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Summer interns are one of the greatest traditions of capitalism.  Each summer, notoriously ambitious interns join companies eager to make an impact and deliver results.  For the Social Media Strategist, interns can provide a fresh perspective to companies looking to embrace Social Media.

At the dawn of E-Commerce (way back in the 1990s), GE executives gathered for a now infamous strategic session called DestroyYourBusiness.com.  Realizing the threat facing GE from the thousands of start-ups thinking differently, Jack Welch had his managers pretend to be one of the many Dotcoms trying to destroy GE’s existing business models.  This exercise helped GE’s leadership think about how the internet could quickly exploit a company’s weaknesses.

Here’s an adaptation of GE’s classic management idea for a meaningful 12-week summer internship.  Not only will your interns love the challenging and exciting assignment, this can also provide your company with fresh strategic thinking.

Weeks 1-2 – Industry and Competitor Assessment (2 weeks)

• Objective – Develop a detailed understanding of industry adoption of Social Media through assessing competitors
• Tasks for the Intern
  • Analyze the competition and document the best uses of social media
  • Support findings with external validation of competitors’ strategies from secondary sources
  • Develop a ratings scale to score industry players on dimensions like traffic, customer conversations, revenue impact, and scalability
  • Interview managers to develop 5 orthodoxies, or “The Ways Our Industry Always Does Things” that could be overturned by Social Media

Weeks 3-5 – Discover Customer Needs, Problems, and Frustrations

• Objective – Act like a Social Media Market Research consultant to study what conversations are occurring on the web about your brand
• Tasks for the Intern
  • Identify the top sites where consumers are talking about your products or services as well as your brand
  • Compile a database of customer quotes about their problems and how they are using products and services from your industry to solve them
  • Categorize the quotes into topic areas for a qualitative analysis
  • Create findings from categorized quotes to identify customer needs that could be met through Social Media technology

Weeks 6-10 – How would a Start-Up Disrupt the Industry Business Model?

• Objective – Take the role of an entrepreneur and create a business plan ready for a Venture Capitalist that could radically alter the industry
• Tasks for the Intern
  • Identify the vulnerabilities of the current business model used by your company and competitors
  • Develop a hypothetical business plan that a start-up could present to a VC that would radically change the industry business model
  • Analyze 5 start-ups that are already pursuing this model and what the company should learn from their early results

Weeks 11-12 – Create a 12 Week and 12 Month Plan for the Organization

• Objective – Highlight quick changes that can be made to lead the organization to a long-term change
• Tasks for the Intern
  • Identify hypotheses that could be tested through experimentation and prototyping
  • Test these hypotheses by building an implementation plan for quick-fixes that could be made in 12 weeks
  • Brainstorm longer-term ideas that could be implemented in 12 months with knowledge gained from the 12-week experiment

I think this could be a very interesting business school project or paper.  Thoughts on how to adopt this for the classroom?

Jobs in corporate strategy always attract the attention of eager MBAs and Undergrads.  I always wanted to go into corporate strategy because the group at my old company contained some of the smartest people in our business.  But what does it mean to “work in strategy”?  Here are some commonly held beliefs about corporate strategy positions, and my thoughts about how they are changing.

Photo by pshutterbug

Myth 1 – Ivory Tower

• The Myth – Corporate Strategists are an elite group separated from the organization like a think-tank
  
• Why The Myth Exists – It used to be that strategy functions would hire high price consultants to sit in all day meetings and talk about the future.  Frameworks describing the business in four boxes or less were compiled leaving all parties confident about the future.  Soon enough, you’d see the presentation quoted by the CEO and available on the intranet.
• The New View - Management is demanding thought leadership that can be executed by the organization.  This requires strategists to spend as much time on practical details of execution as they are on thinking.  The ability to recall facts become less important as the internet has compiled and organized the wealth of information once exclusive to large strategy firms.

Myth 2 – Consulting Rejects

• The Myth – People who work in corporate strategy couldn’t cut it in a big consulting firm
• Why the Myth exists – Large consulting firms pay employees a lot of money to travel the world and meet with Senior Leadership.  This money, experience, and network is desired by all potential recruits, therefore, the best work for Big Strategy Firms.  If you’re not promoted to partner, then you go corporate with a made-up an excuse about work/life balance.
• The New View– Simply put, some people don’t want to be paid for creating PowerPoint decks that sit in an corner office and are never used.  The best corporate strategist love seeing things created that they have helped to shape.

