Featured post by Jay Deragon from LinkToYourWorld.comThe social web is creating a reversal in the process of managing customers. People learn from people and subsequently are avoiding influence from institutions rather the conversations of people, one to one to millions, have become the power of influence.These conversations are creating “social markers” on brands. “Social markers” is a term created by Hugh MacLeod whose blog, GapingVoid, defines social markers as “ a prime form of social shorthand, that people use to STAKE OUT the ecosystem they’re occupying”. A brands social marker can be either good or bad. It is tagged by the conversations of those that have experienced the brands product, service or culture.

Every business has an ecosystem forming within the social web. The ecosystem is driven by the people who have experience with your brand. Whether suppliers, employees or customers the relational experience with your brand is what influences your brands “social marker“. The social web is an “ecosystem” that enables conversations to spread like wildfire and the more conversations the more attention the conversations create.

If your brand is a positive “social marker”, within this ecosystem, you will have a competitive advantage on the other hand if your brand is a negative social marker well just think about the implications.

Is Social Markers creating a Shift?

Theo Papadakis wrote a post which first appeared in the 2nd Online Customer Engagement Survey Report, and his ending comment states “The first questions for would be customer-engagers should not be “what technology should we deploy?”, nor “how can we engage our audience?”, but instead: “What is it that our customers are currently doing, where are they doing it and what do they want to achieve.” And guess what – the best person to ask is … your customer.”

While agreeing with the context of Mr. Papadakis post the train may have already left the station. The train we’re referring to is a shift in control from the brands desire to engage the customer to the customer taking control over the engagement.

Today business relies on CRM products designed to facilitate customer needs into a framework designed by the supplier. It is like telling your spouse or children “I want your feedback but only within this context”. The feedback system is not designed to listen rather to control the context into “frames” the supplier thinks are important to us rather than “open conversations” that are important to us, the customer. Most corporations would consider the thought of having “open conversations” with a large audience of customers a nightmare of uncontrollable cost. When they consider the “technological tools” of the social web they think of it as tools to control and manage, the customer.

The flaw in this thinking is that people would rather simply be heard than managed. Managing and acting on the intelligence gained from conversations is a much more effective way of building stronger relations. The outcomes should scream “I heard you” and subsequent actions should demonstrate that we’ve changed or learned something as a result of what we heard. Automated conversations are not real conversations.

The Old Methods Have Failed The New is in Control

People are now empowered to influence brands by the reach and influence of conversations, one to one to millions. These conversations are becoming social markers. Frustrated by brand promises not fulfilled, old sales and marketing tactics, dysfunctional corporate cultures, the people are speaking out and are managing, creating and influencing markets. Instead of businesses managing customer, customers will influence how businesses are managed.

Which method are you prepared for? The old or the new?

What say you?

Whether your the boss, a manager, or employee, you spend the majority of your life at work. You might as well be motivated so you can enjoy that time. A book called Fire Them Up! by Carmine Gallo will do just that!

We have all seen workplaces where it was dreadful to come in on a Monday morning. Nobody’s motivated to do anything except just enough work to keep their job. Your boss is a jerk, your coworkers are rude, and you just can’t seem to get out of the rut and find a new job. A transformation like this might be near damn impossible, but if your workplace already has a lot of fundamentals, you might be on the brink of being a truly motivating place to work.

Fire Them Up! has all the ingredients of making the workplace a fun, enjoyable, and productive place to work.

There are 7 simple secrets, but the one I enjoy the most is being inspired yourself. The more inspired you are, the more it will show and it will be contagious. If you truly enjoy who you are and what you do, it will motivate others to company goals. This one is probably the hardest as well since it takes a lot of energy and commitment to work on yourself.

You will learn how to motivate and engage your employees and motivate others.

After reading this book, I’m not only going to be more inspired in my career, but in my personal life as well. That is one of the things that I really appreciate about this book; that I can apply it to other aspects of my life.

If you’re ready to enjoy the career you’ve always wanted, pick up the book you will start to see the effects immediately!

