Voters must learn to trust voters again

Image via A-Z Quotes.com

Trust. Given the seismic societal and geopolitical events of the last year I think it's worth reminding ourselves about Trust.

58% of eligible Americans didn't bother voting. Liberal democracies work on the assumption that the voter knows best. This is built on a basic trust. We have faith that the 'other' has our best interests at heart.

As the world has globalised, the question of who should vote on what issues arises. If you take a global perspective why should a nation vote alone on whether or not it leaves (for sake of argument) The European Union. The impact of the decision made by voters goes far beyond the impact on themselves. Do they have the right, within one nation, to vote for things that harm others?
Climate change, accords and fast-growing heavily polluting nations raise similar concerns - as does the free movement of refugees. People moving from difficulty to plenty has been the story of human expansion over the face of the Earth - until we invented passports and border controls.

Democracy it seems can only work if we share a basic beliefs/traditions/outlooks with most other of your fellow voters. When fellow voters are like us we accept the results - and I reiterate, we do so because we assume they have our interests at heart, too.

When those interests are ignored, we don't accept the results. If their experiences are far removed from my own, if they don't understand how I feel and don't care about the things I hold dear then I'm unlikely to accept the result no matter how 'conclusive'.

Is this what we have seen at play in Brexit and in the election of Donald Trump?
Or is there more that binds the people of the UK and the people of the US than divides them?

To move forward both nations must find a place where voter can trust voter again (this is more important than whether we trust politicians, for whom we all have our crap filters set to stun permanently anyway).

I do believe that trust can be rebuilt - I wrote a book (The 10 Principles of Open Business) which lays out how we can do it in brands and business and the principles are equally applicable to our institutions and way of life.

In the main we do share basic beliefs and traditions. If there are differences it is in outlook. Some see the post-globalised, digitised world through fearful eyes. Others with optimism.

If we connect more, share more, enter more transparent discourse, act ,more as what we are - partners in civil society - we can help rebuild trust. In so doing we can enable more people to identify and access the benefits of the connected world so many of us have enjoyed.

If we cannot we will break down (and self-organise ourselves) into the bubbles our Facebook timelines seem intent on generating.

Think for a moment how important trust is in winning this battle, in rebuilding the partnership we aim to have with each other in civil society -
The following are excerpts from The 10 Principles of Open Business.(Palgrave-Macmillan 2014).

"Without trust there can be no relationships of any value. Without relationships there can be no organizations, no customers, no believers, no advocates, no future. Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt went as far as to say in his 2009 University of Pennsylvania Commencement Address that: “In a networked world, trust is the most important currency.” Every politician, every newspaper editor, every CEO, every brand manager, every one of us knows it is essential. It is what ties customers to brands, families to each other, organizations and societies together. It is a very human trait and one which has given us an evolutionary advantage defined at its simplest as: “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine.” 

Evidence from neuroscience (e.g., “The Neurobiology of Trust” by Paul J Zak in Scientific American, 2008) suggests we get chemical feel-good rushes to reward us when we trust and are trusted, and that there are large portions of the brain developed specifically to deal with its complexities. Being able to trust our neighbor allowed us to build civilizations. We’ve evolved to demand it. To work closely with people, requires it. Partnership, the paradigm of Open Business, demands it. And when trust diminishes we are in crisis.

Trust,... is a measure of the belief in the honesty, fairness, or benevolence of another party. Build this kind of reciprocal trust and your partners are more likely to forgive your failures of competence; they will cut you slack if they trust that you are trying to do your best for them and being honest when things go wrong.  

t.

d”

Listen Again: Antifragility and Digital Transformation

I had the pleasure and privilege of being invited to join an international panel to discuss antifragility and digital transformation on Wednesday October 7, 2015.

The panel was broadcast live at 5pm-6pm UK time but is already available to listen to at your leisure on the following link:

LISTEN NOW>>

If you are hoping for a detailed discussion on the digital architecture required to make your business antifragile, this probably isn’t the discussion for you. But if you are interested in the human elements, the value of connectedness, openness, and the development of the truly networked, purpose-led organisation and the role these play in the sustainability of business, you’ll find plentiful riches.

Naturally, I brought my take from The 10 Principles of Open Business (which I note is suddenly scaling Amazon’s ‘Strategy’ book sales charts – perhaps no coincidence) and Anne McCrossan – founder of Visceral Business (link) spoke with passion for the humanising of the org and Todd Nilson who is director of consulting at Feverbee, the online community builders.

