Cultural and organisational barriers inhibiting the ability of organisations to embrace social media

Martin Thomas @crowdsurfing

“Digital communications is a destabilizing force in a bureaucratic environment. And I am sitting right in the middle of a bureaucratic environment.’”Senior corporate communications director

“We’re not set up for this shit”UK CEO

A cultural phenomenon

Our expectations of all institutions have changed:o More agileo More openo More transparento More responsiveo More collaborativeo More engaging

Social media dramatises cultural & operational weaknesses

Slow Hierarchical Bureaucratic Process oriented Distrustful

Social media as a positive force for cultural & organisational change

Good social = Good businessGood business = Good social

Alternative perspective

“70% of business professionals believe social business is an opportunity to change the way their organisation works ” MIT Sloan & Deloitte. July 2013

“We believe social media is about changing our business culture, the ways we work and

the ways we engage with our colleagues and customers”.

Modern Marketing Manifesto, April 2013

Operational & cultural traits of successful organisations

TrustingOpenAgileInformal Collaborative

1. Trusting

o Bedrock of strong internal cultureo Allows shared responsibility & real time decision making

The best company rulebook ever written?

Trust the people in uniform

"It comes down to culture of an organisation & degree of trust you have in your frontline officers. You have to allow them to make mistakes and deal with them as a mistake, rather than coming down heavily on them.”

"The message has to be: 'We trust you with a baton and with the right to take away someone's liberty, I think we can trust you with a Twitter account.”Gordon Scobbie, police national lead on social media

Building a high trust organisation

o Establish freedom within a framework

o Rebalance risk and opportunity

o Smart delegation

o Regard occasional mistakes as an acceptable

price to pay

o Train or replace

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2. Open

o Transparency & honesty non negotiable

“Companies are learning that they can’t count on information about executive pay, finances, employee relations or environmental behaviour remaining private for long. Thanks to social media everyone with an opinion can be heard”

PWC CEO Study, Feb 2013

No Closed Doors

“faith in big businesses is lower than it’s ever been because people have stopped trusting what’s going on behind closed doors. So, from today, there is no ‘behind the scenes’ at Asda. Our aim is to be a truly open, accessible and transparent business so that we can rebuild trust, and drive customer loyalty.” Andy Bond, (former) CEO

From litigation to ‘civil dialogue’

“the one thing we’ve changed in recent years is we have been a lot more open about engaging in dialogue with people so long as they aim to be constructive” (Steve Easterbrook, UK CEO, McDonalds)

Right idea … poor execution

11,466 tweets using the #AskBG hashtag, peaking at 160 tweets in one minute.

Operating an open culture

o Embrace scrutiny and criticism

o Grow a thicker skin

o Avoid self delusion of perfection

o Apologise … resolve problem … move on

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3. Agileo Ability to improvise & operate in close to real

time rather than institutional time

* The social habit (2012)

32%of customers expect brand to respond to tweet within 30 minutes*

9%But only managed to respond within hour*

Committed to answering Tweeted queries within 30 minutes during office hours

Speed of response

o Photo hoax went viral on Twitter

o Quickly countered by social-media team with Twitter statement

o Stock price rose 5% the following day

Creating an agile organisation

o Timeliness more important than perfection– Embrace Colin Powell’s 40/70 rule

o Strip out the bureaucratic ‘fat’– Over-engineered approval processes

o Plan and train for spontaneity

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4. Informalo Being willing to show a human face & a

personality

Think human … not corporate

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Authenticity more important than art direction

“Too much perfection is actually a barrier to collaboration and co-creation, as it disinvites participation. To thrive in the world of social media, leaders need to acquire a mind-set of

openness and imperfection and they must have the courage to appear raw and unpolished”

(Six social media skills every leader needs: Roland Deiser and Sylvain Newton, McKinsey Quarterly, Feb 13)

Embracing informality

o Think human not corporate

o Stop wasting money on polished perfection

o Capture the authentic moment

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5. Collaborative

o Tapping into spirit of collective self expression

o Leveraging people’s willingness to shape service & product offers70% of companies regularly create value through use

of web-based communities (McKinsey)

The Power of Communities

Mutualisation: Collaborating with readers and communities to better understand, explore or reflect situations, topics, perspectives or experiences

Social customer service

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“Social agents are 4x more efficient than telephone agents and result in better NPS ratings” Ben Kay, Head of Digital, Everything Everywhere

“Each view of a YouTube customer support video equates to an £80 saving”Laura Price, Social Media Manager, British Gas

HPs social support community has solved 20% of all problems, helped 40m customers, equating to a saving of $50m in support costs.

Community-powered business model

o People-powered mobile network (O2)– Members receive points for recruiting new

people, making suggestions and solving problems, which are converted into discounts• 20% actively involved• 25% of members will get ½ cost of calls

returned for contribution to community– Plans to involve community in pricing and

marketing decisionso Not reliant on call centres, expensive

marketing and product support

Harnessing community power

o Identify and empower your fan-base

o Research/ NPD, customer service and marketing are not restricted to departments

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If you want to succeed as a social business

TrustingOpenAgileInformal Collaborative

Get your culture right … & the social media will look after itself

@crowdsurfing