Attributes of the Social Organization

Before we explore the attributes of the Social Organization it is important to first answer why we need a new model…  Why don’t solutions like Social CRM, Government 2.0, Social Relationship Management, Enterprise 2.0, Healthcare 2.0, Education 2.0, and others suffice?

While all of these strategic systems have much to offer they all fall short.  The new view, the new system, must recognize the commonalities across organization types, organization sizes, and across geographies.  There are too many silos forming within these so-called open systems that the opportunity for us to build a common language, a core set of strategies, becomes impossible.  For example:

    * Social CRM looks externally and is a system focused on businesses, mostly enterprise-level.
    * Enterprise 2.0 looks internally and is a system focused on businesses, mostly enterprise-level.
    * Government 2.0 is not as well-defined but does look both internally and externally.  It focuses on the public sector only.

The Social Organization recognizes that:

    * A large percentage of the strategies, processes, policies, and tools are common across organizational types, organizational sizes, and geographies.
    * That there is a great deal of lost productivity that results from organizations and industries attempting to define what others have already defined.
    * Social Media has affected how customers in some sectors buy products/services and in some sectors has already affected how the customer conversation is taking place.
    * In other sectors and geographies that Social Media has had no impact and may not have an impact for many years.

Lets be honest.  All organizations are social in the sense that they interact with customers to some degree. Your town government delivers law enforcement services, restaurants sell food, my blog delivers content.    In the simplest of terms:

The Social Organization will use standard approaches that make it easy for customers/citizens to find and buy products and services while enabling the organization to meet their goals.

This easy to understand definition enables us to begin to define the attributes of the Social Organization:

    * Social Organizations use standard approaches.  They follow a well-defined framework for successfully achieving their goals. We will define this framework as we go, but understand that 75-80% of the framework applies across all types of organizations in The Social Ecosystem.  The remaining percentage takes into account the uniqueness of your organization.
    * Social Organizations focus on delivering value in an equitable way.  We do not live in a utopian world, we live in a world where services are delivered in a way where, ideally, customers feel they have received value while allowing organizations to meet their goals (for businesses, making money).  For example:
          o When a customer buys an iPhone they are not focused on the amount of profit made by Apple, they are only concerned with the value received for their money.  If they feel they received the value expected they are happy.  If Apple, as the Social Organization in this example, is able to meet its goals as well, both sides have “won”, equity is achieved.

While less clear from our simple definition, these are the other key attributes of the Social Organization:

    * Social Organizations are focused strategically, not tactically.  Social Organizations understand the need for a goal-oriented strategy and use them to make sure that the greatest value is achieved.  While grass-root efforts can help raise initial awareness of  social media tools, these efforts will not meet broad organizational success unless they become part of the overall organizational strategy.
    * Social Organizations understand that they are part of The Social Ecosystem and deliver value internally and externally.  Value is created everywhere in the organization and this value must be delivered to the right people at the right time.   This includes examples such as:
          o Ensuring the right people in the organization are working with customers on sales and marketing efforts.
          o Bringing the right internal (and possibly external partner) resources together to solve customer reported issues.
          o Ensuring that knowledge held by one member of the organization is delivered to other members of the organization, and other organizations as well, when needed.
    * Analytical.  The Social Organization uses metrics to decide if they are on track to meet their goals and use this information to adjust strategies and tactics as needed.

You may have noted that I once again left out the word transparent.  The Social Organization does not have to be transparent to engage with its market and to meet its goals.  Even those that choose to be transparent must choose the level of transparency required, the amount of transparency that is acceptable, and balance as  needed.

John