My mother always used to say to me “What goes around comes around”. As a young boy she would say that to me every time I felt used by a friend or taken advantage of by someone. The older I got the more I witnessed how true this was and we truly do reap what we sow, sometimes immediately and sometimes it takes years.In business and personal relations a negative action can create a chain of reactions that center around a negative thread. We enter into personal relationships never expecting things will go wrong. However sometimes they do and the “wrongs” become defined through our personal filters of what the “rights” should be. What usually ensues is arguments over who is right and who is wrong with neither party seeking to understand before they can be understood.

Rarely do such arguments end in a win win solution but when they do it is evidence of both parties ability to set aside differences while agreeing to both respect those differences and focus on the common values of the relationship.

Is This True in Business Relationships?

Business conflicts usually arise out of broken promises and expectations not being met. The fuel that drives conflict is centric to economic gain or loss by either party. However, the essence of conflicts start and end with the dynamics of the relationships.

When we form business relations it follows the model of either a supplier, employee or a customer of the business. Businesses need suppliers and employees in order to serve the end product, service or message to their customers. When things go “wrong” anywhere in the supply chain or the delivery chain, whether it be with the product or service, relationship conflicts arise and much time and money is spent trying to resolve the “wrongs”.

When a wrong carries significance, either economically, emotionally, physically or mentally the magnitude of loss determines the degree of pursuit to be made “right”. In business the larger the perceived wrong the more likely that a legal process will be used as the means for conflict resolution. As soon as any conflict gets to the legal stage the cost of resolution goes up and damage to the “relationships”, or in a larger sense markets, becomes extremely difficult to repair or even salvage.

Then there are business conflicts which never end up in legal disputes but the cost of these conflicts can sometimes be larger than those pursued through the legal system. Historically these kind of conflicts were buried in the hearts and minds of those who have loss something as a result of the “wrongs”. Everyone simply walked away and the offenders hoped the issues would never arise again and that “word of the conflict” would not spread too far. Some businesses, not all, tend to take advantage of both there size and economic muscle, power, in resolving conflicts by leveraging the offending parties inability to fuel the cost of a legal dispute. Many consider these tactics a win and will leverage these dynamics any day of the week.

Will Conflicts Now Trickle Down or Up?

The social web creates transparency to both the wrongs and the rights of suppliers, employees and customers. The transparency of collective conversations are open to discovery by anyone, anywhere about anything and everything. Today’s media is quick to report “news” formed by either major business announcements or collective conversations facilitated through the social web. A wrong or right can trickle down to the masses very quickly.

The term “trickle-down” comes from an analogy with a phenomenon in marketing, the trickle-down effect. Some economist support “trickle-down economics” and “trickle-down theory,” and propose that it works best for a collective society. Conversational rivers flow through the social web and trickle down to the point of influence over people, businesses and markets.

Given these dynamics business owners, shareholders and entire markets may need to rethink how they deal with conflict resolution in the future. Focusing on the value of good relations may mean the past tactics of conflict resolution need to be reconstructed around enhancing good will with people rather than leveraging power against them for the wrong purpose.

The alternative is that the conversational rivers of the people become a negative influence over your business, your markets, your suppliers, your customers and certainly not least, your employees. In the old days conversations and the subsequent objectives trickled down. Today the conversations may trickle up.

What goes around comes around.

What say you?

Business leaders collect data and subsequently when confronted with the aggregate analysis the typical reaction is to create organizational change aimed at improving the negative results highlighted in the data.

The subsequent change initiatives consume internal resources, already overloaded with work, and typically involve outside consultants who make their living trying to help organizations gain from implementing change. Lots of time, energy and money is spent simply trying to align an organization with customer and market preferences.

The game is being better than competition at delivering on or exceeding the expectations of the customer and the entire market an organization serves.

So the challenge for business leaders is to organize people, processes and products/services that consistently and continuously deliver beyond what is expected and prepare for future expectations.