IN PRISON… you spend the majority of your time in an 8X10 cell.
AT WORK… you spend the majority of your time in a 6X8 cubicle.

IN PRISON… you get three meals a day.
AT WORK… you only get a break for one meal and you have to pay for it.

IN PRISON… you get time off for good behavior.
AT WORK… you get more work for good behavior.

IN PRISON… the guard locks and unlocks all the doors for you.
AT WORK… you must carry around a security card and open all the doors for yourself.

IN PRISON… you can watch TV and play games.
AT WORK… you get fired for watching TV and playing games.

IN PRISON… you get your own toilet.
AT WORK… you have to share with some idiot who pees on the seat.

IN PRISON…they allow your family and friends to visit.
AT WORK…you can’t even speak to your family.

IN PRISON… all expenses are paid by the taxpayers with no work required
AT WORK… you get to pay all the expenses to go to work and then they deduct taxes from your salary to pay for prisoners.

IN PRISON… you spend most of your life inside bars wanting to get out.
AT WORK… you spend most of your time wanting to get out and go inside bars.

IN PRISON… you must deal with sadistic wardens.
AT WORK… they are called managers.

So why is it, again, that we work?

It’s a surprise to me how many companies have websites these days. From the companies that run their business out of their home office, the hundreds of thousands of small businesses, all the way up to large corporations…they all have a website and utilize email for communicating with clients, vendors, and other employees within the company. At the same time, it still surprises me how many companies do not have a professional email account!

Email is the most prominent use of communicating with others in today’s business world. As such, you want to make sure that your email host has all the tools to keep you up and maintain support so you never have any problems with your email address.

I’m bringing this up because I’ve been researching companies that provide Microsoft Exchange hosting for SMBs. Most of my clients are small to medium sized businesses and many times they are lacking in enterprise-strength hosted IT. This is one of the areas of your business that you want to pay careful attention to because if things go down, your business will suffer. It’s not about finding the cheapest hosted IT, but the one that gives you the most valuable.

I’m checking out a company called Intermedia. The reason I’m looking more into their services is because they offer a 30-day free trial so you can really dig into their services and check their response time if you have any issues.

Whether you have a company website or not, they offer hosted Exchange so you can focus on more important things in your business and not worry about your email going down. Also, you won’t have to invest the thousands of dollars in purchasing the equipment and maintaining your own Exchange. Even if you have a full time IT guy, I’m sure there’s many other responsibilities you would rather have him work on than worrying about one of the most important aspects of your business.

Also, if you’re like me, you have your Blackberry on you most of the day so you can take phone calls and receive email when your away from the office. Intermedia offers wireless email support so you can receive all of your business email directly on your Blackberry or other email supported phone. I know that I bought my Blackberry specifically for the reason of receiving my email when I’m on the go.

Give your IT guy a break, and don’t worry about having your email go down when you choose to go with top notch email hosting providers. There are many other aspects of your business that would be better suited to focus on than email. Your business, and banking account, will thank you for it later.

When you first start a new company, it is vitally important that you set up your mission statement. This is a statement that gives your company purpose. What are you starting this new company for? What do you want it to accomplish? What is the driving force behind this organization?

The reason you want to give this careful thought is because the mission statement is what will keep you focused. The better you’re able to define this statement, the easier it will be to focus on what’s important. The values of the company can also be included in the mission statement. When things are going really well, it will be a reminder of why you started the business in the first place. When things aren’t going so great, it will help you stay on track and accomplish your goals.

It’s also important to review your mission statement and update it accordingly. Hopefully, you gave your mission statement enough thought at the beginning where it is solid and there doesn’t need to be any changes made. However, there are certain times in a company’s life where it may need to be updated. If you brought on a new partner, changed your business model, or outgrew the original statement. These are all good times to go back and review your mission statement and it’s purpose.

Featured post by Jay Deragon from LinkToYourWorld.comBusinesses are shaped and built around markets, existing or created. Whether the proposition is a product or service, for a business to survive it has to have a market that wants or needs its product or service.Business follows different methods to build and deliver to the masses. Creating market differential aimed at specific markets is the means for creating market movement. Think of the Apple IPhone as an example of creating and delivering market differential and thus movement.

