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Does Your Business Embrace Technology Meaningfully?

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A Guest Post by
Matt Krautstrunk

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As bloggers we understand how important interacting with a community on social media is for exposure. We tend to refer to social as “new media,” however when you think about it, some of the ancient social media channels (Myspace, corporate blogs) have been around for over 7-10 years now. The progress that marketers have made on social media channels has almost pushed the medium to maturity, it’s time for corporate structure to follow!

Building Social Media Into Your Corporate Culture

Social media is being used by more and more people to accomplish almost everything from a job search to answering common questions. Just to reiterate how fast social media is growing. See below: According to Econsultancy

  • Tweets grew 250% since January 2010
  • LinkedIn Users grew 100%
  • Facebook grew from 350 million users to 640 million users in one year

But in the B2B marketing industry, social media should extend deeper than just having a LinkedIn. It should be controlled internally and leveraged within each employee. Your employees can be used as vehicles to spread messages about your company’s products and services. With this obviously comes inherent risk, but since social media such a transparent vertical there should be internal social media policies in conjunction with your marketing strategy.

Social Media Policy

Companies are still trying to find a balance whether they should encourage or hide employee social media use. Everything from, the decision to associate your businesses name with employees on social media to governing social media use, social media policies can be laid out to leverage your marketing strategy internally.

For instance, some companies have requested their employees create a separate Twitter account that is strictly professional. This has two key benefits, one is the fact that businesses are able to gain awareness and engagement from each employee’s Twitter, and the other is minimizing the risks associated with standing behind an employee who tweets inappropriate personal material. Businesses should design a clear policy framework for how social media can be used to create synergies not catastrophes.

Improving Workflow

Embracing social media within your company may have some risks, but empowering employees with social media embrace can help your cause. For example allowing employees to tweet during workdays can improve morale and communication efforts. Strategically integrating tools to work within your business can give meaning to each of your departments, according to Charlene Li, analyst at Execunet (http://insights.execunet.com/index.php/comments/creating_winning_social_media_strategies/best-practices/more) , “Anyone can be influential with these tools. Salesforce.com has a new Twitter-like product and calls the people in the company using it, the “Chatterati.” “This internal social group is the connective tissue in the organization,” Li noted. “There is real value being created as people use these tools to get the job done.” Social media is a core element of these innovative companies communication technology, making their employees better, more informed workers. There is an opportunity here for collaboration in the cloud; your employees will have the ability to express opinions and suggestions easier than ever before.

One of the biggest challenges to embracing social media internally is letting go of control. Executives should embrace this technology meaningfully instead of fearing the repercussions.

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Matt Krautstrunk is an expert writer on document management systems for Resource Nation an online resource that provides advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs. You can find him on Twitter as @mattkrautstrunk

Thanks Matt! Great case for taking social media seriously.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

7 Steps to a Vision that Grabs a Community by Its Soul

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(Updated in 2020)

10-POINT PLAN: 1.2 Articulate the Vision

CommunityPhoto by John Schnobrich on Unsplash

Why Have a Vision?

Last week, I wrote Why You Absolutely Must Share Your Vision Early and Often. Now, it’s about the how-to.

Imagine three corporations that build and sell computers for small business and entrepreneurs. Each corporation defines its business in a different way.

Brand A says: Our company is in the business of making products for consumers who need them. We do the work they can’t do and offer it at a fair price.

Brand B says: We’ve are the leader in quality, creative solutions to the complex technology problems that entrepreneurs and small business owners face today. We make it our business to know their problems and to find a way to solve them. We deliver on our promises and we’re committed to staying the best in the industry.

Brand C says: We are a network of deep and strategic partnerships with employees, vendors, partners, and small businesses leaders who work together to build products and work environments that inspire and generate creativity, competence, performance, and trust and to create jobs and solutions that build the economy now and for future generations.

Brand C is the description that connects the company to every person on the planet.

How Does Vision Attract Community?

The vision is more than the mission. It’s the destination drawn clearly so that every member of the new community can see it, understand it, speak about it with passion, and believe that it will happen. The vision is not a product devised and made by a crowd or a committee. It’s a leadership decision — the original strategy expanded with thought and design to elevate it to a higher calling.

The vision is the cause that attracts and unites the people of the community. It why they invest tireless hours and best efforts — because they are building …

  • something that makes an important difference;
  • something that no other company is building;
  • something that needs every individual’s unique contribution
  • something that no one individual could build alone.

