“Video Killed the Radio Star” – The Buggles, Sept 7, 1979

The rise of MTV and the age of video heralded the end of the line for the ugly rock star.   Why?  Media places selection pressures upon the content that flows through them and a visual medium had no use for the likes of Foghat.

Media is Darwinian.  Which is to say the medium of communication inherently enables or inhibits certain traits.  Consider the rise of  literacy which promoted abstract thinking done in solitude versus orality, which favors skills of memorization and shared experience.

In similar fashion, Social media is  placing selection pressures on business (along with every aspect of society).   As more and more of our friends, customers and business colleagues begin participating on the web (as opposed to just reading on it)  it has become a fundamentally social medium; its operating principles now follow social norms more than they do traditional business norms.

What’s the difference?

Social contracts are founded upon trust, authenticity, reputation and reciprocity to name a substantive few.   While these traits have always governed our personal relationships, until the rise of social media most of business that was transacted was remarkably impersonal and asocial.

This leads to an obvious assertion that has huge implications:  Over time businesses that “get” social and adhere to a social contract will thrive – while those that do not, will wither.

BPGlobalPR, the fake Twitter account mocking BP has , at the time of this writing, over 150,000 followers.  It is dark humor – but it is humorous.

Many people have taken to social media to vent their frustration and anger over the oil spill.  There are myriad blog posts, great ongoing conversation at the OilDrum, and the Twitter hashtags (#oilspill and #oilpocalypse) are a steady stream of regular people discussing the disaster.

BP’s response?  Its war-room legions of crisis managers have bought keywords in order to direct search queries to its own story (“learn more about how BP is helping”), it has tried to shut down the fake Twitter account and it has produced pricey television ads (links to aforementioned are intentionally absent).  In both cases the predictable result has been more bad press and ill will.

I have seen many back channel emails. tweets and posts from the social media cognoscenti on the subject of how BP should be using social media.  In one sense the entire question seems misplaced – after all, who cares how BP uses social media during a crisis of biblical proportion?   Isn’t the more potent question how society can benefit from social media rather than the offending corporation?   The answer to why so much time is spent on what BP can do resides in no small part I believe to the fact that social media consultants earn their bread from corporations.  Fair enough.

But my original and still current opinion is that BP should be doing nothing with social media.   They should be doing nothing other than trying to fix their apocalyptic problem.    Any other actions appear to detract from the task at hand and BP has proven itself incapable of wielding social tools (more on that later).  Beyond my sage words of wisdom for BP, I have a bigger issue with the nature of the advice being given by my colleagues.

A few days ago one of leading proponents of social business, The Dachis Group, posted Would Being More Social Help BP? The article suggests many ways in which BP could utilize social technologies to address the oil spill – and implicitly (as the title suggests) improve their reputation.

In  the technical, jargon-heavy language that typifies the Dachis Group’s approach to social business the post states:

BP can leverage the power of social tools to help their current situation – but only if all current business processes are aligned and calibrated for social activation.

Huh?   The post puts forward a series of one-line ideas for BP – some ideas are as interesting as they are unlikely;  “an app to let people report affected areas and wildlife” for example seems a bit far-fetched when you consider that BP is actively trying to minimize assessments of damage  in order to maintain their prime directive, shareholder value (each barrel may cost BP up to  $40K).   Some ideas are slightly appalling, “a private market research community made up of carefully selected consumers to begin to test public messaging” — do we really need message testing on this one?

This leads me to the heart of my issue with this specific post – and by extension all posts of its ilk that speculate about what BP could do without trying to come to terms with who BP are as an institution.   BP is a profit-engine.  BP is not a social business.   And “helping BP”  has nothing to do with technology, tools, apps or “social calibration.”  Being social as a business is a way of treading lightly because you recognize your interconnection with the world around you.   BP is not structured to be social – it is structured to be profitable at all costs… and structure drives behavior.  The Gulf Coast is currently bearing the brunt of their corporate behavior.  What’s more, the moment to help itself has long passed…

To be clear, I believe that social technologies put selection pressures on businesses over the long run – and will make  it harder and harder for corporate profiteers to thrive.  This to me is the promise of social business — over time, businesses that abide by a social contract (respect, authenticity, reciprocity, earned trust etc.) will outperform those that abide by a strictly corporate (or legal) contract.

