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How to Become a Social Business

This compact article by Christine @comaford tells much of there is to tell about how vital it is for a business to engage with social media, and how to go about it. It’s a challenge and a primer (scroll down for link).

And in a context in which most business organizations are either not engaged or engaged in a sloppy and amateurish manner, it points the way to significant competitive advantage that, pretty much independent of industry, will follow from closing with the opportunities of social.

Two disturbing points I have noted in the past.

1. There is growing evidence that businesses are not anywhere near where they need to be in their use of social data. So, 69% of B2B companies have no way of systematically assessing social response. https://futureofbiz.org/2012/06/05/69-of-global-b2b-orgs-ignore-social-feedback/

2. Back of this, the evidence is that very few CIOs are personal engaged/competent on social media. The numbers are dire. Of the Fortune 250 CIOs, 25 are on Twitter, and 4 have their own blogs. They are therefore quite unable to make informed judgments about social, even if they hire people to handle it.

Social Risk: Seems CIOs think Social is beneath them

If You Aren’t Social, You’ll Shrink: 10 Steps To Becoming a Social Business – Forbes.

#Rioplus20 “marks a beginning for the world”?

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The UN Secretary-General has spoken in these ringing terms of the Rio event taking place this week – in which key world leaders such as President Obama decided not to take part.

My view is that we need to start over. The process is essentially running backwards. Whatever one’s take on the three core issues in the debate – whether the world is warming (looks like a Yes), whether humans caused it (lots of evidence, yet some smart people don’t buy it), and whether we can do much about it (hence Rio – and, note, the absence of key leaders, government and corporate) – we face growing issues of global risk (from financial collapse to nanobots) and the world needs to organize itself around sane and consensus risk assessment and mitigation processes. This issue is in fact one among many.

Here’s what I wrote after the Planet under Pressure prep con in April (expanding on the remarks I was invited to deliver). https://futureofbiz.org/2012/04/13/global-risk-planetary-pressure-and-rolling-down-to-rio20-2/

UN Secretary-General says Rio+20 marks a beginning for the world | United Nations Radio.

Three Caveats for Social Search

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Many strands are brought together in this smart review of the coming merge of social and search, which will take much further the secondary role social is already playing in some search engines.

It raises 3 core questions.

1. I am entirely happy that clever algorithms should put together the strands of my digital (and analog) life to my benefit. I am entirely unhappy if there is no clear way found to keep this info entirely, forever, private to me; unless I choose to part with it for cash or some specific service.

2. I am also happy to have a tailored version of search operating in particular situations (so when I search “weather,” the first hit is my local weather not the dictionary of meteorology. But in less obvious cases not only do I want a choice, of social search and, as it were, asocial search; I want a flashing light to remind me that my private universe is being mined, not the universe out there.

3. There’s a fundamental distinction to be drawn between biographical, geographical, or personal preferences in matters of, say, food and music; and broad issues of information and opinion. So it is not at all OK that a Democrat should get a view of history and politics designed to be favorable to him or her; or that doubters of human causation of climate change should receive preferentially material favorable to their cause.

Search and Social: How The Two Will Soon Become One | TechCrunch.

via Three Caveats for Social Search.

Spreading the Word: Knowledge Diffusion now we’re Digital

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I recently addressed a conference on global education, and was asked to look in my keynote at the special situation of “resource-poor” areas. I don’t think my approach went down very well (one senior figure in the room, a former UN official, described it sweetly as “crap”), but I still think I’m right!

What I said was that the digital revolution, combining the digitization of books and the spread of mobile in Africa, was re-weighting educational resources; and would soon allow the delivery of high-level educational programs with almost none of the traditional resource pre-requisites in place.

Here’s a case in point: Nice report on the use of e-books in exactly that situation. At the other end of the opportunity scale we have the new programs being launched by Stanford, MIT, and Harvard. But we have just made a very small beginning. In general, education has been very slow to be disrupted, and my sense is it will change very rapidly over the next 10 years – on the same scale as publishing at the moment. This will not all be good, but it will be enormously good for distance delivery at very low cost of what have been expensive western educational perquisites.

