Happy Thanksgiving to all.

To celebrate thanksgiving this year, I thought I might share my Top 100 list of things I am thankful for. In no particular order:

1. Blue skies.
2. Night thunderstorms.
3. Nutella.
4. Gravity.
5. Fine English saddles.
6. Cheese.
7. Architects.
8. Seat belts.
9. Planet Earth.
10. Croissants.
11. The DOW hitting 10,000 again.
12. Satellite technology.
13. Courage.
14. Antibacterial soap.
15. Power outlets. Especially in airports.
16. Wi-Fi. Especially in airports.
17. Artists.
18. My parents.
19. The number 2 pencil.
20. The internet.
21. Emergency exits.
22. Toilet paper.
23. Skim milk.
24. Sail boats.
25. Yogurt.
26. My wife and kids.
27. France.
28. Sushi.
29. Rollercoasters.
30. Deodorant.
31. Skype.
32. My brother and sister.
33. Fishermen and farmers.
34. Helmets.
35. Petits Beurre, de LU.
36. Canon cameras and lenses.
37. My friends.
38. My enemies.
39. Bailey’s Irish creme.
40. Ice cubes.
41. My extended family.
42. Cartier.
43. Washing machines.
44. Power tools.
45. German cars.
46. Provence.
47. Extra virgin olive oil.
48. Spring.
49. Summer.
50. Fall.
51. Winter.
52. Birthdays.
53. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
54. Dental hygiene.
55. Astronomers.
56. Dogs.
57. My childhood.
58. Movies.
59. Smart phones.
60. Bespoke tailors.
61. The path less taken.
62. Triathlon.
63. Duct Tape.
64. Twitter.
65. Performance fabrics.
66. Kate Winslet.
67. Jazz.
68. Laughter.
69. French patisseries.
70. Slow motion.
71. Cormack McCarthy.
72. My readers.
73. Medical research.
74. US foreign policy in Europe since 1944.
75. A proper cup of coffee.
76. Haribo Cola-flavored gummies.
77. Blue jeans.
78. Designers (engineers and otherwise).
79. Rubber bands.
80. Paris and New York in the spring.
81. Honey.
82. Kenneth Cole, Calvin Klein, Faconnable, Yves St. Laurent and Francesco Smalto.
83. Benevolent space aliens.
84. Air travel.
85. Brave, selfless people.
86. The Mediterranean Sea.
87. The perfect gin and tonic.
88. Afternoon tea.
89. The USA.
90. England.
91. Guitars.
92. Kevlar.
93. The International Baccalaureate.
94. Cashmere and Merino wool.
95. My health.
96. Old people.
97. Laptops.
98. Traditional French cuisine.
99. Stereophonic sound.
100. Every single day.

Missing from the list again this year:

1. Alarm clocks.
2. Disease.
3. Selfishness.
4. Sociopathic bosses.
5. Celery.
6. Pollution.
7. Bigotry.
8. Cancer.
9. Religious and political extremists.
10. Poverty.
11. American Idol.
12. Adolf Hitler.
13. Easy Listening radio stations.
14. Awful advertising.
15. Land mines.
16. Plastic shopping bags.
17. SyFy Original movies.
18. Social Media hacks.
19. Rabid raccoons.
20. Long lines.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

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Finally delivering the Social Media playbook

Building a Social Media program is about more than presence, community management and engagement. And in spite of what some “experts” may have told you, it certainly is about more than having a Facebook page, a twitter account and some videos on YouTube.

The reality of the thing is that it takes more than that to plug social media into your business. Much more. That intern managing your tweets right now doesn’t have the experience or the skills yet. That PR superstar you just hired out of LA or New York or Boston can do some good, but no matter how hard they try, they take your social media program so far. Just like your customer service manager and your CMO and your Director of Digital Media. No matter how smart they are, they only have some of the pieces of that puzzle… and so much time to try and figure out the rest. (Not exactly a master plan, is it.)

Truly plugging Social Media into an organization – into the enterprise, even – is a complex endeavor. It isn’t purely a marketing function, nor is it purely a customer service function or a community management function or a business intelligence function. There are lots of moving parts to this, some strategic, others operational. Some analytical, others tactical: HR and Legal need to be brought up to speed on several levels (especially now that the FTC has released its guidelines for blogging and social media use), the C-suite needs to clearly understand both the opportunities and the risks associated with Social Media in order to make appropriate decisions regarding the future of their companies. Vice Presidents, directors and managers need to understand how applying certain Social Media strategies and tactics to their existing activities could yield solid results in the quarters to come. And on and on and on.

Frankly, if you haven’t worked in the enterprise space, if you haven’t spent years closely working with sales managers, marketing managers, customer service managers, product managers, engineering managers, HR managers, if you haven’t spent years reporting directly to a CEO or at least a Senior VP – in other words, if you haven’t had real experience building programs within enterprise space companies and managing brands hands-on, working across silos, even with all the blogging and tweeting experience in the world, I don’t see how you can hope to know how to build, integrate, manage and measure a 360 social media program for a company. And certainly not in the enterprise space.

It takes a very unique background and skill-set to be able to deliver this kind of thing, and very few people can actually blend 1. a deep understanding of the social media space, 2. real enterprise-class program development and management experience, and 3. 360 brand management experience, from product ideation and development all the way to end-of-life-cycle marketing communications.