BP has consistently shown a tin ear to the outrage, hurt and devastation that they are causing.  That again emanates from a business culture – and no amount of technology will be a balm to that malady.

I understand that BP is a stand-in for “corporate crisis” and social media pundits (I am not exempt) are using it to speculate on just how they might utilize these tools in a crisis setting.  I am also not trying to single out this single post.  But for me it  is exemplary of how much and how often the social media conversation misses the entire point.   The post ends:

Of course, for these efforts to be successful, they would have to be planned, heavily moderated, highly coordinated, and integrated with current data and information systems – then communicated to consumers, franchise owners, the media, and government officials.  In other words, all social business systems would have needed to be in place before disaster struck.

Best of luck with that.  BP’s entire culture appears to have been one in denial about this being possible in the first place (for more on that see Cheney‘s energy task force statement on the riskless nature of deep water drilling)…

The nature of public outrage is not something that BP can (or should) try to game for their own benefit.   The more BP tries to enter a conversation, the more they will be torn apart.   Like the angry mobs that drove Emperor Justinian from the Hippodrome to barricade himself in his palace… this mob doesn’t want conversation… they want blood.

I don’t want BP to “join the conversation.”  I want them to  fix the problem.

I had the privilege to present at Web 2.0 Expo this past week.  Here is the SlideShare presentation: Building a Social Business.    I tend to hew to Stowe Boyd’s definition of a Social Business,

A social business is an organization designed consciously around sociality and social tools, as a response to a changed world and the emergence of the social web, including social media, social networks, and a long list of other advances.

Ideally, a Social Business creates a human-scale organization – one with more points of contact with the outside world, one where information flows more freely in all directions, one that is responsive to community, one that inherently cares about those it engages in business with; one that deals honestly and constructively with the world around it because it is part of (and depends upon) the same social group.  A social business builds awesome products, designs awesome services because (1) it actively seeks to know and care about its customers and (2) it relies on customer communities to carry the flag as evangelists and advocates.

Buildingasocialbusiness

A Tale of Two Cities and Lessons for the Social Business.

About three years ago my wife and I made the rash (and wise) decision to buy a 17^th century home in Southwestern France .  Puy L’Eveque is a 13^th century medieval town situated on a hill overlooking the Lot River.    Its narrow streets all lead upward to the summit – where the Mairie (the mayor’s office) and the church occupy the high ground (Puy L’Eveque translates as  “Bishops Hill”).   It is beautiful in the way of most towns built to withstand the long-passed threat of siege.  But  Puy L’Eveque is unmistakably struggling.  Its shops are anemic and situated between empty storefronts.  Its farmer’s markets and vidi greniers are lean affairs and it recently canceled its yearly medieval festival.  It’s population still remains below pre-World War One levels.  From the tourist office brochure:

“In 1880 the community consisted of 2950 inhabitants, boasted 4 hotels, 6 bars, 9 café’s, a mounted brigade of gendarmes, a charity office, a city toll booth, a ferry-boat at Escafignoux, a flour mill and a suspension bridge!  The 1999 census registered 2159 inhabitants.”

Three kilometers away lies the rather bland town of Prayssac; with ancient roots but clearly developed in the 19^th century.  Lying on the flat plain of the Lot valley, its nothing special to behold but its cafes, markets and festivals are bustling.  It was something of a mystery to us when we moved here.

Why is picturesque Puy L’Eveque struggling while Prayssac  thrives?

This is the topic of many dinner discussions among the expatriates here.   Usually the blame is laid at the hands of incapable administrators.   I believe the problem goes deeper.  It is a question of architecture and urban planning.   Puy L’Eveque’s siege architecture just isn’t built for the modern age.   It’s positioning on a hillside was chosen for its unassailability.   The medieval town privileges control of all traffic (human and material) with choke points at top and bottom.   Until very recently there was a single, one-way street leading up to the summit; a stoplight at top and bottom alternated the flow of traffic – for five minutes traffic led upward – the next five minutes, down.  The prime vantage points are held by church and state.   Puy L’Eveque is lovely but it is relic of the past: privilege of place, control from the top, constricted material flows, and strict regulation of its borders.

Prayssac makes no such assumptions or attempt to control – people and goods move freely in and out of its borders.  Prayssac is a social town – it welcomes outsiders.  Its hierarchies form naturally through assembly at any of a number of town squares and the town dissolves naturally into the surrounding countryside.   There are no fortress walls.   The Mairie and Church are discreetly nestled amidst the other edifices.

