In the following video, Chris Heuer interviews Sandy Carter, Vice President of Social Business Evangelism at IBM. The interview is 17 minutes long but the key takeaway is that “Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch”.
What this means to me is that the backbone of social business transformation has to be grounded on behavior change (culture) – not technology, not social media, not process. In order for effective change to become an epidemic, a certain level of trust needs to manifest itself within an organization through behaviors, actions and communication. And trust only gives birth when business leaders not only talk the talk, but walk the walk as well (or, begin to change their behavior). This is one reason why I often write about IBM and the great leadership they are taking in this space.
There is certainly change happening in many organizations today but it’s usually within small pockets of teams led by various change agents with little to no coordinated effort to move the organization collaboratively with one vision.
Here are a few indicators to determine if your company is beginning to evolve:
- Company leadership mandating that internal teams collaborate across functional business units, geographies, product organizations and channel partners (they also have to be collaborating themselves not just telling others to do it)
- CEO and/or executive teams using social technologies to communicate internally & externally and encouraging employees to do the same
- Global/functional teams sharing best practices frequently; organizational silos dying a slow death
- Social behaviors become engrained in the everyday fabric of employees’ workflow, processes and job functions
- Social business initiatives becomes a consistent line item in marketing, operations and IT budgets
- Human resources adds “social media” type of behaviors in job descriptions and employees are then held accountable
Now the question is .. what are you doing to change your behavior?
Image: BigStock Paper Lunch Bag
