In my recent post “How valuable is
Social Media for the corporate business” I described that getting
real social the corporate company needed a cultural change. The cultural change
which is demanded depends on having an
environment of openness, information sharing and trust. This sort of culture is
acquired to create value out of the social media investment. To create such a
culture you need to have top management in the leading position of being social
acting social and communicating social.
How does CEO participate in Social
Media?
In IBM latest CEO study,
1709 CEO around the world was asked if they were participating in Social Media.
The answer to this question was from my point of view quite embarrassing for
the CEO´s - only 16% (274 of the CEO) was participating in Social Media. This
number will eventually grow to 57% with in a 5 year period. This question in
the IBM CEO study actually pinpoints clearly that Social engagement is not seen
as an important value creator for top management at the moment. Further more,
if it should take 5 years to have a new leadership in place in the corporate
companies to start participating in the social collaboration, I doubt that
these corporate companies will be present in their size and shape we know them
today. There is no doubt that the success of Social engagement demands active
top management participation, this participation will have a significant impact
on the culture of the corporate social collaboration.
How can we quickly change the CEO social
participating?
It is obvious from the IBM
CEO study that the CEO do not recognize Social Media and the collaboration as
an important value creator for the company. How can this be changed?
First thing which always counts for companies is the impact on
bottom line figures – so if you want the CEO getting social quickly he/she has
to be measured on the social collaboration engagement he/she does?
Second thing to do, are getting Social collaboration as a part
of the annual report, just like environment responsibility and other societal
values. When you are making social collaboration visible towards the shareholders
and the board, the CEO will be accounted for this parameter as well.
Third thing you aught to do is to have a direct access from
costumers to the CEO – collaboration is needed directly from the top. A good
example of social collaboration on top level is the former prime minister of
Denmark Anders Fog Rasmussen who used face book to communicate whit his voters.
Will these steps work to get the CEO
participating in Social collaboration?
You can not guaranty
anything but first secure measurement of Social Collaboration, secondly have
social collaboration as a part of the annual report, this will give some kind
of pressure on the CEO to start acting on social collaboration.
If non of these will get
the CEO in action on Social collaboration he will be one of the ones who will
wait for 5 years to interact in being social and use social media to
communicate with the company costumers, and properly out of his business.