My sincere thanks must go to Sinan Si Alhir (Si), for his relentless sharing, connecting, openness and humanity. He brought us together and hosted the panel and never rests in his efforts to build a better future.

Doing The Right Thing

As previously discussed on this blog and in The 10 Principles of Open Business, the value of trust to a business cannot be over-stated.

But does that mean you are doing the right thing?

Trust is the core component of the value of any brand, institution or organisation.

And - as we make clear in The 10 Principles - we don't mean the 'we trust you to deliver' kind of trust that Ryanair used to rely on, we mean the 'we believe you have our best interests at heart' kind its more recent marketing has been tilted toward (yes, even Ryanair has grasped the essential difference and how important that has become to their sustained success).

What this all boils down to is a shift in staff behaviour from Jobsworth to Doing The Right Thing.

When the horse-meat scandal hit the European food-chain, Tesco's senior team didn't stop to ask themselves what they could get away with, or to investigate which suppliers they could point the blame at and pass the buck to, or spend weeks with the legal department honing what they would say to the press and on social media. No. Instead - as CMO at the time Matt Atkinson tells us in The 10 Principles - they simply went about doing the right thing; telling the truth as they knew it, opening up to provide transparency, giving money back without a quibble - acting as if they had the best interests of their customers at heart.

That's really at the guts of my complaint about Hargreaves-Lansdown published yesterday. They are taking a Jobsworth attitude, hiding behind regulations, letters of the law.

Today we expect something different: We expect them to Do The Right Thing.

I don't blame the front line staff I have had to interact with for this - it is an organisational stance and that comes from the top.

Tesco shifted theirs, thanks in no small part to ambitions to become an Open Business. The rebuilding of trust was (and remains) essential to that business.

And if you want me to believe you have my best interests at heart you had best Do The Right Thing rather than what a set of terms and conditions protect you for. When The Computer Says No but your heart and head tell you Yes, it's wise to consider it's the computer that may be wrong...

Contracts and regulations rarely cover every circumstance, every nuance. The relationship between customer and business, or business and supplier is built on trust. The moment you have to refer to the terms and conditions, the contract, the relationship is essentially at an end - you no longer trust each other or believe the other party has your best interest at heart.

How do you make Doing The Right Thing endemic in your org? It's all about permission. I rather like what Avis has done in the US (again referred to in my book) where every member of staff (every member of staff, not just folk up the tree or behind the management desk) is empowered to give up to a set amount in dollar terms to resolve a customer's problems as they see fit, right there and then.

That makes the ability to Do The Right Thing a genuine possibility to all.

So ask yourself - in your organisation are the teams being encouraged to Do The Right Thing or keep the Jobsworth hat on? It could make all the difference to how long folk are prepared to keep trading with you.

Trust has greatest value where choice is highest and price sensitivity lowest

Trust - the output of the 10 Principles of Open Business - is essential for success in today's open economy.
But we should note that its value varies across market segments. Trust will attract the right staff, keep the organisation honest and true to its beliefs and inspire people to perform at their best. But its impact on consumer action varies depending on choice/ease of switching and price sensitivity.
This may explain why even when we lose trust in something we don't always stop using it.
The graph included here illustrates my plotting of some market segments and institutions which shows us which should put the greatest efforts into building trust for the purpose of impacting consumer behaviour.

Where it's very difficult to switch (ie your daily commute by train) trust has some value but building it won't encourage more commuters to use a rail company. They just may feel a little better about the next price hike, a little safer while on board.
While there is no option when it comes to your police service you could argue there is little requirement to build trust to change user behaviour (though trusting the service does of course encourage people to be more open with it, even if we can't go and share our intel with an alternative organisation).
The key area for trust as an investment in behavioural change seems to be where both the cost of both switching and the price sensitivity is low (the top right quadrant).
Here we find the banks, the media, transport. Most retail vendors would fall here. Topically - politically parties appear a standout. Trust should be everything to them.
My positioning of supermarkets on this grid may explain why - despite the repeated crises of trust in our supermarket giants (even Open Business advocates Tesco) - there hasn't been a mass exodus of customers. Tesco's market share is down less than 2% year on year according to Kantar (Oct 2014). But that's based on spend, not numbers of customers. Customers are less likely to have left Tesco for Aldi or Lidl over issues of trust than they are over issues of price. They have added an Aldi run to their routine Tesco buys, not abandoned it completely.
These positions aren't fixed. IF through Open Business or other investment in building trust (and blockchain is being advocated as one such tool by The 10 Principles Co-author Jamie Burke) organisations can make trust a competitive advantage they can become more resistant to start-ups and new-comers who do not have a trust bank already established.

