The old school method for dealing with customers, derived from practices of mass production & mass broadcasting during the industrial age, is getting pushed to the back by the resurgent social mores of interactions between customers & businesses – both online and offline. A lifetime of understanding relationships with customers in terms of transactions has blinded us to the social world & made businesses unprepared to cope with the new social customer.
Unless "social" technologies by themselves are able to change the culture of the company to achieve shifts in how business is conducted, we need to drive the culture change by other means. The culture change might be to become a listening organization, customer centric organization, helping/influencing buying decisions rather than selling organization or co-creating end-to-end value rather than at point of sale.
The "social" components for CRM systems coming to the market in the recent months might not be able to affect the above kind of shifts by themselves. They can help in accelerating the change of culture in an organization, however merely implementing them will not change organization cultures automatically.
Though we might not be witnessing a "Kuhn"ian paradigm shift, we are in the cusp of two of the Sigmoid curves[1] as put forth by Charles Handy in his book "The empty raincoat" or as it is called in the US "The age of paradox"[2].
Dave Snowded of Cognitive Edge explained[3] during his keynote at the recently concluded CII's KM Summit in India that we are in a phase where we are changing our understanding of how things work/should be and are seeing a lot of new ideas taking shape & further changing the status quo. We are shifting from a systems design view to a social computing view. We are in between two of the S-curves as shown above[4].
In such a phase it is not possible to know what the future will hold. What he says has profound effect on our consulting practice's approach. If we cannot know the future state, we cannot create a roadmap! However, Dave says that we can control the process by which the future will evolve. He suggests[5] using complex systems instead of chaos systems or organized systems approach.
If you come to consider it a moment it sounds true. Most of what we see today in social computing is not something we could have predicted. Wikipedia makes sense in hindsight, it was ridiculed when it began. Most of the current uses of social technologies we are seeing are exaptations, very different from what they were built for. Twitter & Facebook were not built for all the purposes we are using them for today. Social computing is about technology enabled networking of human beings and thus slightly unpredictable because of the human element.
A study on relationship between performance and the amount of structure in an organization[6] brought forth varied results, but the conclusion is that there is definite value in having a simple set of rules for strategy. Two of the findings are as given:
"First, we confirm that an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between performance and the amount of structure. Yet, this relationship is unexpectedly asymmetric – i.e., it is better to err on the side of too much than too little structure. Second, we describe how market dynamism moderates the relationship between structure and performance. In particular, increasing unpredictability is associated with a less structured optimum."
But making things simple is actually very difficult. Its easy to write complex thought pieces as this, however very difficult to put them down in a simple manner such that common people can grasp the concepts.
Graham Hill (one of the CRM gurus & strategic thinkers from Europe) suggests a similar approach for the telecom industry and puts forth his customer lifecycle management in 100 days approach[7] which he describes as:
"CLM (or CRM) in 100 days provides a way to break up larger programmes of work into manageable projects, to manage them aggressively to ensure they deliver on-time, in-full, to-budget, and to harvest tangible benefits from them as quickly as possible. And it works."
Hill's CLM/CRM in 100 days is in turn part of his "Vision, Values, Venturing" approach that he suggests for Social CRM success[8]. Very similar to the agile practices in software development.
Is that what we need for Social CRM implementations? A simple strategy & short iterative cycles of implementations? How do we define & calculate ROI in such cases?
--References--
[1] http://heroesnotzombies.wordpress.com/2008/01/02/the-s-curve/ OR http://books.google.co.in/books?id=v1baPx03VpwC&lpg=PA49&dq=curve%20charles%20handy&lr=&pg=PA49#v=onepage&q=&f=false
[2] http://books.google.co.in/books?id=v1baPx03VpwC&lpg=PR9&ots=xghjkmmXX_&dq=curve%20charles%20handy&lr=&pg=PR9#v=onepage&q=&f=false
[3] www.cognitive-edge.com/podcastdetails.php?podid=93
[4] http://cioinnervoice.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/s-curve-r6.jpg
[5] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Miwb92eZaJg
[6] http://www.customerthink.com/blog/customer_lifecycle_management_in_100_days
[7] http://www.customerthink.com/blog/how_vision_value_venturing_drives_social_crm_success
--Image sources--
[1] http://cioinnervoice.wordpress.com/2009/04/30/the-dark-art-of-it-investment/
Prem,
ReplyDeleteAn excellent post, really thoughtful. I have a personal method for measuring the impact of a post, by the number of times I read the content as well as when I can grasp the true value (good posts must be read in the morning, else I will certanly miss some of the major points).
There are two areas which, I believe, warrant further discussion. With respect to social technologies driving culture change in an organization, there is a problem - not with what you state! Too many large organizations (medium too I suppose) are working overtime to block these changes. Either one of use could rout around and dig up the exact stats - but it is a large number > 50% of CIOs are blocking social sites. The exact impact to companies is not clear, but it is non-zero. Social Computing itself cannot drive the change without the support of the organization. Large organizations are not equipped to facilitate these changes - prediction, medium and small organizations are going to leapfrog large in this area (with exceptions of course).
Second topic I would not mind discussing further is a one of a personal 'pet peeve' at the moment, and it really came to light during a round table discussion lead by Michael Krigsman and Mike Muhney - the difference between Education and Training. While we may not be sure exactly where we are going, and we may not in fact be able to create a road map, that does not change the fact that we cannot be prepared for the journey - Education. Training suggests that we know where we are going, thus can prepare people with guides and manuals - nope, not possible.
Excellent post Prem, a true platform for further discussions - glad you are felling better!
