At the end of the 20st century, as the Dot.com bubble burst, social media was gaining inertia and making an ever increase statement in corporate America. By 2001, the number of America Online (AOL) users had grown steadily to nearly 34 million, blogging was well established and flourishing, Blackboard was revolutionizing student-teacher interactions, Google became a household name, and Wikipedia launched on January 15th. By 2003, LinkedIn positioned itself as a business-centric social network for professionals, while MySpace copied Friendster. Only one year later, a young Harvard undergraduate started thefacebook.com—now simply known as Facebook—which became the largest social network site on the worldwide web. Since then, social technologies continued to advance at extraordinary speeds, while simultaneously demonstrating an uncanny aptitude for swift and strategic re-invention upon economic pressure.
By 2009, corporate America was
utilizing numerous forms of social media, such as blogs, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook,
and YouTube in order to leverage their insurmountable power of
communication. Over the years, many
businesses observed the power social media had on the public as well as their
employees and found ways to incorporate these powerful tools of communication
into their business model. Many have successfully harnessed the power of social
media, some have failed in their attempt, while others struggle to adapt and evolve
with these newer and very real forms of communication that disrupt traditional business
models.
So why did some businesses
succeed? What caused other
businesses to fail? And how will
businesses that are struggling in an age of corporate social media compete with
All-Stars like General Electric (GE)?
Perhaps the answers to these questions exist within GE’s highly adaptive
business model and its MVPs.
Since its beginning in the late
19th century, GE has been a model for adaptive business strategies,
especially regarding its famously successful jump into healthcare technologies
after a long and lucrative history of manufacturing electronic appliances and supercharged
turbine engines. Today, GE’s most recent adaptive business success story
involves the proper and strategic use of social media. Since 2012, GE has aggressively
incorporated social media into nearly all of its business units across the
globe, and the company is beginning to see big rewards. However, a company is only as great as
its leaders, which is why special attention should be paid to GE’s MVPs.
In February 2013, after a
thorough survey of GE’s incorporation of social technologies across its many
business units, McKinsey & Company, one of today’s
leading global management consulting firms, published a report (see Six social-media skills every leader needs) describing its conclusions concerning GE’s leadership
and key attributes that were paramount to their successful implementation of
social media. In summary, McKinsey
discovered that GE’s MVPs demonstrate six dimensions of social media-literate
leadership: Producer, Distributor, Recipient, Advisor, Architect, and Analyst.
The Producer
As a Producer of social media
content, a leader must have the courage to move beyond fears instilled by older
ways of communication. For instance, the old phrase “a picture is worth a
thousand words” has been replaced with “a video is worth a million words.” Video composed of authentic voices,
creativity and engaging stories can cause people to shift to the edge of their
seat and become more attentive.
Therefore, leaders must realize, accept and ultimately overcome the
natural discomfort they experience when participating in a more raw and
unedited form of communication. This will intellectually and creatively
challenge leaders to discover and truly understand the art and science of
participatory media. For example, GE Capital’s leader, Mark Begor, was nervous
to participate in the company’s “unplugged” video messaging, an initiative of
GE’s Video Central division. Begor was very uncomfortable with presenting
himself and his message in an unedited format. However, his discomfort quickly subsided as he improved his
communication skills to better serve a participatory platform. According to
McKinsey, “to thrive in the world of social media, leaders must have the
courage to appear ‘raw’ and unpolished....[because] too much perfection is
actually a barrier to collaboration and co-creation, as it disinvites
participation.”
The Distributor
Leaders as Distributors support the creation of meaning from social
media content by knowing where and how to most effectively reach their
audience. By making the social media network a center process, Lorraine
Bolsinger, vice president and general manager of GE Aviation Systems, engaged
and sustained a core group of followers and influencers with her "360
blog.” Identification of this core group of followers is one of the key skills
identified among those with “Organizational Media Literacy.”
Understanding the next steps is critical as well. How will your followers treat your
message in the social media realm? Leaders with Distribution Competence
have a strategic understanding of multiple potential outcomes within the social
universe, such as the possibility of content becoming viral, which can be an
advantage or disadvantage depending on both the content and the audience.
