Can Social Media (SM) be used to gain greater Business Agility? Can SM significantly contribute to more Agile Innovation or Development cycles? Potentially. Let’s see how Agility objectives and SM capabilities line up.
Agility Schmagility … What are we really talking about here?
What’s the ultimate “Agile Goal”? Often the goal is expressed as “shortest time to value.” I boil it down a little further—the ultimate goal is to maximize the amount of output per quantity of input. Agility is about minimizing wasted time, wasted resources, and unnecessary drag.
There’s a lot of hubbub about Agility. But below the noise, there are few bottom line “Agile Capabilities” that significantly contribute to this ultimate “Agile Goal”:
1. One core “Agile Capability” is rapid course correction. Of course, the less the course has to be corrected, the smaller the quantity of work that will be wasted. What this means is that you really want to be on an as-close-to-ideal-as-possible course initially, and then have relatively subtle course adjustments. If your course corrections are equivalent to hard turns, then you will have more time and effort wasted as you wildly zigzag back and forth.
2. A second core “Agile Capability” is efficient testing or vetting of assumptions, models, or prototypes. When you truly are in “uncharted waters” there may not be any knowledge or experience to draw upon. In this case you need to be able to quickly and frequently vet your course with a decent-sized group.
There are other core “Agile Capabilities,” but let’s stop the list there for the time being, and look at how SM might contribute.
What Role can SM Play?
Rapid Course Correction:
It’s easy to look at your small internal team, and say “hey, we can change course quickly.” But for setting an as-close-to-ideal-as-possible course initially, and then having each subsequent course correction be optimal, there is no substitute for tapping a broad base of knowledge and experience. SM has made a broader base of knowledge and experience readily, quickly, and inexpensively available than ever before. If used wisely, this can save you a phenomenal amount of wasted time, effort, and money.
In a SM context we often talk about crowd-sourcing — frequently focusing on the co-creation of content. In this case we’re talking about something a little different. To avoid confusion, let’s call is “crowd-inquiring.” You’re looking for knowledge and expertise that you solicit piecemeal and then synthesize to meet your internal requirements. It’s not the same kind of exercise as crowd-sourcing finished or nearly-finished content.
Crowd-Inquiring Example:
If you post a really complex question on LinkedIn Q&A, leading domain experts from around the world will scramble over each other to provide the best answer. It’s a win-win. They get the exposure of demonstrating their expertise in a public forum, and you benefit from a pool of expert advice.
Efficient Testing or Vetting:
Putting together in-person focus groups has always been costly, cumbersome and error prone. The person who has the free time to participate in a focus group may not be the person you’d ideally like to target with the product or service that you’re developing. We need lightweight and inexpensive methodologies that allow us to get feedback from a group that is large enough so that our findings are statistically valid.
SM can provide the channels through which this kind of lightweight, inexpensive, and adequate-scale vetting can take place. Once again, this is a little different that conventional crowd-sourcing. Let’s call it “crowd-vetting.”
In the Crowd-Inquiring Example we discussed how the responding experts were “compensated” for their contributions. For crowd-vetting to be sustainable there also needs to be some value for the participants. This can simply be belonging to a community, having earlier access to information and offerings, or getting discounts or exclusive offers.
Crowd-Vetting Example:
Your company develops mobile accessories targeted at young consumers. You set up a private Facebook “Insiders” group and send invitations to age-group-filtered customers in three major urban markets. In exchange for feedback, you provide invitations to sponsored events, and early product information. Your cost of feedback is cut by 75% versus focus groups for each product cycle, despite the fact that your sample set and sample rate is 20 times higher.
What Else?
Crowd-inquiring and crowd-vetting are just two ways that SM can contribute to the Agility equation. Which other Agile capabilities are supported by SM? Which SM channels should we leverage in order to minimize wasted time and effort, and to reach our goals as quickly as possible?
1 September 2009, Julian Keith Loren, Paris