Tag: social media

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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Additional research is needed for social media technologies

Additional research that is recommended for leaders implementing social media in their companies is an introspective research. To implement a corporate strategy for social media, it is advisable for leaders to be collaborative with other leaders (Zhu, 2013). Leaders should practice open leadership, which 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).

Leaders should work with others to understand how their business meets the needs and customer pain.  That is because, open leadership allows for one to build and nurture relationships with the customers and employees (Li, 2010).  Leaders should work with others to gain ideas on how they should implement social media technologies, either internally or externally that will support their current business strategy. If the social business strategy does not align with the business strategy then why is the company pursuing it?  It will be a waste of the company resources if there is a misalignment.  Once a company has a social business strategy, they should first experiment with different social media technologies and platforms that meet their goals and objectives.  Once the experimental process is completed, those technologies that had the most return on investment it should be pursued (Mathaisel, 2011; Wollan, Smith, & Zhou, 2010).  These should be data-driven decisions based on metrics and key performance indicators.

Shortly, there doesn’t seem to be any major impacts to current business processes that are stemming from the continued proliferation of social media, like rumors of e-mail disappearing. Each social media platform has its customer base, customer segment, different purposes, and different uses. E-mail is safe from extinction as long as another social media platform or technology cannot fill the needs and purposes that e-mail fulfills.  Even if a social media platform or technology can fulfill the needs and purposes of e-mail, it has to become prolific enough to replace e-mail altogether, i.e. meeting a critical mass of users.

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CIOs and CxOs roles in implementing social media technologies

Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and Chief x Officers (CxOs) must take into account that implementation of social media technologies are not going to have high adoption rates initially and should then adjust their expectations accordingly (Mathaisel, 2011). CIOs are now in the position to help their companies adopt social media. According to Mathaisel (2011), CIOs should be in the middle ground when it comes to their willingness to experiment, use of social science, and personal risk tolerance. CIOs should take advantage to practice open leadership given the nature of social media technology projects (Li, 2010; Zhu, 2013).  Additionally, the concept of experimentation is key. CIOs should be willing to conduct deep analysis on parts of the social media experiments that succeeded and letting go of others that don’t succeed (Mathaisel, 2011).  CIOs must finally take into account that the nature of the social media technology project should depend on the goals and objectives of business (Zhu, 2013).

These business goals and objectives should be aligned with the business strategy (Wollan, Smith, & Zhou, 2010). Even though social media technology tools are the same, their focused use on the company whether internally and externally should change how leadership style practices are used (Zhu, 2013).  Internal adoption of social media technologies could involve retaining talent and knowledge, content, and data management tasks (Li, 2010; Mathaisel, 2011; Wollan et al., 2010; Zhu, 2013). This type of adoption requires enhancing corporate culture to become more collaborative, and the CIO should be the active user not necessarily a power user (Zhu, 2013). External adoption of social media technology could involve recruiting talent, recruiting more customers, developing a relationship with customers, and creating a corporate social brand (Berkman, 2013; Li, 2010; Mathaisel, 2011; Wollan et al., 2010; Zhu, 2013). This could involve collaborative efforts with other CxOs and other departments other than just IT. Thus the CIO does not need to be an active user nor a power user (Berkman, 2013; Zhu, 2013).  Thus, the CIO should not have to become a social media power user to influence either internal and external change but should be leveraging other power user’s strengths to connect ideas together and move the company forward with social media (Zhu, 2013).

According to Berkman (2013), the role of the CIO is starting to blur in the past few decades with other CxOs. This means that Information Technology (IT) departments are no longer a silo as they were in the past. Other CxOs and departments are starting to have their IT specialist outside of the IT department (Berkman, 2013). Therefore, for a successful implementation of social media technologies in business should involve the CIO and other CxOs to find collaborative wins, not just IT but for other departments in the company. Though the question lies on should the CIO and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), or any other CxO, be equal partners in these types of projects? The answer to that is, it depends on.  It depends on who has more of the budget and human capital resources to dedicate to these projects (Berkman, 2013; Zhu, 2013). Although the ideation of the project’s goals and objectives, should be equal across the CxOs, not all CxOs should have equal influence in the implementation due to their resource allocation.  If the CMO has all the funding and human capital, it should be their initiatives that are given higher priority, whereas the CIO and the IT department are there to help and vice versa.

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2 phases for implementing social media in a corporate environment

There are usually two phases in which social media technology are implemented in a company: experimental and business transformation phase (Wollan, Smith, & Zhou, 2010).