Myth 3 – Perfectionists Wanted

• The Myth – Your presentations and recommendations must look perfect
• Why The Myth Exists – Corporate strategy groups used to resemble big strategy consultancies.  These firms required their content and presentations to be perfect because it reflected on the quality of their work.  Corporate strategy groups assumed that attention to detail was just as critical for them.
• The New View – An unpolished presentation makes other functions feel more comfortable about adding input.  This makes it easier to gain buy-in from other functions which is critical to corporate strategy success.  Keeping it raw sends the signal that you are looking to build or shape the strategy.

Myth 4 – Cookie-Cutter Leadership

• The Myth – The leadership skills required for Corporate Strategy are the same as any other function
• Why The Myth Exists – Companies want strategy to “fit-in” with the rest of the organization, so they treat it like any other function.  Leading that function requires motivating a team, representing strategy as a Subject Matter Expert, and communicating a vision.  Therefore, firms wanted to hire great managers…not great analyzers.
• The New View – Most employees in corporate strategy are highly motivated by the work and require minimal direction.  Additionally, no one wants to hire a “Strategy Expert” so the role of Subject Matter Expert (SME) on cross-functional teams doesn’t apply.  The best corporate strategists are Subject Matter Questioners (SMQ) who possess a broad knowledge of business with the ability to link it together.

Photo by pshutterbug via flickr

BusinessWeek’s March 23-30, 2009 issue focuses on Smart Ideas for Tough Times which describes how managers are trying new things to weather the downturn.  The most interesting part of the series covers 11 management ideas that are the basics of any business education, but were quite revolutionary at the time.

This 4 part series (See Part 1 here) will examine these ideas alongside social media to see if we are witnessing a world-changing idea, or just another management fad.  First, here is the recap from BusinessWeek:

Some of the most powerful and lasting management methods were launched during tough times, when companies needed new ways to manage costs and grow. Here is a look back at some of the biggest ideas over the past 100 years.

1910 – The Assembly Line – Explanation

1920 – Market Segmentation – Explanation

1931 – Brand Management – Explanation

1943 – Skunk Works – Explanation

1950s – Lean Manufacturing – Explanation

1967 – Scenario Planning – Explanation

1973 – 360 Review – Explanation

1987 – Six Sigma – Explanation

1989 – Outsourcing – Explanation

1990 – Reengineering – Explanation

2000s – Open Innovation – Explanation

#4 – Skunk Works

The Breakthrough – Lockheed Martin organized an autonomous, high-performance team separated from bureaucracy to develop a plane in 143 days.

The Question:  Can Social Media improve productivity by minimizing the organizational need for bureaucracy?

• Answer:  Somewhat, but not completely
• We like to complain about bureaucracy, but it has a purpose in organizations.  Don’t believe me?  Well look around and talk to people in the world’s largest organizations.  If bureaucracy were not a competitive necessity, it would not be present in ALL of the world’s largest firms.  Skunk Works was a success because it gave TOP TALENT the ability to work around the controls required to make a large organization run efficiently.
• For non-Skunk Works teams, made up of Typical Talent where control and oversight are necessary, Social Media can streamline the governance process through more timely communication.  It can allow teams to break from painful state-gate cycles to move to an environment of more iterative, constant feedback.

# 5 – Lean Manufacturing

The Breakthrough: From Toyota, an approach to efficiency that allocates resources only to those processes that create value for the customer.

The Question:  Can Social Media identify and improve those processes that create value for the customer?

• Answer:  Not really
• Social Media is all about communication which is more art than science.  In order to improve communication skills, you have to practice.  Practicing communication has a fuzzy connection, at best, to creating consumer value
• There’s a soft argument around Social Media democratizing communication to allow front-line employees to identify processes, but most modern production facilities have processes/systems in place already to do this.

#6 – Scenario Planning

The Breakthrough: Shell Oil improved strategic planning by creating scenarios, or possible outcomes, that take into account the combined effect of many different possible factors.

The Question:  Can Social Media improve strategy by offering a better view of the possible future?

