Look to your Bad Habits to Foster Your Goals

When helping many enterprises wrap their arms around a social strategy, I always try to get them to circle back to their business drivers or goals for embarking on a social roadmap.   If these aren’t in place it will be virtually impossible to arrive at results never mind deploy the correct social technology to succeed!

A blog post on Workshifting.com regarding “7 Habits That Derail Your Goals” by David Baeza really pushed me rethink goal setting process.   The definition of a goal by the Oxford Dictionary is “the object of a person's ambition or effort; an aim or desired result”.   This is critical in developing a social roadmap.  

My epiphany was: Goals are set to Rectify Bad Habits.   Goal setting, by nature, should be prefaced by a gut wrenching exercise to determine why this is a goal to start.  What aren’t you doing or what are you doing which is preventing the ideal nature of business nirvana?   We all have heard to death that “Goals need to be measureable.” Sure, okay… but does that make them achievable?   Think about a personal goal which continues to show up on the list in January year after year.  Some of the top personal goals every year are to lose weight, stop smoking, spend more time with family, exercise more…  you get the picture.   

Let’s look at this.   On your goal list is:  I want to lose 30 pounds this year.  Okay, that is:

1.     Attainable (given you have 30lbs to lose) with proper management and is less than a pound a week. 
2.     It can be measured by a scale
3.    It can be broken up into smaller goals that can be used as incentives along the way.  I want to lose 10 pounds by March 31^st.

What most people don’t do is look at really why they need to lose 30 pounds.  They may realize they don’t eat healthy or exercise or have an addiction to ice cream.  However, these are still symptoms rather than the root of the problem that is causing the issue.   You aren’t going to suddenly decide fruit is tastier and a craving rather than ice cream.  

Moving this into the professional realm.   Do you want to have better customer retention?  Okay great.  Your social strategy goal is to impact customer retention and increase your percentage by 10% over two years and drive incremental existing customer sales up by also 10%.   Lofty goals, my friend.  Lets put the goal analysis magnifying glass on it.

1.      Attainable: Yes, companies can improve customer retention by 10%
2.      It can be measured.  Sure I have 1000 customers how many of these are still customers in two years.
3.      It can be broken into smaller subsets

Here is the question…  Why are you having a problem with retention in the first place?  Better communication and listening to your customers on a 24/7/365 basis is certainly a step in the right direction just like joining a gym.   However, simply having a place to listen or work out is not going to get you to the goal.  For many, this is hitting bottom.  They have looked in the mirror and decided what is looking back at them isn’t the person or company they want to be in life.   If you are a company leader, is the organization really the best it can be?  Are you finally ready to implement changes that need to happen in order to make your customers more loyal or buy more from you?   Are you cultural ready?  

You may not realize the core of the problem.  Your customers probably understand it.  Social Technology can be a great mirror.  Painful for some.   Addicting to others.   So when you look in your corporate mirror are you seeing the Biggest Loser when they walk into get on the scale for the first time or at the finale?   Zappos.com, Ford Motor Company, American Express and others are addicted to looking in their social mirrors at themselves.  It is not a bad thing for you and others to like what you see.  

Success is not chance.  It is hard work with a bit of luck around the edges.   Social success is not easy or free.   Companies that are seeing success have dedicated the appropriate resources from a human resource, financial and cultural standpoint.   

Social Leadership

Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.,   General George S. Patton

Yesterday, I thought I would celebrate President's Day with supplying my Twitter and Facebook audience with interesting, funny, and thought provoking quotes from our Past Presidents.  Honestly, I stuck to some of my favourite Presidents and some of the obscure ones.   Reading through some of the quotes, I was also trying to find ones I could boil down to 140 characters for Twitter.   Some of the larger ones, I just couldn't resist to share went to Facebook.   It got me thinking about what it takes to lead.  Individuals which have the inner drive to lead is a strange quality.  I have found especially working in cutting edge technology and human resources over my career.  I am always a bit impressed with the people I know that have the ability to leave the corporate employment world to start their own venture.  

This morning when I googled "Leadership Quotes" a list of the top ten came back.   Two of the ones, I had read yesterday from past President's were on the list.  However, this quote from General Patton stood out and reflected that this is the essence of understanding how to empower an organization to success in the new era of social business.   

My post below discusses organizations that are ready to be social buyers.   These organizations all have leadership which embodies the quote above.   They either understand the business world has yet again evolved like it did with the advent of "company websites and email" or the trust enough the people they have put in place to make the right decisions which will impact the valuation of a company.   The truth is the mistakes that companies make today are no longer going to be hidden.   Yesterday's, Southwest incident is a testament to a company that understands it can't hide from the social lash back to a customer's frustration. (My own feeling is Southwest handled this very well even though I am not a fan of their seating method... I know many are and it works for them)

I have been very lucky to be in the presence of many top executives that understand they must find the internal fortitude to embrace a social business model.   They must listen to the individual ideas, compliments, and critisim of their stakeholders and have the courage to turn their corporate ships to find the right winds to continue to be relevant in the marketplace.   Are you going to be the company that after seeing Ford make the Model T say... " Nope, it is never going to catch on... I am going to continue to make luxury coaches".   This correlation also supports the notation that older corporations are some of the huge success stories with embracing social media.  Ford alone, in the American car manufacturers, is still viable on it's own and is one of the darlings of the social media world as a success story.

I know it isn't easy and in reality the ease and fast paced feedback will present many challenges for the "C" level at many companies.   It will provide a real time understand of how policies and decisions impact your employees and customers.   The question is do you have the stomach to lead in today's social business era?