Organizational Change – Red Chair Group

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 organization’s specific objectives and then create a picture of what the company (as an organization) should look like once the objectives are met. This takes more work than it sounds. You would be amazed how many senior executives have no clear idea where they really want their organization to be in 5 years. Occasionally, you will run into a CEO eager to throw around a number that sounds good to Wall Street but isn’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 is catchy, easy to rally behind, and the investors will love it. And while the number may be attainable, the process by which it was chosen is more about swagger than reality.

Worse yet, in cases where targets were set based on random factors, when you ask some CEOs how they intend to get there, you may get a vague answer along the lines of “we’ll sell more stuff” or “we’ll expand into new markets” or some other generalization. No specifics. No action plan. Nothing of substance. This lack of specificity and clarity can be both dangerous to morale and counterproductive when it comes to actually delivering on the promise of that target.

The faster everyone is off the cowboy plan, the faster you can get back to reality: Goals have to be specific. Real strategy sessions aren’t about impressing anyone. They’re about getting down to business, which starts with setting aside theory, and creating workable action plans.

If a CEO wants 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? Is the company 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 needs to happen: 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) may be 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 with a tool.

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. This is as true of Social Media integration as any shift in operational management.

Basic Lessons to keep in mind:

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 generalizations, 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.

Change for the sake of improvement always trumps change for the sake of change. The first has value. The latter offers none.

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.

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.
We’ll be covering some of this in greater detail – as it relates to Social Media integration in PR, Advertising, Marketing, Customer Service, HR, legal and business development in Portland next month.

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:

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.)

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.

(If you want us to add your city to the list, let me know. We’ll chat.) 2010 is definitely going to be a fun year.