Can Most Companies Improve Digital Engagement?
But all the news is not bad for traditional companies. Not at all, as it turns out. As I uncovered in the research for
my book last year, there are now many examples of traditional companies moving to network models for key
functions. Intuit with its mass peer-production customer care, TELUS and its 50% increase in employee
engagement with social media, as well as SAP, IBM, Ford, BASF, and a fair number of others
(http://www.zdnet.com /blog/hinchcliffe/realizing-social-business-enterprise-2-0-success-stories/1908) . So some companies
are clearly making the transition, often I'd note pointedly, by committing totally and experimenting with tolerance
for learning from inevitable mistakes.
So to come full circle, technology certainly can greatly improve the engagement of employees and therefore the
performance of organization, but only if they are ready to make the fundamental changes required to take
inherent advantage of the unique power that a new technology makes possible.
In other words, it shouldn't be surprising that acquiring a powerful new engagement technology, and then not
focusing on using what makes it so powerful, results in poor outcomes. A few test questions can illuminate this
point: Are you rolling out social media broadly across the organization, yet not methodically opening up business
processes to wider participation and scruntiny? Then you'll get limited results. Are you creating a new intranet
with some social features but keeping the publishing process locked down? Not much new will happen. Are you
letting employees talk to customers via social media? Then customer care is going to stay expensive and poor
quality.
Digital leaders of tomorrow, and therefore the business leaders, are finding that their businesses are becoming
networks, and in ways they never anticipated. This is leading to empowerment on an entirely new scale for those
that embrace it. I'll say it again, just like folks like Harold Jarche are (http://www.jarche.com /2013/11/networks-are-thenew-
com panies/) , "Networks are the new companies." The faster we can internalize and activate that with new
technology and a new mindset, the richer we all become.