Primarily in the experimental phase, the focus is on the social media technology tools, like blogs, forums, micro-blogs, vlogs, etc. (Mathaisel, 2011; Wollan et al., 2010). It is in this first phase, where the company has only implemented parts of the social media technology, and it may not be consistent across the company or the social media platforms (Wollan et al., 2010). This could have happened because a social business strategy was not drafted or implemented.  Another possibility could arise from the creation of a social business strategy where it outlines a specific experimental phase (Mathaisel, 2011).  Mathaisel (2011), stated that this possibility allows leaders like the CIO to be liberal on the technology, but still be fiscally conservative.  The inconsistencies between each technology in the second scenario could result from experimenting which techniques works best in creating relationships. However, companies should be wary that not all social media platforms will have the same type of customer base or customer segment.  Therefore, messaging can be consistent across social media platforms, but at the same time, the messaging must be tailored to the social media platform and their respective customer segment (eMedical Media, n.d.).  When this inconsistency is discovered, the silo and out-of-sync efforts will be reconciled to help move the company towards the second phase (Wollan et al., 2010).

In the second phase, the business transformation phase is where the real business value can be realized because in the first phase the derived value could be small as they are usually connected to a project or simple purpose (Wollan et al., 2010). In this business transformation phase, social media technology is seen as a strategic tool to engage and build relationships with their employees, future talent, and customers (Mathaisel, 2011; Wollan et al., 2010).  In this phase, the social media technology is integrated into the company and in particular in integrated part of Information Technology (IT) department (Wollan et al. 2010).  The integration depth into the IT department depends if the social media technology is used internally or externally.  Depending if the social media technology is used internally IT must integrate it with Active directory, data warehouses, content management, etc.; whereas if the social media technology is used externally, IT must integrate it with web analytics, logistics management, customer relationship management software, etc. (Wollan et al. 2010).

Compared to the first phase, the second phase has a more considerable amount of planning, resources, and experience (Wollan et al., 2010).  Finally, Wollan et al. (2010), stated that the key focus of the second phase was to focus on a thorough and thoughtful approach to picking the right social media technology and platform that is sustainable and scalable for interacting and building relationships with the customers.

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Achieving full benefit of social technologies through a culture of trust

“To achieve the full benefit of social technologies, organizations must transform their structures, processes, and cultures: they will need to become more open and non-hierarchical and to create a culture of trust. Creating a culture of trust is even difficult for organizations that have not implemented social technologies as well. Ultimately, the efficacy of social technologies hinges on the full participation of employees who are openly willing to share their thoughts and trust that their contributions will be respected. Creating these conditions will be far more challenging than implementing the social media technologies themselves.”

The most important element from the above premise statement is that creating a culture of trust is difficult and that social technology will fail or succeed based on trust of their contributions.  If there is no culture of trust, there will be no contributions to a social technology. Even if the tool is perfect, if no one uses the tool, it was just either a waste of money, waste of time, waste of messaging, or all of the above.

It is true that a culture of trust is more important in a highly collaborative environment powered by social technologies (Burg, 2013).  It is needed because this could be an avenue where ideas can be fully expressed to improve certain parts of the company, product, or service in a constructive and respectful discussed (Burg, 2013; Li, 2010; Vellmure, n.d.; Wollan, Smith, &Zhou, 2010).

However, establishing a culture is much hard than introducing a new piece of technology. There will always be naysayers and resistors to a new piece of social technology (Li, 2010; Wollan et al., 2010).  Even though people who are willing to share their thoughts and ideas are hoping that they can do so in a trusted environment, that their shared ideas are respected, and still have a job the next day.

The leadership style that is more conducive to creating an open culture based on mutually shared respect and trust would be either an open or democratic leadership style. Both the open and democratic leadership are heavy on team participation and are customer and employee centered (Cherry, 2016; Li, 2010).  Cherry (2016), describes that in democratic leadership styles the final decision comes down to the leader, whereas Li (2010) describes that the open leadership styles give more autonomy to the team.  Thus, both are more conducive to creating an open culture, but it depends on the current company culture and the willingness of leadership to give their employees full autonomy over social technology that defines which of these two cultures will prevail in the end.

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To outsourcing social media or not

The advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing social media:

+ Outsourcing companies have the expertise to manage multiple social media platforms and understanding which are the best social media platforms to help realize a social business strategy (Craig, 2013; VerticalResponse, 2013).

+ Outsourcing companies can be a time saver, because it can take quite a while to learn about all the different types of social platforms out there, to grow an engaging audience, and to fully realize a social business strategy (VerticalResponse, 2013). Also, outsourcing companies don’t have to be bogged down with another day to day tasks of business requiring their services (Craig, 2013).

+ Outsourcing companies can be a fiscal resource saver, given that accomplishing a social business strategy can takes resources away from core business activities (VerticalResponse, 2013).

– Outsourcing company may not fully understand the business nor the industry in which the business resides (Craig, 2013; Thomas, 2009).

– Outsourcing company is not part of the everyday marathon of business (Thomas, 2009).

– An outsourcing company cannot be 100% authentic when responding to the customers because they are not the actual voice of the company (Craig, 2013; Thomas, 2009; VerticalResponse, 2013).