Give to receive

The 10Principles of Open Business provide a framework for rebuilding the trust so many brands and organisations have thrown away in the over-zealous pursuit of profit/cost.

What we know is when they destroyed the trust they had (through exploited suppliers, one-size-fits-all marketing and anti-customer service) they also destroyed the shareholder value they thought they were creating.

Today’s businesses are waking to the advantages of treating their customers better – of becoming customer-led Open Businesses. They do this because they know without trust their brands have little value.

Those that are most successful at this have recognised something you will find defined in the chapter on Trust in The 10 Principles – that trust is a reciprocal thing. We don’t want trust of the ‘you can trust us to be the cheapest’ kind. We want trust of the ‘we have your best interest at heart’ kind.

To be trusted you have to trust.

Amazon and John Lewis – about the most trusted names in retail these days in the UK – both provide a similar case study when it comes to refunds (an ever more critical part of the retail mix in an increasingly online environment in which distance selling regulations apply to everything bought online in the UK).

Both companies give you your money back. Take John Lewis. I took a six month old leather bag back. The zip had broken and the strap had all but snapped. I had no receipt. But I knew it was a John Lewis bag. I took it back and had the current list price of the bag (£145) zapped straight back on to my credit card.

Trust.

Which I immediately reciprocated. I went straight to the bag department and bought another bag. I know that if I have a similar problem, I’ll get similar treatment in future.

Amazon: Got a problem? They will refund you and THEN ask you to return the item. They trust you. So you trust them.

Both have thought about the problem not from an ‘efficiency’ perspective – but from a customer effectiveness one.

Today you must either offer wow or easy. If you are really good you wow by being easy (Amazon, John Lewis).

You can wow through really low price, or really high quality. Do this and you may get away with not being the easiest in the market to trade with. But if you can’t differentiate yourself significantly through price or quality then easy is where you have to aim – and where you have to win.

I wonder how many high street retailers can really argue they are as easy to trade with as Amazon? They don’t offer higher quality. They rarely offer lower price.

How can they restore the trust and make themselves easier – the first step may be to start trusting their customers more. For many that will require them to know their customers better.

I’ve had a few run-ins with one famous High Street retailer in the last few months. It’s becoming a bit of a running joke in our house. Mrs C laughed after I recounted my latest call with The M&S executive office and said: “They must hate it when they know it’s you,”

I only wish they had the customer systems in place to know my past record when I do contact them. I’d love it if they hated to see me coming. They’d know how much in debit with me they already are and might make an effort not to make things worse.

Sadly, every new issue I have with them is like starting from scratch. 

For M&S watchers - here's my latest complaint. I bought some trousers online. Colour wasn't quite what I was expecting (Less 'neutral' more, pensioner beige). So I returned them to a store. Thinking M&S was the bastion of easy exchange, I took nothing more than my order number with me. That should access everything they have on record about the transaction, I figured.

Nope, in store they can't check your online order number against anything, it seems. Now, instead of trusting their customer and just giving me the money back (as they would have done had they had the receipt) they could only give me a credit voucher. There was nothing in store that day that caught my eye so I took the voucher home to use at my leisure online.

When I did go to buy something online with it I discovered it could ONLY be used in store. In other words a purchase I had made online had been converted into a voucher I could not use online.

I rang and asked for it to be converted to an e-voucher. Computer said no. Even though I have all the reference numbers this could only happen if I sent the voucher back to them first. Funnily enough, if they don't trust me, I'm disinclined to trust them.

So I was left with a useless voucher (as least until the next time I went into one of their stores) instead of the goods I had paid for online.

That is how not to wow, how not to be easy - and how to illustrate the decline of a once great customer service brand...

Open Business on the Business Hub

I'll be discussing Open Business (and of course The 10 Principles of Open Business) on Ann Hawkins' Business Hub show on Star Radio this Sunday morning (April 27, 2014) 9am-10am.

If you are in the Cambridgeshire area you should be able to tune in on 107.9FM. If you aren't close by the show is also available to listen online via this radioplayer.

It will also be available as a podcast immediately after the show on Sunday.

So even if 9am on Sunday morning is just way too early for you...

There's more to transparency than telling the truth

There's more to transparency than simply telling the truth.

Let me give you an example. A standard packet of Walkers Quavers you may buy in your local corner shop delivers 109 calories.

However, flip over to the the rear of the same pack and you find some interesting claims about a range of Walkers snacks which all come in at under 99 calories a pack. You'll note Quavers are included in their number.
How can this possibly be?

The answer is far from transparent.

