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Has Your Water Cooler Gone Virtual?

February 3, 2010 by Valerie Dennis

For anyone who thinks they don’t have time to learn about Social Media, you might want to find time. The fact is, a solid population of your employees are using it—inside and outside the workplace. And while that fact alone may not motivate you, think about this—it can affect the bottom line.

Social Media is a mechanism for sharing and what gets shared, who sees it and how it gets used all can affect your business. Today, the conversation that once occurred at the water cooler now happens on the internet. So how do you know where risk might exist inside your workplace? Here are some things to think about:

  • How comfortable are you with your management practices? If an employee were to “twitter” about one your managers, would it (at all times) be favorable or could it create risk for your business or your employees?
  • How comfortable are you that your employees understand that your Conduct Policy should apply to things shared or uploaded on their social networking sites?
  • How comfortable are you about the secure flow of confidential information inside your company? Could trade secrets get leaked on Facebook, LinkedIn or another source?
  • How comfortable are you that privacy rights are not violated?
  • How comfortable are you that your Managers or employees would NOT go into Yahoo! Finance (or similar site), identify their relationship to your company and post commentary about your financial outlook?
  • How comfortable are you with your recruitment practices? Could your hiring managers be using protected class information (accidentally or on purpose) that they found on a candidate’s social networking site?
  • Do you think Social Media updates during the work day inhibit productivity? Could 20 minutes of social chatter in the hallway be less productive than a two-minute break to update a Facebook status?
  • What information might a disgruntled, former employee share that risks your business interests?
  • What risk can be created if your employees can be tracked with Geolocation data coming from their phone?
  • How many of your managers have “friended” their subordinates?
  • How many hours would pass before your Legal team could confidently advise your Marketing Department on how to respond to a crisis that has gone viral? And how many people would know about the crisis before you responded? (Think: Dominos PR crisis)
  • Are you aware of the record retention requirements for your industry regarding Social Media posts?
  • Is it possible that an employee, who had a really bad day, just might vent his frustration about your best customer?

So how does this affect your bottom line? Potential lawsuits. Dysfunction created inside your workplace. Lost sales or brand reputation. Time and money lost putting out the flames of a PR crisis. Intellectual property shared in a public arena. EEO lawsuits. Employee safety issues. The list goes on and a range of lawsuits are starting to emerge…

So if you’re feeling comfortable, ask yourself if your existing policy, processes and training address Social Media in the workplace. And if you feel good about that, then you might want to take a peak at what people talk about—search these sites to see what the general public says about their customers, bosses, employers, etc. And then poll your company on its use of Social Media to validate your perceptions. That will help you identify your gaps and determine where risk can surface inside your organization. The next step is to close the gaps.

Your options: Social Media policy (or guidelines, if you prefer), but don’t stop at policy. There is policy and there are workplace practices and the two don’t always coincide. Companies should work with their legal counsel and a cross-functional team to craft policy and align practices with your culture, industry (I.e. regulated) and strategy.

You’re not going to stop a speeding train by standing in front of it, but you can ensure that you’re on the right track (sorry, couldn’t resist). The lesson here: Make the time to figure out how Social Media are used in your workplace and save yourself valuable time, money and reputation by managing it proactively and effectively inside your organization.

Posted in Social Media, Workplace Challenges | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

Do You Have Cracks In Your (Organizational) Foundation?

January 20, 2010 by Valerie Dennis

A big question these days is what will the New Normal look like and for companies searching to answer this question, the other question to ask and answer is: do we have the right people, skills, structure, strategy in place to succeed in the New Normal?

Strategic planning will likely be far more fluid in future years than in the past. This means that strategy, structure and processes may need ongoing and frequent change (throughout the year) to facilitate faster decision making—and execution. We’d all like to think we’re fast thinkers and even faster at implementing until it comes to budget approvals, resource allocation, etc—and try doing any of that after the fiscal year starts and the budgets are set. It’s corporate molasses.