In short, Puy L’Eveque was not architected for the modern world where goods and people follow an accelerated flow… where commerce privileges open exchange and more porous, natural borders between town and countryside.  The very thing that made Puy L’Eveque thrive in the 14^th century makes it hard to survive in the 21^st; its architecture.

Many of our 20^th century behemoths resemble Puy L’Eveque .   They are closed fortresses with strict, forbidding hierarchies.   While information flow outside has radically accelerated (everyone has a real-time broadcast tower) the modern organization is marked by glacial response times and chokeholds on who is an “authorized” spokesperson.   The world is divided between those inside (employees) with very fixed roles and responsibilities and those “outside” (everyone else) who can’t be trusted.

Hendrik Hertzberg’s insightful comment on healthcare as a by-product of the system of legislation rather than Obama, Nancy Pelosi or even (or especially) Joe Lieberman, provides a lesson not just for government but for business on how architecture is destiny:

The American government has its human aspects—it is staffed by human beings, mostly—but its atomized, at-odds-with-itself legislative structure (House and Senate, each with its arcane rules, its semi-feudal committee chairs, and its independently elected members, none of whom are accountable or fully responsible for outcomes) makes it more like an inanimate object.

We tend to blame people and let architecture off the hook.  But the structures we live within shape our behavior and govern what is possible just as the physical architecture of our towns both emerge from and reinforce the way we see world.

As the social norms set by the Social Web – openness, sharing, participation, become the norms of business (this to me is the key insight behind the new term “social business”)  and as the information flow outside accelerates, organizations will need  rethink their structures.   They will need to think about whether or not they are designed like Puy L’Eveque or Prayssac.

Architecture is destiny.

This is a cross-post from Radar.

I am proud to be joining Stowe Boyd’s upcoming Social Business Edge as a speaker.  Stowe has been one of the leading thinkers on the Social Web and this event has a fantastic line up.   Below is a summary of the conference and a list of confirmed participants.

The conference promises to be intimate and, like Stowe, totally original.  The format stretches the notion of a typical business conference and should be fantastic.

Conference Summary:

Today, more than ever, management is reexamining and rethinking the basic principles of business: how to innovate and prosper. To that end, managers are looking to stay in step with a changing world, and the rise of the social web in particular. How should today’s business leverage what is being learned about the social web?…

Some of the leading thinkers in this area believe that we are at the start of something much larger than a retake on marketing. We are seeing a rethinking of work, collaboration, and the role of management in a changing world, where the principles and tools of the web are transforming society, media, and business. The mainstays of business theory — like innovation, competitive advantage, marketing, production, and strategic planning — need to be reconsidered and rebalanced in the context of a changing world. The rise of the real-time, social web has become one of the critical factors in this new century, along with a radically changed global economic climate, an accelerating need for sustainable business practices, and a political context demanding increased openness in business.

These issues cannot be dealt with one by one, but instead approached as connected elements of a new world order for business. Social Business Edge is designed to address these issues, and to bring together a community of visionaries, practitioners, and tool makers, to collectively explore what the form the social business — and our aspirations to design it — will take.

Other participants at Social Business Edge:

• Lee Bryant, co-host
• Sarah Kennon, co-host
• Adina Levin
• Baratunde Thurston
• Deanna Zandt
• Diane Hessan
• Dion Hinchliffe
• Euan Semple
• Jay Rosen
• Jamais Cascio
• Jemima Gibbons
• John Hagel III
• Micah Sifry
• Venessa Miemis

The story of the social web is a story about how people, when given the ability to freely communicate – do so in great numbers. And when they do they abide by social rules (be yourself, listen, build relationships through give and take etc.). Social Tools Follow Social Rules. When people are allowed to exercise their innate drive to be social they expect the companies they interact with (and work for) to get social as well. Thus social rules become the new rules of doing business.

The problem is, companies have spent generations codifying rules of conduct to make communications – with employees as well as customers – cost-effective, uniform and risk-reducing, not necessarily to be social. We have put in IVR telephone systems (“press 25 to transfer to another pre-recorded call representative”) to lower call costs despite the fact that humans prefer to speak with other humans. We have delegated all communications to the outside world to two classes of individuals: low cost (e.g. call center reps) and high cost (e.g. “communications professionals” and marketers) who serve as proxy communicators on behalf of the organization. Neither of these addresses the challenge of the social web.