The two points of critical measurement are 1) “the voice of the system” (internal people and processes) and 2) “the voice of the customer and markets” (customers and suppliers aggregated as a market).

Where are these voices?

The social web’s interactive nature and ability to facilitate real conversations between real people, where there is common interest, is the phenomena driving voice of the customer analytics. Customers have real needs, companies offer real solutions. Voice of the customer research is driven by this common interest and a sincere desire to share and listen. Customer driven organizations are the result of technology used to forward the idea that ‘the common good’ can be explored best through democratic systems. A democratic system must be lead and by the “voice of the system”.

The “voice of the system“, internal people and processes, is very similar to the “voice of the customer” in that the common element which provides the most valuable input and influence is the people.

What Are The People Saying?

Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council’s recently released a study called “Profitability from Customer Affinity“. A high level review of the most significant and noteworthy research findings included:

• Fifty-six percent of vendors perceive themselves as being extremely customer-centric, but only 12% of customers agree.
• An overwhelming majority of vendors—85%—are convinced that they are getting better at responding to customer needs, but 45% of customers disagree.
• More than half of customers surveyed described their relationships with vendors as “dependent and captive,” “struggling for common ground,” or “combative and adversarial.”
• When asked to describe their relationships with the channel, 45% of customers surveyed evaluated their channel relationships similarly.
• More than 30% of customer respondents said they would terminate relationships with companies that fail to gain their trust; 62% would scale back existing engagements, while 7% would no longer consider the vendor for future business.

The flyer we received for the report states “The full Profitability from Customer Affinity” report will help you rethink how you embrace, interact with and respond to your customers. The complete report is available for purchase for $299.00 by simply clicking here. .”

Notice how big the “gap” is between the voice of the customer and the voice of the system? Just maybe the root cause is a lack of listening by business leaders combined with the inability to effectively initiate top down changes within their organizations.

Ironically when you look at employee survey results the data pretty much reflects the same as the “voice of the customer”.

Maybe we can save a ton of money by simply paying attention to the blinding flash of the obvious. Then again leaders would have to let go of their control so that the people can fix the obvious. The rules of the game have changed and now business rules have to change.

What say you?

In the old days when the conductor of the train was ready to leave a station the whistle blew and he shouted “All Aboard!”.Yesterdays presentation at the SAP Anniversary session of The Cluetrain ignited the blogosphere with conversational rivers that will likely swell for weeks. Doc Searls presentation ripped open minds and made us all think about today’s social web realities and what seems to be the “blinding flash of the obvious” when presented as only Doc can present.

Labeled as provocative, radical and disruptive the comments were aimed at the existing institutional and corporate mindsets that continue to create barriers to the very conversational freedoms afforded us by the enabling technologies of the social web.

Doc’s comments flew through the web as if it were a giant copy machine and bloggers added to the commentary largely in agreement but with an awoken spirit motivated and with passion. The copies magnified, flourished and the conversational rivers turned into a sea full of waves roaring with enthusiasm and energy.

Doc’s says “Groundswell - a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations. Companies sees the one-to-one communication, can’t measure it, but now there are ways to do this at scale. CBS Jericho TV show - what happens after a nuclear bomb goes off near a town. Jericho message boards were active, show went on hiatus came back placed against American Idol, same audience, show canceled. Shaun Daily, on BlogTalk radio, would not accept the cancellation. Collaborated with Nuts online, asked people to send nuts to Nina Tassler at CBS, had 20 tons of nuts that were delivered to the show. Saw that the decision to cancel Jericho was a mistake.”

CBS announced the comeback of the show on the CBS fan message boards, said that they will count on the fans to rally their friends - PS, stop sending us nuts Jericho Wiki, Jericho Widget - things are very 2.0 now. Companies don’t really understand that markets are conversations, but understand that the groundswell is there and that they have to manage it.

Revolutionaries Create Change, Radicals Create Upheaval.

