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Social Business Failure #4: Make This Your Project

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Scenario: you are the only one who understands why social technologies internal to your organization would be a good move for your company.  You have either come from another company which used it or you can see the value from other projects you have worked on.  Yet no one believes you.  Sure they may think it might be good, but they don’t believe it is that important.

But, you press forward, doing your best to show the value through use cases of other companies.  You even set up some capabilities internally using a free tool and try to get others to use it.  It starts to take hold a little.  Still, you set up meetings with the right people, give some good presentations and then suddenly, the clouds open up and the light shines down: You are given permission to officially explore the use.

To move forward, you talk to as many other managers as you can about what issues they are having, trying to determine how social business may help them.  You tell them your plan and they are skeptical, but on the outset most are willing to listen.  Some think what you are trying to do is stupid.

As you talk with employees, they somewhat get it, but not fully.  Yet their heart is behind you.  Deep inside they know that it will be good and want to see you succeed.

It finally gets to the point that you can stand up a pilot instance of some social software.  You lead out on how it should be set up and organized.  You pick out the use cases where you can pilot it and you get everyone on board to try it out.  You do all the “advertising” or “evangelism” and you are calling the shots.  It makes sense because you are the only one who really understands this.  Others are looking to you to move this forward.

What is the problem here?  It can be summed up in one word: YOU.  YOU is used too often.  There isn’t enough THEY.

The above story is my story the first time I tried to help a company.  Although I would not have called myself an expert, I knew more than anyone there about social business by far.  So, it made sense that I would lead everything and try to do it all.  And because of that I almost failed.  I ran into many roadblocks which seemed too large to overcome.

It wasn’t until I realized that all this social stuff was not about ME, but about WE.  I couldn’t do this alone.  I had pull others into this and make this THEIR project.  When I did this, everything turned around.  It was not about me and my leadership and vision – this was about them.  To go about it as a ME project was to go against the very nature of social business itself.

But I also recognized that it was an easy trap to fall into because of my passion and knowledge around the subject.

Questions to answer:

  • How might we make it a THEY project?
  • What roles can others take?
  • How do we get involvement and feedback from others?

(See Social Business Failure #3: Ignoring others who have done this before.)

Social Business Failure #2: Rely on Stats

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(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:

  1. How can we capture stories?
  2. What should we do with the stories?
  3. What if an executive only wants the stats or only gives you time to present stats?
  4. How do you help people create their own experiences?

I’d love your feedback!

Social Business Failure #1: Going Cheap

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(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.

  1. What can you do to ensure you don’t go cheap on your social business efforts?
  2. What if management is set on going cheap – how can you ‘convince’ them to spend the money it will take to do it right?
  3. 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?

Please add your answers below!

(Also, please consider sharing your social business failure with me to use in a future week’s scenario. I promise it will be anonymous!)