Given that companies are responding to a market that is still changing (along with their strategy and goals), so do the commensurate skills and job requirements. Coupled with job losses and cost controls, it’s hard to address the emerging needs but it’s necessary.  One of the key activities will be mapping the necessary competencies to existing skills and determining where and how you’ll fill in the cracks, gaps, and all-out breaks from reality.

Since I recently spoke with someone who told me they haven’t more than one fully-executed review in ten years, this can make the process daunting. Management will need to be finely tuned to the capabilities of their employees: existing, emerging, declining and potential. They’ll need a high degree of support to do the things that are needed to address the gaps. It sounds simple, but it’s not—without a cohesive plan and organizational commitment you won’t get very far.

As the New Normal finally surfaces, those who are ready for the new frontier will have had a bit of introspection about where they are going, how they will get there, and who can take them there.

Posted in Change Management, Employee Development, Organizational Priorities, Skills Gap | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

So You Have A Big Social Media Following, Does That Make You An Expert At Anything?

January 14, 2010 by Valerie Dennis

 

For people and businesses, I tend to believe that social media activity must accompany a strategy and set of goals. Without it, you are a bit like a rudderless ship. You may be moving but you’re not moving in an intended direction. I think that some people and companies set goals such as “thought leader” which is great, but you better have some good thoughts—and more importantly be able to reinforce that in the real world. You may be a hotshot in Twitter terms but it won’t carry much weight without something tangible to back it up…

Real thought leadership or expertise needs to start in the external world, where your results, skills and knowledge create that foundation. Social media sites such as Twitter allow you to reinforce or leverage what you have accomplished or know. Without it, anything you say in the social media realm will fall into the category of “talks a good game.”

If you want to demonstrate expertise and build your level of influence, another key aspect of social media is about the company you keep. People often equate the size of their following (or blog stats) with their standing or level of influence in this environment and the two aren’t necessarily tied together. As many of us know, there was a flood of spam on Twitter in late 2009 that made us all feel like Rock Stars—only to find out that unless you’re the king or queen of porn, that’s probably not your target audience. (p.s. Twitter addressed this spam issue.)

When you participate in social media go for quality relationships, not quantity and build your following methodically—just as you do with your career. The experience is more authentic but more importantly, it will better support your professional goals. You are better able to filter and make meaningful contacts. Think of it like an alumni association—in total numbers, you are an acquaintance with a lot of people, in reality you’re close friends with small few. It’s the quality of those small few that matter.

Social media has great opportunities for people and businesses. But it’s up to you to decide what impression you want to create.

Posted in Personal Branding, Social Media | Tagged , | 1 Comment »

New Year’s Resolutions: Are You Applying Them To Your Professional Development?

January 5, 2010 by Valerie Dennis

The New Year generally starts with a tradition of resolutions and yet most of the time, those resolutions center around our personal lives and goals. I think there’s great value in introspection as it can help to shape successful changes for the future. In the vein of applying resolutions to our professional lives, I ran across an article in Harvard Business Review that I liked, titled Three Questions Executives Should Ask for the New Year, written by Melissa Raffoni.

The full text of the article is worth reading but for the purpose of this blog, we will focus on the author’s three questions:

  1. If there was only one thing I could do to improve my business, what would it be and how would I make it happen?
  2. If there was only one thing I could focus on to improve my personal performance, what would that be and how would I make it happen?
  3. What messages am I not listening to or refusing to confront in my business and personal performance and how am I going to overcome that this year?

My prediction is that companies will need to reassess their leadership attributes in 2010 and shore up the gaps. Leadership doesn’t need to be attached to a title or position, it comes from every level of your organization if you look for it and harvest it. Unfortunately, as Melissa points out many executives don’t get enough out of their employees and they don’t listen well. To increase the effectiveness of this exercise, executives must encourage the same behavior in each of their employees. In particular, Question 3 won’t work at all if your own employees aren’t listening to each other, or your customer, etc. In essence, they’ll have nothing meaningful to tell you if they’re out of touch and uncommitted.

