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Matt Ridings

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Your Client Is Not An Idiot - A Rant On Consulting

Begin rant.

  1. Every department feels like they best understand how to achieve the companies goals.
  2. Every department feels like they are in a tug of war with departments that 'don't get it'.
  3. Every department thinks if they could just get the budget they needed they would be much more successful.
  4. Every department feels threatened if they hear of some initiative taking place elsewhere that they think they should be the owners of.
  5. Every department feels under-represented at the leadership table
  6. Every department feels many of their company-wide processes are broken
  7. Every department feels like infrastructure services (HR, Finance, IT) often make their lives more difficult instead of enabling them
These truisms exist not because companies are stupid, but because they were smart.  These fractures occurred because of a need to scale.  It is the divide-and-conquer approach to a hierarchical chain of command.  It is the source of silos.  It's a simple thing to stand at a distance and see these structures and believe that organizations are feeble-minded.  After all, if we can all see these flaws for what they are then why can't they?  For the most part, they can.  But you have to keep in mind that these structures were formed during an industrial production/consumption period in which companies had never before come close to reaching these kinds of sizes.  They needed new ways of distributing and scaling corporate functions.  It's easy to pick these structures apart now when we have a developing knowledge based economy, but let's not forget that using these traditional structures we grew the largest companies known to man over the period of a century.  I, for one, have a real issue decrying something that proved its worth over a much longer period than anything we are suggesting now.  Yes, these structures have issues, and yes those issues are being exacerbated as we move into a different type of economy.  But there was a lot *right* about those structures as well.  They served their purposes very well.

When I hear consultants and theorists berate companies and the way they are structured one of two thoughts crosses my mind; either a) They've never actually been in a large enterprise in their life or b) They have foregone reality in favor of making themselves look smart.  

Do they really believe that the leadership of these 'broken' companies don't understand that their models carry with them certain problems?  Do they really believe that the leadership hasn't read all the same books on how to run a better business that they have?  Do they really believe that the McKinsey's of the world haven't crawled throughout that company over the years pointing out these issues?  It's this arrogant point of view that many consultants carry with them into the boardroom that really gets under my skin.

The best ideas in the world cannot, and will not, be successful if they are built on a foundation of fantasy.  You don't modify the structure of a company overnight, you don't put technology in place and watch all of your woes magically disappear, and most importantly you don't make the individuals within your company suddenly sing kum-ba-ya and forget about their own self-centered needs and desires.  It takes time, sometimes a lot of it.  It takes work, always a lot of it.  It takes determination, a ridiculous amount of it.  Most of all, it takes leadership caring about the state of the company ten years from now more than they care about the state of it one year from now.  That's a pretty daunting view for anyone, particularly for those beholden to shareholders, and it's why only the very best leaders tend to take on these types of challenges.  

IBM and GE would be two of the most obvious examples of those successful business model shifts because of their size, but there are hundreds of mid-cap companies, and thousands of SMB's who take on this challenge every year.  Those ratios might imply that it gets easier the smaller you are.  I disagree to a point.  It can happen *faster* as you get smaller, and the variables are less complex, but I'm not sure I would say *easier* because that implies that the commitment required was less.  I would posit that one reason volume increases with a decrease in size is 'legacy'.  The smaller you get the more likely you are to have an Owner/Founder in place.  One that is more than just a 'job' for the CEO.  A leadership that isn't walking away with its millions even if the business fails.  One that sees the company as a means to provide for its descendants.  That tends to organically support a longer term view.

Do I believe that the tools, the surrounding culture shift, and economic status are now aligned in such a way as to incent many leaders to finally make some of these business model adjustments?  Of course, it's why we started SideraWorks.  It's why I believe in the structure of Social Business. But don't mistake proper timing and incentives helping corporate leaders make these choices now as being the same thing as them 'finally seeing the light'.  They saw the light long ago, but the perceived risk/reward balance wasn't yet leaning far enough for them to justify it.

Our job is to help these organizations realize their vision, not to realize ours.  Whether 'social business' is the method by which that occurs, or some other name you choose to apply to it it is still a *method*.  The 'vision', a more efficient/agile/responsive/successful company, is still theirs.  The more you dismiss the intelligence stored within your clients companies, the more likely you are to fail them.  Success in these matters is achieved only by sitting at the same table with the leadership and *facilitating* solutions.  Standing upon a pedestal with hoarded knowledge and dictating solutions to the peasants simply doesn't work.

End rant.

Cheers,

Matt Ridings - @techguerilla

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What Is Social Business? A SideraWorks Brief

You can find the brief on "What Is Social Business" below, directly on SlideShare, or on the SideraWorks website (Yes, it's now live!).  Enjoy!