This is the challenge.

How does an organization manage the increasing communications asymmetry between inside and outside?

On the inside, information flow is glacial and constricted to a few individuals at the top of the reporting pyramid. On the outside, information flow is kinetic and ubiquitous. Taken within the context and expectations set by the social web most corporations are now structured to be antisocial (communication by proxy) and non-responsive (overwrought workflows governing when/how to respond to issues).

There is no functional method within any organization I know (and I am familiar with quite a few organizations that are trying to tackle this issue) that is effectively handling the following questions:

• How can an organization reasonably (read cost effective and on-brand) be responsive to so many voices that are out there discussing your product or service?
• How do you calibrate your response times to the web where real-time tools like Twitter, Facebook feeds and blogs distribute information instantaneously?
• When and how do you decide to get engaged versus not when issues can literally metastasize overnight?

There are several mutually supporting solutions that need to be put in place and getting there will be a haphazard affair.

First, corporations are not predisposed towards listening (see Listening Beats Talking). We have companies preternaturally tuned towards talking. This is being addressed by the raft of social media consultants out there preaching the holy gospel of listening. Like all behavior changes, this change will come slowly. It will come as a slow market correction – companies that align to this new reality will prosper (think Zappos where customer service is their fundamental marketing plan).

Second, while we have monitoring tools that mine the social web for discussion, we don’t have simple means of connecting our insights into action. There is no “ticketing” system that can provide workflow and audit trail of a customer voice out on the web – and the company outreach that ensues. Another way to say this is that we don’t have any real, proven social CRM solutions. BestBuy has Twelpforce that allows hundreds of BBY employees to respond in semi-coordinated fashion on Twitter. It is a great program and a good start but we have a long way to go.

Now – what does this have to do with the War on Terror? The analogy is more of a footnote to this post but it is an important one and it leads to the third solution needed to meet the challenges listed above.

The U.S. government has approached the The War on Terror  the way a large, industrial corporation would; lay down a heavyweight strategy and marshal all of its resources for a big, resource-intensive push.   Meanwhile the enemy, like the Social Web, in this analogy, exhibits a few key characteristics:

• They are emergent: there is loose direction at the top but most of the action occurs on a cellular, self-directed level
• They are dispersed: geographically Al Qaeda has a confirmed footprint in multiple countries
• They are unknown – These are no longer state actors (in our analogy you might say these are no longer known journalists and “influencers” in the pay of a known corporation that you can negotiate with).  The lowest common denominator is an anonymous well-motivated individual or small group empowered to take a wide variety of actions in pursuit of their goals
• They learn fast, they don’t “play fair” and they are predisposed not to like you

Using a centralized model to meet a decentralized “threat” is a tricky game. The third issue that needs to be solved is that of communications decentralization within large organizations. How do you energize and mobilize your workforce to engage with the outside world? Companies that create a happy, dynamic work culture will have a happy, dynamic workforce capable of carrying the flag in social media (inside and outside the organization). This will allow you to move beyond the limited spokesperson model of today.  To get there companies need to (1) work on a culture of sharing, (2) co-create social media guidelines with their employees and (3) provide training that engages them in thinking innovatively about the potential of these tools and gives them familiarity with the cultural norms of the social web.

Companies that foster a culture of sharing will thrive disproportionate to companies that don’t.  And companies that address the communications asymmetry will be more likely to prosper.

The term, “Social Business” has been steadily gaining currency among influential thinkers such as Stowe Boyd, Jeff Dachis, Peter Kim, and Jeremiah Owyang.   At its broadest definition Social Business describes the systemic challenges and new opportunities social technologies present to organizations.

I have been writing for some time that business needs to “get” social in ways that go well beyond marketing gimmicks or pushing press releases through Twitter.   It is a new approach to doing business.   So I am excited to announce that I will be moderating an O’Reilly panel discussion with Boyd (Principal, The /Messengers), Kim (Managing Director at Dachis Group) and Owyang (Partner, Altimeter Group) on January 14 to discuss:

• What is the definition of Social Business?
• How can Social Business impact strategy, design, technology and customer experience?
• Who are the leading exemplars?

The panel will leave plenty of time for audience Q+A.

I would love to hear about any questions you would like to see addressed.

You can sign up for the webcast here.