The Recipient
The Recipient not only gathers and manages potential incoming
content, but these leaders also achieve success through deep understanding of
their audience. Successful Recipients maintain a discerning eye and
thoughtful voice, both critical to engaging and making meaning of content
through a collaborative process with their audience. However, engaging is
not always an easy task, explains Stuart Dean, CEO of GE ASEAN. To wade
through the constant onslaught of content in the social world, it is critical
to proficiently apply tested content-management tools, such as
HootSuite for Twitter, to streamline the content-gathering process and increase
time available for rich, authentic interactions across multiple
communication channels.
The Advisor
The social media-savvy leader
also functions as an Advisor, where he or she proactively tutors, guides, and
strategically coordinates the social media activities of his or her team. This
could mean creating new roles, such as content monitors, social network
analysts, and community mentors, in order to utilize new social technologies in
a strategically aligned effort.
For example, GE’s mining business came to fruition due to Steve
Sargent’s, president and CEO of GE Australia and New Zealand, strategic implementation
of an internal mining-industry social media network that crossed businesses and
regions. “The type of leadership
we need finds its full expression in the DNA of collaborative technologies, and
I am determined to leverage this DNA as much as I can,” said Sargent in a
report by McKinsey and Company (ref).
The Architect
GE’s leaders are also Architects
of social media, whereby they design an organizational architecture that
balances free exchange of communication with enforced bylaws that circumvent or
minimize irresponsible activity.
In other words, to function as an architect the leader must find a way
to harmoniously intertwine vertical accountability with horizontal
collaboration. Andrew Way’s, vice president of GE’s Oil, Gas Drilling and Surface
Division, approach as an architect was to produce a series of videos explaining
the business’s history, current state and successes. Way believes the videos
united his team members by clearly and continuously communicating their shared
goals. “It clearly has created a new culture,” stated Way in the 2013 McKinsey report.
The Analyst
As a social media Analyst,
leaders should a) keep up with social trends and innovations while b)
continuously surveying their business for gaps or weaknesses, and c) experiment
with and incorporate new technologies if needed. In 2011, GE took the lead in being an analyst when it
launched its educational program called Leadership Exploration as part of the curriculum
at Crotonville, GE’s leadership university. In this program, leaders are introduced to a broad range of
state-of-the-art technologies as well as innovative practices, whereby enabling
GE leaders to respond quickly to change and effectively adapt if necessary.
From this in depth analysis of
GE, it is clear that social media is no longer a new business model. Thousands
of companies and organization have adopted social media. For instance, at the last American
Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) conference, the AAPS used
Twitter to “tweet” comments between FDA and attending scientists to members who
were unable to attend the meetings. “This in turn allowed them [AAPS members
not present] to comment back using the same social media device,” according to
Val Barra, Senior Manager of KKC’s Clinical Assay Division, who attended this
year’s AAPS conference. Val also
noted that “summaries of discussion groups held after the open meeting with FDA
were also expressed via Twitter. This allowed for interaction that would not
otherwise have happened.”
Val’s observations provide clear
evidence that social media tools are being adopted by key members of the
scientific community. Of course, the FDA also demonstrates a responsible
outlook on social media, especially within the realm of FDA-regulated firms
(see the recently drafted Promotional Media Guidelines
for Regulatory Requirements). But that is another story.
So if the FDA views social media
as kosher, given that firms communicate responsibly, why are some
pharmaceutical and biotech companies reluctant to change? What can be said about companies that
question the use of social media? Moreover, companies may notice that
when viewed through a sharper lens, social media can function as a “heart
monitor,” constantly checking the vital signs of the company? That being said, how can companies become
more aware of the benefits of social media?
In Val’s opinion, along with the
GE leaders previously mentioned, companies should embrace social media. Val states that “Seeing these applications
as potential problems rather than new ways of communication will only put the
company behind those that adopt social media as an acceptable way to hold quick
discussions…to ignore them is not going to benefit the company. You are better
off to let Pandora out of her box for awhile and see what works and does not
work, then to keep the poor girl in her box forever.”
I’m of a similar opinion as
Val. I believe in responsible and
strategic open communication, and social media seems to be a natural next step
in our evolution as well as the evolution of the organizational entities we
create. Therefore, it seems
inevitable that social media will find its way into each and every company,
eventually. The real question is
what will happen to those companies that are late to adopt social media as a
standard way of communicating their business?
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