If the social web had a constitution it would read “We the People of the Social Web, in Order to form a free exchange, establish free conversations, insure seamless transactions, provide for the common voice, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our community, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Seamless Web“.

The subsequent articles would address the powers of self governance, self organization and freedom of expression. In essence such a constitution exist in the minds and hearts of those that not only agree with much of what Doc says but desire to unite in one voice and together break down the barriers with our collective influence.

Consider the comment Groundswell - a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations”. How much more productive could we be, could our world be, if we united together and applied influence towards mindsets that try and control our conversations with archaic rules and power plays. Consider what happen when Robert Scoble’s Facebook incident created a groundswell of support from other users. Facebook changed their rules. Examples abound that united we stand, divided we fall.

When Cluetrain first came out in 1999 it did indeed create a river of conversations but the flow of these conversations were constrained by the technology of the moment. Ten years later the technology has advanced, the people are smarter, more adaptive and are embodied in the power of social influence. The empowerment has been self assumed and as mentioned in Doc’s recent speech, Leadership is needed. The definition and assumption about leadership of the past implies one. The past is behind us and the new definition of leadership is many. However to lead one must be willing to stand up united and be heard so that the conversation unites many others and provokes leadership actions.

Based on the ebb and flow of the recent Cluetrain conversations sparked, copied and distributed is seems that the train is getting ready to leave the station and the conductor is yelling “All Aboard The Crazy Train!”. Are you aboard or will you stand by and watch the train leave hoping that the people reach their destination but leave the “nuts” along the way?

What say you?

www.relationship-economy.com

Doc Searls, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, did a anniversary presentation at the SAP offices in New York City today and his comments were summed up by Charlene Li on a blog post at Social Media Today that is worth sharing. Charlene writes : “Doc Searls started talking about the genesis of The Cluetrain Manifesto. This was fascinating to me. He started with reflections of the overblown 90’s (Push, Pointcast). “Customers treated as plankton.” A reaction to the overblown venture investments in “capturing eyeballs” in the 90s.”

“The genesis of a lot of those ideas as he described (e.g. 95 theses, “markets are conversations”) sounds as if it wasn’t all that thoughtful. And didn’t take that long to write. But what made these ideas so fresh and powerful (my opinion here) is that it was obvious to them long before anyone else was even thinking about it. The cluetrain authors were unafraid to talk about it frankly. And — this is important — they had each other to bounce things off of.”

“Does it hold up after 10 years? Rereading it — and listening to Doc — it does. The strident tone seems a bit “of its time” — that is, they were screaming about things you don’t have to scream about any more. But the content seems as true as it did when it was written.”

“But Doc has remained way out in front of what’s happening, rather than consolidating the gains we made in getting to the Cluetrain world.”

“I love Doc’s take on Web 2.0. He implies that O’Reilly’s emphasis on the software is misplaced — and wants to know why he uses advertising as his first example. I concur. The real change is about people and how they relate to business — software is the enabler. Fascinating, as Doc points out, that Google search “Web 2.0? search yields ads about Advertising.”

“He’s still got a problem with advertisers and advertising — including on Facebook. Searls’ updated theses (numbering is not a mistake — he skipped a few)”

1. Advertising as we know it will die.

2. Herding people into walled gardens and guessing about what makes them “social” will seem as absurd as it actually is. (Facebook is his example.)

3. We will realize that the most important producers are what we used to call consumers. (Yup.)

4. The value chain will be replaced by the value constellation. (Many connections.)

5. “What’s your business model?” will no longer be asked of everything. (What’s the business model for your kids?)

6. We will make money by maximizing “because effects”. (”Because effects” are what happen when you make more money because of something than with it.) E.g. search and blogging.

8. We will be able to manage vendors at least as well as they manage us. (Agreements between companies and customers shouldn’t be skewed in favor of the companies.) At Harvard Law they call this VRM — vendor relationship management — which is what Searls is working on (projectvrm.org).

