasing turnover of younger workers. Sumit’s trusted HR Head, 35 year old Shalini Taneja, found out from exit interviews that recent recruits felt disconnected from the conglomerate and felt that they didn’t know how they fit into the big picture.
Sumit and Shalini decided that the key to retaining young recruits was to build an open organizational culture where young recruits could connect with each other and older mentors across levels and functions. It was also important that they felt empowered and encouraged to bring their whole self to work.
Fueling Effective Team Working using Social Technologies
Posted on 27. Nov, 2009 by Gautam in How To Guides
Shared in the flow workspaces to enable Team Work Effectiveness
THE STORY SO FAR
(scenario 2 from here)
Alacrity Legal Technologies is a new Legal Process Outsourcing firm which focuses on a complex method of helping law firms in the US get their litigation issues outsourced to India. On each of these teams it needs the various groups of people to work together so that case materials and lawyer’s notes for clients to work on before the start of the day. Hence teams of law researchers, Indian lawyers and US client managers need to work together to get fast turnaround times.
Sundar Raman, the 43 year old CEO of the firm, is concerned at the high levels of customer complaints – the key theme being that ALT teams always seem to be missing their deadlines. Sundar decided to dig deeper and found that the delays are caused by the serial processing nature of the work: a mis-communication in the to-and-fro chain of emails would stop everyone else’s work and cause serious delays.
Sundar instinctively knew that a way for people to work on documents together without necessarily emailing versions back and forth would speed up the deliverables.
Using Social Technologies for Organizational Innovation
Posted on 25. Nov, 2009 by Gautam in How To Guides
Kickstarting an Innovation Mindset in the Organization
Bedi Electronics has been amongst the top ten firms in the Indian consumer electronics industry over the last twenty years. Its 1200 employees are spread across six plants and twenty sales offices. Over the last two years, it has fallen behind its competitors in terms of product innovation.
Rahul Bedi, the 28 year old scion of the family, has recently taken over as the Chief Marketing Officer of the business. Rahul knows that his 250 frontline sales officers have the pulse of the market. However, Rahul gets to meet them infrequently, in annual sales conferences and monthly market visits. They share interesting product ideas with them during one-to-one interactions, but he doesn’t know how to validate them with other sales officers and build on them.
“I wish I knew how to learn about consumer preferences from my frontline sales officers,” Rahul said to Gaurav, “help them build upon each others’ ideas. If we can revitalize our product innovation process, Bedi Electronics will regain its strength in the market.”
Social Business: Creating a Foundation for Growth
Posted on 25. Nov, 2009 by Dave in Announcements, How To Guides, Ideas
Three realistic tips to help optimize your social media program.
Article continues here.
Social Media in India: International Software and services company review
Posted on 20. Nov, 2009 by Achintya in Reviews
Software and Services companies have been believed to be making good use of social media for their marketing and promotion. Our research on the Fortune 50 international companies in India not just confirms this but also shows that these companies have made special efforts for Indian customers. Hence in this blog we will review the social media efforts of these Fortune 50 international companies in India.
The Fortune 2009 lists IBM (#28) and Microsoft (#49) among the top 50 in the software and services sector. Interestingly both the companies have customized social platforms for the Indian consumers. While Microsoft targets the Indian social web with Mera Windows, IBM has an India Page for IBM Smartmarket to target the Indian SMBs (small and medium businesses)
IBM Smartmarket
Community Platforms: What makes a good one?
Posted on 18. Nov, 2009 by karthick in Reports, Reviews
How do you categorise and cherry pick the best community platform? What would be the baseline that you would target? This the purpose of the post and what follow sis an analysis of what we have put together.
The breakdown.
First a definition is in order. What is a Community platform?
A community platform refers to the community platform “tool”. This is a tool (open source or otherwise) that enables people to build their own community networks or groups. So if I wanted to start a community for Kawasaki Bikes or Micheal Jackson dance moves club, what is the community platform tool that I should look into?
That’s my purpose in the series of blog posts that will follow. I plan to analyse a bunch of various tools, each bringing it’s unique features to the table, and then see what would broadly fit your (and well mine too) needs.
The Methodology of Analysis.
Trends towards Open Organizations
Posted on 16. Nov, 2009 by Gautam in Trends
Organizations are primarily communities first – and profit making machines later believed Arie de Geus and wrote it in his book The Living Company. These days, however, now businesses need to be social communities to survive and thrive.
We at 2020 Social believe that businesses will move to the next level of growth not by doing the same things that they were doing but by embracing some of the biggest trends that are shaping today’s culture.
Some of these trends that are having an impact on the workplace are:
- Speed of decision making: As external change on organizations comes faster and faster, and as organizations get flatter and flatter – decisions are expected from the front line level which directly interact with customers, be they sales or customer support people. However often they don’t have access to information that they need to really do it well.
- Transparency: As society and government opens up – employees are expecting similar transparency within their organizations – and when organizations are seen as secretive and opaque they lose either their employees energy and commitment – or at risk of losing the employees themselves to competition
Three Scenarios: How Can Indian Firms Leverage Social Technologies Within the Workplace?
Posted on 14. Nov, 2009 by Gautam in How To Guides
Gaurav and Gautam collaboratively wrote this blog post on a wiki. This is the first in the series of blog posts where we will explore how social technologies, when used effectively within the organization, can create significant business value for Indian firms.
A TYPICAL CONVERSATION
Ever since Gautam joined 2020 Social three weeks back, we have had several interesting conversations with Indian firms of all shapes and sizes on how to use social technologies within the workplace.
The typical conversation starts when someone fills the “Ask Us How” form on our website: “I am excited by the possibilities of using social technologies within our company and want to explore what these technologies can really help us with.”
During initial discussions with Gautam, it becomes clear that the client faces a business problem, but she is not able to make the connection between how “the business being social” will help her solve her problem.
In the first post in this series, we have outlined three typical business problems several Indian firms are struggling with. In the next three posts, written over the next week, we will share scenarios for how social technologies can be a part of the solution.
Media and Publishing: New Social Tools Worth Noting
Posted on 11. Nov, 2009 by Dave in Announcements
What Condé Nast could have learned from Meredith Publishing, iVillage, MTV’s Guarida Azul, and Belo Interactive.
Article continues here.
2020 Social builds and nurtures online communities for Indian and international clients, connects their customers, partners and employees, and helps them achieve their business objectives.
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