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?