People who know how to do this in the US, I can count on the fingers of one hand. There aren’t many of us yet. And given the need for companies to understand how to properly plug social media into their business (and start enjoying positive results fast), that’s a big problem.

If my “fingers of one hand” remark seems like an exaggeration, go back in time just a few months and ask every social media “consultant” or “expert” in your address book to briefly shed some light on a few random (and simple) components of a Social Media program… like how to tie R.O.I. measurement into Social Media activities, or how to structure an enterprise-wide Twitter presence. Until those few of us who know how to do this came along and spelled it out for them, it seems that the vast majority of these “experts” didn’t have a clue. Scary, considering these types of things are among the most simple components of any social media program’s structure.

To address that problem, I am partnering with a pretty solid group of experienced marketing and PR directors, Director-level social media practitioners, management consultants, business managers and other experts to bring businesses exactly this kind of knowledge in 2010, not just in a consulting format but in a training format as well. The training specifically is what I want to bring up here today because it’s the most accessible of the two – both from cost -effectiveness and timeframe perspectives. This video should help explain what we’ve been working on:

As the video explains, we’ll soon have a website, a full schedule of cities (and countries) where our full-day trainings will take place throughout 2010, along with a ton of valuable information you’ll want to check out.

Perhaps the most important component of the training program will be the content of the program itself: Essentially a social media program development, integration, management and measurement playbook. As attendees, whether you decide to take copious notes (which I suggest you do) or simply watch the presentation decks over and over again, you will essentially walk away with everything you need to build a social media program for your organizations (or your clients’ organizations for that matter).

Pretty solid, right?

As mentioned in my previous post, the plan is to launch Red Chair trainings ahead of schedule in London on December 4th instead of waiting for 2010 as originally planned. It’s a little short notice for a lot of businesses in the London area (not a whole lot of time for decision-makers to a) find out about it and b) make plans to attend), so we’ll play the schedule by ear. If we can fill up the training by then, great. If not, we’ll go back to the original schedule to give the London business community time to fit it into their calendar. No big deal. One thing I should mention about the December 4th event, however: The group discounts are insanely good. Take advantage of them now if you can. (I doubt the group discounts will be as good in 2010.)

If you want the December 4th event to happen, make sure you sign up asap. Beg your boss, call a friend, invite a client or two, whatever works. Definitely take advantage of the 1+1, 1+2 and other discounts. Click here to sign up now, or click on the image below.

Update: After receiving numerous requests for Red Chair London to be held in early 2010 instead of December 2009, we  have decided to move the event to a date that will accommodate everyone. Thanks a lot for your feedback. You guys rock. I look forward to an even bigger Red Chair event in London just in a few months.

Cheers.

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UK Businesses: Two events you want to add to your calendar right away

Conferences are great. You learn stuff, you meet people, you go back to work all jazzed up and energized… But let’s be honest: There are some things you just can’t get from a conference, like real training and “how to” knowledge.

From my perspective no matter how much clarity I bring to topics like R.O.I. and social media measurement, building and managing social media programs, brand management in the era of the Social web, etc. at conferences, there is only so much I can teach you in an hour, or thirty minutes (and even 10 minutes, in some cases).

Based on feedback from a pretty big number of conference attendees over the last year, it became clear that something was missing from the picture: Think of it as a gap between the short conference format presentations and high-commitment 3-8-month long consulting engagements.

That’s when my mind flashed back to the courses I used to take from the American Management Association (AMA): Full day trainings on just about anything you might need to increase your value to your organization, from Best Practices in to “how to” courses. The format was simple: One day out of the office, learn everything you need to learn from an expert in the field, come back with copious notes, and get back to work with a valuable new skill.

Bonus: The playbook you bring back with you in the form of notes and course content. That’s yours to keep. Forever.

I loved those things. They made me smarter about the world, better at my job, and payed off in major ways – both for me and my employers… which is probably why they didn’t mind paying for them several times per year.

The single-day AMA trainings I was sent to typically used to cost my employers about $2,000 between registration, airfare, hotel and food (about the cost of going to a conference these days), which I always thought was a little steep. (Multi-day trainings went up from there.) Different value than attending a conference, sure, but in the back of my mind, I always knew the model could be streamlined and the costs made more accessible.

Long story short: It’s obvious that business managers increasingly need real social media operational training, not just neat case studies and presentations about social media tools, so I am launching a series of AMA-style trainings to address that need.  If you’re a business manager or social media practitioner and you need to learn how to better develop, integrate, manage and measure social media programs, this is for you. Though the official launch will take place in early 2010, the very first of these trainings will take place in London on December 4th:

Event Number One: Red Chair London

The course I will teach in London is designed for C-level business executives, Marketing and PR directors, Agency honchos and Social Media managers wishing to deepen their operational understanding of Social Media.

The course is designed for decision-makers and managers looking for real training on how to actually plug social media into their organizations and make it work. Not just from a strategic angle, but also from operational, tactical, and analytical standpoint. (Yes, this is what you guys have been asking for. I am finally bringing it to you.)

