How Twitter is forcing institutions to meet cultural & organisational challenges of a real time world

Martin Thomas @crowdsurfing

Organisational & Cultural Challenge

o Social media is driving new behaviours & heightening expectations

Real time problem solving Real time expectations

Instant access, instant response, instant gratification “living life through shortcuts” MTV

“The trouble with McDonald’s is it’s too bloody slow”

o Amplifying cultural trends

Organisational & Cultural Challenge

Dramatizing institutions’ structural, operational & cultural weaknesses

Connected Consumer meets Disconnected InstitutionConnected Consumer meets Disconnected Institution

“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

Why Many Institutions Struggle

o Not configured to work in real time, in terms of speed or resources

10 minutes10 minutes60 minutes60 minutes

* Critical response time for responding to negative comments

Thriving by Loosening Up

o Operational & cultural traits of successful organisations

TrustingOpenAgileInformal Collaborative

Tight Thinkers Need Not Apply

o Organisations & people that struggle with this new worldHierarchicalBureaucraticProcess orientedDistrustful

“the approval time for each Tweet, by the time it had gone through compliance and tone of voice, used to be 10 days”

1. Trusting

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

decision making

The best company rulebook ever written?

Nordstrom Revisited

“Prescriptive rules have the effect of infantilising staff & make it harder for them to adapt to different situations. This goes as much for digital communications as for selling socks … Like the Nordstrom handbook we’re trusting staff to follow the spirit, not just the letter, of our guidelines”Meg Pickard, writing about The Guardian’s new social media guidelines, November 2010

A Trusting Organisation

“We have issued 31 thousand Tweets none of which have been approved (it would defeat the object)”Martha Roberts, Royal Mail

Accepting, Anticipating & Even Leveraging Mistakes

Which doesn’t mean having to tolerate flagrant abuses

2. Open

o Transparency & honesty non negotiable

Capable of transforming reputations

Openness is …

o Being transparento Engaging critics & embracing criticism o Encouraging real conversations with people

inside & outside the organisation

Openness is … Non Negotiable

Social Media is No Respecter of Secrets

Openness is … Non Negotiable

“For brands, Twitter is an option.

For public services, it’s an obligation”

3. Agile

o Ability to improvise & operate in close to real time & to act on real time information

4. Informal

o Being willing to show a human face

Informal Access

O2 Twinterviews with senior management 500+ new followers every time

Authenticity More Important Than Production Values

5. Collaborative

o Tapping into spirit of collective self expression

o Leveraging people’s willingness to shape service & product offers

Numbers are Compelling

o 70% 70% of companies regularly create value through use of web-based communities

o Using customer communities to solve customer problems costs 10% 10% of traditional call centres

* McKinsey 2010

The Power of Communities

Create Content

Solve Problems

Collaborate

Contribute Ideas

The Power of Communities

Thriving by Loosening Up

TrustingOpenAgileInformal Collaborative

@crowdsurfing

Get your organisation & culture right … & the tweets will look after

themselves