What and Where are the Markets?

A market is a social structure for exchange of rights, which enables people, firms and products to be evaluated and priced. A market allows buyers and sellers to discover information and carry out a voluntary exchange of goods or services. It is one of the two key institutions for organizing trade. In everyday usage, the word “market” may also refer to the location where goods and services are traded, or in other words, the marketplace of transactions.

Business is a Web of Conversational Transactions

A conversational transaction is an agreement, communication, or movement carried out between separate entities or individuals. These conversations often involve the exchange of items of value, such as information, introductions, knowledge, services and sometimes money. These conversational transactions evolve into relationships based on an affinity defined between two parties then thousands of individuals collectively forming a “swarm” of transactional conversations centric to affinities.

These collective relationships then form into markets being defined by the “collective parties engaging in conversations“. Think about how customers thrilled or disappointed with a new product or service converse with others thus creating a web of conversations that influence others. Think about employees disappointed with employers and the influence the subsequent conversations have when promulgated into the marketplace of people. The marketplace is where the conversation are occurring, the conversational transactions are the influence on the marketplace, any marketplace, your marketplace.

The Social Web is the Marketplace of Conversations

The social web is the new marketplace fueled by conversations and relationships formed at the intersection of people and technology. Web 1.0 was about delivering information. Web 2.0 is about enabling conversations which in turn create transactions. Thus the appropriate label of the “social web”.

Doc Searls book, The Cluetrain Manifesto, and on his blog often and regularly he refers to three categories of activity which are fueled and enabled by the power of the web. These are: transactions, conversations and relationships. Doc writes “In too many markets the mix of the three is warped and strained. Too much of the conversation is insincere, preachy, hollow or otherwise bullshit. And the current methods used by businesses pollutes both conversation and relationship.”

“Networked markets are beginning to self-organize faster than the companies that have traditionally served them. Thanks to the web, markets are becoming better informed,” Some of Doc’s key points are:

• These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.
• As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.
• People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products.
• There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.
• What’s happening to markets is also happening among employees. A metaphysical construct called “The Company” is the only thing standing between the two.
• Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.
• In just a few more years, the current homogenized “voice” of business—the sound of mission statements and brochures—will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.smarter, and more demanding of qualities missing from most business organizations.

The Social Web of Business

Business is about markets, methods and masses. The markets are the relationships, people. The methods are about the conversation and the masses is about the reach of the transactions. To win in the relationship economy a business must have solid market relations, honest, open and frank conversations which in turn fuel the transactions, results.

The Relationship Economy is about people, one to one to millions, transacting in the form of conversations but openly, honestly and at velocities never before experienced. These transactions enable new relationships to be formed with a global reach and formed within what we have come to call the social web.

These conversations are about anything, everything, anybody and everybody. These conversations are nonstop able, fluid, frank and with no hierarchy of control, they are free and without constraint. This represents a movement of markets and unless business understands the methods they will loose the masses and the subsequent transactions.

It is that simple yet hard for business to grasp considering the current state of mind. “It” requires a different mindset, a focus on human factors and understanding the value of “real” conversations.

What say you?

Featured post by Jay Deragon from LinkToYourWorld.com

The great historian George Santana once said “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.”The history of social movements have demonstrated the human desire for independence while the “portals of power” have always tried to make people dependent on the power structures.

More and more people are becoming dependent on social networks for multiple purposes. These dependencies are flying in the face of the basic human desire for independence. Consider the resent Robert Scoble story about being banned from Facebook.

E-Week reports: Facebook on Jan. 3 reinstated Robert Scoble’s membership one day after banishing the high-tech blogger for testing a Plaxo tool that imports contact information from Facebook to the Plaxo Pulse service.

Facebook’s servers detected the automated script, which a representative told Scoble resembled the same type of script used to commit malicious attacks and send spam and shut the account down earlier Jan. 2.

