Can Social Business Be Bullied In?

Being a Social Business is important to you, dammit. Why can’t everyone just see that and do what they’re supposed to? It would all be so much simpler if everyone could just know how important this is to you and respond in kind.

Why do employees have to be so difficult?

Lead The Initiative

You always hear the phrase “take the initiative.” We always want employees to “take the initiative” and do community service, or “take the initiative” and work extra hours, or “take the initiative” and lead a department-needed change.

It’s not a far stretch to want employees to “take the initiative” when it comes to the Social Business changes too….except that it is. Social Business is a complete overhaul on a lot of the established ways and therefore must be approached in a very systematic way. The idea behind being a Social Business is not to simply open the floodgates to social activity and tell all your employees to “do whatever makes you happy!” There’s a reason we harp a lot on strategy here at Social CRM Info.

So you can’t just hope that your employees will take the initiative, because they might take it somewhere that’s outside where you want to be as a Social Business. You have to Lead the Initiative to be truly successful.

And that brings us back around to whether or not you can bully a Social Business into existence. If your employees can’t take the initiative themselves and it’s up to you to get this done, force is the only option left, right?

Honey vs. Vinegar

You’re a manager or C-suite executive, dammit, and it’s your job to make the necessary changes for the good of the company, whether the employees like it or not. So that has to be the answer. Social Business can be bullied in.

Wrong.

Will there be growing pains? Sure. But relying on pressure to make your employees more social on your behalf will fail every time. What happens when you have employees that aren’t fully invested in being social on your behalf? You open the door to costly and image-damaging mistakes.

Part of this whole Social Business initiative must be a carefully planned and executed training process. There will definitely be some employees who hold out on all the changes, but you don’t want them representing your brand online anyway. Through the training process you will locate the employees that will lead the charge for you online and within the company and at that point you can give them the initiative as opposed to expecting them to take it.

Information and communication are vital to a successful Social Business strategy, but they are even more important to an internal rollout strategy.

Just like the great coach Phil Jackson couldn’t win the NBA championship without his team, you won’t win the Social Business battle unless you have your team working towards the same goals and doing so positively and energetically.

I’ll end this by giving you the same advice I was given by my parents when I was younger: “Bullying is never the answer. Use your words.”

Timeless advice, in my opinion.

Thoughts?

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