The vision isn’t a dream. It’s a work in progress … a group aspiration in the true sense of it’s definition, breathing toward. The vision gives the community a why for why they are investing the time of their lives each day into this work. The vision is more than economic, more than profession, it is a commitment to accomplish something meaningful in the world.

7 Steps to Communicating a Vision that Grabs Folks by the Soul

If you’re looking to build a thriving business, start with a long-term, loyal internal community of employees. They will build and protect a healthy innovative culture, promote the values of the business, stay with the company, develop expertise with coworkers, and live to serve customers. What better way to build a brand than to agree upon the values that you stand for and create an environment that nurtures brand ambassadors?

It takes the right vision to attract the right people to that kind of community culture. When we meet the best people, we have to tell them about that vision, or how will they see it? Here are 7 steps to articulating a clear vision.

    1. Think contribution. Think partnerships. Re-imagine your team or your business at this highest, most useful place in the world — financially, professionally, and philosophically. Talk through what you see with people you trust until you have a image, a vision, of what that business offers to employees, partners, vendors, and customers.
      We’re inviting the highest quality people who have a stake in teaching and learning technology to join together in building products, services, and opportunities that show other people how business can work better for customers.
    2. Think ideal membership. Make the vision irresistible: smart, feelingful, and life-changing on a world-scale.
      We’re only interested in the best minds, best designs, and the best problem solvers with the highest values. We’re going to align our goals and build stable, successful, ethical business models that freely give support to fledgling business in depressed areas to create an economy that helps us all grow.
    3. Think contributions and returns. Find the words to describe it simply in ways that others can see the value of what you’re going for.
      We’re building the business that listens, learns, contributes, and invests in the people who help it thrive — it will be the business that people want to work with and for — the sort where every person makes a difference.
    4. Think recruitment. Be able to speak to the benefits of being a part.
      One benefit is that under-achievers and those who will sacrifice anything to raise the bottom line won’t want to work here.
    5. Think champions and heroes. Invite the people who see the vision to be involved in highly visible ways. Talk about what they’re doing encourage them to talk too.

The communications team has started a newletter for partners and vendors working with inner city high school enterpreneurs. Let us know if you want to volunteer.

  1. Think honest communication. Talk publicly to everyone in as many ways as you can — live your message.
    I’ll be listening to the folks who have experience where I don’t. I’ll be looking to learn from you how to do this better. That includes everyone I know.
  2. Think evangelism and growth. Invite people to pass on the vision and the invitation.
    Who else belongs here? Tell us.

It’s not the how or what of work that builds community. It’s the why. The underlying vision that unites us toward building something that we can’t build alone. A community needs leadership to set and invest that vision and so that they can feel smart, safe, and powerful in investing too.

Once the community sees the vision and realizes that leadership commitment. People who share those values will pick up the message, the tools, and the passion to contribute to the cause. The culture will grow from their actions.

Humans are wired to be deeply inspired by causes greater than ourselves. To inspire a community to invest its soul, we have to show them why we’re willing to invest our own.

Have you really communicated your vision? Are there ways you might make it clearer to the people who can help it thrive?

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

–ME “Liz” Strauss

5 Reasons You Absolutely MUST Share Your Vision Early and Often

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(Updated in 2020)

10-POINT PLAN: 1.1 Articulate the Vision

Why Define the Vision?

Tom Peters says that a business either supports the over-achievers or the under-achievers. The ones who feel supported call up their friends to say “This is a great place to work!” The other group feels unappreciated and leaves. My experience has shown over and over again that this is true. A business reinforces gets the behaviors it reinforces through its models and processes.

Zappos is a great case study in a how to build a internal community of brand loyal fans. What makes the Zappos culture uniquely strong and attractive is the commitment they make to the core values of the community. The vision is articulated clearly and acted upon in highly visible ways.

“Everyone that’s hired, it doesn’t matter what position–you can be an accountant, lawyer, software developer–goes through the exact same training as our call center reps. It’s a four-week training program and then they’re actually on the phone for two weeks taking calls from customers. At the end of that first week of training we make an offer to the entire class that we’ll pay you for the time you’ve already spent training plus a bonus of $2,000 to quit and leave the company right now.” — Tony Hsieh, CEO Zappos, as interviewed in Fast Company, The Happiness Culture …

They pay new employees to leave!

It’s Not How Or What … It’s Why That’s Important

Zappos says that it’s not a company it’s a mission — the Happiness Culture. That says something about who they are and why they do what they’re doing. Read the the core values of the Zappos culture.