 

 

Cheers,

Matt Ridings - @techguerilla

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Influencers and Change Management

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Importance Of Adoption

Most of the conversation about understanding 'influence' these days revolves around the work taking place in the Social Media arena.  I've spent an inordinate amount of time on that particular subject over the last several years.  However, my interest in identifying influencers evolved not out of social media but rather understanding the internal social structures of organizations for the work I'd been doing in change management.  One of the most intractable problems where large scale change management is concerned is 'adoption'.  In Social Business, that may be getting employees to utilize a new collaboration tool, having them leverage a new process or methodology, or simply evolving a new cultural mindset within the organization.  But participation, and creating the proper incentives for doing so, is always the toughest challenge.  It's also one of the most overlooked.  You'd be surprised how many initiatives (CRM anyone?) fail because the focus is on deploying the technology instead of the people who would be using it.  Setting a budget and spending it on a 'deployment' is much simpler than worrying about all that messy 'cultural stuff' so it often becomes an IT exercise.

 

Influence Characteristics

So what does that have to do with 'influence'?  When you're trying to break down communication barriers, or silos, in an organization one of the most effective ways to do so is to seek out internal influencers.  Much like we would search for them in social media, we can seek out those employees whose voice already carries across departments and business units.  Perhaps surprisingly, they can be found at virtually all layers of an organizations hierarchy not just senior management.  While it's too in-depth to go into here, you will find that there are different 'types' of influencers as well.  More accurately, influencers whose influence is derived from different characteristics.  Some garner their influence due to their passion, some through their ability to communicate effectively, some through their widely acknowledged capabilities/genius.  Every organization invariably has a pool of individuals that defy the norms and influence others well beyond their station and expected audience.  It should be noted that the most effective influencers for change management purposes are rarely those forceful individuals that may typically come to mind.  Yes, sometimes you need people who can just 'make it happen' through their force of will and their empowered position, but where lasting change is concerned those being asked to change must see purpose and meaning in that change if they are to truly adopt it for the long term.   I'm fond of saying that the best organizational change is one which you never realize is occurring, in other words it happens so organically that it doesn't feel like it's being directed.

 

Spread Horizontally, Don't Disseminate Vertically

Once the pool of influencers is selected they should be brought into the change management process at an early stage and made formal members of the team.  Their input into deriving the proper incentives for adoption, and assistance in the communication planning should be given the highest level of consideration.  Unlike todays more typical top down planning by a committee made up of the heads of business units alone, you'll find your long term outcomes much more successful (vs. the typical 1/3 success rate of large scale initiatives).  You'll also find that you've created a platform from which some of the strongest talent in the organization is viewed as an example of the type of culture you value.  One of the most valuable artifacts of this approach comes not from the explicit engagement with those influencers, but from the fact that they then organically spread information, passion, belief, and 'purpose' throughout their influence ecosystems via their day-to-day communications.  It's building that underlying perception that is so difficult in any change management initiative, and why internal influencers can be so critical to your success.  Obviously you still have to know methods of properly identifying and filtering these individuals to arrive at the right mix for the team, but I'd wager you're already nodding your head thinking of people who fit the kind if influencer profiles I've described here.  Word-of-mouth is as good a tool as any when it comes to finding these internal influencers, but if you'd like to discuss more formalized approaches feel free to contact me.

 

Cheers,

 

Matt Ridings - @techguerilla

 

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To Gain Control, Sometimes You Have To Let It Go

Control

The Illusion Of Control

When we talk about Social Media & Social Business and the corresponding activities, cultural changes, etc. that are necessary to enable them, invariably the conversation turns to 'control'.  Sure, oftentimes the word control isn't used but that's what it always comes back to.

In HR:  "Our employees could go out there and just say *anything* and that could reflect badly on us!"

In PR: "But *we* need to control the message and perception, there are all these customers out there talking about us any way they want!"

In the C-Suite: "But if social is integrated throughout our business, who will manage all of this 'stuff'?  *Someone* has to be in charge!"

In the departments: "Social is the next big thing, I want us to control it for the whole company"

You get the picture.  Everything about the way we do business is typically tied to this notion of control.  Whether it is 'controlling' costs, or 'controlling' people and resources, we constantly reinforce this notion that if someone isn't 'managing' these things explicitly they will spiral into chaos.  While I completely disagree with this perception, much has already been written on it elsewhere and it's not the focus of this post.

