How might we go about socializing the enterprise?

We need to improve our understanding of influence flows first off, and our facility to think and behave in these terms universally (as opposed to just in marketing and PR). And develop our assets accordingly.

Sarah commented that the Balanced Scorecard approach considers how best to develop three types of assets in improving an organization’s capabilities to execute the strategy. They are human capital, information capital and organization capital. The first needs no explanation. The second refers to IT capabilities, and the third to the leadership, culture, teamwork and alignment of the organization and activities to the strategy.

So, it seems logical that we might consider the process of becoming a social business in terms of developing the human, information and organization capital appropriately.

We thought about ‘influence flows’ as a strategy that we can run through the normal strategy maps and Balanced Scorecard process. But then we noted that the flows of time, money and materials weren’t strategies, so why would influence flows constitute a strategy per se. Rather, strategy is defined as identifying those processes that the organization decides it should do better than the competition in order to secure it the advantage it desires in the marketplace.

In short, focusing on influence flows isn’t a strategy, determining which influence mechanisms and processes to improve is.

I was excited about where this was going but time was flowing by. So, with an hour of the day remaining, I asked who’d like to go out to dinner that evening, if they didn’t have prior commitments of course, to seize the momentum. Everyone was up for it and I made a reservation at Vincenzo’s. But we weren’t done at the hotel just yet.

Saket introduced everyone to the Influence Scorecard approach, which, like the Balanced Scorecard, is a management approach rather than a yardstick per se.

The Influence Scorecard can be considered as a subset or augmentation of the Balanced Scorecard containing all the influence-related objectives and metrics extracted from their functional silos.

Once a company’s influence strategy is defined and influence objectives articulated – by each of the six influence flows and by stakeholder – influence flows can be drawn explicitly in the enterprise strategy map.

Sarah asked if the Balanced Scorecard was a prerequisite of the Influence Scorecard. Saket replied that any organization that hadn’t yet implemented well defined and disciplined business performance management wasn’t yet in the best position to socialize the enterprise effectively. And transitioning to social business cannot be accomplished in a week or two; it will take place over a number of years although strategic value should be derived each and every quarter if the process is managed well.

ACTION: Sarah, Yvonne, Michelle to work with Saket and learn more about the Influence Scorecard.

We got back down to it for the last part of the day.

Social business

Several of us have heard two related phrases bandied around at conferences – ‘social business’ and ‘socialize the enterprise’ – and it had come up in conversation during the break. How does this idea relate to the discussions so far? And what does it mean exactly?

We agreed it means so much more than establishing the organization’s presence on the big social networks, maintaining a blog or two and procuring an enterprise social network, but it seemed there was no real definition. So we constructed one based on all the discussion so far.

Social business is about adapting the way in which an organization delivers its mission and pursues its vision by designing the organization around influence flows, connecting:
its people, partners, customers and other stakeholders;
data, information and knowledge in and all around it;
more openly, productively and profitably with the application of social web, big data and related information technologies.

We tried to shorten the definition but felt our efforts then lacked the full impact.

We are keen to convey that social business doesn’t just mean using social media. Rather, social media are just the eggs in the social business cake!

Yvonne, Georgio and I all went to make much the same observation at the same time…

On considering whose responsibility this is, it appears not to fall into the domain of a particular organization function or department. Nor does it appear irrelevant to any function or department, quite the opposite. William suggested that this wasn’t a surprise as the flows of time, money and materials have influenced today’s business structure, but not the systematic understanding of the flow of influence.

Everyone’s in the business of influence – influencing and being influenced in order to play their role valuably.