The day will be divided into four sessions:

1. 9:00am – 10:30am           Social Media Program Development (Strategy)
2. 10:45am – noon                 Social Media Program Integration (Operations and Planning)
3. 12:45 pm – 2:45pm          Social Media Program Management (Execution)
4. 3:00pm – 4:30pm             Social Media Program Measurement (Data analysis, benchmarking, ROI, etc.)

We will break for morning tea/coffee, lunch, and again for afternoon tea/coffee. (All included with your registration.)

Red Chair London is being kept purposely small (20 seats)  to foster a roundtable-style atmosphere for participants in which all questions will be answered, no matter how technical or complicated. I can handle it.

Registration is only £650 per person (about $999 US), and we have created some pretty awesome group discounts to make it easier for companies to send more than one manager (or client) to the event. (My advice: Pool your resources and buy group tickets instead of just individual ones.)

The best part is that attendees don’t have to fly anywhere or book a hotel. If you work in and around London, you can swing by your office early that morning, spend the rest of the day with us, and go home when we adjourn.  No flying, no hotels, no extra expenses. Simple, painless, convenient.

Although seats should go fast (we’re limited to only 20 seats), I am all about treating my readers well, so here’s a treat for you. (This isn’t on the eventbrite registration page.) The first 6 people to register using the keyword “paddington” will enjoy a special BrandBuilder discount off their ticket price.

Red Chair London will be held at the posh One Alfred Place business Club, which is the perfect venue: centrally located, beautiful meeting rooms, awesome food, providing just the right mix of business focus and comfort. If you aren’t familiar with One Alfred yet, you’re in for a treat.

All that’s left for you to do now is either register or pass the information along to your peers, bosses, colleagues, friends and clients. (Or your marketing, PR and ad agency partners if they don’t seem to know how to take your social media presence to the next level.)

Seriously, if you know someone who should attend, be their hero and send them this post’s hyperlink. Red Chair may not come back to London for quite a while. We have a lot of cities to cover in the next 12 months. Get a jump on the competition.

While we’re still putting the finishing touches on the Red Chair website, you can go register for the London training here.

Event Number 2: Like Minds Immersive

If you can’t make it  to Red Chair London or prefer a lighter version of that type of training, check out December 3rds’ Like Minds Immersive instead. (Hey, not everyone wants or needs to get a Masters in Social Media Operational Management just yet. Baby steps, right?)

Some differences:

1. It’s in Exeter, not London.
2. It’s on Thursday December 3rd (the day before Red Chair London)
3. It only lasts 3 hours
4. It’s a little easier on the finances (Only £200)
5. The content is designed to be more accessible to junior managers and folks not yet fluent in Social Media management than Red Chair London.

Who should attend Like Minds Immersive?

• Devon area business people who can’t make it to London on the 4th.
• Anyone looking to advance their strategic and operational Social Media management skills but isn’t ready for a full day of advanced training yet.
• Managers and business owners looking for structured, step-by-step how-to social media training they will be able to apply to their business right away.

You can register for Like Minds Immersive here.

Now spread the world, ye of internet fame, and help me finally bring real Social Media wisdom, best practices and savoir-faire to the world.

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What’s next: Operationalizing Social Media. (Huh? What?)

Speaking at SMiB in London

The current state of conversations in regards to Social Media and Business

Okay, look. I don’t mean to step on anyone’s toes here, but how many times do business managers hungry for real Social Media know-how have to suffer through another “Social Media is what’s next” presentation before someone actually decides to help them answer real questions and solve real problems?

Yes. We get it already. Social Media is the future of now. It’s the answer to all of your old-school marketing problems. The holy grail of business growth. It’s all about people and conversations and relationships, don’t you know. Okay, fine. So now let’s get on with it: How the hell does a company actually put Social Media into play?

Before I go on, if your answer includes any of the following words, I may have to reach across the internets and smack you upside the head: FaceBook, Twitter, Blog, YouTube. (No, no, no and no.) Let’s take a giant step backwards here, because if your idea of developing a Social Media program for a company of any size essentially consists of creating a series of embassies on the most popular social platforms on the web, you haven’t just put the cart ahead of the horse, you’ve pretty much squashed it like a bug.

Let me be as clear as I can be about this: Having a Facebook fan page, a twitter account, a YouTube channel and a blog aren’t forward thinking. This is the default position now. The absolute minimum. If you aren’t already here, you’ve already shown that your business is grossly out of touch with the rest of the world (and dare I say, your market?). And by default, so are you. You’ve fallen behind. And if your company does proudly display those little social badges, if indeed you do have a presence on Twitter, FaceBook, YouTube and the blogosphere, congratulations: You’re doing the same thing everyone else is, which is to say that you are merely here.

Having a Social Media presence nowadays is merely the equivalent of what being listed in the yellow pages meant ten years ago. It simply isn’t enough to be there. And if you believe it is, you have seriously underestimated the situation.

Don’t get me wrong: The vast majority of business managers and C-suite executives still need to be shown that Social Media isn’t just a silly fad. That it is a legitimate business discipline worthy of not only investment but special attention. And perhaps most importantly, that by not understanding that Social Media fits in their business toolkit, they will begin to lose increasingly large chunks of market share (among other things) to their smarter, more strategically-minded competitors as early as H1 of 2010. These are realities and facts that still need to be conveyed to decision-makers in the business world. No question.

