Tag: organizational alignment

Compelling topics in leadership, technology, and social media

  • A business strategy is “the direction, positioning, scope, objectives, and competitive differentiation” of the business (Wollan, Smith, & Zhou, 2010). It is important and enables a business to learn from the business’ employees, customers, and partners (Li, 2010).
  • Organizational alignment is when business strategy meets business culture, where visions are aligned, and business goals and objectives should be drafted towards this business strategy (Richards-Gustafson, n.d.). Organizational alignment and its governance should be part of the business and social media strategic planning from the beginning (Zhu, 2012). For social media strategy creation efforts, best practices dictate to borrow heavily from their current IT strategies and governance processes (Wollan et al., 2010).
  • The definition of social media would change with time because social media is dependent on the technology and platforms that enable and facilitates a social connection (Cohen, 2011; Solis, 2010). The social connection from social media shifts content creation and delivery from a “one-to-many” model to a “many-to-many” model (Solis, 2010; Wollan et al., 2010).
  • A social media platform is the technological infrastructure, platform, and software that allows a company or a person to produce and share content either internally to a selected group of people or externally to the entire world (Wollan et al., 2010).
  • The overall statement is true: “Emanating from the growing popularity of social media, consumers expect companies to be present on popular social media channels. As a consequence, companies can no longer maintain customer interactions solely by way of traditional channels.”
  • Social technologies can help drive tangible value for the company through: product development, knowledge sharing, increasing collaboration, operations and distribution, marketing and sales, customer service, business support, reduction in travel expenditures, reduction in costs, reduction in time it takes to complete a project, etc. (Li, 2010; Vellmure, n.d.; Wollan et al., 2010).
  • Social media helps shine a light exposing: hypocritical business policies, functions of a product/service, marketing, and sales; these issues must be solved relatively quickly, and that requires a social business strategy and resources (Wollan et al., 2010). Thus, there are a significant amount of resources that are needed to achieve any new social business strategies.  These resources should be accessible, such as training resources, best practice guidelines, in-house subject matter experts, and direct managers by all employees (Li, 2010).
  • Also, the power of a negative tweet (a social networking platform) can severely impact a company. This was the case when then President-elect Trump criticized both Boeing and Lockheed Martin, sending their stocks to plummet within minutes from that tweet (Kilgore, 2016; Lauby, 2010; Li, 2010).  Thus, mitigation of negative sentiment is becoming more prevalent for how a business that is operating in a world with social technology. Bughin et al. (2011), reported that social technology for customer purposes had increased effective marketing, customer satisfaction, and increased marketing cost savings.
  • Employee collaboration does not automatically increase within the organization when social technologies are set up because each employee has a different work style, ethic, values, and set of beliefs (Wollan et al., 2010). The organization must change the culture to embrace social technology, by having social technology champions to help bring the resisters into the fold (Li, 2010; Wollan et al., 2010).
  • According to Li (2010), the Open Leadership Style is the best style for implementing social media technologies.
  • Open Leadership Style: Has about five rules, which allow for respect and empowerment of the customers and employees, to consistently build trust, nurtures curiosity and humility, holding openness accountable, and allows for forgiving failures (Li, 2010).  It is not easy to “let it go,” but to grow into new opportunities, one must “let it go.”  This thought process is similar to knowledge sharing, if you share your knowledge, you will be able to “let it go” of your current tasks, such that you can focus on new and better opportunities. Open Leadership allows for one to build and nurture relationships with the customers and employees (Li, 2010).  It is customer and employee centered.
  • Situational Leadership Style: Is a style of leadership where the leader must continuously change their personal leadership style to meet the situation and needs of the employees/followers (Anthony, n.d.). The input of the employees/followers must come first regardless if the leader is a micro-manager, supervisor, coach, supportive, developer, or delegator. The leader would use: micro-manage if employees just need to do exactly what they are told; supervisor methods if employees are inexperienced; coaching if employees lack confidence/motivation; delegation if employees need little supervision; and developmental when the employees have high needs and little experience (Anthony, n.d.).
  • Autocratic Leadership Style: Is also known as authoritarian leadership, where the leader takes over everything and makes all decision with no input from the group (Cherry, 2016a). This is great for when quick decisions are needed, but it comes at a cost to the followers. That is because of Cherry (2016a), stated that decisions made in this style of leadership are absolute and the followers/employees are not trusted.  This feeling is felt and creates the illusion of the classic “control freak,” “bossy,” etc. trope on the leader.
  • Democratic Leadership Style: Is also known as participative leadership, where the employees/followers are a vital part of making the key decisions (Cherry, 2016b). This is the direct opposite of the Autocratic Leader.  Here ideas and opinions are championed, even if the leader remains the final arbitrator (Cherry, 2016b). Unfortunately, this style can be quite time intensive but could provide better results due to a diversity of thought.
  • Servant Leadership Style: The leader is considered a servant first to their employees/followers to allow them to grow, become healthier, wiser, freer, autonomous, and become servants themselves (Center for Servant Leadership, n.d.). The focus is on the growth of the employees/followers.  One way to accomplish growth is a leader sharing their power to help people develop, synonymous to caring for each other (Center for Servant Leadership, n.d.).
  • Laissez-faire Leadership Style: leaders allow employees/followers make their decisions, also known as delegation leaderships (Cherry, 2016c). Unfortunately, Cherry (2016c) points out that there is little guidance from leaders when it is most needed, or when there is a lack of knowledge. However, it does allow for the autonomy of the employees/followers and promotes problem-solving from them.

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Corporate governance of social business strategy

Dell, at the beginning had a very centralized governance and strategy over its operational social media resources at the beginning (Li, 2010).  Li (2010), goes on to say that they eventually loosened up their governance where there was still a centralized social media council, but other departments were allowed to meet up weekly to discuss the content and how the strategy should be implemented. This is a great example of a large Fortune 500 company slowly adopting open leadership governance of their social media strategy to help them keep it aligned with their business strategy. Trusting departments to act autonomously according to strategy is hard, but each function/department should have their governance group, which should allay these fears (Zhu, 2012). This is all about building a relationship and trusting in your competent employees to ensure organizational alignment with any strategy (Richards-Gustafson, n.d.).

Organizational alignment is when business strategy meets business culture, where visions are aligned, and business goals and objectives should be drafted towards this business strategy (Richards-Gustafson, n.d.). Organizational alignment and its governance should be part of the business and social media strategic planning from the beginning (Zhu, 2012).  For social media strategy creation efforts, best practices dictate to borrow heavily from their current IT strategies and governance processes (Wollan, Smith, & Zhou, 2010). This is especially the case when trying to derive data from social media platforms to facilitate future strategic data-driven decisions on their products/services.

However, to ensure that there is an organization alignment with either the business strategy or social media strategy the BusinessWeek Online (2010) outlined: that there should be measurable critical success factors and key performance indicators that are required to reach strategic goals; and by using simple daily action plans for their employees to clear up any confusion.  Richards-Gustafson (n.d.) stated her outline as developing a supportive culture through aligning all the business goals to the business strategy while training non-competent employees; work towards building trust, open communication, and transparency; and promote people and teams to be more autonomous in driving this alignment.  Both BusinessWeek Online (2010) and Richards-Gustafson (n.d.) stated that having all levels of management involved and embodying the strategy themselves is key to driving organizational alignment with strategy.  However, according to Zhu (2012), management helps in implementing strategy while governances monitor strategy compliance.

 

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