(THIS IS THE 2nd POST IN A WEEKLY THEME OF SOCIAL BUSINESS FAILURES WITH THE INTENT TO LEARN FROM EACH OTHER. PLEASE ALLOW US TO LEARN FROM YOU BY POSTING YOUR COMMENTS BELOW.)
When I first tried to introduce social technologies to a company I learned one of my biggest lessons: Stats can only go so far.
I was asked to create a presentation for the Executives on social technologies and why we should use them. The charts focused on facts and figures: what social technology is, why we would benefit from it, the assumed ROI, etc. Honestly, it was a poor attempt because there were very little information about this working inside an organization. Coming up with numbers and facts was difficult.
Two (out of many) hurdles loomed in front of me: my boss and the Director of IT.
My boss thought it was a good idea, but he wasn’t sold. At least until he experienced the value first hand. At that point, I could have given him lousy stats and facts – it would not have mattered because he experienced it and knew for himself the value.
The Director of IT was against me during this whole process. One day he came to me and said, “I was going to shut this whole project down yesterday (because it was not going as smooth as other IT projects). But I decided to give it one more chance and I spent all night researching what you were trying to do. I get it now and I am behind you 100 percent. Tell me what you need me to do.”
From these experiences I learned that 1) experiences & 2) stories (in that order) are much more powerful than stats. Granted, we have to have the stats, but the heart will beat out numbers any day. Stats don’t move us to action – our emotions do. When we hear stories that resonate and when we have an experience, our emotions play a big part in how we will react. Shoot for the heart, not only the mind.
Questions to answer:
How can we capture stories?
What should we do with the stories?
What if an executive only wants the stats or only gives you time to present stats?
How do you help people create their own experiences?
(This is the first post in a weekly theme of social business failures with the intent to learn from each other. Please allow us to learn from you by posting your comments below.)
This is a picture of a survival kit (which, BTW, I could not take with my iPhone because I went swimming with it last Saturday – another failure I won’t get into now) – one of the many hiking/camping type knacks I received for Father’s Day. Everything is packed in there very tightly When I opened it for the first time, safety clips came flying out. I know if I took anything else back out, I would never be able to get it all back in.
Notice the top zipper part. Would it have hurt to spend an extra penny to extend the top just a little bit so that it wasn’t busting at the seams (one of my pet peeves for packaging)?
Yet this is often how we buy social business. Some buy the cheapest platform that can be found, put it on the cheapest hardware and then hire as few people as we can to make it look like it is working. And then they are disappointed when it doesn’t work like they hoped. Can we really be surprised?
At one organization, budgets were really tight, so it was decided by management (against the team’s best judgement) to put up an environment that did not meet technical recommendations. It worked fine for the pilot with limited usage. Then launch day approached. The promotions were genius which drove the usage and… Crash #1. Mad dash for technical adjustments & restart #1. Up for a little… Crash #2. Mad dash for technical adjustments & restart #2. Stable, but not where it should be. That night more adjustments were made. Finally, after a few more adjustments over the next few days they felt comfortable. It was a bitter sweet moment – great usage, poor execution.
In the end they had to spend more resources to do it right than had they configured it correctly in the first place.
Another organization didn’t put the personnel in place as was recommended. The months following the launch, they were disappointed by the adoption. Yet another organization chose a tool because it was not as expensive. Their requirements seemed fulfilled, but they went cheap. In the end, they spent more time in upkeep and no one used it because although it had all the bells and whistles, the user experience was weak and it was very difficult to use.
Here are some questions you might think about. Please let us learn from you by commenting below.
What can you do to ensure you don’t go cheap on your social business efforts?
What if management is set on going cheap – how can you ‘convince’ them to spend the money it will take to do it right?
What if you have already launched, but there isn’t enough of a budget from your sponsoring department to do what needs to be done?
Attending last year’s Enterprise 2.0 conference was a great experience. I learned a ton, met friends I had never met before in carbon, and left feeling invigorated. But there was a nagging feeling – it was all too perfect.
The sessions and keynotes were all about how great this was and how successful everyone had been. But I knew those were not the full stories. Having worked on Social Business for a few years, I had made my share of mistakes and had made a partial living off of fixing the mistakes of others and I learned a ton from these experiences. Why should a conference be any different? Why can’t we learn from each others’ mistakes? Was there a huge fear of failure?
So, when the call for presenters went out, I decided to talk about failures. I had some I could share, and I was sure I could find others so it didn’t turn into a “Kevin Failure Show.” I was wrong. As I started compiling stories I realized that there were very few who were willing to talk about their failures. But I had to go forward and the only failures I knew where my own or were from organizations I had worked with – and I didn’t feel like I could rat them out.
My first thought was, “I don’t have THAT many failures I could share!” Wrong again. It was amazing how many times I had failed. Not catastrophically, but even in small and simple ways.
My sweet wife was concerned. “Will it look like you are a total failure? Will they understand that you are really good at what you do?” I assured her it would be just fine. But this meant I had to be very open and transparent about my mistakes. This really is not an easy thing to do (mentally).
While creating the content for the session I learned that all of us make very few huge failures, but instead we make many small ones, quickly learn and adjust and turn them into wins. And the more I thought about it, the more mistakes I could name off. Soon, there were so many that I had to figure out which went into the presentation, and which I would merely mention and not explain.
The day of the presentation came. I was scheduled for the first time slot immediately after the keynotes. Arriving a bit early, I set up as I watched attendees pour in to this huge room. Susan Scrupski (queen of the Social Business Council) came up and said, “Have you seen the line to get in?” I had to go see this. She was right and it was long. By the time everyone had filed in, this large room was full.
I mention this only to point out that the reason they were there was not because of me, but because of the topic of failure – there were many others that felt the same way I did – a nice validation of my thoughts, but now the pressure was on (I didn’t want a live failure of a presentation on failure!). They wanted to learn from the mistakes of others so they would not repeat it.
In another post I will go over the content, but there are a couple things I did in the session that were kind of fun. The day before, during the workshops, I made the above video, and that is how I started it off. Immediately after it was silent, everyone waiting for me to start. I stood there, quietly for a moment, and then said, “Hi. I’m Kevin and I have failed.” A few giggles followed. I had planted four others in the audience who, in turn, stood up and introduced themselves and said the same thing. It was a Fail Flashmob or an FA meeting (Failures Anonymous). Then I went on to talk about the nature of failure, followed by examples of failure and how they could be overcome.
Time was running out and I had MANY more in the hopper (just in case time went long). I didn’t expect to explain most of them, but just use as examples. Later others told me that as I blew through the last 20 or so, they personally recognized each one and realized that we fail all the time, but we recover.
At the very end I issued two challenges to the audience. The first was to share their failures and not be afraid to talk about them. The second was to join me in discussing them after the conference has ended.
And so I invite you as well. Each week I will post an Enterprise 2.0 failure on this blog and encourage you to answer these two questions: 1) how can we avoid it and 2) if it still happens, how can we correct it? I have enough for a half year’s worth and by the time that comes around, we’ll all probably have that many more again.
The response after the session and for the next three days was wonderfully overwhelming. Thank you to everyone who tweeted during the session, blogged (Nigel Danson, Steve Radick, Cecil Dijoux) and wrote articles (SearchCRM, CMSWire, IT Knowledge Exchange), came up and talked to me about it and referred to the session in subsequent sessions. I wish I could thank you all individually. I am truly humbled by the response.
So please join us. The more perspectives we get each week, the more we can learn from each other and be better we will be at what we all love to do. I hope to learn from you next Tuesday with the first failure! (I promise the posts won’t be nearly as long 😉