A World Gone Social, by Ted Coiné and Mark Babbitt: Book Review

I’d selected several books to take with me on a recent family vacation at the Florida Gulf coast. I was frankly skeptical about A World Gone Social, by Ted Coiné and Mark Babbitt, published by Amacom.  The social media domain is vast and I was doubtful that any book could really do justice to the territory — what is happening today, why it is happening, how this will likely play out in the next few years, and, most importantly, what firms should be doing about it. But the book did not disappoint!

Subtitled “How Companies Must Adapt to Survive,” A World Gone Social does an excellent job presenting the case for the “social revolution.”  If you are not convinced that social media is part of a revolution, each of the early chapters will convince you that this is real, significant and worthy of the over-hyped term “revolution.”  It’s packed with well-researched anecdotes — the success stories and the failures — with lessons nicely extracted. From building the case to taking advantage of social media, the book offers plenty of intelligent, practical and pragmatic advice on how to become part of the social media-enabled revolution (or however that ends up labelled by history!)

The book covers all the bases:

• Customer power and the “Here Comes Everybody” effect so powerfully articulated by Clay Shirky.
• The social employee, and how social media is revolutionizing the company-employee relationship, including recruiting and engaging.
• Viewing the social revolution as the next wave in the evolution from an agrarian to industrial economic model.
• How social is transforming the importance of size and depth in business operating models.
• How to lead your own organization into the social revolution, and the risks of of moving too slowly while your competitors seize the high ground.

A Wold Gone Social recognizes that this is not just about marketing, brand, or the customer experience.  It is all these and more.  Just as the shift from agrarian to industrial economies had a transformational impact on how and where we live, how and where we work and who we work for, so is social media having profound impact on organization structure and the very nature of “the firm” and “community.”

Organizational Implications of Social — the Emerging Holacracy

I was absolutely delighted to see a wonderful chapter entitled “Flat: The New Black” that presents a very compelling case for the impact of social media on management and how employee performance and engagement blossom in flatter organizations enabled by the social revolution.  This chapter discusses the concept of a Holacracy as an emerging organizational form.

This chapter particularly resonated with me. Business Relationship Management Institute (BRMI) was very much a product of the social media revolution. If it were not for the social media revolution, BRMI would almost certainly not exist today. I co-founded BRMI with Aaron Barnes and Dr. Aleksandr Zhuk.  We’d been co-moderating a LinkedIn group that Aaron had created for Professional Business Relationship Managers.

But more importantly, beyond its social media roots, BRMI is deliberately shaping itself as a Holacracy — a model we felt ideally suited to our non-profit status, and as an entity formed by a community of 3 who shared a passion for business relationship management, and wanted to collaborate with and serve a growing community of professional business relationship managers. Our vision and design parameters meant that management overhead had to be kept to an absolute minimum while active membership engagement would fuel future growth.  As such, we not only leveraged the common social media channels (Twitter, LinkedIn, FaceBook, YouTube, etc.) but we also leveraged social tools — Atlassian’s Confluence wiki in particular as the engine for collaboration and for housing the BRM Interactive Body of Knowledge.

Implications for the Business Relationship Manager

A Wold Gone Social is a ‘must read’ for BRMs — there are direct implications for how the BRM can engage with key stakeholders, but more importantly, for the advice, vision and leadership the BRM can bring to her business partner regarding the potential for social media to impact every aspect of the business and its market.

Note: My next on-line BRMP Certification course is being held across 3 Tuesdays—November 4, 11 and 18 . For details, please click here.

 

Social Innovation Word Cloud courtesy of The Digital Doctorate

Related articles

• A World Gone Social: A book review by Bob Morris
• Authors Mark Babbitt and Ted Coiné Prepare Business Leaders for The Social Age with Launch of Their New Book, “A World Gone Social: How Companies Must Adapt to Survive.”
• Mark Babbitt & Ted Coiné – A World Gone Social
• Are You Ready for A World Gone Social?

Bloggers – How Can You Drive Up the Value of Comments and Questions?

I could not resist the cartoon above when I saw it in last week’s New Yorker magazine!  Comments are tricky beasts!  I get literally hundreds for every post – unfortunately, most of them are pure spam!  Thanks to WordPress and it’s highly effective akismet spam filtering capability, these are virtually all caught for me with minimal intervention.  It’s the real comments – or lack thereof – that take me to the analysts couch!

Keep the Emails Coming!

