Wendy Harman, the social media manager at the American Red Cross, will be speaking at the July 18 Buzz2010 breakfast about managing social media risk. She will also be on hand this coming Wednesday, when Groundswell author, Charlene Li talks about her new book, Open Leadership. Here’s the thing…Wendy is a prominent success story in Charlene’s book.
Part of Wendy’s job is helping the nearly 700 locally supported American Red Cross chapters use social media in a way that strengthens the entire brand. She has a number of tools up her sleeve for this, and I can’t wait to hear her discuss some of her strategies on July 18. In the meantime, I thought I’d share her Social Media Handbook Toolkit as a model and sample that is especially useful for those of us coordinating chapters and components.
We get a lot of questions about the ROI of social media. When you invest time, resources, and money into something, you want to know that it was worthwhile. That’s why Olivier Blanchard will be speaking at the August 18 Buzz2010 breakfast. We’ve heard a lot of people talking about social media ROI without any real answers. Somehow, when Olivier talks about it, it all makes sense. Here is one of Olivier’s slide deckson ROI. We post them here as a preview to get you thinking. What questions do you have? What are your frustrations? Do you know that the work you’re doing is having the intended impact?
This month’s breakfast is happening during a really exciting week of great events. Digital Capital Week (#DCWeek) starts in DC (yep…the initials are on purpose) on Friday and runs through next week. Buzz2010 is on the DCWeek schedule, along with a bunch of other great events. If your schedule keeps you away from Buzz2010, you can still get in a lot of great learning from some fancy experts.
Also next week, the ASAE Marketing & Membership Conference is happening in DC on Monday and Tuesday. It’s sold out, which is both awesome and a bummer. Maddie and I will both be there presenting, along with a bunch of great folks from the association community. I’m especially looking forward to hearing from Baked In author, John Winsor on Tuesday. If you’re planning to be there, we hope you’ll stick around to see Charlene with us the next morning.
With just 8 days left before Groundswell author, Charlene Li speaks about Open Leadership at the first Buzz2010 breakfast, we wanted to take a timeout to thank TerpSys for supporting the program as sponsors. Maddie Grant and I had the privilege of meeting up with a group of web and application developers from TerpSys up at their Rockville, MD headquarters. They asked us to come in just to talk about our favorite topic: how associations are using the internet, and especially social media. We were really impressed by the mix of expertise and curiosity that seems to be built into the culture over there.
You’ll learn more about what TerSys does when you come to breakfast next Wednesday. In the meantime, please do register in advance, if you haven’t already. The June 16 date is beginning to fill up and we want to make sure everyone has a seat at the party.
Here is the final part of Ben Whitford’s interview with Charlene Li. (Here’s part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4.) In this installment, Charlene talks about the traits of open leadership. Who is an open leader? Does openness need to be a directive from the C-suite, or can it bubble up from the bottom? Here’s what Charlene had to say.
Ben: What does open leadership mean for the notion of leadership itself? You talk about the importance of distributed decision-making, and the way that it’s a natural extension of information openness. But if anyone can blog or tweet, and thereby become leaders, does it still matter whose name is on the door of the corner office? How should bosses cope with this (and nurture open leadership in others) without feeling challenged/threatened? Does the real threat to a leader’s authority comes if they opt out and let this process continue without them?
Charlene: There’s a difference between leadership–inspiring people toward a common goal–and authority, which is the right to make decisions based on a title. Bosses need to acknowledge that leadership now comes in many different forms, and that people with little authority can quickly become effective leaders because of their mastery of being open–especially with the advent of social technologies.
The only way for them to not feel threatened by this new type of leadership is to be able to harness it for their own purposes and uses. So yes, they will feel most powerless when they decide not to engage. But compared to the “old way” of leading, it will still feel uncomfortable to not be in complete control.
Ben: How can leaders use social technologies to improve openness? Should every CEO have a personal blog or Twitter feed? Should bosses force themselves to look beyond their comfort zone? How can leaders use social media to create and moderate their own personal authenticity and authority? Can you give an example?
Charlene: I would never dictate that every executive needs to be on Twitter or have a blog! Executives should understand how being more open can help them achieve key strategic goals–and then consider if any social technologies can help them become more open in those areas. For example, if a key goal is to develop greater customer loyalty, the CEO may feel he or she needs to give regular updates on the company’s direction, and use a blog or video podcast to help with this.
So linking the use of social technologies to a specific goal is crucial to success. But many executives have undeveloped or flabby “sharing muscles”–they simply aren’t very good at it! Authenticity in particular is a hard to develop because you can’t just “be authentic”–you have to earn it. For example, Chris Pratley was one of Microsoft’s first bloggers but nobody perceived him as being authentic because he was a product manager at Microsoft–and they couldn’t possibly be authentic about wanting to develop a real dialog! Chris had to earn his authenticity by demonstrating his intent. He sought out and accepted criticism. He incorporated suggestions into the product he managed. And participated honestly and openly with commenters on his blog.