But the message has already reached a good number of them. So now what? You’ve convinced them to focus on Social Media, but aside from “get on facebook, twitter, youtube and blogs and start engaging,” you haven’t really given them a whole lot to go on. For the benefit of those folks, why don’t we switch gears and meet them where they want us to: In the real and complex world of “how the hell do we actually build this in our own organization?”

Let’s inject a little structure and order into the Social Media for business discussion:

First, let’s get a couple of things straight about the nature of Social Media when it comes to operations (yes, actually “doing” instead of just talking about how great it is):

1. The idea that Social Media professionals are one-size-fits-all needs to disappear. Understand that despite what you may have been told, Social Media practitioners aren’t all community managers and engagement aficionados. Some are data analysts and others are business strategists, while some specialize in operational management, market research, marketing communications or any number of commonly found business functions. Yes, that’s right: Social Media practitioners probably aren’t social media experts at all. They’re simply professionals who use social media because they understand its value to their job and organization.

The topic of incorporating social media know-how into existing organizational roles (rather than creating new layers of superfluous social media expertise to piggy-back on existing functions)  is one that we will revisit often in the coming months.

So the lesson here is that if your organization seems to a) suffer from a knowledge gap when it comes to Social Media, and b) filling that gap with dozens, if not hundreds of new employees seems daunting, don’t fret: Focus on training and development first and foremost. Don’t worry about trying to hire a bunch of unemployed marketeers with “social media” roles strategically added to their resumes in the last 18 months. That will get you nowhere fast. There’s a better way. (More on that in a minute.)

2. Effective, sustainable, scalable social media programs all have a basic underlying framework (hinted at by the X-Box Live avatars assembled in the image above.) At its simplest, you are looking at four major building blocks and operational elements:

• Social Media program development (a strategy-heavy function)
• Social Media program integration (almost exclusively an ops piece, especially in the enterprise space)
• Social Media program management (the broadest of the three, basically dealing with the execution of the program itself. Some examples of management functions are listed in the image above.)
• Social Media program measurement (an analytical function which requires little explanation given the amount of time I have already devoted to explaining FRY, ROI, and non-financial impact).

When you start actually building the structure of a Social Media program, especially for a large/enterprise space organization, things get complex fast.  But let’s learn how to walk before we start running marathons, okay? Not everyone here is ready to graduate from “isn’t social media just another marketing channel?” so we’ll move slowly out of respect for them.

First things first: Recognizing that in order to build a proper Social Media program within an organization, you must first start with the understanding that these four core elements need to be present in order for things to work properly. Just having a Social Media director and an engagement team won’t cut it. All you’re likely to end up with is a decent management piece with perhaps some light strategy,  completely accidental integration thanks to an IT guy or two, and some made-up measurement based on whatever metrics seem to be popular on the Twitternets that week. Sorry but that’s not good enough.

If a half-assed DIY-style Social Media program appeals to you, your boss and your customers, by all means, have fun with that. But if you are the type of manager or business leader with even an ounce of vision,  professionalism (and sense of self-preservation), you already know that winging it isn’t really going to produce the results you are expected to deliver.

The alternative is to try and do it right: Actually building an effective and sustainable social media program within your organization by integrating social media (embedding it, even) into every department and business function – and doing so with purpose.

That’s all fine and good, but what if you need help? (No worries. I have you covered.):

So where can you turn for help? Unfortunately, that can sometimes be hard to tell. On the one hand, you have the thousands of self-appointed Social Media “gurus” selling everything from rehashed presentation decks and derivative white papers to stale webinars about essentially nothing. (Thanks for charging me $650 for information I could have gotten for free just by reading Mashable for twenty minutes a week. Great.) And don’t even get me started on the hacks who shamelessly steal my work and that of others and try to pass it off as their own. (We know who you are. You aren’t fooling anybody.)

So how do you tell the good ones from the frauds? Experience. Luck. Savvy. In fairness, you could actually get lucky and find one who knows how to do this (with enough money and enough time, who knows,) but the odds aren’t in your favor.

You could also keep hoping that the operational knowledge you seek will emerge from the various social media conferences you keep attending. And to some extent, yes, over time, you will pick up enough nuggets to become dangerous. No question. But it could take a while. Industry conferences have their value, but real operational training isn’t usually on the menu.

And of course, you could partner with a reputable consulting firm whose team of of experts will guide you every step of the way, from choosing the right measurement tools to the way you should develop engagement strategies. If you ‘re ready for that, have found a partner you know you can work with and have the budget for it, it’s go time. But not everyone is ready or able to go that route quite yet.

A fourth option is to let those of us who know how to do this teach you how without asking you to break the bank or further burden your schedule. We aren’t talking about “boot camps” here. (The idea isn’t to throw as much information at you as we can in a few hours and see how much of it you can retain.) By the same token, you don’t want a training programs to be so light that you walk away from it with solid theoretical knowledge but no practical knowledge. There isn’t a whole lot of value to training if you can’t actually put that training to good use.  And to be honest, there’s only so much ground you can cover even with a full day of training. So a group of us put our heads together over the last few months and decided to create something to fill that gap for you and do it right. (Which is to say, do it exceptionally well.) The objective is then to blend training and consulting in a way that makes sense for everyone.