Two social media components that are more likely to be outsourced:

  • Setting up the multiple social media platform profiles, due to the tedious tasks of filling out the same standard fields/details in each account (Baroncini-Moe, 2010). Social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc. all have standard fields like a short bio, name, photo, username selection, user/corporate identity verification, etc. This non-value-added work can consume valuable time, yet do not compromise a corporate’s authentic voice.
  • Automation of some status updates across some/all social media platforms (Baroncini-Moe, 2010). For instance, a post made on a blogging website could also be forwarded to a LinkedIn and Twitter profile, but not in Facebook. This differentiation should be explicitly stated in the social business strategy.

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Social media impacts and emerging trends

How social technology is changing how businesses operate

Seventy-two percent of companies are using at least one social technology (Bughin, Byers, & Chui, 2011). There have been observed changes in how the business operates.  Previously the role of human resource (HR) is to allay legal risks, but they are also now responsible for fostering a supportive corporate culture, and social technologies are facilitating this (Lauby, 2010).  Social technology can include social networking, video sharing, blogs, microblogging, etc. (Bughin et al., 2011).

However, 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.

Other companies like the H&M retail, had created an H&M alumni group, which allows them to track their previous talent for future rehiring, but also maintain an eye on keeping proprietary data proprietary (Lauby, 2010).   Even though social technology makes it more difficult to keep proprietary data proprietary, it has helped companies to search social technology to generate new ideas, pivoting in projects, etc. (Bughin et al. 2011).

Additionally, Bughin et al. (2011), reported that social technology internally had been used to increase knowledge access, reduce communication costs, increase network connect to internal subject matter experts.  This can help improve employee engagement with the business. Calvin College uses their Facebook page to showcase their employee involvement per their social business strategy, and this gives them the reputation of being more engaged with their employees (Lauby, 2010).

Emerging social technology trends

  • Li (2010), stated that curating consists of spending hours in ensuring well-organized content for their customers/employees as well as participating in discussions with them. Thus, a trend moving forward is to have fewer and improved, but well-curated posts (DeMers, 2016). Taking a page from minimalistic living is consumers of social technology like to be seeing less content from a content provider, but are also starting to expect that the quality of that content should be higher than their corporate competitors. When companies begin to curate high-quality content, they will set themselves apart because they are developing a social brand that is engaging (Li, 2010).
  • Social media platform dynamics are increasing, where Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn had similar tools, goals, and applications but serving small differences in niches; but Instagram, Snapchat, Vine are starting to serve a new niche (DeMers, 2016). Thus, this is where a social business strategy is known as a living document, to meet the demands of an ever-changing field of social media (Cohen, 2011).  This strategy should be growing and adjusting to consider the benefits of new platforms and analyzing the current business strategy to maximize these new platforms (Wollan, Smith, & Zhou, 2010).  Each of these niches also means different ways of engaging/curating materials and reaching to potential new employees, new customers, or retain talent (Wollan et al., 2010).

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Resources needed for a social business strategy

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, Smith, and Zhou, 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). Wollan et al. (2010), stated that a sponsor is needed to be devoted to the social business strategy because they can remove obstacles and provide the resources abovementioned. Having open leadership allows for a business to use all of their resources to help solve problems (Li, 2010). Thus, the sponsor should then gain additional sponsors or social media champion from the following departments: outside sales, customer service, marketing, product development, information technology, human resources, etc. (Wollan et al., 2010). Having all these teams as a champion or co-sponsor as key human resources adds more credibility and objectivity to the social business strategy.  Then, Li (2010) said that ideally a suggestion box for improving current strategies should be placed in plain sight so that everyone’s input for improving the current social business strategy is heard.

One consideration to make about using in-house resources, outsourced resources or a combination of the two is whether or not a social business strategy is vital to the operations or just contextual.  Li (2010), states that open leadership on social media strategies tends to add more work on employees, with little additional financial resources to be thrown their way. Craig (2013), states that some of the upsides of outsourcing are leveraging external expertise whiling building internal expertise, saving time and fiscal capital.  If a company thinks its core to their current business strategy, human capital strategy, and human resource strategy, then it should keep it in-house.  If they just think its core for just customer relations, but not core to the business strategy then it could consider to outsourcing it to a managed services company that is adept at implementing social business strategies.  However, caution should be thrown when outsourcing the social business strategy because any post becomes the voice of the company and the outsourced company won’t do the business’ voice justice (Craig, 2013). At the end of the day using in-house resources, outsourced resources, or a combination of the two is dependent on the social business strategy, current company resources, and finally the social strategist sponsor’s belief that this is either core or contextual to the business.

References

  • Craig, D. (2013). Pros and cons of outsourcing social media. Retrieved from http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/tech-decision-maker/pros-and-cons-of-outsourcing-social-media/
  • Li, C. (2010). Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead, (1st). Vital book file.
  • Wollan, R., Smith, N., & Zhou, C. (2010). The Social Media Management Handbook: Everything You Need To Know To Get Social Media Working In Your Business. John Wiley & Sons P&T. VitalBook file.

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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