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?

Featured post by Jay Deragon from LinkToYourWorld.com

Today’s social networks are “train cars” of conversations.People connect to people they perceive as “headed in the same direction they desire to pursue”. The subsequent conversations reflect common threads of interest. The different train tracks represent different conversations, different platforms, different affinities and different transactions.

We’ll define a transaction as an agreement, communication, or movement carried out between different people, entities or objects, often involving the exchange of items of value, such as information, goods, services and money. Today’s social networks are fundamentally connecting people and enabling open conversations, transactions of informational exchange.

The evolution of these transactions will be enhanced through the convergence of technological advancements to “networks” which enable people to increase the value of these transactions economically. The “train cars” are fueled by today’s conversations and they are building speed, momentum and the attention of business. The velocity of these train cars, running on multiple tracks, are moving faster than anything in history and most businesses are not even aware that “the train is coming“.

Will there be a wreck at the intersection of people and business?

Doc Searls writes: “Think of markets as three overlapping circles: Transaction, Conversation and Relationship. Our financial system is Transaction run amok. Metasticized. Optimized at all costs. Impoverished in the Conversation department, and dismissive of Relationship entirely. We’ve been systematically eliminating Relationship for decades, excluding, devaluing and controlling human interaction wherever possible, to maximize efficiency and mechanization.”

With all the attention being given to “social networking” much of the underlying dynamics that drive the adoption of the “networks” are misunderstood. Businesses, analyst, markets and the media again are focusing on the results rather than understanding the systemic nature that produces today’s results. The attraction of over a half a billion individuals engaged in today’s “networks” is a business attraction motivated by economic possibilities. While the economic possibilities are significant the understandings of the dynamics which are creating the possibilities is critical to capturing the economic gains.

If you reflect on Doc Searls comments above you will see a systemic failure of “business” to make progress in the fundamentals of human interaction, relationships. People produce business results and businesses produce relationship results. If we measured the “relationship results” of businesses the scorecard would likely create a failing grade. Businesses have been consumed by financial measures as dictated by public and private markets that measure economics. The social web is creating a new measure of business based on the fundamentals of relationships. The people have known and continue to know how “business has failed them”. It has never been a secret rather business environments have simply controlled the conversations that speak to the relationship issues.

John Maloney, Founder, KM Cluster; Global IT Architectures says: Social networks and SNA are excellent research tools for academics and scientists. They are excellent at showing and understanding relationships. However, from a purely practical sense, a business and economic sense, for driving growth, they fall down badly. Why, again academics, scientist and businesses are measuring and analyzing the wrong thing, results.

Measuring and reacting to results is like trying to play tennis by watching the scoreboard. The results of “social networking” is nothing more than a scoreboard indicating “something is driving people to engage, exchange and connect”. If businesses want to succeed in a “social network” they must engage, exchange and connect with people in order to reap any benefits of social commerce.

The momentum of a train is based on speed and mass. The faster it moves with greater mass the harder it becomes to stop it and anything in its way simply gets runs over.

What say you?

Featured post by Jay Deragon from LinkToYourWorld.com

Many of the conversations in 2007 were about whether social networks will become centric to conducting commerce, B2B, B2C and P2P.While social networks continue to grow exponentially the next growth curve will be driven by the holy grail of economics“, social commerce. Social commerce may actually become the dominant development in 2008 and subsequently turn business models upside down and inside out.

One might ask why?

Simeon Simeonov writes “Consider for a minute how gargantuan the social shopping/merchandising market opportunity is: the current US retail market (excluding home and automotive) is around $4+ TRILLION/year and is supported by $150+ billion in advertising, the bulk of which still goes to TV for immersive, emotionally impactful ads. Capturing the proverbial 1% of that total market would represent over $40 billion/year in transactions which is huge!”

“So, clearly, whomever figures out how to get paid to unlock socially-driven product discovery and merchandising is going to make an astounding amount of money and have a huge impact on net culture.”

Is there consensus on this opportunity?

We recently asked the following questions aimed at adults throughout numerous social networks, “Will businesses and people conduct commerce using social networks?” We asked 2,000 of our contacts the question and received responses from 623 which created a 31% response rate as of December 31, 2007. The responses are still coming in as of the writing of this post. The responses carried many comments, some of which we will be sharing in future post, however the majority, 72%, said absolutely Yes. Obviously these responses are influenced by people who are engaged with the social web and see the opportunity.