So there you have it: the push and pull between leadership and authority…between openness and authenticity…between change and status quo. For me, the one major unanswered question in terms of association leadership is the difficult balance between industry leaders, member/volunteer leaders, and staff leaders. Will openness make that balance easier to achieve, or even more politicized than it already is? What are the unique challenges we face as organizations built with the assumption that a large portion of our leadership will flow from deeply passionate (and usually unpaid) volunteers? I can’t wait for the discussion to unfold.
Ben Whitford’s interview with Charlene Li continues. (Here’s part 1, part 2, and part 3.) In this installment, Charlene talks about the traits of open leadership. Who is an open leader? Does openness need to be a directive from the C-suite, or can it bubble up from the bottom? Here’s what Charlene had to say.
Ben: What risks are involved in open leadership? How useful are written policies in this process? Is it possible/useful to have a top-down “this is how we do social media” document, or should best practices emerge organically?
Charlene: The biggest risk is that people in the organization are being too open or not open enough. For that reason, written policies are essential because they spell out the rules of engagement for everyone and set expectations. But the two ways to come up with these policies–either dictated from above or crowdsourced from below–are not mutually exclusive of each other. Policies created by committee tend to result in bloated documents that are rarely used, while policies created by a single entity or group find few supporters. Instead, I encourage leaders to set a foundation of open principles based on strategic reasons. From there, the broad organization can provide input on how those principles are expressed in best practices and guidelines. Being open is an ever-changing dynamic that pulses with the life of the organization. As such, the policies that express how that organization engages in relationships also needs to change.
Ben: Can you explain why a tolerance for failure is so important to good open leadership? What are the key benefits of “open failure”, and how can leaders learn to make the most of mistakes in this way? Is there anything they can do in advance of actual failure to make it easier to fail productively? Can you give a good example of open failure?
Charlene: Open leaders recognize that they are in a relationship with their followers–and that meaningful relationships are never perfect. Things go wrong, failure happens, and the strength of that relationship is seen not in the good times, but in how it weathers the bad times. Forgiving failure develops trust, which is essential in strong relationships.
One thing leaders can do to make it easier to fail is to anticipate what failures are likely to happen, and to put in place appropriate contingency plans. This isn’t about making sure that failure never happens, but rather, making sure that the organization is resilient enough to deal with and withstand the consequences of failure. Having confidence in the organization’s ability to recover allows the organization to take on the risks of being open.
One example of this is Barry Judge, the CMO of Best Buy. He had recently begun blogging when a premium loyalty offering went out to 6.8 million customers instead of the intended 1,000 recipients. Barry immediately apologized on this blog for violating customer trust and also asked for feedback on additional steps Best Buy could take to rebuild trust. The result: Best Buy stayed ahead of this becoming a major crisis by quickly acknowledging and addressing the problem.
The final part of this interview will be out on Monday. The final two questions are about how leaders can cope with open leadership when, let’s face it, it can be pretty uncomfortable at first. June 16 is sneaking up on us–just 8 business days away–so please take a minute and register or pass along the information to a colleague who can attend in your stead.
In this third part of Ben Whitford’s interview (here’s part 1, and here’s part 2), Charlene Li talks about the traits of open leadership. Who is an open leader? Does openness need to be a directive from the C-suite, or can it bubble up from the bottom? Here’s what Charlene had to say.
Ben: What traits mark a good “open leader”? How important are factors like emotional intelligence? Curiosity? Humility? What can leaders do to make their own management style more open? You talk about four archetypes of open leadership — are there “right” or “wrong” ways to be an open leader? Can you give me an example of a great “open leader”?
Charlene: Emotional intelligence is important because we’re talking about relationships that need to be nurtured over a period of time. Curiosity is at the core of many open leaders’ mindsets–they constantly seek out new ways to think about the world around them and are eager learners. And they also have a strong sense of humility, that they have and will continue to make mistakes and that they are surrounded by multitudes of people smarter and more capable than themselves.
I describe four archtetypes of open leaders, ranging from Worried Skeptics and Cautious Testers to Transparent Evangelists and Realist Optimists. In the book, I lay out why Realist Optimists are essential for moving an organization toward greater openness–and inevitably, people want to see themselves as the one who fill that important role. But there is no absolute “goodness” when it comes to being an open leader–an accurate self-assessment of our innate mindsets is more important than landing in the right category! That’s because an honest evaluation of how you view openness is needed if you are to accurately plan out how you will be open. If you fundamentally have a pessimistic view of what people do when they have power, you will need to put in place more guidelines and processes (basically, more closely define the sandbox covenant) than a more optimistic leader.
Ben: Is this something that needs to come from the C-suite? Does this sort of systemic change have to come from the top? What can social media teams do to promote broader open leadership at their company, or to secure C-suite buy-in? Can open leadership come from the bottom up?
Charlene: Open leadership can and does exist at all levels of the organization. In fact, people can be open leaders without any official title, budget, or direct reports. That’s because the power of an open leader comes from relationships built by broad information sharing and shared decision making.
But I do believe that for an organization to be open, the C-suite has to be involved to bring about the cultural change that’s needed to support greater openness. One key way is to show executives the benefit and value of listening to and learning from customers and employees. Once they see that they can not only get real-time feedback but also deep, strategic insights implied by listening and talking with customers, they are usually hooked. So do a search on Twitter, Facebook, and blogs to see what customers are saying about the company, product, or service.