10. We’ll marry the live web to the value constellation. (The Live Web isn’t just about stars. Relationships of anybody to anybody.)

Examples: The personal RFP — find me what I need (driven by buyer not seller) I should be able to manage my own health care data. I should be able to inquire and relate to whole markets on the fly. I think Doc is still a radical — a bomb-thrower, a provocateur. But to create real change, you have to be a revolutionary — someone who engages with the powers that be to create major change. We need radicals. But we need revolutionaries too.

We’ve come to know Doc personally and all we can say is his mind sees the obvious while the masses see and engage in the clutter of the moment. Doc’s heart is as deep as his mind is broad and his perspectives are worthy of attention to those wishing to lead rather than follow.

Seeing things as they are and speaking to the obvious is frank, honest and given his reach and influence his perspectives are disruptive. Disruption is what we need to maximize the social web benefits in front of us by letting go of the paradigms behind us.

What say you?

www.relationship-economy.com 

02 13th, 2008

An average commuter will drive 60 miles a day which equates to $21,098 in cost a year per person commuting. This cost continues to rise as the cost of fuel goes up.The average worker spends in excess of 50 hours a week away from home. As businesses try and get leaner the demands on workers go up and to keep the job more is expected which means more time on the job doing more. People discuss these issues, one to one to millions daily. The conversations are abundant.

The current credit crunch and subsequent long tail effects could cause significant shifts in the “credit economy” with ripples being felt globally. Already new home housing stats are indicating a slow down in residential real estate and the bankruptcy rate is on the rise.  The conversations are abundant.

Consumer debt is at an all time high and the rate of late and default payments is increasing. The gurus of economics converse over whether this is just the beginning or the end of bad economic news. The conversations are abundant.

The debate over global warming continues and there is no denying that we are consuming more of the earths raw materials faster than they can be replaced. The push to conserve natural resources and find alternative energy sources is a global conversation which is and will continue to impact the future eco-system we all live in. The conversations are abundant.

The debate over the war on terror continues to capture our attention and that of global leaders. The different positions on the war continues to polarize people, parties, institutions, religions and governments. The conversations are abundant.

The state of our “relationships” with each other are showing signs of decay. Divorce rates are up, teenage suicide is up, criminal incidents are on the rise, employee turnover is on the rise and medication therapy for our ills is exploding with every new kind of psycho labeled malady being diagnosed and treated with yet another medication that promises to “help” us get through our mental and emotional anguish. The conversations are abundant.

The media feeds us with these stories which only sparks more conversations, responses and concerns as to what we individually need to do to cope with the issues that impact our life. The conversations are abundant.

The current political debates within the U.S. are all centric to these issues and each candidate “promises” to have the answers hoping to appeal to the masses and win their votes. The current conditions of the American landscape of issues and the possible outcomes are part, if not much, of the thread of conversations globally. Each of us and everyone of us are seeking answers to the complex problems that exist in our worlds. The conversations are abundant but the solutions are not.

Are These Abundant Conversations Converging Around Chaos?

We’re not trying to predict doomsday rather we’re only trying to illustrate what subjects are dominating today’s conversations. Subsequently what potential outcomes could come from all this chaos being discussed could indeed become part of the solutions.

Chaos is the complexity of causality or the relationship between events. This means that any ’seemingly’ insignificant event in the universe has the potential to trigger a chain reaction that will change the whole system. A well known saying in connection with this issue is “A butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world can cause a hurricane on the other side of the earth.” This is also known as the “butterfly effect“.

The issues that are dominating today’s conversations are very real and threaten to disrupt the eco-systems we live in. If one or more of the issues accelerate at the same time the convergence could create chaos that impacts our lives and subsequently forcing changes unexpected, unpredicted and adaption to these changes will be required.

