Some new friends and I talked yesterday about their company’s needs with regards to new media and community building. The two people tasked with the roles of bringing podcasting and community to the organization were both smart, had many of the right ideas, and were already marching down a reasonable path. What I felt after our conversation, however, was that their organization wasn’t really convinced that they should make the move fully into this new relationship economy. Here were their sticking points.
Control
It’s hard for a big organization to understand that information isn’t meant to be horded. In fact, control overall is a hallmark of a big old company worrying about their future, but not ready to let go of the wheel a little bit to get there. For those seeking to convince a company to let go, small bites is what I recommend. Find some smaller segment of the whole that they can use as a test bed, and then see what the benefits are. Another point: make sure all sides have benefits. Companies aren’t in business to give the store away.
Conversations
My new friends told me about the challenge of their organization wanting to participate in conversations around their products, but then being sensitive to criticisms. In all cases, the conversation abruptly stopped. Both friends knew that this meant the conversation continued elsewhere, only now out of sight of the company, and without a strong tie back to the people who created the products.
This is a difficult experience. Opening one’s self up for criticism is hard. And there are all kinds of ways that a big organization can be targeted unfairly. Someone from an opposing organization or with a clear benefit to criticizing the company can come on and make trouble. There are lots of reasons people can come on and poison the talk. And yet, other companies have survived and thrived with open conversation mechanisms in place.
Again, seek the upside for all parties. In this case, sometimes the criticisms are real, and deserve consideration for your products. Other times, they’re meant to be harmful. Choose to discredit these, and reinforce your organization’s method.
Navigating the New Relationship Economy
It’s funny how much of these conversations are devoted to technology. These new digital relationship tools do take a little understanding, and knowing when to use which becomes important as well. I found that these two knew what they wanted to accomplish and had selected great tools, but that they could probably use a little more support from the main technology group at the organization. Their projects worked great on the smaller scale, and then there would have to be a larger agreement before creating a project to scale them out to the whole organization.
Also surprising was hearing that companies still have the same debates about blogs (whether or not to do them, internal or external, who gets access). Didn’t we determine this years ago? Evidently not.
What About YOUR Organization?
If you wanted to provide advice to a big company seeking to move into this Relationship Economy world of ours, what would you tell them about social media, social networking, and the ways we choose to enhance our digital life?
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