On the other end of the spectrum

We were recently at a meeting with executives of a Fortune 500 company and the discussions were centric to the social web. The issue of social commerce was brought up and the opinions of the executives were that people wouldn’t buy things through their social network profiles and businesses wouldn’t engage is making purchases with other businesses via a social network.

When asked how many of the executives were active participants in social networks 100% answered they were not and 40% didn’t even have a profile on Linkedin. When asked how many of their employees (in excess of 20,000 employees) were active in social networks their answers were “We don’t know”.

How can business executives draw conclusions with no experience or understanding of the dynamic of the social web? The answer is they do and they will continue to, right or wrong. The awakening will come when markets move, when competition leads the movement, when executives engage with people who find satisfaction and benefit from engaging with other people, when the world shifts and an alarm ripples through the executive suites.

What are the factors that will drive social commerce?

• Consumer as communication channel: viral in its purest form just carries over a many to many channel an essentially one to many message from a business to its audience.
• Consumer as message author: recommendations and referrals are where the ‘consumer’ is already an ‘employee’ of the business, effectively working for the Marketing department and generating the message in addition to carrying it.
• Consumer as a transaction participant: where the business has found a mechanism to engage the consumer in more than just passing a message, in ‘closing the sale’, processes orders and (why not) takes PayPal payments.
• Consumer as co-creator of the product: from participation in product design R&D with feedback, ideas and recommendations, particularly where the ‘product’ is the message he spreads. Two more jobs: in the R&D and in the Production department of our business.
• Finally, consumer as Investor: already an insider of our business, he confidently buys our stock (and recommends that, too). Clever companies find ways to engage them even better in the share ownership through dedicated schemes.

There’s been a lot of progress made in 2007 in social commerce and 2008 will see new players, new technology and lots of money thrown at the solutions. Social commerce can encompass and influence a wide array of points on the purchase process, both before and after, and markets will move where money moves. Stay tuned for The Emergence of the Relationship Economy!

What say you?

www.relationship-economy.com

Featured post by Jay Deragon from LinkToYourWorld.com

Based on the ebb and flow of the social web in 2007 this new year promises to bring more disruption facilitated by the cascading conversations of individuals, one to one to millions. We are likely to experience significant adoption of the social web by businesses representing every market segment and industry.

The force that fuels significant growth will be the “noise” created by cascading conversations at velocities never imagined or experienced. Conversations are markets and unless businesses learn to engage they will loose their market positions, some slowly and some overnight.

A cascading conversation is a consecutive series of organic conversations which often proceed via social networks, one to one to millions. It allows the conversational synthesis of topics from a single user’s creation to spread at the click of a mouse and with no geographical boundaries or other limitations as to who chooses to engage in the conversation or who is touched or influenced by the cascading affect.

The cascading conversation contains many functional streams that take part in the conversation’s transformation one at the time. Often another cascading conversation is generated from a previous conversation. The social web accelerates cascading reactions from conversations due to the dynamics of one to one to millions conversing about anything and everything, including businesses.

Cascading conversations carry an idea forward in ever-broadening circles. The very nature of cascading conversation implies, “the conversation creates the results.” The social web creates the medium to engage thousands…then millions…of people. These people create conversations centric to topics of interest and issues of affinity with others who have migrated to groups–commonly known as swarms.

The Social Web: A Conversation-driven Process

The social web created a two way conversation between people. At first its appeal attracted the younger generation looking to be heard and wanting to converse. Now more and more adults are finding satisfaction from the conversational web. Whether engaging for personal or professional reasons, adults are finding the creativity of the social web and the dynamics of virtual relationship appealing. The subsequent cascading conversations have fueled global conversations about business, politics, causes, opportunities, knowledge and any other thing which one would classify as adult conversational topics. People are connecting in the virtual world and finding ways to help one another, including finding jobs, finding friends or finding stimulating conversations.

What is the effect of these conversations on businesses?

The essence of any business is primarily about conversations. Business leaders spend most of their time engaged in communication. Whether face-to-face with their teams and customers or alone in their offices dealing with memos and e-mails, these are all conversations about the business—its brands, strategies and effectiveness. At its simplest, the role of leaders is to have the right conversations with the right people in the most effective and efficient manner.