In any chaotic event, remember 911, the foundational forces that create calm and adaption to unknowns is relationships and conversations.  When society feels collective stress we turn to our relationships and converse about the issues at hand and the solutions to anything that directly impacts our individual eco-systems.  When 911 occurred we reached out and conversed with those closest to us. We took time off from work and thought about the possible implications. We stayed glued to the media waiting to hear “What Next?”. We felt the need to get closer as families, communities and as a nation. Relationships became paramount and the conversations abounded.

Considering all the current issues the social web may actually become the backbone of society’s need to relate, converse and find solutions to perplexing issues facing our world, its eco-system and our communities, one to one to millions.

If the chaos of the moment forces us to spend more quality time with our relationships engaging in problem solving conversations what could the outcomes be? Self governed and self organized could we solve problems better than those who govern and attempt to organize us now?

What say you?

www.relationship-economy.com 

The internet is free. The tools are free. Content is free. Social networks are free and users have gained the freedom of expression and connectivity without constraint for free.The only factors of user and producer cost is time, attention and trust.The “free” model doesn’t fit well with traditional business models and mindsets. People have a hard time figuring out how to convert “free” to earnings. Most everyone considers the social web as a primary point of distribution for advertising and view advertising as the only means for converting free to earnings.

This paradox boggles the minds of many and most conclude that the social web does not contribute to earnings thus lets not spend lots of time, attention and resource engaging in all this “social activity”. Sound familiar?

Most Businesses Currently Provide Numerous “Things” for Free:

1. Customer support is free although a bad experience may cost plenty.
2. Slick & expensive marketing materials are free although over hyped promises may cost plenty.
3. Communicating is free although many types of communications cost plenty.
4. IT support, internal and external, is free although unresolved problems may cost plenty.
5. Mediums that provide interaction with customers and suppliers are free although most are poorly designed and cost plenty.

There are a number of other “free” things that business builds into a product or service offering and the cost of “free” is built into the overhead to run the business. However, the cost of poorly designed “free things” and the subsequent impact on relationships, i.e. customers, suppliers and markets, is rarely measured or itemized on financial statements or shareholder reports.

The gurus of industry have always proclaimed the value of good relationships with customers, suppliers and markets yet the organizational designs and collective actions tend to but up barriers and create consistently poor experiences that alienate relationships with customers, suppliers, employees and entire markets.

Lets talk about two real time examples. Previously we had written a post about a very poor experience with Verizon’s customer support system which is touted as “free”. Just last week we spent over eight hours on the phone with our bank, Bank of America, trying to tract down a trasnaction.

After dealing with numerous phone prompts to get through numerous instructions we ended up being passed around to nine, count them, nine different people and to make matters worse none of these people could provide an answer as to where the payment went.

To fuel the frustration further every time we were put on hold the automated messages kept repeating “Your business is important to us and we value our relationships. Please stay on the line until our customer service representative can assist you. The next customer service representative will be available in NINE MINUTES!”.

In between this repeated message was “Have you tried our free online banking service? Bank of America provides its customers with free online banking to serve all your personal and professional needs“.

To further aggravate this situation none of the real people we talked to were allowed to give us their full name, direct phone number or email address. Go figure, just how important or valued is my relationship? Actions speak louder than words but words spread on the social web can indeed create actions.

Will This “Free” Message Be Copied and Create Influence?

Kevin Kelly writes: “The internet is a copy machine. At its most foundational level, it copies every action, every character, every thought we make while we ride upon it. In order to send a message from one corner of the internet to another, the protocols of communication demand that the whole message be copied along the way several times. The digital economy is thus run on a river of copies. Unlike the mass-produced reproductions of the machine age, these copies are not just cheap, they are free.

There are a number of qualities that can’t be copied. Consider “trust.” Trust cannot be copied. You can’t purchase it. Trust must be earned, over time. It cannot be downloaded. Or faked. Or counterfeited (at least for long). If everything else is equal, you’ll always prefer to deal with someone you can trust. So trust is an intangible that has increasing value in a copy saturated world”.

