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

Martin Thomas @crowdsurfing

A Hyper-Speed Culture

o Speed & responsiveness“The trouble with McDonald’s is it’s too bloody slow”

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

Acceleration of News Agenda

1952Lynmouth

flood disaster

1952Lynmouth

flood disaster

1988Piper Alpha explosion

1988Piper Alpha explosion

May 2008Sichuan

Earthquake

May 2008Sichuan

Earthquake

Jan 2009Hudson River plane crash

Jan 2009Hudson River plane crash

2 days 1 hour 30 minutes

Real Time

Real Time+

Spring 2011Live blogging during Arab

Spring

Spring 2011Live blogging during Arab

Spring

Service Innovations Heightened Expectationso Speed & responsiveness

Crisis Management in Real Time

The Real Twitter Effect

o Driving new behaviours & expectations Dramatizing institutions’ structural, operational

& cultural weaknesses

Connected Consumer meets Disconnected CorporationConnected Consumer meets Disconnected Corporation

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

TrustingAgileInformal Collaborative

Tight Thinkers Need Not Apply

o Organisations & people that struggle with this new worldHierarchicalBureaucraticProcess orientedDistrustful

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

How to Build an Empire

“Presumed Competence”

Accepting, Anticipating & Even Leveraging Mistakes

Agile

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

@crowdsurfing

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

themselves