October 19, 2010

How Do You Recognize and Attract Heroes and Champions for Your Brand?

published this at 8:04 am

10-Point Plan: Enlisting Heroes and Champions

Those Who Are Waiting to Lead

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It seems every time I give a presentation about growing business and social business a few CEOs and business owners find me to talk. They want to know to get started raising a barn — a vibrant internal community of fans focused on growing their business — rather than building a coliseum — a huge endeavor that employees work on for them. They want to use social tools to connect all of the people — employees, vendors, partners, and customers — who might have ideas and insights that will help their business thrive. They’ve “get” the elegance of starting by …

finding the heroes and champions who already love what you do.

The first question is how to find and attract those heroes and champions.

How Does a Business Identify Heroes and Champions?

Last week, I wrote about assessing and benchmarking the community with two informal tools that allow people to offer their opinions on the state of things. The second tool, a sociogram, is often used in education settings to determine social networks and influencer hierarchies. It’s a gem of a tool for finding out who already has influence within a group.

To find the heroes and champions of the change toward a stronger community look to the sociogram to find the people who were chosen most often as

It easy to see how these four groups, particularly the last would be the people that your team and your community look to for answers, advice, and how to evaluate and navigate change.

So it follows naturally that the people who scored highest in these groups might be the first team of heroes and champions that we bring together to talk about the brand values they believe in and those that are the new mission.

Look for the Leaders You Already Know

Attracting and enlisting these heroes can be natural and easy if we really are set on raising on barn, not building a coliseum. We lay out the vision clearly, explaining the goal and the rewards of getting to it.

We’re going to build a business that will make work easier, faster, and more meaningful for us and the people who work with us. AND We’ll do it by aligning our goals and building something that none of us could ever build alone.

Are you in? What skills do each of you bring? What are the minimum processes and rules we need to keep honest, respectful communication? What problems do you see? How might we solve them before they begin? How can we best bring this message back to the rest of the team?

Yet people can respond to a clear vision for many reasons. Some are drawn to the work. Some come for personal reasons. Some come to build something they can’t build alone. Some may come because they seek approval and attention.

Look for those who show leadership qualities of their own.

Before you try to create evangelists why not reach out the ones you already know? As you look for the people you would call heroes and champions, you’ll find they’re connected to others who are much like themselves. Invite just a few to a meeting and begin planning a barn together.

How do you recognize the evangelists you already know?

Related
To follow the entire series: Liz Strauss’ Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

Be Irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Filed under Business Life, Community, Successful Blog | 2 Comments »


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2 Comments to “How Do You Recognize and Attract Heroes and Champions for Your Brand?”

  1. October 19th, 2010 at 10:31 am
    Steve Poppe said

    Excellent stuff Liz. I’m still focusing on the difference between Posters and Pasters (2 important social segments), you’ve IDed 4. Nice!!!

  2. October 20th, 2010 at 8:43 am
    ME Liz Strauss said

    HI Steve,
    That’s a great place to spend some thinking. Get to know their motivations and needs and you’ll learn about why you want to do what YOU do. :)

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