Enter the Red Chair Group:

There will be plenty of time for me to get into what the Red Chair Group is, who will be involved and what types of services we’ll offer in the coming weeks. For now, all I can tell you is that our official launch is scheduled for December of 2009, that our primary objective will be to provide expert level assistance to businesses in need of strategic and operational program management, and that geographically speaking, we will cover a lot of ground. (I haven’t been this excited about a project/venture in a very long time, so it’s pretty hard for me to keep from spilling the beans.)

To that end, one of the first things the Red Chair Group will be launching is a series of executive training programs specifically designed to teach C-suite execs, business managers and agency directors how to develop, integrate, manage and measure social media programs (what we have been talking about in this post). These trainings will be carefully structured day-long events held in major cities around the world. We are currently in talks with partners in 20 key cities to bring Red Chair events to your doorstep.

(I forgot to mention: The whole idea is to bring these training events to you so you don’t have to come to us. This is yet another way we thought we could keep your budget as intact as possible.)

Cities already being added to the 2010 schedule:

• Chicago
• San Francisco
• New York
• Seattle
• Atlanta
• Boston
• Portland
• Philadelphia
• Paris
• Houston
• Sydney
• Hong Kong
• Charlotte
• Orlando
• Toronto
• Brussels
• Tokyo

(If you want us to add your city to the list, let me know. We’ll chat.)

The first Red Chair event will be held in London on December 4th of this year. (Yes, in just a few weeks.) Click here or on the image below to register. For this venue, A+G‘s Scott Gould (of #LikeMinds fame) will be joining me to cover some key topics and learning points. To provide the best possible environment for the event, we’ve secured a space at One Alfred Place, perhaps London’s coolest (and my favorite) business club.

Our schedule for the session on December 4th is pretty heavy, so we plan to promptly begin with introductions at 9:00 am and be well into the program by 9:30. To make things easier for everyone, we’ve set up some group and agency discount packages in case some of you want to buy your tickets together. I strongly encourage that companies with an interest in this level of training (especially enterprise class organizations) consider sending more than one individual.

A note about registration: Though typical Red Chair events are designed for up to 40 attendees, our London launch is limited to only 20 attendees. Since our registration process is first come-first served, you’ll want to register quickly to secure a spot. With our schedule the way it is, it could be a while before we’re back in London.

One last thing: Anyone who registers for Red Chair London will automatically be enrolled in our registration referral program. The way it works is simple: Once you’ve registered, you will be given a special discount code to give friends, colleagues and clients. If they in turn register for the event using your code, they will get 10% off their ticket price and you will get $100 back. Nice, huh? Yeah. We thought you’d like that.

I will let you know as soon as the Red Chair website is up. (We’re building it as we speak.) In the meantime, you can access Red Chair London information via EventBrite by clicking here (or the image below).

I look forward to sharing more about how the Red Chair Group’s plans to help companies of all sizes operationalize social media. I am usually a pretty quiet guy (no, really), but I have to admit that I am having a hard time containing my excitement about this: To know that businesses are finally going to be able to cut through the social media noise and BS in part thanks to Red Chair makes me feel pretty good. 🙂

2010 is definitely going to be a fun year.

Cheers. 🙂

PS: Let’s give credit where credit is due. Special thanks to Kristi Colvin and Doug Cone for the amazing work they are already doing on the Red Chair Group’s branding and website. You guys are already producing outstanding work.

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The Art of Living

I keep running into this every few months or so. It always makes me smile because it’s so true:

The master in the art of living makes little distinction
between his work and his play
his labor and his leisure
his mind and his body
his education and his recreation
his love and his religion
He hardly knows which is which…
He simply pursues his vision of excellence
in whatever he does
leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing
To him he is always doing both.

– Zen Buddhist Text

If you’re any good at what you do, and by good, I mean really good, work is play.

Always.

I’m sorry that BrandBuilder blog postings have been a little scarce lately. On the one hand, I have been traveling a lot. But there’s other reason: For the last few months, I have quietly been working on some pretty exciting projects with some of my favorite people on the planet, and I should finally be allowed to start talking about them very soon.

So patience, Grasshopper. We’re almost there.

I could be wrong, but my hunch is that you’re all going to like what I have in store for you guys in 2010 and beyond.

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Before you can truly talk about Change Management, you have to focus on achieving clear vision

I love the fact that the comments my readers leave on the BrandBuilder blog are an endless source of topics for me to write about. I am seriously considering devoting one or two posts per week to either giving your brilliant opinions more exposure and/or answering your questions. And in that vein, why not start today, right now?

Here’s an astute question from Sonny Gill: in regards to characteristic n.8 in my post about “Becoming P2P: Principal characteristics of the new social business“:

Company/organizational culture is something I love getting into and am still learning a lot about.

One point of interest that intrigues me – and what you mentioned – is empowering your employees. Giving them not only the tools and structure to succeed, but empowerment and reinforcement from internal leaders – the attitude that not only spreads throughout the company but outside of the office also (as we all know, work/life intermingle so much). I say it’s intriguing because it’s such an integral part in making this culture change and a P2P business a success.

The biggest thing that companies will be asking though when reading this post, let alone your upcoming book, is ‘how the hell do we accomplish this?’ It sounds/is great, as how businesses function – internally and externally – is evolving, quick. But there’s definitely got to be a huge buy-in and sense of what a P2P culture looks and feels like.