Worldreader: An E-Book Revolution for Africa? – WSJ.com.

Tomorrow’s leadership will be predominantly female

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HR Magazine has a brief report on a study of the respective strengths of women and men in leadership. No great surprises here; indeed mostly statements of the proverbial bleedin’ obvious.

But note that’s going on. The writer is making the best of men’s “strengths,” though they are more strategic weaknesses. Two picked out are making a good first impression, and being good at getting their careers to progress. Yes, well.

By contrast, woman excel at completing projects on time, inter-personal relations, planning, organizing, listening, and on and on.

What the article does not highlight is that these “women” key skills are in higher demand in the context of change. And what’s the watchword of century 21? Exactly. Exponential, disruptive change. So men’s key skills which were a good fit with most aspects of the Fordist mass-production, bureaucratic age (which of course they devised) are now increasingly being marginalized. Which is why the push for diversity in executive leadership and the boardroom does not need to be focused on equity, simply on alignment with the central focus of 21st century business. Diversity as such is more significant in change contexts, but the distinctly female traits are key. That’s where competitive advantage and value will lie.

Sorry, guys.

HR Magazine – Employers urged to recognise men and women tend to excel in different aspects of leadership.

Data, Privacy, Data, Privacy, Data, Privacy – and Business: 5 Principles

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At the core of 21st century business lies data. And as the digital revolution envelops more and more of our activities that core will only get bigger.

We have become most aware of these issues in the context of social media and the biz models that have grown up around advertising as a way to sustain enterprises that are free to the user/consumer.

But of course it goes deeper, much deeper. National security issues, health, transportation – a thick strand of data/privacy concerns and opportunities runs through sector after sector. In this illuminating piece in the NY Times, the spotlight is on Acxiom, a vast aggregator of consumer data whose name is known to few.

These 5 Principles are clear:

1. Every day, more of our lives will be digitized.

2. Every day, there will be more business opportunity in the mining (refining is the word Acxiom likes) of the data.

3. For a stable business environment to flourish, without GMO-style revolts or data scandals such as have punctuated the short history of social media, we need to move towards consensus policies that give business maximum freedom and citizens maximum control over their lives and their digital output – through the optimal mix of self-regulation and legal oversight.

4. Concerns over cybersecurity are growing. Every expert I know is more more worried all the time – as we aggregate data and in the process raise the risk of its being released by accident (another laptop left on a train) or theft. Some of the smartest people on the planet are entirely focused on hacking into our securest systems, and they keep scoring. Risk assessments need to be candid and – unless this raises its own security issues – public.

5. In these days of globalization and cloud, there is no way to avoid global standards.

Acxiom, the Quiet Giant of Consumer Database Marketing – NYTimes.com.

#Blodget and Broadcasting and Why I think TV is Over

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Henry @HBlodget of Business Insider not exactly for the first time has been causing controversy – now about TV, not Facebook.And here’s a neat piece from @TerryHeaton summarizing his case and agreeing with it – to the effect that TV as we know it is falling down the same hole (my metaphor) as print journalism.

I probably agree with Blodget more than Heaton does. First thought about it seriously at a private event in London several years ago when Jeremy Hunt, who is now the UK govt minister for culture et al., and in hot water over Murdoch issues, was still in opposition. His topic was his approach, when the Conservatives got into government, to “independent” (non-BBC) television. He is a very smart fellow; it was a lively presentation. But when I got around to asking my question, which was to the effect “why do you think it has a future; everything is migrating to the web and asynchronicity, and the moreso the younger you are,” it was pretty obvious he had not thought about it.

It’s a marvel that just as the moving image bounds every further up the exponential curve of consumer demand in C21, its classic purveyors are like deer staring at that bright spot that used to sit at the center of the screen in the old days after we turned it off.

Local Media in a Postmodern World, Part CXXVIII, Henry Blodget is Right: TV is in Trouble.

via #Blodget and Broadcasting and Why I think TV is Over.