However, experience has shown that conversations can also be the cause of many organizational ills. Individual conversations may poorly engage the work-force; fail to reflect reality; fail to focus and align people; and stifle individual and business transformation. A common failure of business conversations is they can be one sided and lacking a learning exchange. Business success is simple: increasing or accelerating the organization’s effectiveness requires changing the organizational conversation. Cascading conversations can accelerate business transformation whether planned or not.

Cascading Conversations Can Transform Markets

Markets have historically relied on traditional media to carry their messages to the masses. Using multiple forms of media, businesses have tried to reach consumers with advertising messages aimed at getting consumer attention through product or service appealing images. Consumers have been surrounded by messages appealing to the human senses, needs and desires.

Slick advertising campaigns, sponsorships and a host of other media techniques have been used to create affinity and attract consumers. These methods have been used for years and advances in technology and media have simply increased the creativity of the messages and the means. Conversations between people have become the media and the cascading effect is gaining power and momentum. Businesses are just now beginning to pay attention.

Some businesses are following the social web because that is where the people are migrating. IBM has developed social networks for businesses. The likes of Wells Fargo, American Express, Bank of America and Nationwide Insurance to name a few have recently engaged in using the tools of social media to reach their customers. Many businesses either do not know what the social web is or they have underestimated it and discounted it as a fad. However the wave of cascading conversations will grow at exponential rates throughout 2008 and the collective voices of the people will only get louder. Businesses will follow the noise even if business leaders do not understand how to engage in conversations.

The new business leaders of tomorrow will understand the value of conversations and subsequently we will then begin to see the evolution of a new dynamic called social commerce. Today these are just ripples in the ocean of the social web. Tomorrow these ripples could create a wave of change again at velocities never before imagined or experienced.

Substantial issues regarding the effect of cascading conversations need to be considered going forward.

Are your people having the right conversations? Are business leaders focused on the impact of cascading conversations? Could business be more effective at conducting or leveraging cascading conversations? Are business leaders listening? Will business be transformed or will it lead the transformation?

What say you?

Jay Deragon

www.relationship-economy.com

Featured post by Jay Deragon from LinkToYourWorld.com

There is an old saying, “if you stay in this world you will never learn another one.”Learning the dynamics, the art and the science of the new world created by the social web is one of the foremost challenges for businesses.

Current business theories are correct in their own world, but the problem is that the theory may not make contact with the new world.

For businesses to succeed in the new world a transformation in leadership thinking will be required.

Back to the Future

Imagine if business leaders were able to go forward in time and see what needs to change today in order to create a better future. Most business leaders would jump at the opportunity to be able to see the future in order to better manage today’s decisions. Well here are 10 Points of Business Transformation required to survive and thrive in a new world:

1. Management practices of the past have smothered the individual and tried to contain and manage individual expression. The social web brings back the individual and enables individual freedom of expression.
2. The social web is not a thing, rather it is a movement accelerated by the art of self expression, the reach of relationships and fueled by the science of advanced technology. This combination of art and science has created a new world with new markets fueled by conversations, one to one to millions individually.
3. Economic activity takes place within social relations. People create economic gains by what they buy and recommend and how many others with whom they share their preferences. For businesses to reach buyers they need to reach people.
4. If you destroy the people of a company, you do not have much left for the future. People drive all business processes, products and services. People influence customer and supplier relations. If your cultural robs expression what are you customers and suppliers hearing and feeling about your business
5. Fear and lack of trust can make economic growth impossible. Don’t fear the social web, embrace it. Distrust destroys relationships
6. The social web gives businesses reach and richness in finding innovative answers to perplexing business problems.
7. Businesses are social networks. If you didn’t know this you are in denial about the power of people conversing with other people.
8. Human Resource Management is no longer a rules game. People don’t resist change–they resist being changed. The traditional approach to human resource practices needs to be transformed to practices that empower people.
9. People have conversations with people, not things. Customers will connect with customers and employees will connect with employees. What are these conversations producing? What can a business learn from these conversations?
10. Remove the barriers to relationships. Lead the transformation or be transformed by it.

Much of our day to day life, personal and professional, is interaction with other people and the patterns of interaction influence so much of the events around us and before us. The social web is creating new patterns of interaction which in turn is creating a new world of social exchanges about everything, anything and between everyone everywhere.

For businesses to survive and thrive in this new world they will need to go back to the future and adopt the 10 Points for Business Transformation required to thrive in the new world. We will cover each point in greater detail in the future.

What say you?