The Zappos Core Values are:

  1. Deliver Wow Through Service
  2. Embrace and Drive Change
  3. Create Fun and a Little Weirdness
  4. Be Adventurous, Creative and Open-Minded
  5. Pursue Growth and Learning
  6. Build Open and Honest Relationships with Communication
  7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
  8. Do More with Less
  9. Be Passionate and Determined
  10. Be Humble

They explain why people work there, why people do business there, and why people talk and write about them.

Tony Hsieh has articulated, built, and protects the community values that make Zappos a great place to work and a great company to work with. No wonder Zappos has such a huge and love-them loyal fan base.

That vision built a company in an enviable position. There is Zappos! and the companies who wish they had what Zappos does.

It’s Not the What or How, It’s the HUGE WHY Behind It

Leaders know where they’re going — direction and vision. They know how they will get there — a strategy and tactics. Leaders who are community builders articulate that direction and strategy with intelligence and resolve, with clarity and passion, and through a generous invitation for collaboration.

At the core of community building are three key understandings:

  1. A community-building business offers financial, professional, and philosophical/political growth for the community. As we invest our time and resources, a thriving community and its members become more successful at earning income / revenue, gain more visibility and professional authority within their industry, and know that their work has meaning and contributes to a higher purpose.
  2. A community-building business looks to align goals rather than trade services. Communities collaborate and communicate to raise a barn. Gone are the hierarchies and silos that used to negotiate to build a coliseum. The difference is in shared ownership of ideas, interactive problem solving, and commitment to the vision. Invest in people and they will return the investment.
  3. A community-building business knows that the people doing the work know what’s working and what isn’t. The exact interpretation of how the HUGE WHY vision is put into action is defined at the team level. Teams discuss and design simple decision models based on the agreed upon core values. As a result, people at every level know how to respond to new situations with positive action.

The vision of where a community-building business is gone draws from those three understandings. It’s good to know them, but it’s not enough.

5 Reasons You Absolutely MUST Articulate Your Vision

It’s critical to put the three key understanding of community building into action by defining and sharing a distinct vision. The vision sets the value of the business and the higher purpose that attracts and unites the community. It defines the internal brand and affects everything from hiring decisions to how employees treat customers.

Here are 5 reasons you absolutely must share your vision early and as often as you can:

  1. To make the thinking concrete and achievable. We all know things better when we have to communicate them. By articulating our vision, we internalize our commitment, begin to know it, and see the reality and flaws our thinking.
  2. To fulfill your leadership responsibility. It’s the role and responsibility of the community leader to define the reality of the community. The vision is and will be what attracts and retains the best employees, vendors, partners, and customers as part of the community.
  3. To visibly underscore the community values. Once the vision is articulated, the core values of the community can be listed, illustrated, discussed and integrated into every part of the business.
  4. To unify the community around one well-defined vision. Without a well-articulated vision, each community manager and member will be forced to make his or her own definition of what the community stands for and how those values are best incorporated into decision making.
  5. To empower and protect the community. In the same way that a budget or a schedule allows people to make decisions with confidence, the definition of the vision allows people to make decisions. A strong vision statement lends confidence to people who want to do the right things for the business.

A loyal internal community is a huge advantage. Every employee becomes a brand ambassador who invests emotionally in building the community as well as the company. Even in a solo practice, not to set your vision is to leave yourself in a place where your idea of where you’re is open to redefinition and loss of focus far too easily.

The strongest businesses know where they’re going and can share that with confidence and clarity. Yet too often we assume that folks understand the importance of where we’re going and why we’re going there. We have to share our vision or folks won’t see it and believe it’s going to happen.

Have you set the vision for your business? Is it HUGE enough to include everyone who helps your business thrive?

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

–ME “Liz” Strauss

7 Reasons Why Investing in an Internal Community Makes Solid Business Sense

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(Updated in 2020)

10-POINT PLAN: A Foundation of Solid Thinking

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

A Good Business Values Customers; A Great Business Values Every Person Who Helps the Business Thrive

I once had the best job of a life-time, working for the best boss I could have ordered up in my wildest dreams. Our relationship brought out the best in each of us and that ethic was true throughout the entire company. The operation of that business was smooth, reliable, and totally centered on customers and how to serve them. In an industry that was experiencing 2-3% growth, we were doing 10 to 20 times that. Conversations were honest and thinking was naturally strategic.

