The Virtual Gardener
The place where I explore online community cultivation, propagation and harvesting techniques.
I've been working as head of consultancy at Sift for the last four years. The business supports all organisations looking to respond to a Web 2.0 world and truly engage with their audience - and has been doing so for the past 10 years.
This blog originally started out as a comment on a conference I attended about online communities. I'm now using it as a thought-bin for related stuff. Any gaps in posting doesn't mean I've stopped thinking ...
We are smarter than me: How to unleash the power of crowds in your business
Barry Libert is the Billy Graham of the online social network space. No chance to doze, or even check emails. He started by asking us to stand and introduce ourselves to the person next to us as if we weren’t interested in him/her - and ended by asking us to stand and greet the same person as if they were a long lost, very close buddy. Being one of only two Brits at the conference it appeared that there were very few of us whose toes curled with sensations of happy clappyness.
His premise is straightforward - traditional corporate culture is inherently artificial, restricting productivity - the ‘Me’ company. It’s covered by the three maxims:
1. Take no risks
2. Keep your head down
3. All good deeds go fully punished
The ‘We’ company, on the other hand, is a network-brand business that leverages community pervasively to improve its performance.
The characteristics of the ‘We’ company are (S C O R E):
1. S ocial
2. C o-operate (e.g. snap-on, twitter, Dell’s Idea Storm)
3. O pen (e.g. personal stories, I trust people I know)
4. R eward (e.g. customers, NfPs are good at it)
5. E valuate (e.g. by customers themselves)
We were then invited to score our own business using S C O R E from 1-5 where 1 is no and 5 is yes against the 5 characteristics. Anything under 15 is a ‘Me’ company.
The four steps to a ‘We’ business are:
1. Start with a well defined process/strategy
2. People - get the right people engaged - activists not objectors
3. Technology - how do you moderate/encourage facilitator interactions
4. Measurement - use executive language - e.g. $, loyalty, improve pricing, frequency