Featured post by Jay Deragon from LinkToYourWorld.com

Social Tools are changing the way business gets done.IBM, Toyota, even Wells-Fargo Bank, have invested serious money in Second Life and are using blogs to engage customers, people; many corporations are building their own social networks to serve employees and to create commerce amongst customers; major law firms encourage their employees to blog; wikis are often far more powerful and useful than standard resources and have replaced intranets in many instances as invaluable sources of information and communication throughout the enterprise. RSS Feeds, Instant Messaging, Video - all can deliver greater involvement and transparency.

Originators become real, human and influential, and for the new generation of techno-savvy professionals, the opportunities and applications are unbounded.

One of the key challenges for businesses is how they integrate these new technologies within the enterprise and figure out which best suit their needs and the needs of their customers. Another challenge is how to facilitate ecommerce into these social exchanges thus enabling participates to exchange products and services for economic gains.

Economic activity takes place within social relations. For businesses to reach buyers they need to reach people. More importantly businesses need to understand “how” to reach people.

The Dividing Factors between People and Businesses

Today people use the social web for a variety of reasons but the primary aim is relational. Relational in the sense that people connect to people to find affinities, to learn, to share and with the freedom of expression. All the activity that drives the social web today is not represented by a collective strategy of the people rather the activities are a process of discovery fueled by the intrigue of finding, knowing and conversing with people you’ve never met physically. The discovery process for people follows a common framework which includes:

1. What does one person have in common with another
2. What does one person know that another may want to know
3. Who does one person know that another may want to know
4. Where, in life, in location, in stature is one person compared to another
5. What possible opportunities could develop out of a relationship between one person and another

All five of these discoveries are facilitated through the information people present about themselves in profiles, in their past communications with others and in the subsequent conversational threads exchanged one to one to millions. From these “virtual conversations” people create an emotional and intellectual profile of others and it is from these profiles that people begin to form active relationship and engaging conversations between themselves and others of like profiles. These relationships are driven by emotional and intellectual profiles formed by virtual conversations. It is the emotional and intellectual profiles which create individual gauges of trust within the virtual world.

Business leaders are just now beginning to engage in the social web however much of what we see today demonstrates a disconnect in purpose and methodology. Businesses approach the social web with a common objective of gaining relationships and converting those relationships into economic gains. The strategic approach to the social web by business follows a common framework including:

1. How can we market ourselves effectively within the social web
2. What positioning can we gain from use of the social web
3. What products and services can we sell through the social web
4. What gains would we get from setting up our own social network
5. What is our competition doing and what do we need to do better

A business is driven by the need to produce revenue and subsequent profits for its stakeholders. Progress in management practices and technological advances have shaped the mindset of business leaders to focus on productivity, profitability. market share and capital; results. In one hand this progress has delivered the results and on the other hand it has deteriorated relationships with employees, customers and suppliers. The trust factors between people and corporations continue to decline. Corporate actions of the recent past have only reinforced the distrust factor.

As many business leaders rush into the social web intrigued by a new fertile ground for business opportunity the fundamental factors of success will be learning how to go back and connect with people.

Which comes first, the business or the people? What drives business success, the people or management methods? Just look at the differences in framework between why and how people approach the social web and why and how businesses approach the social web. Do you see the differences?

What say you?

Featured post by Jay Deragon from LinkToYourWorld.com

Consider for a moment the amount of data about you that resides in multiple technological matrices.   

1.      Our government has considerable identifying data on us personally as a requirement of citizenship. Name, location social security number, date of birth, gender, law enforcement records and the list goes on.

2.      Our medical institutions have vast arrays of data on our health history, medications, physical conditions and the list goes on.

3.      Our educational institutions have data on our learning experiences, intellectual capacities as well as specialties and the list goes on.

4.      Our employers have our history of employment, financial information, personal information, occupational categorizations and the list goes on.

5.      Our financial institutions have details of our spending, deposits and related personal information.

6.      Our cell phone providers have similar personal data on us individually plus our communications history and now GPS tracking capabilities.  The list of services and products providers we use daily is significant and each has a set of data on us as individuals, our behavior patterns and related affinity data.  Just think about your computer, the web sites you visit and the emails you send and receive.

Enter Social Mediums

Most all of the social networks we use require a set of baseline information about us to register for usage, consider the data collected on you.  Our subsequent activities within social networks is a stream of data which identifies numerous affinities that create a digital profile of us that operators then use collectively for their own analysis and planning purposes.  Each of the previous six examples of data collected on you represents silo technological matrices.  Social mediums are yet another matrix of data marks that identifies you and your affinities, preferences and privileges.  Social mediums are one of the largest emerging singular matrices that collect the most dynamic points of data on individuals.