Planning to blog, tweet, or otherwise capture the Buzz2010 experience? We’re putting together an A-team of Buzz2010 curators, and we’d like you to volunteer for the gig. As a part of Team Buzz, you’ll have a few special perks:
Reserved seating, close to the action.
Access to power and the Interwebs
A fancy Team Buzz badge (for your blog and in real life)
A signed copy of Open Leadership
You’ll also be included in our content aggregation. We haven’t figured out exactly what that will look like yet–probably a Twitter list, maybe an Alltop page as an homage to Buzz2009 speaker Guy Kawasaki, and definitely a list on this website of all the Buzz2010-specific posts you create. We’re open to suggestions for how we should aggregate everything.
So tell us why you want to be on Team Buzz. Be creative–do a video, a blog post, a slideshow, a Prezi, or any other thing you can think of to get our attention. (Hint: tag your stuff with Buzz2010.) Then leave us a comment on this post about what you’ve created. Oh - and do it all before next Wednesday, June 9. Please? Y’all are super-creative. I can’t wait to see what you come up with.
In this second part of Ben Whitford’s interview (here’s part 1), Charlene Li talks about balancing openness and strategy. How open does your organization really need to be? Here’s what Charlene had to say.
Ben: You write that successful open leadership depends on an “open mindset”–can you elaborate? I’m thinking particularly about your idea that there’s a balance between letting go and maintaining control. What exactly do you mean by “open mindset”, and why does it matter so much?
Charlene: No one is completely open or completely closed. You choose to be more open or closed depending on the situation and your goals. The same thing applies to business, where you must figure out just how open you need to be in order to accomplish your goals. So the open mindset is thinking about being open in a pragmatic, strategic, and disciplined way–where you examine carefully and closely where being open makes sense. And just importantly, you also understand where it doesn’t.
Ben: Is this a one-size-fits-all process? Can companies decide in advance how open to be, or do they simply have to take the plunge? Is it possible to be too open? You mention Apple as a relatively closed company, for instance–what would you say to a CEO who’d rather be like Steve Jobs than, say, John Chambers or Bill Marriott?
Charlene: While there’s something to be said for jumping in and experimenting, you need to move quickly into planning your open strategy so that it is oriented to achieve your strategic goals. For example, if you want to enter a new market, how much information does your new customer need and expect from you? Or if you want to manage a strategic change in your organization, how do you need to change decision making and information sharing to bring that shift about? You have to think through how being open in ten different areas of information sharing and decision making will help you achieve your strategic goals. If you don’t, you run the risk of not being open enough to achieve your goals, or you are being too open and not realizing enough benefit to justify the risk. Your excessive openness may also dampen the organization’s appetite for openness because you’ve moved too quickly for leaders to adapt.
In the book, I describe “The Apple Factor” which is that Apple’s level of openness is appropriate for its business strategy. They are in a highly competitive industry and also benefit from the buzz that comes with its legendary secrecy. Apple has legions of loyal customers who provide insight, marketing, and support for free. And their innovation engine is so strong that they don’t need to go outside. But they are open to allowing developers to publish on the iTunes and iPhone platforms–as long as they stay within the boundaries they’ve set up.
So if you create amazing products, have a fanatical customer base, and can create an ecosystem of partners you too can afford to be less open. The danger is that when (and this is not an “if”) Apple stumbles, they will need to be more open–and they will not have created a culture of sharing that will allow them to easily do this.
When Charlene speaks at the Buzz2010 breakfast on June 16, she’ll elaborate on the ten different areas of information sharing and decision making that organizations need to think through. Register for Buzz2010 and be there to hear from her.
“This is such a passion of mine because last year, I traveled throughout the U.S. filming video of seniors who had fallen victim to fraud — and in the process, lost nearly all of their savings. One poor woman told me that “a young man” came to her door who was “dressed so nicely and was so polite” that, by the time she had left, her life’s savings were in someone else’s hands. That enraged me but made me more determined than ever to use my skill set to try to make a difference.
I was fortunate enough to even have SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro record a welcome message for the site.
So please — retweet this, bookmark it, do whatever you can to push it out. The more people who know how to avoid scams and fraud, the less sad headlines we’ll see.
Please.
Mark
P.S. – SEC Disclaimer: The views expressed in this post are mine and mine alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the SEC Chairman, Commissioners, or my colleagues. So there.”
I’m really looking forward to hearing Mark discuss his approach to working through risk at the July 20 Buzz2010 meeting. Most of us are working in a far more forgiving environment, compared with the SEC–his experience will serve as an inspiration and a model for us to lead our own organizations forward.
Planning to blog, tweet, or otherwise capture the Buzz2010 experience? We’re putting together an A-team of Buzz2010 curators, and we’d like you to volunteer for the gig. As a part of Team Buzz, you’ll have a few special perks:
All three Buzz2010 breakfasts will be rebroadcast online for folks who couldn’t be there in person.
