Gartner Hype Cycle
Gartner uses the Hype Cycle (since 1995) to indicate how people deal with the introduction of new developments. At first they are very enthusiastic, but their expectations are often not realistic, which makes them disillusioned. Only then do they realize what the new development can mean for them and learn how to deal with it in a productive way.
Focus on generating orders
The social media hype is over now. However, we notice almost daily that not all colleagues understand how to list to data use social media productively in their work. The biggest challenge they encounter in this is related to the way our colleagues are rewarded: namely the number of hours they have been billable. Reason for us to focus our efforts on colleagues who go to market with a product or service and generating assignments.
Not yet a social business
At Deloitte we work with split fiscal years. This means that we are now halfway through the fiscal year that ends on May 31, 2013. The ultimate goal of Social Business Engineering is to become a social business. However, this (fiscal) year will not succeed.
Adoption curve
As you can see above in the innovation adoption curve, you reach a tipping point when 16% of a group of people has embraced a certain innovation. You could say that the rest will follow automatically. We now have 80 Social Business Champions, which corresponds to 1.8% of our organization. We hope to grow even further to 5% this year. This is already quite an ambitious goal. We will certainly not reach 16% this year. That is not a problem. To avoid disappointment, it is good to realize this before you start such a project.
Like any change, the transition to a social business takes time. Existing organizational structures and reward models can make it difficult to free up hours for such changes. So think carefully about how you are going to spend your available hours. You can't do everything and you have to make choices. It helps to focus your efforts on those people within your organization for whom the need for change is greatest.
Make your results visible
Make sure you achieve results quickly and make them visible, so that even skeptics are convinced of the benefits of using social media for business. However, do not be discouraged if people seem to lose their enthusiasm (Gartner Hype Cycle) or if a turning point seems to be absent and it takes longer ( innovation adoption curve ) before your organization also becomes a social business.
I am very curious about your views on this and what steps you have taken or will take to transform your organization into a social business.