The overall goal for these questions is to get to real change in 2010 and in the process, you may begin to fill in the leadership gaps in your business. While each of these questions has a common theme, no amount of introspection will help without a.) a culture that encourages personal and corporate improvement and b.) an environment of communication and trust. As leaders, perhaps the fourth question should be whether you’ve created a culture that encourages each of your employees to ask the same questions of themselves. If you do, then you’ll have something worthwhile to listen to, and your most meaningful cues for how to improve your business or your personal performance may come from their ideas and observations, not just your own.

Posted in Career Management, Corporate Culture, Organizational Priorities, Self Development | Tagged , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Who Is The Expert On Your Customer?

December 22, 2009 by Valerie Dennis

You or your competitor?

You or your customer contacts? (The 90/10 rule tends to apply: most people know 90% of what goes on in their department and 10% in the rest of the company).

This is a quick blog.  In a complex, multi-layered sale, there is a direct relationship to your ability to close the deal (profitably) and how well you know your customer contacts, and their business. It also affects retention.

So what does it mean to be an expert on your customer? In addition to knowing the basics (goals, competitive pressures, market pressures, business initiatives, etc) as you move up, down and across the organization, here are some things to think about:

  • Do you understand the workflow of their business and your product or service well enough to educate your customer, not vice versa?
  • Have you anticipated gaps in process workflow so you can build the best solution?
  • Have you effectively built alignment and consensus among disparate decision makers?
  • Have you addressed your customer concerns in ways that work with their organization, not against it?
  • Do you understand how your business affects your customer in every aspect of service after the sale (billing, problem resolution, customer care, etc?)
  • Are you adding value: does your product or solution address problem areas that your customer had not identified?

Customer satisfaction is an ongoing cycle from the point that an agreement gets signed to paying your invoices. The areas of opportunity for your competitor come from how well you address the business needs—the ones the customer knows about and the unknown needs you—or your competitor–identify.

Thoughts?

Posted in Sales, Strategic Selling | Tagged , | Leave a Comment »

Will Social Media Affect Policy, Management Practices and Principles?

December 3, 2009 by Valerie Dennis

 

“Bout to go into a meeting with Sales Director until a hottie turns up, then he says ‘Ill brief you later’ and goes in alone…HATERRRR”  Found on Twitter, 8:20 pm, Nov 26  

I ran across this in Twitter and found it to be an interesting example of how social media will change companies in terms of policy, management practices and principles. In the past, these stories would have had a limited audience—told at the water cooler with peers, or emailed (or voicemail) to a few friends—privately—to tell the story. Today however, social media now provides a public venue for personal situations and they can have consequences to businesses and individuals.

So why does this statement become an example of a cautionary tale? Here are some potential outcomes:

  • The “hottie” is harassed, or feels that she is, and the Tweet reinforces possible intent.
  • The “hottie” hears about the tweet and no longer wants to meet with anyone associated with the company.
  • Several coworkers view the tweet and the potential work audience expands. The communication goes from viral to verbal and back. The message is less likely to be diluted since it is in writing (no game of Post Office) and the message can be retweeted…
  • They win some business from this sales call but the competition has seen the tweet…and makes an issue of it.
  • The Sales Director has an allegation of sexual harassment from within his company and this tweet surfaces—setting a possible precedence.
  • The author of the tweet is female and no longer feels comfortable being alone with the Sales Director.
  • The Sales Director makes the “hottie” uncomfortable and they lose the business opportunity.
  • The employee is terminated or put on a performance planner  but uses the tweet to show that the Sales Director interfered with his/her opportunity to meet quota or grow business.
  • The employee misread the situation but created a deluge of interest and gossip affecting the Sales Director’s reputation.