• Answer:  Yes, emphatically
• Good strategy is hard evaluate because it can only be measured in hindsight.  Bad strategic decisions are is easy to justify because you can always tie a bad outcome to something not considered in the strategy.  Social Media can offer exponentially more points of view on the future than currently used by strategy managers and consultancies.
• Social Media can also improve the quantification of probabilities of possible outcomes through technologies that can collect and measure the perspectives of millions of people.  These technologies are in their infancy, but will scale rapidly as more data is collected and analyzed.

BusinessWeek’s March 23-30, 2009 issue focuses on Smart Ideas for Tough Times which describes how managers are taking innovative approaches to weather the downturn.  The most interesting part of the series covers 11 breakthrough management ideas that are now the basics of any business school education.

This 4 part series will examine these breakthroughs alongside social media to see if we are witnessing a world-changing idea, or just another management fad.  First, here is the recap from BusinessWeek:

Some of the most powerful and lasting management methods were launched during tough times, when companies needed new ways to manage costs and grow. Here is a look back at some of the biggest ideas over the past 100 years.

1910 – The Assembly Line – Explanation

1920 – Market Segmentation – Explanation

1931 – Brand Management – Explanation

1943 – Skunk Works – Explanation

1950s – Lean Manufacturing – Explanation

1967 – Scenario Planning – Explanation

1973 – 360 Review – Explanation

1987 – Six Sigma – Explanation

1989 – Outsourcing – Explanation

1990 – Reengineering – Explanation

2000s – Open Innovation – Explanation

#1 – The Assembly Line

The Breakthrough: Ford dramatically lowered labor costs through standardized parts.  This made an expensive technology cheaper and therefore increased mass market demand.

The Question:  Can Social Media make expensive technologies more affordable for the Mass Market?

• Answer:  Probably Not – Social Media makes communication faster and more relevant through online social networks.  This makes knowledge workers more productive than in the past.  However, big industries that rely on knowledge workers (pharmaceuticals, software, finance) can profit more from using this information to increase features, and therefore price.
• Additionally, while collaboration is now less expensive, globalization and other technological improvements have already made streamlined labor costs a barrier to entry in most industries rather than a competitive advantage.

# 2 – Market Segmentation

The Breakthrough: GM divided customers into groups based on their unique needs and focused their products on meeting those needs.  This decreased competition and cannibalization between their brands.

The Question:  Can Social Media allow companies to better identify and meet distinct consumer needs?

• Answer:  Absolutely Yes  – Tremendous amounts of data are being created by users of social networks and organized by marketing-savvy companies.  A company’s biggest challenge is how to make sense out of all thea data that is out there.
• Eventually, managers will have the tools to micro-segment their consumers and offer highly specialized products that do not contain features that would compete with other products they offer.

# 3 – Brand Management

The Breakthrough: Organize brands into “mini-businesses” that must differentiate themselves from both internal and external competitors to survive.

The Question:  Can Social Media allow organizations to more effectively align their resources to maximize total profit?

• Answer:  Sometimes – Social Media can extend the communication and collaboration ushered in by the first generation of internet technologies.  Larger organizations with many brands competing for internal resources will benefit from improved information flow, but this will be a one-time, medium-size improvement rather than a radical redesign.
• However, the majority of the benefits from improved internal communication have been realized through the adoption of first generation internet technologies.

Photo by ChrisL_Ak

Matthew Fraser and Soumitra Dutta write an ambiguous, bland, and wrong piece on Forbes.com about the need for CEOs to use Social Networking technologies.  Their seemingly decent argument cites Web 2.0 Evangelists (no one particular, just the “evangelists” in general) who apparently claim the following:

Web 2.0 evangelists, on the other hand, argue that social software can be used to boost productivity. They say it can facilitate an open-ended corporate culture that values transparency, collaboration and innovation. Most important, it can be an effective way to build a customer-centric organization that not only communicates authentically but also listens to customers and learns from that interaction.

Of course all this is true, but two of the examples they use, Blendtec CEO’s “Will it Blend” series, and Zappo’s CEO Twitter Feed, feel like a simple marketing channel.

Simply put, CEOs make a lot of money because they are good at managing talented people.

