Review: Adfed Mentorship Circle 5/6/09

“What you need to keep in mind is the massive company structure and organizational changes that are required to make enterprises outface to the customer in a better way. At even the growing small business, and certainly mid-size and Fortune 1000s, much has to go on behind the scenes before they can be agile and proactive in operations-marketing dynamics like the examples Adrian describes.

Remember: elephants need more lead time to move and react. Not every organization can be proactive jackrabbits. ”

I absolutely agree with this assessment and am well aware of the adjustment factor.

Let’s dig deeper: why?

Why are there are still a large percentage of orgs that haven’t even started this re-tooling process? How much more suffering will they endure before they’re forced to change? How many more jobs need to go and profits cut before the decision makers come clean on what is really going on? At what point is enough enough? Fear of change, insecurity, and ego is what lies behind the curtains in my opinion and if anyone thinks there are other reasons at the heart of the matter, I’d like to discuss that greater detail.

Kudos to those that have made the internal leap, are leading and embracing, and really doing the best they can while displaying the courage and humility to admit that they don’t know exactly how or where this things is going (no-one does). Thanks to those who will lead our country out of recession.

On a related note, it’s interesting to observe the attitudes of the agencies that represent a lot of these larger orgs. I actually hear them admitting that they don’t know what’s going on…wow…now were getting somewhere! The fatal flaw over the past 10-20-30 years was to think that we, or anyone else really knew anything, and that business (read: people) doesn’t evolve. At least here in the West, we fell into this trap of intellectual hubris, and it has cost us our children’s future. I include myself in this.

But I think this change is more than just a re-tooling; it’s a 180 degree reversal in business as usual and its all up for grabs. If the necessary internal psychological changes haven’t started already, the odds of successfully managing the change (should it actually happen) are decreasing daily. Markets and innovation don’t wait and they don’t care where they get their needs met + the door has been swung wide open for anyone who offers a better product/service/whatever to compete with anyone like never before. Throw in there a volatile/uncertain economy, lack of consumer confidence and distrust with wall st. banksters that financed (and still do) these massive orgs and you get a perfect storm.

The risk isn’t in changing, the risk is in waiting a minute longer to change. Information is no longer secret which until now has been one of the primary growth drivers of the “hierarchical” “top down” “command and control” “org chart” management philosophies. Talent was attracted to and loyal to the hand that fed them what they needed to know to do their job, but now, the world is at our fingertips. As a result, information has become commoditized and the long tail of a commodity is pretty close to zero. Now that it’s become an information overload only the loudest signals will be heard-and the loudest signals come from those of decentralized communities, also known as “the crowd”.

The big news is that all those companies that have had practical monopolies during the mass marketing era are now waking up to realize that their products/services are not remarkable and thus not what the web community at large wants to see and because the barrier to entry is so low, companies (read: communities) that actually strive to be the best they can be (as opposed to maximize short term profits) are listening to their markets to give them what they (the markets) want vs. what they (the corp) thinks they should want. Big difference.

Social media is simply a series of hyper connected megaphones given to each member of the internet community- this is the greatest opportunity ever to spread oneself or org and the ideas that matter – why wait? Oh yeah, you’re company is too bureaucratic and politicized, you’ve got to think about legal and PR and “message” and trying to gain control of something you don’t understand, something that’s way bigger than anyone can imagine, something that cannot be contained, and most importantly doesn’t really care what it is you sell because our sole purpose in life simply isn’t to buy. Oh yeah, and marketing didn’t tell you about social media 2-3-5 years ago because they knew the moment they saw it that there’s no future for them in the new economy.

Elephants do need more time to move and react for reasons noted. Smaller more nimble, agile, and responsive creatures are gaining unprecedented growth & market share: small is the new big and it’s the people inside the orgs that matter like never before. The future is nothing short of full transparency. Additionally, it’s no accident that there’s a direct correlation between the size of a business and it’s human characteristics – primarily respect and humility – and the web adores this stuff when it comes to commercialism.

Again, I agree with what your saying but regardless of how responsive an org can be, that’s only half of the equation, and we still have a long ways to go in that regard.

Thanks for your comment/thoughts/response!