You can say there’s free speech, and that social media simply has become a vehicle for this. And this would be true. You can say that most people, given the sheer traffic in social media, are likely to miss this note. Also true…but we don’t know where else this message went. And you can say I’ve lost my sense of humor. Without a doubt, these are worst case scenarios and not representative of all possible outcomes but they help to tell the story.

The question is: are you prepared to handle how social media can affect the internal workings of your business? This isn’t just about whose manager has “the hots” for their client; the comments may leak confidential corporate information, confidential client information, or misinformation. For example, the message could be: “I’m very excited about our new commercial line which launches in January!” And while much of this is likely to be accidental or unintentional, it’s immaterial to the impact on a business.

The fact is that this type of tweet is not going away and it won’t be contained, audited, edited or likely even countered (i.e. with the truth or some semblance of a response). But today, companies should be prepared to handle the potential for such circumstances in policy, practice and management principles.

There are no easy answers. And there’s no real way to halt the public updates but a structured, proactive approach can help minimize risk for all parties and equally important, help to reinforce cultural values and behavior in an era of new communication tools.

Other tweets to ponder:

“not understanding why 3 male nurses have hit on me these past 2 hours..ugh” Dec 03

“Apparently client drunk-dialed my coworker last night after dinner to say he didn’t mean to hit on me or say anything inappropriate. Amazing” Dec 03

“Why does my boss insist on calling my into her office to tell me racist jokes? Es muy mal!”  Dec 02

“Chuckling sales director (m) just introduced new client contact (f) saying “She’s MUCH prettier than James, isn’t she.” FISTS IN MOUTHS” Dec 01

Posted in Corporate Policy, Social Media | Tagged , | 1 Comment »

Fifteen Ways To Mis-Manage Change

November 12, 2009 by Valerie Dennis

  1. Don’t bother to create a vision. Any old idea will do!
  2. Don’t share the vision. Your folks are smart, they’ll figure it out!
  3. Don’t establish an accountable and empowered change management team, someone will pick up the slack.
  4. Don’t educate your leadership team on the change nor their role in the change. Let them work on a need-to-know basis.
  5. Don’t train your employees, the less they know the better.
  6. Don’t empower your people, someone will make it happen.
  7. Don’t worry about external communication, let the change itself be your communication tool!
  8. Multiple communication channels are not important, they might think you’re spamming them…
  9. Don’t gain stakeholder input or buy-in.  Why gain buy-in when you can just tell them what to do?
  10. Don’t worry about feedback, corrective action is not important.
  11. Don’t celebrate short term wins, momentum isn’t important–it’ll all work out in the end.
  12. Don’t wait for results, change for the sake of change is good.
  13. Don’t worry about a tactical plan, it’s not important to institutionalize the change.
  14. Move slowly, a sense of urgency never helps.
  15. Don’t do your homework, external market conditions matter less than your gut instinct or your view of the world.

Posted in Business, Change Management | Tagged , , | 3 Comments »

The Real World Vs. Social Media

November 11, 2009 by Valerie Dennis

In conversation today, the question came up about whether or not social media can truly benefit the average person or company…In some instances, the real question is about the true influence of its participants and in other instances, it’s about the medium. If you want to leverage people who can promote your business, drive traffic to your website and generate sales interest—where does the strongest sphere of influence exist? On Twitter, Facebook or outside the social media realm??

Anyone who participates in social media with the mere hope of getting people to tweet about them is missing the boat.  You can certainly create awareness for yourself in a social community but you need to migrate to tangible activity in the real world where sales are made, jobs are offered, partnerships are created, etc. Social media is restricted by random elements such as the noise factor, time of day, quality of following, false levels of influence, etc.  It may give you momentary visibility but not provide targeted value and purpose.