This blog has received 180,000 pages views since Jan.1 by over 30,000 “connected users”. Those users have second degree connections of over 3 million people. The social web magnifies peoples experience with business, good and bad. Bad experiences can be remedied by simply following the basics of creating good relationships. However, the very systemic design of many businesses are not friendly to establishing and maintaining good relations rather the “relationship experiences” are anti-social to say the least. Most people who read this post will relate and pass the message on, one to one to millions.

The social web is indeed free but the cost can be very high to those businesses that don’t understand the power of free. How good or bad you are at free could influence how much you earn.

What say you?

The perplexing question for businesses is “how can we make money using the social web?”

Most view the social web as a playground, a place where people connect, converse and businesses view the economic game as purely one of advertising.

For years businesses have continuously tried to develop metrics to measure their return on advertising and marketing initiatives. Public relations and marketing firms have responded with a variety of models all designed to justify the huge expense firms spend on advertising and marketing. In the old days it was about eye balls and impressions, clicks and finally correlations of efforts vs. actual sales gains and value in branding.

These models and measures have been used by the gurus of marketing for years and the Fortune 500, and those wishing to be a Fortune 500, have taken the bait and adopted “the “trick of the trade” all aimed at getting our attention hoping to entice us to a call for action, buy something.

Consider the spending on the recent Super Bowl Ads. Millions for seconds of our attention but one must wonder what were the actual results gained by those advertisers. Data will be collected to justify the cost and spin will be used to demonstrate the proposed value gained. There is an old saying, figures don’t lie but liars figure.

GoDaddy’s Super Bowl Ad used sex ( the oldest game in the book) to draw peoples attention to their web site The ad cost GoDaddy millions to run. Subsequently GoDaddy’s video will be freely distributed throughout the web as more and more people engage in discussions, both the good and bad about the ad, the method and of course the brand.

Conversations Are Free But Will The Impact Help or Hurt Revenue?.

Bob Parsons, CEO of GoDaddy reports: Our Web site has never been busier! Before the game was over, we received right at 1.5 million visits to our Web site. We had a whopping 2 million visitors for the day. This compares to last year when we had less than 1/2 million visitors. Traffic to our Web site today is up over 4 times normal levels. But the real test concerning any ad’s effectiveness is simply this: did it generate sales?

Before the ad aired Go Daddy’s worldwide market share of new domain name registrations was 25%. The following week this number catapulted to 32% and held there.

More than 160,000 customers took our survey after viewing the ad on GoDaddy.com’s Web site. 75% were male and 17% were female. The vast majorities of viewers liked “Exposure.” But here’s the surprise, 17.1% of males and 16.5% of females disliked the commercial – there was virtually no difference between the sexes! So you see, both ads not only worked, they were incredibly effective

Just How Effective Was the Ad?

There were 97.5 million viewers who watched the Super Bowl. According to GoDaddy they received 2 million visitors to their site or roughly 2% of the viewers. Of the 2 million visitors GoDaddy reports that 160,000 filled out a survey, or 8% of the visitors of which roughly 17% expressed a negative opinion of the ad. Wonder what the other 98% of the viewers thought about the ad?

GoDaddy reported the short term economic gains received as a result of their ad. GoDaddy used sex to stir traffic and attention. How well that translates to establishing customer relations and brand value to their core offering and subsequent earnings is yet to be seen.

Relationships have a long term effect and decisions based on short term traffic and results don’t always tell the full story. One wonders what the hidden effect of 96 million people who were exposed to the ad but didn’t go to GoDaddy’s web site and voice an opinion or make a purchase will be. One also wonders what the conversational rivers from the 96 million who did not visit the GoDaddy web site will produce and how many million others will be influenced by these conversations over time.

GoDaddy, and your advertising firm, you’ll have to go figure what relationships you really gained or lost over time.

What say you?

www.relationship-economy.com

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?

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?