For many years I have drawn great inspiration and lessons from leaders of all sorts - political, corporate, social and the like.

A political and social leader who has had among the greatest impact on me is former U.S. Army General and U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell. In his autobiography 'My American Journey' Mr. Powell shares many stories, insights and lessons learned throughout his storied career.

Perhaps the most important offering in the book are the '13 Rules of Leadership' that he shares.

I refer to these rules often and each time I look at them I learn something new.

I would like to share them with you - along with commentary as to how I apply each as a communication professional leading in an environment of constant social and business change.

Interestingly, I found a great article authored by David Zinn that was published in 2000 - where he applied the same rules to coaching in sports. A few of his insights are woven Into the below as well.

RULE #1: It ain't as bad as you think. It will look better in the morning.

The practice and art of managing communication and influence has changed significantly over the last three years driven in large part by the impressive utilization and growth of social media - further enabled by innovations in the development of mobile technologies and social applications.
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Barbara French and Gideon Gartner recently started a discussion about the future of the IT advisory industry. The two part discussion can be found at Advisory Industry Competition: Pushing Past ‘Business as Usual’ (part 1) and Advisory Industry Competition: Pushing Past ‘Business as Usual’ (part 2)

As background, Gideon is a pioneer of the IT advisory industry having founded Gartner Inc in 1979 and GIGa Group in 1995 (acquired by Forrester in 2000).  By many measures Gartner and Forrester are (today) the dominate forces in their industry.

Barbara is a highly regarded thought leader, advisor and consultant to the IT vendor community helping analyst and influencer relations professionals adapt to changing landscape and market influence of analysts and other influencers types.  

The discussion that Barbara and Gideon started is based on the observation that the IT advisory industry is going through a new and important phase in its maturity. In essence, the question they pose is to what extent will smaller research and advisory firms and the growing rank of independent analysts disrupt the business models that the current dominate players have been founded on? 

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In a recent blog post I discussed the virtues of Design Thinking as a framework to facilitate the creation of innovative marketing and communication strategies.

In this post, I offer thoughts on what leaders need to do to create a culture where innovation and design thinking can actually thrive.

Lessons from Harvard Business Review.

In an article published in the December 2009 issue of the Harvard Business Review entitled “The Innovators DNA" authors Jeffrey H. Dyer, Hal B. Gregerson, and Clayton M. Christensen discuss the characteristics of leadership that drive innovation cultures within organizations.  The article is the result of a six-year study to uncover the origins of creative - and often disruptive - business strategies in innovative companies.

The authors discovered that the best leaders in many organizations are not the genius behind ground breaking innovations.  Rather they are the curators of ideas and design and are the facilitators of collaboration that often lead to great innovations.

The ability to innovate is the secret sauce of business success. 

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For many executives, when it comes to understanding basic stakeholder perception and sentiment towards a company's product or corporate brand in the social web, Twitter is a great and safe place to start. 

People who 'tweet' want to be listened to, they want to be heard.  As such, Twitter is a perfect platform for people to channel their emotions, thoughts, experiences and ideas.

There are a number of free Twitter applications available that allow you to run an infinite number of Twitter queries at the same time - such as TweetDeck. 

As an example, you can start by running the following queries, side-by-side:

• Love [insert your company/product name]
• Hate [insert your company/product name]

This is a safe and easy way to understand the sentiment of people toward your company (brand, products and services) - at the extremes.  You can also conduct the same with your competitors as a comparison or benchmark. 

If you want to take things one step further you can 'engage' with and thank customers who support and love your products/services - by responding to tweets.  Perhaps ask a few questions while at it: "What do you like best about x products?" "How can we improve your experience?"

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Design thinking is a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues that looks for an improved future result.  It is the essential ability to combine empathy, creativity and rationality to meet user needs and drive business success. Unlike analytical thinking, design thinking is a creative process based around the "building up" of ideas. There are no judgments early on in design thinking. This eliminates the fear of failure and encourages maximum input and participation in the ideation and prototype phases. Outside the box thinking is encouraged in these earlier processes since this can often lead to creative solutions.

As the principles of design thinking have largely been used to help companies reinvent their innovation processes to develop compelling and transformative products and services - there is much that marketing and communication professionals can derive from these basic principles to support the creation and design of influence strategies to shape market conversation and ideas to advance the competitive positions of their companies.