Data is collected and creates information.  Information is collected and creates knowledge.  Knowledge is gained and creates intelligence. Intelligence creates power to those that use it.  Already in some networks the technology is recommending communities, people we may be interested in connecting with and tools we should consider using. Smart technologies are already analyzing our behavorial  patterns.

Enter the Era of Convergence

What one event sparked the demand and need for technological convergence? 9/11 attack on the world trade towers.  This event awoke the United States Government to the need for technological convergence for the purposes of identifying and tracking an enemy they could not see, they could not hear and they could not fight using traditional methods of intelligence gathering.  All of the above silo technological matrices have been and will continue to be converged together as a priority of national security. Fueled by the deep pockets of the American taxpayer and intensified by political influences of the intelligence establishments.

Many Americas are already screaming about privacy concerns of this new apparatus of intelligence catering.  Our privacy has always been and will continue to be invaded; it began during the information age and will only be accelerated in the coming ages of technological advancements.

While governments are converging technological matrices private sector initiatives will follow form in years to come.  Much debate will be created over a multitude of issues and we the people will hear a lot of noise and scare tactics aimed at preventing the private sector having access to a converged technological matrix.  Greed and power will win because the collective economic value of converged matrices is wider and deeper than any other proposition in the history of mankind.

Will it happen in our lifetime?  What say you?

A weekly roundup of the best blog postings related to business issues:

How To Start a Business Blog, Part 8: Choose Categories at Michael Martine.

Seven Business Blogging Mistakes at Krishna De.

“Green” hotels please customers, boost profits at The Honolulu Advertiser.

Are All Customers Worth the Effort? at Unique World CEO Blog.

What Employees Want from Their Job at Suite101.

Luck and the Entrepreneur at blog.pmarca.com.

Tom Peters on Leadership at The Practice of Leadership.

How to Combine Social Networking and E-commerce at Dennis Plucinik.

Public Speaking: Time of Day Matters at Great Public Speaking.

Need Help Making Management Decisions? at Slacker Management.

Many companies outsource their fulfillment services to save time and money running their business. Most small and medium sized business do not want to hire an employee to run their fulfillment division because frankly, they don’t have that much to do. Unless that employee has other responsibilities, there should be no reason to hire a person to run your fulfillment duties. Outsourcing it is the most cost effective way to handle those tasks.

So, where do you start when looking for fulfillment companies to work with? First, you have to understand what your companies marketing strategies are and how a fulfillment service will benefit your company. You can find companies that can provide a complete turnkey solution to where they store, process, and send all of your company’s literature and marketing pieces. Some of these companies also offer marketing services so they can put together your literature and marketing pieces. You will have to have a realistic budget put together so when you’re locating your fulfillment business partner you will be able to decide if their services will remain under your budget.

Once you’ve done these two things, you should have a better understanding of the products, marketing pieces and the fulfillment services you will need.

Just with any employee you hire, you want to make sure that an outsourcing company understands your business and you can have a beneficial working relationship with that company. Too many businesses try to do too much and control everything. If you want your business to go to the next level, you will need to find quality partners to work with to ease the burden on yourself. Once this is done, you will be able to focus more on your expertise and the products you offer to clients. This in turn will increase your sales and bring in more revenue.

MBA’s represent a comprehensive understanding of business theories and practices.  Some MBA schools go even further and add real life curriculum to the classes for your knowledge.

There is no doubt that having your MBA will open doors and provide networking oppurtunites that you would not be able to have if you did not have your MBA. 

On the other hand, if you do not have your MBA you can still succeed.  I’ve seen many people that did not get there MBA succeed in business.  The biggest difference is the way that they succeed.  Even after all the schooling that you receive from getting your MBA, it al comes down to personal motivation, drive, and the willingness not to give up.  Some of those qualities they cannot teach in MBA graduate classes.

MBA in a Box is a great book that reviews the basic principles and ideas that you receive from business school. This along with Harvard Business Review are excellent ways to learn the same strategies as you would in business school.  Plus it keeps you up-to-date on the newest thoughts and ideas on how to run your business.

I’ve been doing this for many years, and it will put me ahead of my classmates when I attend business school myself.