Social inside; The Big Picture

Image via CrunchBase

I've long argued that if companies want to interact with social networks, they must themselves become social networks.  

That's the whole point of 'social business'. When a company wants to roll out a customer facing social media initiative the first question I ask is how are you collaborating inside?  How are you being like your customer?  I get too many replies of 'what's that got to do with it?'. Everything - it's the whole game.  The very clever people at Dachis Group have articulated this in a single picture here:

 

Get it now?  Social software is actually most transformative inside the company.  

“The biggest challenge CEOs face today is getting their enterprises closer to their customers,” Tom Kelly, Moxie Soft

Comments

[Garethjones]

Nicely put - although I would go further and suggest there is another step missing from the graphic. We are only at the beginning of the social manifestation in any large way in my view. A truly social business, or perhaps the next step on from a social business to a "normal business of the future", once we are past all the social hype, will be one entity - one ecosystem where customers, employees, potential employees and potential customers all freely interact - not two as indicated above.

Have you read the starfish and the spider? Great book and relates well to your social business, can you handle it post where you refer to the power fo peer to peer organisations.

[Oaxaca]

Thank you for your kind words Gareth. To your point about 'ecosystem'.

“Imagine organizations in which most workers aren’t employees at all, but electronically connected freelancers living wherever they want to. And imagine that all this freedom in business lets people get more of whatever they really want in life – money, interesting work, the chance to help others, or time with their families.”

Thomas Malone, The future of work