Employee Advocacy for #socbiz at @DachisGroup's #SBS2013

Yesterday at the Social Business Summit hosted by Dachis Group and Oracle in Mumbai, I presented (in a room full of Social Media Marketers!) the HR viewpoint of how employees are the key to success in social media and how organizations can leverage them. Also shared some things on what we are doing at Philips in India and our plan for the future.

You can view (and download) the presentation here:
Would also love your thoughts and comments

Employee Advocacy for Social Business Success - Presentation at Dachis Group's Social Business Summit from Gautam Ghosh

Interestingly Dachis Group's Michael Jones presented a very interesting employee portal that leverages gamification to get employees to spread the word on social networks about the organization.

Here are some of the conversations that I had during the course of the day :)

Speaking at the #SBS2013 on 23rd May, in Mumbai

A break during the Dachis Group Social Business Summit in Austin, TX (Photo credit: Lars Plougmann)

When I started my career in the social business consulting space, there were two firms I was following closely. One was Altimeter Group the analyst firm started by Groundswell co-author Charlene Li with superstars like Jeremiah Owyang. The other was a firm that started off as a consulting firm, but has since become a social analytics product firm - The Dachis Group, fou.nded by Razorfish founder Jeff Dachis.

Three years ago Dachis Group launched a series of events called The Social Business Summit. This year in 2013 the Social Business Summit comes to India, on 23rd May.

Here are the details. And I am proud to be a speaker at the event. Hope to see you there :)

Social Media and Knowledge Management inside organizations

So I was invited to give a talk at the first K-Cafe event at Mumbai. The topic was how can the principles of social be used to embed KM in an organization's DNA. The audience was the Mumbai KM Community.

The folks at iGate (which hosted the event) took a video and shared it on YouTube. Have embedded it below. The event photographs are on Flickr.

Quoted in the latest Chief Learning Officer magazine

My twitter friend Dan Pontfract the author of Flat Army: Creating a Connected and Engaged Organization, and Head of Learning & Collaboration at TELUS recently wrote an article in the Chief Learning Officer magazine.

The article is titled "the social C-suite" and Dan says if the C-suite increases its social media use internally and externally, it could be used as a tool to impact organizational competence. You should buy the magazine - I am not sure if it is online right now.

Dan was kind enough to ask me if I would be willing to answer some questions that he would answer. I agreed. Here's what he asked and my answers.

*         What benefits does 'going social' bring members of the C-Suite with respect to internal employee engagement?

Remember the days of T-groups and OD interventions that originated out of NTL? Their objective was to make organizations more open and transparent. The thought being, if feedback loops were open and transparent, then it would be an adaptive and learning organization. "social" shorn of the buzzwords, aims at creating that organization finally. The benefits would be an organization where opinion and information is unfiltered and real time. Eventually creating an organization that responds faster to stimuli - both internal and external.

*         What are 3 key attributes C-Suite members should employ when 'going social' with their employees?

- Willingness to rethink the way they view "management" and "leadership"
- start thinking in flows rather than stocks as Hagel, Brown say in their book "The Power of Pull"
- Stop thinking of the boundaries as opaque walls - both internally and externally. Think of them as porous, translucent membranes.
-Be ready to fail. In public. Embarrassingly. Remember, it's a world of flows. You will recover faster as you will learn faster.

*         What if the C-Suite doesn't go social. What happens or will happen over time?

- The organization will go on. Things will be the same. For a time. Then the slow continental shifts of time will make sure that the organization gets irrelevant. And dies.

McKinsey on 6 social media skills for leaders

McKinsey Quarterly has a brilliant article on how leaders need to build social media skills, at a personal and organizational/strategic level. Along with examples from GE.

So if you're a leader in an organization which of these skills would you focus on depending on organizational priorities?