Thank you Mitch. This is what I call a #scrm community post ;) & would not have been possible without the initiation by you about the need for patterns in Social CRM rather than best practices & Esteban's help in refining a couple of thoughts in the introducing paragraphs. :) I must say that an internal discussion in my team at work also instigated me into researching more & writing this. :)
ReplyDeleteWhen I went through Dave's podcast & came to know about the cusp of two S-curves I understood what we were all going through in the #scrm accidental community & inside our organization as well. We were dealing with uncertainties. Having been used to a "roadmap" approach for most of the projects I have been involved in, yet having an innate affinity for innovative thinking, I was confused due to the clash of my inherent & acquired thought processes.
I am still grappling with this but am sure once we are through with the patterns stuff there will be a lot more clarity in my mind. :)
I agree to you two points. In fact, for the first one am trying to have a general discussion in our internal blogs. inviting comments from both managers & younger techies, about how to ensure that sensitive information is not leaked to the outside world. This is the main reason for us to block access to social media & not productivity. Productivity is a lame excuse & has been debunked in various emerging studies. http://stopblocking.org has references to many such studies.
<span style="background-color: #ffffff; ">I am of the opinion that mere technology like web filters will not suffice. Culture is important too. Biggest challenge would be to make the youngsters entering the organization fresh from colleges, who have sort of grown up with orkut / facebook since their late teens, understand the enormity of the mistake they could inadvertently make if they are not careful about what they share.</span>
This is what I guess you will call education, not training. :)
Thank you for the comment Mitch, I was worried I might not have been coherent in this post. ;)
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ReplyDelete<p>
<p>Prem - You bring up good points about the need for corporate culture to drive the adoption of social business design concepts. I agree.
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<p>Your article is pointing towards what I've been saying about the need for objectives and strategies have to lead technology.
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<p>However, leading the former are corporate culture. It's a company's culture that will influence the type of leaders selected to run a company (and success of the selected leaders will be influenced by cultural expectations). And through the leaders comes the selection of objectives and the definition of the strategic approaches to achieving them.
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<p>Mitch - Me thinks your "two topics" are tied together. There's the education of executives, including CIOs, as to how to lead through trust and empowerment rather than control.
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<p>And there's the education of staffs to know the most responsible and effective way to self-manage in a social business. It means mentoring staffs to be able to move beyond being "wrists" who carry out what the "head" tells them to do. Said another way, to move beyond expectations of being cogs and into a realm where they are empowered to take roles as leaders and influencers as well in their own spheres.
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<p>And all that circles back around to corporate culture again.
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Hi Prem,
ReplyDeleteYour last comment seems to denote that we cannot teach new entrants about what they can and cannot post. I am inclined to say that there are already a sufficient number of companies that have policies that can be used to formulate your own, and which employees can thus be trained on (http://mashable.com/2009/09/20/social-media-policies/). Education is an ongoing activity and why not, xould be peer-to-peer driven such as you would find in a social support community :)
Cheers,
Mark
Hi Mark,
ReplyDeleteHmmm. Your comment took mine in a different direction than I intended but let me respond to yours.
First, let me say I have a great deal of faith in people and believe most people are capable of much more than most companies give them leeway to be. To get to employees to into their "mostness" zone, though, means letting go of corporate control and empowering employees to act and influence on their own initiative.
That said, though, employees *do* need to act within the corporate framework so the company moves forward in a unified way. And it's not about "meeting policy" but about working within a cohesive culture to propel the business (to the benefit of customers, partners and employees).
Second, while there's value in peer-to-peer learning, including in the social media realm, I don't believe that approach that will win over executives who are already squiggy about social media. Peer-to-peer can be used as influencer, but execs will likely need more comfort.
By it's definition empowering means trusting employees to do the right thing. In the social media world, it comes back to trusting how and when employees use social media and also what and how they say things online.
The reality is many companies are fearful of social media. If they weren't then those companies wouldn't block SM or limit participation on company matters to only a few select employees.
While having policies might codify the appropriate use of SM, it doesn't educate people about its impact or how to use it effectively. And policies won't necessarily alleviate executive fears either.
Rather than simply depending on codified policies or, worse, winging it and hoping for the best, the better approach goes back to what Mitch mentioned. Educate rather than simply train.
What's the difference? Training is where you teach someone to insert a widget into slot A.
Education is when you teach them why the insertion is important and how it impacts the related actitivies downstream or laterally from their own activities. Education is what gives people context and allows them the mental tools to face new challenges when they arise.
And corporate culture relates to education because it's a factor helping to put education into context (as in, this is why "we" do things this way).
OH on twitter ... #scrm needs sociology more than technology ... or something like that. Yes Kathy, you are spot on! Cultural, sociological & behavioral changes are far more important to achieve first to step on to the level of achieving mass collaboration within an organization. Unless people can collaborate within I don't see how they can help the customers or anybody else outside the organization. Everybody would either be presenting a discontinuous experience to the customers or reinventing the wheel.
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ReplyDelete<p>Mark,
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<p>We do have our Acceptable User Policy & Code of Ethics that needs to be completed by each & every individual of the organization, thankfully no exit tests required!<span style="background-color: #ffffff; "> O:-) </span>
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<p>However in this era of pervasive computing, thanks to the proliferation of camera phones & smart phones & GPRS (not much of 3G yet here), it much much easier to inadvertently<span style="font-weight: normal;"> send out information that might have unintended consequences when sent out to the social web. Mere policies or policing do not help, hence the need for educating the folks in addition to the training. :) </span>
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<p>Regards,
<p>Prem