We were a community on a quest.
We loved what we did and we were outstanding at doing it.

Love. Not like, enjoy, or get kick out of, but have a passion for, live for, hold in highest esteem.

Every company that wants to grow should have some of that.

Here’s how to explain the value of internal community to leadership in ways that shout ROI and make business sense.

Why a Loyal Internal Community Is Crucial to Every 21st Century Business

People perform amazing feats when they’ve got a quest, a cause, and a purpose. We rise to our better selves when we become part of a community dedicated to building something that no one of us could possibly build alone.

Why?

It’s how we’re wired as humans. We’re better when we’re inspired by deep feeling. We bring our best to whatever challenge we face. Any less is inauthentic, second-best, didn’t try, plan b, ho-hum, phone it in, stand in right field and let that pop-fly pass us by instead of saving the game . . . we might as well be out!

There’s a reason that so many folks — online, in IT, in academia, in every career — say the same thing. . . . find your passion, do what you love.

The people who understand passion and work are not promoting self-indulgence. When people do what they love they perform better, faster, and with more skill. When a community gathers around a common quest, they raise the performance bar even higher by supporting each other.

What Makes an Internal Community So Important Now?

Big brands and small businesses have been talking about building customer communities for a few years. Yet, it’s been proven that the way we treat our employees is the way they treat our customers. So, it only follows that the strongest community starts inside the business.

The high touch and high concept of community draws a company together around a single goal. What could attract and support brand evangelists better than that?

In his book, A Whole New Mind, Dan Pink points out that “high concept” and “high touch” values (design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning) are as important to business success in the 21st Century as linear thinking, detailed analysis, and spreadsheets.

In this global economy, conversation and relationships matter as much as schedule and budget do.

In plain and simple words, thinking and doing what everyone always has thought and done no longer work.

It’s time align our goals and values and invest in what we do together. That’s the only way to attract the best people — employees, partners, vendors, and customers. That’s the only way to be the best.

Rather than checking our personalities at the door, why not check out what a loyal internal community can do for a business that wants to build a brand that wins the loyalty of life-long customers and fans.

7 Reasons Why Investing in an Internal Community Makes Solid Business Sense

A community challenges us to bring our best to a situation. We invest in the community and they invest in us. And in that manner, we share our goals to build something that becomes a common cause. When we bring all of who we are, full engagement of head and heart, 7 deeper values and higher outcomes show up in our work.

1. Complete presence — focus. We’re all there — the all thinking business is no longer sufficient. The business is more well-rounded and friendly to the people who help it thrive. Computers can’t smile. Computers can’t listen to the spaces between words. People conceive, design, build, buy and talk what we sell.

2. Peak performance — productivity. A computer might work every minute achieving great computation effort, but it will only be as good as the people who program it and it will never over-achieve its programming. People invest more, do more, go further for the work we love. People connect to other people who are doing that.

3. Tolerance — perseverance. We have more patience, time, and energy for problem solving when we directly reap the benefits. Peter Drucker proved that money is a disincentive … it has the most effect when it’s not there or too small. What leads folks to achieve greatness is the payoffs that a loyal community offers: support, feedback, acknowledgment, sense of purpose.

4. Value and Appeal — compelling story. To compete a product or service has to be useful and beautiful. Simple and elegant, for to the adult and the kid in each one of us. Bringing logic and emotion to a business outdistances the world view of logic alone. Competence and great execution are expected. A loyal community builds in added value in how they tell the story, how they treat the product and the customers who buy it, and how they talk about the company as a value in their lives. What’s more appealing than working with someone who’s not only good but also loves his or her job?

5. Total Differentiation — identity. An internal community develops it’s own culture and identity. The uniqueness of that common bound shines through in concept and execution. The respect of a loyal community shows in everything it does. It becomes it’s own barrier to entry. The competition can’t knock that off.

6. Fully Invested and Worth Investing In — market value. Rolling all of the above values into one, nothing beats the 360 degree investment of brains, money, and dreams all in the same direction. Any financial firm worth its salt looks for that combination when funding a small business.

7. Sense of Worth — authority. Community builds authority. We value what we earn and what we love. That value telegraphs itself. It’s contagious. Customers, vendors, and partners pick it up as well.

Can you see why it’s only sense that a strong business would move to build the most supported internal community on the planet? A fiercely loyal internal community is a secret weapon that stands on its own.

Have you ever worked for or interacted with a business that was a community of loyal fans? What was your experience of that?

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

–ME “Liz” Strauss