The best way I know how to answer that question:

Don’t sell change. Ever.  Instead, sell results. That’s what execs really want anyway

As always, the old adage about leading horses to water stands firm. First, you have to realize that “companies” aren’t what you’re working with. What you’re really dealing with are people. In other words, companies don’t make decisions. People make decisions. Particularly, leaders in this instance. If the leadership within a company refuses to commit to the type of change that will yield greater success for their business in the future (and starting immediately), I can’t help them. Heck, even Tony Robbins, Zig Ziglar and Dr. Phil can’t help them.

What’s important here isn’t to sell change. Nobody likes change. It’s scary, it’s risky, it’s unpredictable. You’ll never get very far selling fear, risk and uncertainty. Especially to that crowd. So you have to approach change from a very different angle: From the end result. From what they actually want to accomplish.

First things first: Uncovering the true objectives of an organization’s leadership team

Before you do anything, you want to uncover the leaders’ specific objectives (or wishes, even) and then create a picture of what the company (as an organization) will look like in this “fantasy” version of the future. This takes more work than it sounds. You would be amazed how many CEOs have absolutely no idea where they really want to be in 5 years. They’ll tend to throw around numbers that sounds good but aren’t based in reality, like… “We’re at $8.3B in revenue this year. I want to be at $12B by 2012.” Because $12B in 2012 sounds cool and the investors will love it. But that’s bullshit. It’s all about swagger, not reality.

In cases like this, when you ask the CEO how they’re going to get there, you get an equally nonsensical answer like, “we’ll sell more stuff” or “we’ll expand into new markets” or some other such generalization. No specifics. No action plan. Nothing but pipe dream. That’s dangerous and counterproductive. What you need to do is get them off the cowboy plan and get them back to reality: You have to get specific about their goals. These types of sessions aren’t about impressing anyone. They’re about getting down to business, which starts with getting back to reality.

If they want to hit $12B by 2012, fine. Work your way backwards from that. What’s it going to take? Probably some key acquisitions, first and foremost. Is that even possible? Are they in a position to pull it off without risking too much exposure? Does it even make sense to try and grow that quickly? What else do they need to do? Look for strategic partnerships? Expand distribution? Capture more market share? All of the above? Okay, you have 24 months. Show me on a 24-month schedule/timeline how you currently plan to accomplish that.

And guess what: Most of the time, that plan doesn’t actually exist.  It got as far as being turned into a few bullet points on a slide in someone’s powerpoint presentation six months ago. So you have to start from scratch and see what’s realistic and what isn’t. You have to work out all of the contingencies. It isn’t rocket science, but it takes work. And it takes organization. And it takes commitment. Before you can even get to how a company is going to address empowering their employees through a real cultural change, before a company is ready to actually pull this off across all of its departments as a matter of policy, it has to know exactly where it wants to go and what it will take to get there. Not only that, but the leadership team has to both understand and accept that such empowerment is one of the ways they will get there.

Second: Mapping out the start, the “finish” and everything in between

Growth, change and success are hard. You have to map it all out, starting with where you are, where you want to go, and all the points in between if you want to have a shot at actually pulling it off. So change management, which is really what we’re talking about here, starts with that process. And that process starts with painting a crystal clear picture of what you want the organization to look like at the end of the process. (More like a milestone than a finish line, but that’s a topic for another day.)

Now, in order to hit the numbers the CEO threw at you, you really have to be able to create a detailed snapshot of the company in this specific future. What it looks like. Where it operates. How it operates. How it is structured. How it executes on its activities. You have to not only create a snapshot of what it looks like on the outside, but also on the inside, layer by layer, like a CAT scan.

Understanding changes in cultural dynamics and the evolution of technology, you can then zoom in from the portrait/snapshot of the company to its structure, then to its processes, then to the skills of its members. From there, you can reverse-engineer the adaptive phases that the company needs to go through.  To be realistic, the example I gave you (24 months) is too short when it comes to true cultural change for a company that didn’t have much of a culture to begin with. It takes time for organizations, especially large ones, to develop the kind of social  and emotional sophistication to do this well. It takes maturity, and maturity takes time. It isn’t something you can accelerate or optimize.

In this example then, the company’s strategy would focus a lot more on acquisitions and partnerships than growth through cultural change. But it isn’t to say that a cultural evolution couldn’t begin to happen during that time period. In order for the strategic changes to be a success, a lot of internal work needs to ensure that these changes won’t become a liability when it comes to simple things like customer service, customer experiences, internal communications between divisions, brand erosion, etc. You can’t divorce culture from infrastructure. Companies that don’t understand that always fail at creating efficient (and sustainable) versions of either.

Basic Lessons to keep in mind:

Anyway… Long story short: The most important thing when trying to get buy-in is to help clarify exactly where the company wants to be in 5, 10, 20 years. Not pie-in-the-sky bullshit, but specifics. Once you have that, you can paint a clear picture of what the future of the company NEEDS to look like. Now you’ve flipped change on its head. Instead of selling uncertainty, you’re selling clarity.