I get lots of Email about my blog posts.  This is great – some are about requests for consulting or speaking.  Others really are comments or questions about a specific post.  I’m happy to answer these, but I WISH they were submitted as actual comments on the post, so we can all see, and if we wish to, participate in the discussion.  Occasionally, I get so inspired by the comment, that I’ll create a new post based upon the Email I received and the response I created.  This always seems to me to be a clumsy way of bringing an offline thought back into the mainstream, but it works.

So, yes – please keep the emails coming – but don’t be shy about inline commenting!

The LinkedIn and Facebook Effect

Another tricky proposition is that I choose to have my posts appear on LinkedIn, FaceBook and Twitter.  When the post relates directly to one of the LinkedIn Groups in which I’m active, I will actually link to it from within a post on the group page.  This is great – it expands the reach of the post.  The downside is that my Twitter and LinkedIn connections and groups are vociferous and knowledgeable commentators.  My FaceBook friends are often active commentators, even if not so knowledgeable in my topic areas!  So much of the comment traffic happens outside my blog – uncaptured for posterity!

I’m not sure what to do about this.  I’m reasonably happy to live with the situation (as I have for the last 6 years or so.)  But when I saw the New Yorker cartoon, it prompted me to write a short post – and see if I get any comments!

Cartoon courtesy of New Yorker Magazine

Corollary to my Post About the Value of LinkedIn Groups

Last week I posted something of a “rant,” questioning the value LinkedIn Groups.  I’ve received more email (though no comments on the blog!) about this post than any since I started blogging 5 years ago!  Many of these messages agreed with my observations, some did not.  One of the most insightful led me to post this – not as a retraction or correction, per se, but as a corollary.

The Value of Giving

One participant in one of the LinkedIn groups in which I participate – and it’s important to note that he is one of the most active participants – reminded me that there is one other aspect of the”ROI” on time and effort invested in LinkedIn groups I had ignored.  He wrote:

LinkedIn groups, like any other social medium, offer us a way to not only fully blossom into who we truly are, but they also provide an invaluable channel for others to connect with us.  …the true value of what we do is not really in what we receive, but in what we give…”

Of course, he is absolutely correct about the value of giving! I have given in terms of my time blogging and on LinkedIn (and other media) for the reason he cites – I get tremendous value from the act itself.  My blogging and my activities on social media help me think through and process how I am seeing and making sense of the world around me.  His email humbled me for ignoring this crucial aspect of the value of participation in groups such as LinkedIn.

My Lame Defense

In my defense, my rant about the value of LinkedIn groups was intended to be a message to the spammers and to all those who only want to “take” and never to “give.”  In some respects, I let my anger at them get the better of me – I probably should written the post – taken a deep breath – and then deleted it!

In the world of blogging, it is considered bad behavior to delete or change a post once published.  (And there have been a few posts over my 5 years that I wish I had not published, or wanted to rewrite!)  And, frankly, I’m not sure I would delete the rant even if it was standard practice to do so.  But my reader’s email to me was spot on – and I am glad to be able to add this corollary, saying what was left unsaid in the original post.

Related articles

• Are Linked-In Groups Worth the Time and Effort?

Chris Brogan’s 27 Holiday Gifts to Bloggers

Why don’t I use my blog to simply point to someone else’s post?  Many blogs do, but from my perspective, that does not seem very value-adding.  But Chris Brogan recently offered the world his “27 Blogging Secrets to Power Your Community.”  I found this to be such a rich and valuable resource, I’m going to break my own rule.

In fact, Chris’s blog, for those who are into community and social media, is a must.  If you are not into these topics, it’s still a must because as we head into 2009, I don’t think you can afford to ignore these topics!

Enjoy – and thank you, Chris.

Social Networking in a Downturn…

My esteemed colleague Susan Scrupski had a great post the other day entitled “The trouble with social media is, well, people” where she captured something quite important.  It has always been clear that social networking can be both a positive and negative force – but Susan nicely connected the potential and impact of social media to global mindsets, and how our attitudes to social networking (and ways to use it) might shift in a recession.

As Susan says, “Social media was great when it ran on positive mental attitude and a go-go economy, but now that people (the stuff networks are made of) are acting like humans, well, harrumph, it’s time to re-examine this social media phenomenon, eh?”

My take on this is that ultimately, you have to believe that increased transparency is positive – though there will be a period while companies and individuals adjust to the facts that:

• Anyone can say just about anything – whether you like it or not!
• Anything you do say (or is said about you), anywhere on the web, might come back to haunt you!
• Expect a free flowing and open dialog – now how are you going to (a) live with it, and (b) take advantage of it?