Senior Management ‘gets’ Potential of Social Media but Fail to Act



Key findings include:


Professor David F. Larcker of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and lead author of the study, said:

Companies appreciate the potential that social media can have to transform all aspects of their business: branding, reputation, communication, outreach, and identifying strategic risks. They also realize the serious threats that it can pose. They’re just not doing very much about it.”

“We know that executives and board members are using social media. However, familiarity with social media is just not translating into systemic use at their companies.  The majority of those we surveyed don’t have social media guidelines in place at their companies, haven’t had a social media expert consult with their company, and don’t have systems in place for gathering key information. They are putting themselves at serious risk by not taking action.”

Stanford recommends taking the following steps to implement a social media strategy:

  1. Assess their current capabilities with social media

Only a ‘whole brain’ approach leads to success

What needs to be done to successfully implement social media in the organization is a holistic change journey. The recommendations by Stanford focusses on processes, KPI’s and what more. As the study showed, it’s also key to get people moving. It’s not enough that within organizations there is a lot of bottom-up empowerment, but top-down commitment is key!

Successful organizations do for things right in relation to social media integration:

  • Align social media strategy with business objectives
  • Build internal capabilities
  • Tailor organizational design to operations
  • Create a culture of sharing, accountability and learning

The one thing that you need to do to be successful in social media integration and execition is Test, Test, Test! Bottom-up empowerment does not simply fall from the sky, the potential needs to be experienced, needs to be co-created with employees. The actual transformation is often more complex than the execution, this transition also needs to happen in the mind of the employee.

This is also the way to convince senior management and make them act, create business cases and concrete ‘burning platforms’.

What do you think of the results? Does it surprise you?

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