Apathy or Retribution - Silo's Part 3

Continuing on with previous posts about Silos and being an ACE or an AS we now stop to think about some reasons for the middle ground people.

The two extremes, one side uses everything and shares like beer on tap overflowing a glass and the other shares nothing and could care less. They both work in their own way and should be respected for they have made a decision.

Most of the world however, or 95% of it, if I can warp an old statistics class idea, is in the middle. Not committing to do or not to do or even try. Yoda would not be pleased. Mostly they are paralyzed by the fear of retribution should they go up against something or someone they do not believe in or trust. they may also be stuck in the land of apathy, uncaring too much of the information because it does not touch their little world (mini fiefdoms).

So now that you got here, how do you get these people to go to the other side without paying the ferryman?

 In a post from October, I wrote this:

Stop Using the F, S and C words to Explain Connections

What I did not touch on was the need for people to belong and feel connected to others emotionally which is why they may use Facebook or Linkedin. That emotional need does not exist in business for most people. It's their job and unless they are 100% into their job and company the same need isn't there, thus the apathy. And also they rightly presume this may be used against them, thus the retribution.


Now compare this to a person who blogs about the issues within an educational organization who is trying to reach out to people who are affected by the decisions and yet the same people do not want to speak out or comment for fear of retribution by the community at large.

Now how do you as a sales person help your vendor sell their social business solution into a company? We have seen installations get tossed aside because of lack of usage. We have read about solutions that served them well for years to be tossed for something new. We have even seen some people choose to turn off some options because they want to force employees to think differently, the cold turkey method.

Buy-in from employees comes when they see their leadership making the effort and leading the way and showing the benefits to the company which in turn benefits the employees, or it should. Only in this way can you stave off the apathetic and assuage the fear of retribution.

It is not an easy process to accomplish and  it takes time to spread this across, especially if your company has been full of Silos and fiefdoms for some time.

A Manager’s Guide to Resolving Conflicts in Collaborative Networks

Found this while searching on some other topics. It is an excellent paper, from 2007 which describes some of the obstacles we will face as we strive to a collaborative social business. The document is from the IBM Center for The Business of Government.

Indeed the authors: Rosemary O’Leary, Distinguished Professor of Public Administration
Maxwell Advisory Board Endowed Chair, The Maxwell School, Syracuse University
and
Lisa Blomgren Bingham, Keller-Runden Professor of Public Service, School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University-Bloomington

do an excellent job of the pros and cons to this topic.

Here is just one nugget from the paper:

Interesting reading, some basic sales 101 but the outlines of steps to follow for different sections could be a course in its own for those who just can not get their head around everything still.

The Accidental Silo Structure

http://www.mabeats.com/

In the Silo's Happen  previous post I started to discuss the Accidental Silo Structure. I can't use the acronym since it will get blocked by some systems, so I will use the term AS.

If you have an AS, what do you do? Do you realize that you look like an AS? Do you think that you look like an Accessible Collaborative Enterprise (ACE)?

How do you know? What can you do to test for which side you are on?

Keeping in mind that some companies are ACE on the inside but AS on the outside and vice versa we need a litmus test for the sales teams to better understand where the customer sits on this spectrum.

As a Sales person, have you looked for these from the outside:

1) Listened to or watched a webinar or conference call between the client and their constituents, be they business patrners, vendors, customers? Have you noticed if they have an open meeting? Do they let you see everyone on the call? Can you chat with anyone or only the presenter?

2) If you read their blogs on their company website, are they up to date, even within 30 days?

3) Do they run a twitter feed that searches on the company name? Do they show they even are active on twitter at all?

4) Can you comment on their blogs without a "waitingfor approval to post your comments" line?

5) Have you noticed if there is anything other than a phone number or email address for connecting with the organization?

None of these individually rule them out, especially #5 which I use as a simple test. Similarly to the Van Halen brown M&M's contract rider, somethings go a long way to tell you about the organization.

Now what about the inside? Not so hard as you might think:

1) What does the company use to disseminate information? Is email still #1?

2) Does the company use a standard Instant Messenger solution? I don't care which one but a company wide solution?

3) If the company runs Jive, Lotus Notes Applications, IBM Quickr places, IBM Connections, Sharepoint or whatever are they actively using it and managing it? Or are there a million silo places inside each that make it seem like a needle in a haystack to find what you want?

4) When you take a meeting with the executive...is it only them in the room with you?

5) If you know the backgroound of management, do they come from organizations that are open and sharing and social or cold, dark and closed?

#5 is not meant as a failure. However, it implies that the people, who may in their own way be open and caring, ACEs actually, have a background from a place that acts like an AS. In other words, they may know better, but their mind says "this is how we did it before".

We need to stop the historical thinking!

You must bring the problems to the executives at their level. Sometimes outsiders provide greater and deeper insight to a company than their own teams. Great leaders want this information and want to see changes made because they may be tired of their "yes" people.

Don't assume anything about your potential clients, but look for the signs, they are staring you in the face. Deal with these before you try to sell your solution and you will look like an ACE too instead of an AS.