Average CEO of an S&P 500 company was $10.5 million in 2008

Say whatever you want about executive pay…but CEOs have unique skills and are therefore highly compensated.  At $10.5 million a year, and assuming no sleep, that’s about $1,200 an hour.  Shareholders demand that CEOs should focus on what they do best…

CEOs Would Need to Spend Many Hours Building Social Media Skills

It takes a decent amount of experience to use this technology authentically without sounding artificial.  And, the only way to do this is “learning by doing”.  So, if anyone says, “It only takes a couple of seconds to Tweet”, remind them that the best Twitter users are ones that have practiced writing pithy updates.

Johnathan Schwartz is the rare example of a CEO who can do this, but I suspect there is some ghost-writing behind this blog.

The Best CEOs Hire People Who Are Smarter Than They Are

Find a social media expert, apparently they’re everywhere.  But hire them and have them communicate to you like any other functional leader in your organization.  Find a strategic thinker who can drive change at all levels of the organization to impact your business objectives.  Don’t have a CEO spend their valuable time learning Social Media skills when they are experts in the much rarer skills of Management.

Mashable’s wonderful update on new Facebook explains many of the changes, including a link to the most relevant changes for social media marketers.  In the Opportunities section, they highlight these 4 points:

Opportunities

1. Stronger Interaction with Fans
Because the Wall tab will become the focus, Pages will feel much more active and dynamic than ever before. This will encourage more participation and interaction between brands and their Fans.

2. Increased Virality
Content posted on the new Wall will also show up in Fans’ News Feeds more often. This means that posting updates to your Page is much more viral and has the potential to drive significant traffic to your Page.

3. More Ways to Communicate

The Status Update will provide a powerful way for Pages to share short interesting blurbs with Fans in a way that is less obtrusive than an Update delivered to their inboxes. Brands that use Twitter can sync their accounts so that selected Tweets will automatically post to Facebook as Status Updates.

4. Specific Landing Page for Non-Fans

The Wall tab will be the point of entry for all Fans when they visit a Page (with the idea that they’ll first be exposed to the newest content). When it comes to non-fans, Page admins will be able to choose which tab they’d like to use as the landing page. This means that if a Page has a new application or custom content that they’d like to promote, they can set this as the point of entry for all new visitors to the Page.

But seriously…how many brands are you a fan of?  Probably your company and a few others to make former high school classmates think you’re cooler now than when you were 16.

Don’t recycle Twitter Content

The biggest implication is in Mashable Opportunity #3, More Ways to Communicate.  Specifically, “a powerful way for Pages to share short interesting blurbs with Fans”.  However, don’t take the lazy way out and recycle your Twitter messages; your fans are interested in you so give them more interesting stuff than what you are spamming to the legions on Twitter.

Create short URLs from your domain

If you are providing links to content you host, don’t bog your URL down in a mess of directories.  Additionally, if you have to use a URL shortener like bit.ly or tinyurl.com avoid the random letters and make it your own.  Simple is key, for example, a post from CareerBuilder.com offering advice for job seekers should read like this

“Tips to make your resume stand out to recruiters – careerbuilder.com/resumetips”

Provide “How-To”, not “Buy Me”

No one wants to see an advertisement in their news feed, that’s why facebook puts their ads on the side.  Make your updates a source of information to help your fans make a purchase decision.  Sorry Skittles, not much you can do here…however Guitar Center, pay attention.  A great Guitar Center status update would read something like the following:

“How do guitar strings affect the sound of your music? – http://bit.ly/GuitarStrings“

I’ve heard of Social Media being aligned in a bunch of different functions across the organization.  In a perfect world, Social Media is its own function with the leader reporting directly to the CEO.  But…we’re not quite there yet.  TheSocialOrganization.com had a great post about corporate initiatives being staffed in its own “function”, but until we get there, here are 3 common approaches and their pros/cons.

Marketing

Pros

• Easier to tie results to key business metrics (revenue, profit, brand awareness)
• More natural fit for organization makes it easier to gain stakeholder buy-in

Cons

• Can limit potential – initiatives focused on increasing sales
• Customer perception of spam – lame company attempts at Twitter

Information Technology

Pros

• Easier to iterate/change technology applications
• Employees with more experience in the space

Cons

• Over-engineered solutions that complicate content
• Many tech departments aren’t known for being user-friendly

Strategy

Pros

• Provide longer-term, “big-bet” focus to the initiative
• Able to apply value to multiple organization functions

Cons

• Can be focused too focused on “great thoughts” instead of quick action
• Often balancing multiple strategic initiatives which could divert attention from Social Media

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