For businesses and professionals looking to gain tangible results, it’s important to use social media strategically and methodically. For example, social media may not be the most impactful or influential vehicle for your goals—but the people who reside in social networks just might be. Leveraging the right people is a bit tricky because authority in a social network may not translate into their daily life. As such, your main goal should be to gain key actions and support from the right people, in a medium that is most impactful for you. There are four simple steps to consider:

Step 1: Know what you want to accomplish

Step 2: Identify key people or companies and validate who they are beyond their Twitter ID

Step 3: Cultivate the relationship

Step 4: Close the deal/gain agreement on the desired behavior—such as actively promote you to their customers (in the optimal medium), buy from you, etc.

How you use social media depends upon your goals. You can work hard and only create fleeting awareness or you can work to create tangible results.

Posted in Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking | Tagged , | Leave a Comment »

Can You Teach An Old Santa New Toys?

November 5, 2009 by Valerie Dennis

Yesterday I heard a story about how store Santa’s were asking for training on the toys that were coming out this year—primarily electronics. In its simplest form, it is a great example of understanding where the gaps in performance exist (as well as being in touch with your customer needs).  A trip to Santa can be traumatizing enough for kids but imagine if you asked for your dream toy and Santa hadn’t a clue what that was? Your belief system, your hopes for the perfect gift are all shattered in one visit to the mall. The moral of the story: Santa can’t make a successful “sale” if he doesn’t know his products.

Training, in my opinion is critical to the effectiveness of a sales force. Just like Santa, you need to have strong product knowledge and skills to build consistent results. I don’t envy the learning curve on all those toys but I applaud the Santa’s and the stores for coming to the conclusion that training was a critical success factor. 

I have seen the range in business practices–those who actively promote training and others who throw the reps to the street hoping instinct and current skill level will drive results. It generally doesn’t. My friend Joe used to say that ten years of experience can equate to ten years of appreciable skills and knowledge or “the first year of knowledge and skill repeated ten times.”

In the case of Santa, they needed product knowledge. For most sales reps, knowledge must be paired with competency. Great product knowledge with poor sales execution doesn’t make a sale—and I would suggest that if it does, it is sheer luck and not likely to be sustainable. Conversely, good skills and poor product knowledge also don’t translate into sales effectiveness. Good training programs balance both while addressing ongoing and progressive development.

In a time when companies are re-engineering and business priorities are changing, are companies keeping pace with training to ensure that their sales people are up to speed on the essentials of knowledge-based and competency training?

Posted in Education and Learning, Employee Development, Training | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

Does The Company You Keep Affect Your Business Performance?

November 2, 2009 by Valerie Dennis

CSO Insights’ Barry Trailer posed the question in a recent blog about the relationship of high performers to the company you keep titled Are Your Friends Making You Unsuccessful? The academic premise is that if your friends are big downers and slackers, you might become one too and they can affect your health, happiness, etc. (a little humor there but the premise remains the same). Behind the academics is the practical question: is there a correlation between top performers and their ability to network? And is there a correlation between top performers and the quality of the company they seek?

Most of us have a wide range of friends, some of whom are more central to our daily lives because they live near us, work with us, etc. But distance aside, many of us carry friendships over decades and they serve a purpose in our lives as well as a history. All that to say, if you look at the high performing sales reps in your company, also look at the company they keep.  The quality of their network tends to drive them to greater accomplishments and results.

Most top performers seek each other out in an organization, and they feed off of each other. They tend to shy away from negative influences in an company and keep in constant contact. There are often competitive undertones but the drive and desire to perform fuels idea generation, feedback, and best practices. They see the potential, not the obstacle; they find productivity vs. activity, etc—in essence, they are the practical translation of the premise that certain social behaviors are contagious and drive behavior and thinking in others.

One other thing I’ve noticed is that the relationships are genuine which increases ownership and interest level. That key element plays a significant role in how they interact and as a result, how they perform.

What is your view on the element of “social contagion” in the workplace? Does high energy, strong performance and drive breed similar behavior? Can a company inadvertently squelch drive and positive behavior? And how does an organization cultivate the right environment to encourage success versus defeat?

Posted in Employee Engagement, High Performers | Tagged , | 1 Comment »

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