The Fallacy Of Control

Sometimes, you have to give up traditional control to move forward.  Much like a modern fighter jet, to achieve more capabilities we had to 'give up' direct control over the mechanical aspects of flying.  We had to move to a 'fly by wire' system where computers are actually doing all of the 'controlling'.  In this model we are providing direction, not control.  This requires trust, it comes with certain risks, but it was the only way we could advance.  The benefits far outweigh the possible negatives. 

The Reality Of Control

The funny thing is that a business *does* have control over all of these things, it simply looks in the wrong places to apply it.  I'd like to posit that your control lies in the products and services that you deliver to your customers, your employees, your partners, and your stakeholders.  That is your means of control.

Treat your employees fairly and with respect and you don't have to worry about being unfairly exposed.  Deliver great products and services and you don't have to worry about all the negative discussions taking place about you.  Run your organization ethically and responsibly and you don't have to 'spin' all of those embarrassing events that made it to the public.  Give people the responsibility to act like an adult and they will rise to that expectation.  Provide empathy and quality to your customers when they need assistance and they will be your biggest advocates.  Develop true partnerships instead of beating up on your 'vendors' to shop the lowest price and those relationships will weather any storm.

You already have control over every aspect of your business that matters.  No amount of transparency, organizational design change, integration of social, or empowerment of employees will ever be able to take that true control from you.  

Sometimes, to be in control you have to give it up.  Keep the focus on staying in control of your destiny.  By focusing on the experience that you deliver across all the points of your organizations ecosystem instead of a focus on controls at the micro level you will always garner greater benefit.  

Do good work.  Build great products.  Design great services.  Foster amazing relationships.  Now, go forth and prosper.

Cheers,

Matt Ridings - @techguerilla
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Social Business And A Culture Of Enablement

Handenabling
Same As It Ever Was

We've known for some time that there are better organizational structures out there. That collaboration and knowledge management systems when executed properly can bring about both efficiencies and innovation (a rare combination).  That the motivators of the new workforce (Millennials specifically) have changed.  That the pace of change has steadily increased and is only getting faster.

People roll their eyes at those proclaiming how businesses need to 'act now or be left behind' because as they rightfully state "these individual factors are nothing new".  And while that may be true enough, what they are missing is that we've arrived at a critical juncture where these factors (and more) are being pushed from a point of 'luxury' to 'necessity'.  A perfect storm is taking place where economic, societal, and technological factors will no longer abide a business which decides to 'wait this one out'.   The scales have tipped to the point that the effort and risk of large scale change no longer outweigh the benefits.  Enter Social Business.

Evolution Ignores No One

We have successfully operated our businesses in a model based upon the hoarding of intellectual property.  A model that says "Find a way to do something better, or know something the other guy doesn't know and then build a fortress around it using either the law (patents, lawsuits, etc.) or secrecy".  We then leverage and monetize that advantage for as long as we can.  Regardless of your point of view, this has been an incredibly successful model for well over a century.  The problem is that, as the pace of change accelerates, the amount of time available to monetize a business based on this model decreases.  The only solution when intellectual property lifetimes decline to the point of commoditization is to a) accelerate your rate of innovation or b) differentiate yourself through other means.  Ideally, both.

Predictive Loss Vs. Dynamic Gain
Today's rapidly changing business environment means businesses must learn to thrive in these conditions.  To be agile, creative, alert, adaptive, and spontaneous.  Highly structured organizations with their top-down hierarchical fiefdoms serve to stifle these attributes.  Yet the notion of decentralized, self-organizing, emergent structures have always scared the pants off of enterprise executives.  And rightfully so.  After all, their responsibility is to maximize investor returns…sort of.  What that really means is "maximize how well you can predict investor returns".  The vast majority of CEO's would prefer to be able to say "we will achieve our forecasted revenue this quarter" even if that revenue was a *loss* than to say "I can't really forecast this quarter very accurately" even if the long term growth outlook would be more positive.  There are some exceptions to these executives, including a few who refuse to do quarterly forecasts at all, but you'll notice they tend to exist in the more progressive (and successful) companies.  

The Journey, Not The Destination

The reality is that none of us should nonchalantly berate those organizations who haven't yet seen the light.  There is risk involved in making these shifts and when you sit at the head of the table of a multi-billion dollar corporation it takes an incredible amount of will and confidence to tackle the cultural changes necessary to bring these shifts about.  Our job as consultants in this space is to demonstrate we understand those risks, to provide clarity on the impetus factors that demand these changes be made, and most of all to produce a clear path forward that arrives at the destination but makes the journey as safe as possible along the way.  The human equivalent of adding a GPS and airbags to the organization.


A Culture Of Enablement
A Social Business is embodied and brought about by items like Collaboration, Culture Development, Knowledge enablement, and Innovation empowerment.

