Author Archive
These are all posts by Mary.
Tuesday, 30th June, 2009 at 13:06
Serial entrepreneur and Linqia CEO Maria Sipka is a passionate community creator with many years’ experience and a number of successful businesses under her belt. In this interview Maria talks about social network fatigue, the limits of decentralized business, and emerging trends in measuring social media ROI.
This article is part of an ongoing series of guest posts for SOMESSO by leading experts and practitioners in social media for business.
Balancing creative freedom with focus and leadership
Mary: You often mention ‘The Starfish and the Spider‘ (Brafman, Beckstrom), which looks at the power of self-organizing as opposed to top-down command and control organization structures. And your company is called ‘Starfish Group’! However in conversation you have also emphasized that a degree of structure and hierarchy is still important in business. What one tip would you give businesses to help them unlock the power of decentralization without creating chaos?
Maria: We were crazy about the principles and stories shared in ‘The Starfish and the Spider’ for both the idea of Linqia and how we wanted to operate the company. We romanticized the idea of creating a flat structure in our company. Unfortunately it didn’t entirely work work the way we thought it would. Where we got stuck was in decision making and focus.
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Keywords: decentralization, Linqia, Maria Sipka, network fatigue
Tuesday, 23rd June, 2009 at 19:24
This post forms part of a series of guest articles by experts in different fields around business and social media.
Anne McCrossan, founder of Visceral Business, is a branding and change management consultant with a dizzying track record and client list. After reading her recent article on ‘Recalibrating Organizations’, I interviewed her with the goal of drawing out some of her ideas around change and corporate leadership for a SOMESSO guest article.
The resulting hour-long conversation is published here as a 3-part series. Part 1 examined how companies need to move from pushing a message to galvanizing people around an idea; part 2 explored in more detail why companies need real values. This final part looks in more detail at how organizations structured around values and relationships work in practice.
Scaling whole-company community outreach
If an organization’s overriding purpose and values are clear, then you will see people self-selecting as potential community leaders. These individuals will not necessarily be your employees: you must seek out and cultivate those that have the most committed affinity with your brand - these are the most important members of your community. This has implications for your approach to recruitment: as people move closer to your organization, you can start thinking about relationships that should be funded because they’re valuable - employing the people who are already committed. In this way you will build business around affinity as opposed to structure. And, like cell division, this kind of community building is infinitely scalable.
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Keywords: anne mccrossan, brand management, branding, change management, collaboration, recalibrating organizations, social branding, social business, social enterprise, social media, visceral business
Wednesday, 17th June, 2009 at 16:03
This post forms part of a series of guest articles by experts in different fields around business and social media.
Anne McCrossan, founder of Visceral Business, is a branding and change management consultant with a dizzying track record and client list. After reading her recent article on ‘Recalibrating Organizations’ last week, I interviewed her with the goal of drawing out a couple of ideas around change and corporate leadership for a SOMESSO guest article.
The resulting hour-long conversation is published here as a 3-part series looking at how contemporary changes in technology and society are impacting business. Part 1 examined how companies need to move from pushing a message to galvanizing people around an idea; this post looks in more detail at the benefits of this new approach.
The visceral connection between big ideas and action
If societal, environmental and technical evolutions are forcing organizations to adapt to a new social dynamic, the tried and tested business models we’ve been using must also evolve and respond to this. The organizational development of business in the last 100 years has been dominated by an institutionalized and factory-oriented approach that’s no longer appropriate or fit for purpose.
The solution is to recognize and enable the visceral connection between big ideas, inspiration and action. For example, if you have to spend millions to get people to buy your stuff, you’re spending money on an idea that’s probably not big enough. None of us own our brands, they live in the minds of the audience the originating organization is connected with and to cultivate positive brand perceptions organizations need to work out how to create a position and purpose within their marketplace that benefits everyone, aligning investment, operations and audiences in ways that brings commercial and philanthropic elements together coherently.
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Keywords: anne mccrossan, change management, recalibrating organizations, social business, social media, visceral business
Tuesday, 16th June, 2009 at 18:02
This post forms part of a series of guest articles by experts in different fields around business and social media.
Anne McCrossan, founder of Visceral Business, is a branding and change management consultant with a dizzying track record and client list. After reading her recent article on ‘Recalibrating Organizations’ last week, I interviewed her with the goal of drawing out a couple of ideas around change and corporate leadership for a SOMESSO guest article.
In the resulting hour-long conversation, Anne ranged across contemporary challenges in society, culture and the environment, the need for a new approach to business, and the power of social media to contribute to - and help us navigate - this changing landscape. What follows is the first of a 3-part miniseries based on that interview, where Anne looks at how these developments impact businesses, and how in turn businesses can begin to transform themselves to meet these opportunities and challenges.
The social dynamic and the transformation of business
With something of a perfect storm of food, energy and water shortages being forecast by 2030 and the combined forces of social technology, economic recession and environmental change making their mark, the possibility of a new social ethic is emerging with the potential to transform the way we do business. Whilst ensuring we bring the intangible assets and existing equity of established businesses with us into this new commercial domain, new business models are required that involve a recalibration of organizations and businesses as we know them. And this means that marketing and organizational development needs to be reinvented.
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Keywords: anne mccrossan, big ideas, change management, environment, recalibrating organizations, tribalization, visceral business
Monday, 8th June, 2009 at 17:31
This is a guest post by Frans van der Reep, Professor at InHolland University.
Social Companies
The Internet is changing the way we organize work. It is shifting the requirement for what we
call the ‘schedule push’ and the hierarchical organisation that it implies, and therefore it is
removing the type of control that is conventionally used to match resources to tasks, and customer
demand to supplies and services. Organisational hierarchies have become too expensive to sustain,
and in many cases their style of coordination is simply no longer necessary. The cost complexity of
the industrial complex starts to outweigh the benefits and the Internet is making it redundant.
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Keywords: collaboration, corporate social media, Enterprise 2.0, Frans vd Reep, future, INHolland University, social business