I recently touched on this in a post on thought leadership.

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Answer: Everyone!

Social media has evolved significantly from its roots in marketing and corporate communications to the point that it should no longer be viewed as merely a function or a discipline within a company. 

In a business context, social media is no longer just a destination or a set of tools and features.  It has evolved into a very powerful extension and dimension of work…a new way of thinking about how business is done.

Asking the question (today) 'who owns social media?' in business is like asking the question 'who owns email?' 

Everyone does. 

Email has traditionally played an important role in how people communicate, collaborate and share information.  In many ways, social media represents a massive evolution (or revolution) as to how we do the same – but in a different context and with greater benefit.

Everyone in a corporate environment needs to understand, appreciate and own how social media is used in the context of what they do.

Resistance is futile

A mistake that many companies make is to relegate social media to just marketing and/or corporate communications and associate it as only relevant to the youngest generations of people. 

Adjusting to the use and rules of social media and social thinking is not easy for everyone.

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Social media is a tremendous environment for B2B companies to establish competitive advantage through compelling thought leadership.

In a social environment, thought leadership allows companies to frame and stimulate conversation and collaboration around important and sometimes complex ideas and real-world business and socioeconomic problems – where their solutions are uniquely positioned to help address.

Through social media, companies can reach highly targeted audiences by role (CEOs, CIOs, developers, etc.), industry orientation and geography through any form of generic or specialized social network or community (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, MyVenturePad.com, YouTube, etc.).

If compelling, people will contribute, share and internalize the thought leadership – giving companies a tremendous opportunity to influence agendas and establish standards in the market.

As outlined in a recent post by Rob Leavitt, in order to make an impact - thought leadership requires focus, depth and continuity.

For many companies this represents a big challenge due to a lack of skilled and trained staff (in house) to produce good, deep and continuous thought leadership - on their own.

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I had a great discussion last week with Mike Kelly and Peter Auditore about social media and why business leaders should care.

If you agree with the premise that we now live and work in a world that is increasingly becoming more and more ‘social’ then it is easy to understand that new rules in business are being written for companies to be successful and compete.

Social media now thrives in a dynamic environment as a result of the convergence of many great enabling technologies built around the Internet, Web 2.0, and mobile along with advancements in bandwidth and connectivity (among other things).

We now operate in a world where hundreds of millions of people are seamlessly connected through devices and the Internet - sharing billions of pieces of content, information and experiences on a daily basis.  It is just amazing.

In many ways, social media has evolved to become a very powerful medium to channel emotion, context and experience.

• Emotion: How I feel…
• Context: What I think or where I am…
• Experience: What I did and how I will act as a result of...

Perhaps the most important component for business leaders to understand and appreciate in a social world is 'experience.’

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As I recently discussed, Tom Foremski, Vanessa DiMauro and I have started a great collaboration – extending from of our work together at the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR). 

The three of us meet regularly to discuss industry trends and share experiences from our respective work in media, business and technology.  Our discussions have sharpened our individual and collective views on social media and social business that have helped us (or at least me, anyway) become more effective in our 'day jobs.'

Through our collaboration, we have also identified a great opportunity to share our experiences and ideas through a new blog, intended to help business leaders and practitioners understand how to incorporate social strategies and social thinking into the heart of their business operations (beyond marketing and communications) - strengthening the competitive position and market leadership of their companies.

Today we launched the blog Every Company is a Media Company.  This blog is intended to support rich discussion between marketing and communications practitioners, business and IT professionals, academics, consultant, etc.

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“People don't change behavior or positions based on what they know. They change based on what they feel.” – Oprah Winfrey.

 

This is an extremely powerful and clarifying statement from one of the most successful and influential ‘social’ leaders of our time.  What makes Oprah Winfrey so influential, anyway?  In my view, she is successful because she has a pulse on the issues and concerns of millions of people within her core audience.  She is a master at channeling and telling stories based on both her own experiences and those of everyday people.  She comes across as accessible. She is a masterful communicator and understands the importance of authenticity. 

Regardless of your view on Oprah’s politics or opinions…it is hard to deny the great and transformative power of her influence.

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