Social business roundup

It’s time for our monthly glimpse at the latest and best thinking, case studies and stats around social business, and December is proving to be a (Christmas) cracker.

Edelman have released a deck on Social Business Planning in 2012 (And Beyond) – a behemoth, but a great resource for anyone wanting the big picture of how to drive a structurally and culturally sound social enterprise.

At LeWeb in early December, Jeremiah Owyang presented Altimeter’s State of Social Business Report in which he declared that it is now time to “return to basics and focus on building a scalable infrastructure –before jumping into adopting social tools”. Watch below.

Over at CMS Wire, Rachel Happe has predicted the 3 Critical Social Business Trends to Watch in 2012; they boil down to:

1. Overload. Too much information, too much content, too many connections, too many “apps for that”.…just way too much for most individuals to handle productively.
2. Acute lack of talent & expertise. As more organizations get serious, the need for community managers, social data analysts, collaborative innovation experts and social strategists will grow dramatically, but the available expertise will not. A skirmish for talent — and maybe even a war — will break out.
3. Momentum Dip. The changes required to move our organizations from where they are today to a new way of organizing and operating will take a long time to implement. As ideas and concepts move into execution, it becomes less about excitement and more about slow, persistent reinforcement and progress — different skills and individuals are needed to manage this transition successfully.

Sensible stuff, and the emphasis on gradual and tenacious long-term change is an important one when ‘social’ can sometimes be interpreted as ‘the cheap and easy option.’ A recent related post to read on this topic is Social Business and Time Horizons, from Matt Ridings at techguerilla.

Another challenge comes from the fantastic Brand Builder, our friend Olivier Blanchard. In Beware the Social Business Siren Song he reminds us that “becoming a more social company is not the same as becoming a better company” and sets out a series of questions for leaders that will ensure that they are innovating and improving, not bandwagon-jumping. Pass it on.

If you haven’t read Charlene Li’s book Open Leadership yet, order a copy and in the meantime check out her website where you can download useful resources such as her Openness Audit, Social Media Policies Directory and Benefits and Lifetime Value Calculator for adopting an open organisational approach.

And if you want to see the theory in action, the airlines are a good place to look. Jay Baer relates how Southwest Airlines demonstrated a moving example of their social culture, while KLM continue their good work with a Facebook app allowing people to choose their seat-mates.

Finally, Forbes has released a special Social Business Report covering everything from ‘interoperability’ to recruiting and data handling.

Happy holiday reading!

Brought into the world on Friday, December 16th, 2011 and filed under social business.