How do you become a a Social Business? Create your A.G.E.N.D.A.

Check out this YouTube video by Sandy Carter, Vice President, IBM Social Business Evangelism and Sales.  The concepts highlight key focus areas in support of building your Social Business ... and is easy to remember :-). 

• It all starts ALIGNING organizational goals and culture.  Sure ... companies need to define goals, but that's the easy part.  The real challenge is about transforming organizational culture, which could take years.   Culture change needs to be driven from the highest executive levels in the company, and be adaptable across the vast geographies that many companies operate.  
• Once companies have a well documented and communicated strategy and a supporting culture, GAINING friends through social trust is the first step in the journey.  Employees should be encouraged to define and nurture their social eminence - their professional profile.   This again, is a journey and could take months/years to develop.  
• Building eminence is about ENGAGING in relevant conversations and providing valuable insights to your peers ... i.e. building social trust.  Gaining friends and effectively engaging will be most effective as part of a supporting corporate culture that provides clear guidance and incentives that align to the overall goals.  
• Once companies have established these elements, they can begin to NETWORK changes into existing business processes.  Social is one of many 'inputs' to your business processes, and Social will be one of many 'outputs' to that same process.  The way to effectively scale to a Social Business is to seamlessly integrate social into the way businesses operate.   
• The last two bullets are focused on risk management and metrics.   Your customers are talking about you.  It's important to DESIGN a response process to assure that you are able to listen ... and quickly respond.   This is not an optional step.  If you don't respond, it's possible that your competitors will.  ANALYZING your data provides you with an opportunity to learn about what works and what doesn't.  Having a feedback loop and being iterative in your Social Business journey is essential!