Scoble promptly blogged about how he was cut off from his 5,000 Facebook friends, triggering an outcry from supporters in the blogosphere that is renewing the debate about who has the right to control data on a social network—its users or the network.

Facebook has very clear rules that the data on its network is under its purview; users would like to export their data to other social sites so they don’t have to re-enter data on multiple social networks. When Facebook banned Scoble, it provided a reason for users who want to control their data to reignite the fire.

While the historical conflict of dependence vs. independence has been between the people and the powers that govern the people there is now an evolving conflict between the people and the technology. The intersection of the matrix.

Doc Searls wrties: “Independence is a value that has run like a river, not just through the Open Source movement, but through the Independent Developer movement, the Free Software movement, and through hacker culture for the duration. Its origins are in value systems that recognize the transcendent virtues of personal freedom. Including the freedom of assembly that results in social groupings — especially those that are inherently elective. To be free is to opt in, not just out.”

“Scoble should be able to take his personal data, his social data, and his business, anywhere he likes. Our ability to associate and communicate and work out “social networking” should be independent of Facebook, LinkedIn, or any company’s walled garden.”

“The problem is, we have not framed what we want, and what we invent, sufficiently in terms of independence rather than dependence. We have not started with ourselves and worked outward and otherward from there. Instead we’ve waited for the Facebooks and Orkuts and Friendsters of the world to prototype our “social networks” for us. Which is fine, as far as it goes. But that’s like letting AT&T or Apple some other company contintue to define operating systems for us. With BSD and Linux we stopped doing that, and started making for ourselves.”

“We need to do the same with social networking. We can choose to serve as batteries in the Matrix that is Facebook (and every other “social network” that serves as a world-like habitat). Or we can choose to be free. That’s it.”

The battle between the people and the technology is just beginning. As Doc says, we can choose to depend on the matrix and thus become dependent or we can choose to be free. The choice is ours and if history repeats itself we’re in for a battle regardless of the choices we make.

Independence actually has a set of dependencies. The dependencies are at the conversational intersections between and among people. One to one to millions. The power of these dependencies is when the conversations become united and stand together on common principles that enable independence.

Facebook reinstated Robert Scoble’s membership because the people spoke up in swarms but did they change the rules of the matrix?

What say you?

www.relationship-economy.com

Jay Deragon

In business, you want to have the best employees working for you. If your team is made up of high quality people who have the skills and traits to succeed, your company will grow faster, quicker, and easier.

It’s those times that you have key employees holding your company back from this growth. I’m sure you’ve seen it countless times in your career. Those employees who aren’t motivated to work, gossip, or just don’t have the right skill set to succeed in your business.

Workitect.com has studied the characteristics and skills of high performing employees and what makes them stand apart from the rest. This type of research can help you understand the type of people you need to higher within your organization to help the business succeed.

What’s important to point out is just because a potiental employee isn’t suited for a certain position, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t suited for a different position within the company. Workitect has done a lot of research on certain job competencies and the qualities and skills those people should have to succeed in the position.

If you’re looking for a new job, this would also be a great way to access your own skills and see which types of jobs you would be best at. I know when I was younger, I bounced from one job to another until I found the one that I was highly successful at. If I would have had this type of information in my early 20’s, I wouldn’t have wasted so much time throughout my career trying to “find” the perfect job.

Businesses that want to succeed should incorporate some sort of competency models into their hiring process. It would save them a lot of time and money on hiring the wrong person for the job. As you go up the corporate ladder, it becomes even more important to hire the right person the first time.

Now that we’ve entered into 2008, I hope most of you have written down your business and personal goals that you want to accomplish this year.

I just got done reviewing the goals I set in early 2007 last week and I was happy with the things I’ve been able complete (and of course there’s still things I need to work on).

I want to thank the people who have helped with this site over the last year as well. You should have noticed that CEOConsultant.com added four contributors this year and their business knowledge is incredible and I truly appreciate them taking the time to post their thoughts, observations, and experience in their respected industries. Please take the time to visit their sites and see if they have a solution your company is looking for to accomplish your goals.