Knowing where you’re going is 90% of getting there. Most company execs are so focused on meeting numbers this month and this quarter that they just aren’t able to look beyond the here and now long enough to actually drive their businesses anywhere. They’re too busy reacting to the next pothole  or turn ahead. By helping them see 1 year into the future, then 2, then 5, than 10, you can help them impact their numbers now, this quarter, this half, this fiscal year, by giving their performance context in relation to where they want to actually take their business.

That’s a big part of what I do, and everything has to start with that. Before you can get to cultural change management, you have to make sure the leadership team knows where it wants to go and what it needs to do to get there.

The caveat: Lazy execs and the reality of horses that just won’t drink

But with all of that, if the CEO and the COO and the VP of this and that just don’t want to change their ways, if they are more committed to their game of golf and corner office and third McMansion than to the success of their business, there isn’t much I can do to help them. I already know I can’t fix stupid. I’m pretty sure I can’t fix lazy either.

People have to want to be successful, and it can be hard to convince a late career exec making seven or eight figures  and eying retirement in five to ten years that success is about more than the wealth they’ve already amassed. Success is a frame of mind they either want to have or not. The biggest lesson for them is this: Success doesn’t live in the past. Memories do. Success lives in the here and now and tomorrow. It really doesn’t matter what you accomplished ten years ago. What matters is what you’re doing today, and what you’ll accomplish next. Anything else is just ego. Throw away the plaques and the trophies. They aren’t who you are.

A guy who just wants to enjoy the trappings of success but isn’t willing to work his ass off to perpetuate that success is a guy who’s given up. That kind of individual is completely worthless to me, and more importantly, to his/her organization.

Unless the rest of the management team and I can appeal to their sense of pride and self worth, and tap into the ambition that fueled them in their youth, they’re basically in the way. Folks like that either have to get back in the game or move on if you want the organization to evolve. I can’t light a fire under their ass every single day. I can do it for a while, but eventually they have to step up and want to run the ball all on their own.

So, all this to say that you won’t win them all, Sonny. Execs who have grown complacent, live in denial and refuse to accept that their companies are headed straight to the crapper in ten years are beyond being reasoned with. I’ll only get so far with them before I move on to someone who won’t waste my time.

In the end, I can’t help people who don’t want to help themselves. And since organizations are really collectives of people, you either find leadership teams made up of people who are willing to do whatever it takes to save and/or make their businesses kick ass, or management teams made up of people who are happy to pretend that everything is golden even though their business is either stalled or in the tank. Usually, the latter are the first to blame the economy or cheap imports or whatever else they can throw a cat at to explain slow, flat or negative growth rather than take the blame themselves.

I’m not a miracle worker. I wish I were, but I’m not. I help people who are serious about making their business truly successful and are looking for good honest help. The rest, I try not to waste my time with. It’s far too precious as it is.

At some point soon, I’ll actually go over how to create really solid internal cultures both from the top down (trust, leadership, mentoring and hiring practices) and from the bottom up (trust, engagement, tribe mentality, alignment with the organization’s belief system), so don’t go too far. We’ll visit this topic again.

Thanks for giving me my topic today, Sonny. Cheers.

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Thoughts on the sorry state of Social Media Conferences – comments from readers

Yesterday, I talked about the disappointment (to put it mildly) I feel whenever I run into a pointless social-media related conference. Particularly the kind that charges significantly more than the value it actually delivers, and essentially serves no purpose other than to further inflate the social media hype bubble instead of actually advancing the discipline. If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, click here to go read it now.

Judging from the comments the post generated, this topic evidently struck a nerve with more than a few of you. Some of the comments were so good that I figured I should share a few of them with you today.

From Mack Collier: “The worst thing you can do for your event and the attendees is pick the speakers first, then the topics.”

Like you, I will only speak at events that stress teaching and learning. If the attendees can’t be sent home with a plan of action for how they will move forward with their social media efforts, then I won’t be a part of that event. This is a BIG reason why I am in no hurry to speak at SXSW again. I spoke there last year, was on a fabulous panel with Mario Sundar, Kami Huyse and Lionel Menchaca, but on the whole, SXSW is NOT where a company that wants to get up to speed on social media should be spending the time and money.

Now, before I got into my rant about speakers, I’ll add something that attendees should look for. Lots and lots of networking time. Not just with the speakers, but with each other. Look for interactive sessions, or open mic sessions. The more time attendees have to interact with speakers and each other, the better. That’s where the REAL value of the event comes in. It’s great that sessions are live-streamed, but that’s not where the value is, the value is in the hallways and during dinner. If the speakers at an event leave the stage and run to the airport, that’s a HUGE red flag.

As for conference organizers, the WORST thing you can do for your event and the attendees is pick the speakers FIRST, then the topics. If you say ‘OMG we have GOT to get Joe Rockstar to speak!’ then you’re screwed. You pick the topics that your attendees need to be taught about, THEN pick the speakers for that topic.

Second, you have GOT to paid your speakers. Even if you just cover travel, this is a must. Let’s say you don’t pay your speakers. That means they are out $1,000-2,000 just to get to the event. So that means they walk in the front door knowing they are a coupla thou in the hole. And how do you think they will make up that money? By trying to PUSH THEIR SERVICES on the attendees. Nice! And their presentation? Do you really think there’s much incentive for them to spend hours on making a kick-ass custom deck? The only customizing they will probably do is to add a couple more slides about THEMSELVES and how you can WORK WITH THEM.