The language we use when describing the transitional aspects of moving from a traditional business to a Social Business  is important.  We need to ensure that the words are representative.  If a traditional business is 'stable', then a Social Business isn't 'unstable' it's 'Dynamic'.  We have to shift from 'economies of scale' to 'economies of scope' and from 'managing risk' to 'fostering resilience'.

The most difficult, and most important, aspect of a Social Business  for an executive to come to grips with is moving from a culture of 'control' to a 'Culture of Enablement'.  At their core most business and management models are structured around control.  Controlling risk, controlling people, controlling outcomes.  In a truly evolved Social Business the mentality has to shift.  Now you enable people.  You enable outcomes (even the unpredictable ones…also known as innovation).  You enable access to risk by demonstrating and educating on the companies shared values.  You don't 'lead' a company to success, you enable it to succeed.  These small mental shifts are difficult at first, but have a massive impact on how you approach your decision making within an organization and the culture that evolves.  With the new batch of people entering the workforce, and their value systems, this becomes more critical than ever.

Are you ready to enable your company to succeed?  Are you ready to be a Social Business?  I think you are.

Cheers,

Matt Ridings - @techguerilla

*This post is part of the Wizard Behind The Social Media Curtain series

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Cognitive Dissonance: Why Change Is Hard

Change_is_hard

Cognitive Dissonance is that discomfort we feel when we try and hold two conflicting thoughts in the mind at the same time.  If we believe we are inherently a good person, then when we do something bad we feel dissonance.  The disappointment we feel when someone acts differently from the view in which we held them is also a form of dissonance.  From an organizational perspective, if you've been entrenched in a long held process or corporate culture the implication is that it was the *right* process (whether you agreed with that or not).  So when someone comes along and turns over that apple cart and says there is a *new* right way, dissonance is created.

When you try and institute change within an organization, you are going to encounter this.  What's critical to understand is that this is not only 'normal' behavior, but to some degree inevitable.  It's just the way our brains work.  The larger the organization, and the greater the change, the more this dissonance (and thus resistance) will occur.  

So what?  Why all the psychological mumbo jumbo?  Because change management is so utterly critical to deploying the cultural sea change necessary for the next generation of Social Business.  I see so many consultants in this space banging their head on the wall out of frustration that big companies just don't 'get it'.  They sit at lunch with me and argue about how 'stupid' these executives are because they've presented them with irrefutable logic about the 'best' way to run an organization and the executive still doesn't bite.

Logic and reason, unfortunately, have little to do with making change actually happen.  You are still creating dissonance.  You will still be resisted at every turn if you don't have a solid change management plan in place that takes into account the incredibly nuanced aspects of politics, culture shift, systems and process, etc.  You cannot just 'roll out' a decision that requires any significant change within an organization and expect a high degree of success.  Saying 

"We have new software, systems, and processes.  We are going to train you.  We will now be a 'social' company starting on Friday of next week" 

is akin to saying 

"I just bought you a wine cellar, filled it with wine, and gave you a book...you start your new job as a sommelier on Friday".  

There is also no such thing as a unilateral change management plan.  We talk about corporate culture like it's a single 'thing', but it's really not.  From department to department, geographic location to location, the cultures are different.  Sure, they all combine to some generic sense of the type of culture a company has but that's not good enough for effective change management.  Some regions/groups respond best to well defined messaging based on self-interest, others on shared interest (sometimes corporate shared interest, other times societal shared interest).  In some regions the dictatorial style may actually work if messaged properly (France and Belgium for example).  The point is that simply knowing the 'right' thing to do for a company is not enough.  Simply saying "you must now do this" is not enough.

At a simplistic level you can look at it through the lens of one of the tools I use in my workshops called "What? So What? What Now?"*

  1. What? - What are we trying to accomplish big picture?
  2. So What? - Why are we trying to accomplish it?  What are the implications of doing so? What are the implications of not accomplishing it?  What does it mean to *me*?  What does it mean to the familial group (department/division)?  What does it mean to the corporation?  What does it mean to the consumer?
  3. What Now? - Visualize the before and after.  What actions do we take to start down this path?
*Note - Items 2 & 3 are done in layers to accommodate messaging specific and relative to the audience, there's not just one.

So to my consultant friends who are so frustrated right now...knowing what someone should do, no matter how correct, is not a substitute for knowing how to get them there.  It's not that those executives are necessarily disagreeing with your assessment, they simply don't believe that you understand how to truly make it happen.  Show them they're wrong, demonstrate your understanding of complex change management and you may find your success rate goes up.

Best of luck.

Cheers,

Matt Ridings - @techguerilla
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