Jay Deragon: LinkToYourWorld.com

Brock Henderson: Henderson & Associates

Lara Valentine: Green Habits

Terry Kaufman: Your English Solutions

Thank you and may this year be a prosperous one!

Featured post by Jay Deragon from LinkToYourWorld.com

“You’ll have ten minutes to explain the virtual world of social networks.” That was the instructions from a global corporation who asked us to dial into the proverbial Monday morning executive meeting and discuss social networks.So how does one educate business executives about the value of conversational relationships with a ten minute limit set on the conversation? You can’t!In another example, a Fortune 500 company had engaged us to research their specific niche market as it relates to what the market was doing with social networks and what opportunities could they pursue to create market differential as well as improve customer and employee satisfaction.

Upon finishing the research we began to write the report and send drafts to the appointed project manager within the company. Our first draft was ten pages long. The appointed project managers first response was “we have a rule around here and that is our executives will not read anything longer than two pages.” The essence of the message was “we don’t need to know why and how to do something rather simply tell us what to do and do so quickly.”

Does the “how and why” impact what the final results will be?

Many, if not all, employees of any corporation will relate to the two examples above. Pressed by deadlines and an abundance of task businesses thirst for the “one minute answers” and then when the answers are implemented but do not produce the expected results the blame game begins. Subsequently “pointing fingers at who is to blame” becomes a cultural norm when the “what” answers contained in the two page summaries or ten minute presentations do not produce expected results.

Dr. Charles (Kalev) Ehin, Professor of Management Emeritus and the former Dean of the Gore School of Business at Westminster College writes: ” Have you ever wondered how things actually get accomplished in most organizations despite all the obstacles continuously encountered by the people who perform the day-to-day activities? I’m sure you have unless, of course, you are one of those rare individuals who is independently wealthy and has never worked for someone else. Not surprisingly, all of us have our own individual theories about why businesses survive in spite of the seemingly unworkable systems and processes they frequently employ. Just in case you may have, for a moment, forgotten what those obstacles are let me list just a few of the most common:”

• Unclear goals and objectives
• Ambiguous or unexplained policies and procedures
• Unrealistic deadlines and budgets
• Pressure to do more with less
• Lack of cooperation and teamwork
• Poor and uninspiring leadership
• Lack of open communications and trust

“Can you imagine what gains in wealth, creativity, and social responsibility could be realized if enterprises discovered how to leverage the hidden but powerful attributes that allow firms to make a profit in spite of these barriers? The possibilities are boundless. And think as well about how much more successful mergers and change initiatives in general would be if they could tap into these attributes. Essentially, my focus will be on the nature of the emergent systems or informal networks present in all social entities and what leaders must do to “allow” the tremendous energy and creativity inherent in these systems to support the overall organizational vision and objectives.”

Successful Social Networks are more about the How and Why

The innate power of relationships is the learning element that we adults seem to have forgotten. Part of the element of learning is conversational and without taking time to have a conversation learning is being limited. Half of a conversational process is listening and maybe it is the most important part. If business leaders don’t have time to listen or engage in conversations how will they learn the inherent power of social networks?

I have a five year old son whose constant response to any conversation is “why” which is indicative of human natures desire to learn. Even when you respond to his first “why” he’ll naturally follow up with another “why” until he thinks he’s gained an understanding of the subject matter being discussed. Ironically when he thinks he truly understands something he’ll be the first to correct his father in future conversations relative to whatever he thinks he now understands. Sound familiar?

Business thinking and subsequent institutional behavior has created deficits in learning capacities and capabilities. Finding quick answers to market movements, short term profit pressures and institutional maladies is a repetitive process that robs peoples ability to learn the how and why. Do business leaders really think they have learned enough to simply ask for what without understanding why and how? If we truly found time to have conversations with employees, suppliers and customers what would we learn?

A ten minute presentation or a two page summary may not be enough to understand the power behind a major social movement. Are we so connected to business that our relationships have become disconnected?

What say you?