Nice. Conference organizers, you get around this by PAYING your speakers. Don’t give them the ‘well no we can’ t pay you, but you’ll have access to HUNDREDS OF POTENTIAL CLIENTS!’ line. That’s BS. Those ‘potential clients’ are serial conference attendees, and are going to take copious notes and run home and try to do this stuff for themselves.

And as you said, there are WAY too many social media conferences. Case in point: A couple of months ago Social South was in Birmingham. Wonderful event, admission was $200, and should have been several times that. But the NIGHT before SoSo at the EXACT SAME VENUE, there was a FREE social media seminar where ‘experts will teach you all you need to know about using LinkedIn and Twitter to make $$$!’ And you better believe since this was a ‘free’ event, that attendees were subjected to a ‘free’ commercial by these ’social media experts’ on how they should HIRE THEM.

The social media conference circuit is quite frankly bloated, and broken. Hopefully organizers will pay attention to this post.

From Valeria Maltoni: “The multiple tracks and rushing to decide on what will be good from the program doesn’t cut it for me.”

It’s a really good discussion to have not just for social media. Branding and marketing conferences, international communications conferences come to mind, too.

I’ve attended my fair share and I can tell this community here – I like it how you all came in and discussed it from different angles – that the multiple tracks and rushing to decide on what will be good from the program doesn’t cut it for me.

Learning the same way I eat and am social, I take my time to enjoy the experience, absorb the context and connect with all present. Fewer speakers and some sessions to warm up with a topic and have a real discussion would result in a less disconnected and more useful experience – both for the participant and the speaker.

From John Heaney: “Is the best you can offer a 45 minute presentation on the 6 Best Facebook Fan Page Tips?”

Like you, I’ve become frustrated with the number of social media acolytes whose primary function appears to be trumpeting the importance of social media as the next great marketing channel.

We get it, already.

Want to know what’s tough? What really consumes our time and effort? Making social media efforts work. Day in, day out, engaging staff, management and clients in social media (or is that new media?) channels.

Believe me, I know how to give a kick-ass presentation that will have C-level executives salivating over the prospect of implementing their own social media initiatives. I can power through a captivating Keynote presentation that convinces them that delay is potentially ruinous.

Then, however, I have to execute a real life campaign. Design a researched strategy that makes sense for their organization and integrates with their existing marketing efforts. Design guidelines and policies to protect the organization. Introduce the campaign internally. Train employees. Train some more. Then train some more. Generate compelling content, then try to recruit internal talent to contribute their own. Market and promote the company blog, Twitter contacts, fan pages, YouTube channels and any other selected channels to targeted prospects and an existing client base. Then do it every single day. All the while tracking SM activity and tying that activity back to authentic and measurable business activity. The revenue-generating kind.

Now, can you help me with that? Or is the best you can offer a 45 minute presentation on the 6 Best Facebook Fan Page Tips?

(Right on.)

From Scott Gould: “We, the conference organisers have been hoodwinked into building celebrity events about quantity and not change incubators about quality.”

We need this kind of talking, because to be honest, we (the conference organisers) have been hoodwinked into building celebrity events about quantity and not change incubators that are about quality.

It took a lot of hard work and resistance to make Like Minds what it was (and what it will be) – as so many people wanted to pitch in with their ideas for making money and not imparting value. It takes guts to hold that type of event at the risk of financial loss.

From Amber Naslund: “A conference built putting tools in the forefront is leading with the wrong message to start with.”

The social media hype has us waaay too focused on the tactics and tools, and not nearly enough in the broader business implications. A conference built putting tools in the forefront is leading with the wrong message to start with.

I think that one gets missed a lot because the organizers are in the making-money-with-events business, not the teach-people-to-do-their-jobs-better business.

You can go read the rest of the comments (and leave your own) here. In the meantime, keep them coming.

Update: (added Monday 3 November 2009 – 13:50)

From Steve Woodruff: “I’m impatient with hearing the same old same old tired generalities, especially when it is dressed up in meaningless biz-jargon.”

Over the years, I’ve attended many, many conferences – some awful, some forgettable, and a few outstanding.

I’m getting impatient.

I’m impatient with thinly-veiled sales pitches from sponsoring companies during sessions. If you’re going to have sponsoring companies, set aside a specific time in the event when they can present their solutions openly to the audience.

I’m impatient with speakers who think their role is to walk through a series of slides and do a verbal data dump. If you cannot spark interest, tell engaging stories, use helpful analogies, facilitate discussion, and (yes, this matters) speak with a reasonably pleasing voice, then don’t be a presenter.

I’m impatient with attendees who are satisfied with passive information reception. We deserve and should demand better.

I’m impatient with hotel setups where you cannot get some light on the speaker. Really – you CAN do this.

I’m impatient with hearing the same old same old tired generalities, especially when it is dressed up in meaningless biz-jargon. If it’s not practical, real-life, and fresh,  put it on a blog somewhere where it can be ignored. Because that’s what your audience is doing.

I’m impatient with a lack of daring. Try newthings. Shake things up. Get some creative thinkers in your advisory board and plan, from 9-12 months out, how you’re going to make things better.

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