You have a choice. Take the Blue Pill or the Red Pill.

Take the Blue Pill and Run on the Corporate Wheel.

Acme’s Sales Executive Ted has a conversation with a prospective customer about industry needs, which sparks an idea for an innovative product upgrade. He e-mails the idea to Susan his Sales Manager, who likes the idea and suggests it to Sam the Sales VP at the following month’s regional sales meeting.

Sam, knowing the corporate policy well writes a brief and “inter-offices” the document to Sheila, the Chief Operating Officer who files it with her assistant for inclusion in the quarterly product review meeting…

…fast-forward 12 months and that idea was downgraded into obscurity because of current product development issues and priorities or won favor but is in “committee planning”, waiting for systematic review, comments and rebuttals throughout the corporate chain.

In the meantime, an upstart competitor is winning market share by bringing the new product to life and hired Ted, who was “unsatisfied with the responsiveness of his former company” to sell that product to the business who inspired it in the first place.

[All names changed to protect the blissfully ignorant.]

Take the Red Pill and enter the Matrix.

Acme’s Sales Executive Ted has a conversation with a prospective customer about industry needs, which sparks an idea for an innovative product upgrade. Ted posts the idea onto an internal social network, which is read by Justine, the Product Manager, Tanya, the Customer Support Operator and Trevor, the Marketing Exec.

The four exchange similar insights and their own discussions with various customer contacts. They post links to each the work each had begun.

Trevor invites his boss, Lucas the CMO into the discussion to get a reality check on what this ad-hoc cross-silo team has been brainstorming. Lucas quickly understands: the need, the opportunity, the challenges in bringing the product to market and the solutions, which he gathered from reading the team’s discussion.

Lucas opens an online collaboration room with the these participants and crowdsources a formal marketing plan that he presents at the next product development meeting.

…fast-forward 12 months and Acme is reporting a spike in category sales spurred on by the reintroduction and rebranding of an old product with new features. Ted receives a bonus for his efforts, additional commissions for the lift in sales.

And the upstart…oh, wait…what upstart?

Social business requires employees and managers to enter the matrix. The corporate matrix is both a culture and technology that encourages and even rewards open sharing of ideas, experiences, project statuses and, dare I say, opinions from every employee and across every silo regardless of hierarchy.

Next, it must enable on-demand committees to form around ideas not hierarchies.

Imagine. Open communication for the betterment of the business.Social Business. Revolutionary.

You have a choice. Take the Blue Pill or the Red Pill.

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego
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