A packet of Quavers from a multipack is just 88 calories actually. Wow. Do they use a different recipe? No, they just make the packs smaller (16.4g in the multipack vs 20.5 in the ordinary one).

Given time and the internet you can find this stuff out. Walkers are making the truth available - but that's not the kind of transparency demanded of Open Business; ie the kind that builds trust between consumer and brand.

There is a sense of dishonesty rather than truth in how this is presented to us. It feels like we are being deliberately given parts of the story when that part is to the benefit of one party (the brand) rather than the mutual benefit of both.

And as we make clear in chapter 10  of The 10 Principles of Open Business (Trust), building trust requires the customers belief that the brand has their best interest at heart.

The Quavers example feels like the brand tells the part of the truth it feels will be of most benefit to it at any one point. A transparent retelling may have the mutlipacks stating: "Smaller snack size - scaled down calories too"!

Transparency (Principle 8 of the 10) requires honesty. Without it we can be reduced to telling only the truth that benefits us.

Open Business wins some influential supporters

It's a good week already for reviews of The 10 Principles of Open Business- with two very positive write-ups appearing by influential business leaders by Tuesday.

The Chief Learning Officer at global PR business Ketchum wrote an article/review on The 10 Principles of Open Business for the Ketchum blog on April 8 (2014).

In his post The Purpose Driven Organization - Moving from Talk to Walk Robert Burnside concludes: "I highly recommend you check out the thinking in this book. It's ahead of the curve and a useful glimpse into the future."

Excerpt: 

Essentially, the book argues that businesses should move from thinking of others as customers, to thinking of them as partners in achieving a purpose that they all find meaningful in the world.
Of course, this involves a lot of changes in organization structures, most deeply in the mindsets of those involved. The book does a credible job of giving examples of how the 10 principles are being realized by various organizations, including big ones like Tesco in the UK.

B2B Marketing Magazine published a review of the 10 Principles of Open Business in its April 2014 issue.

Written by Harris Interactive's UK Head of Marketing Ian Smith, the review concludes: "The book will get you thinking about ways in which you can apply the open business ethos to benefit your business, direct stakeholders and society in general. Open business is our present and our future. You can't afford to ignore that, or this book - 'Open up, and win!'

Thank you both. If you've read the book and would liek to share a review, please let me know. I am particularly looking out for more folk to add to the Amazon reviews.

More examples of The 10 Principles in The Press.

Open Business: Three-page focus in Cambridge Business Magazine

From the April 2014 issue of 

Cambridge Business Magazine

Cambridge Business Magazine published a three-page interview with me about The 10 Principles of Open Business in its April 2014 issue out now.
The print version is subscription only but anyone can view, download or save the e-magazine version here.
The article starts on p58. It's flash so no use for apple devices I'm afraid.

Customers know each other better than our data does

Yesterday I was served a 'promoted tweet' which suggested I might like to plan my own death. Today I have received an email inviting me to audition for a youth production of The Wiz.
Neither are relevant.

Listening to social and focusing on CRV closes the data gap

So - for all the advances in targeting and retargeting some are taking advantage of, it's clear that the one-size-fits-all approach is still being deployed at the bleeding edge of technology. Which is insane in 2014. Wastefully, expensively, customer-annoyingly, relationship-destroyingly insane.
The reality is that customers know each other better than our synthesis of all the data we have on them. If we don't make them, and their peer-to-peer advocacy, partners in our best relationship building efforts we will continue to fail to serve their needs accurately.
Partnership builds better relationships. Relationships are essential in building success in today's Open Economy.

The social web demands partnership with customers - and a radical rethink on content

We're... seeing a much bigger shift in how people spend their time online. 

People are spending much more time interacting with other people, and much less time consuming content from websites. This shift is not about any one particular social network. It's about people connecting to each other online.

Paul Adams, user research lead for social in the UX team at Google.

That nugget is essential information in telling the story of our shift from trusting brands and branded content, to trusting each other. It is also a revelation in telling the story I am so keen on - that the web is for us to connect with; to enable us to self-organise.

Paul adds, in his presentation  The Real Life Social Network: "The social web is not a fad, and itʼs not going away. Itʼs not an add-on to the web as we know it today. Itʼs a fundamental change, a re-architecture."

This adds to the evidence offered in The 10 Principles of Open Business that rebuilding trust between brand and customer is not the realm of ads or branded content. We are turning to each other to find the truth behind the promises made by content of this kind. Content only has value so far as social media is concerned if it proves the promise the brand is making. If the web is indeed going through a fundamental change to become the social web what that means is that ALL online content must now pass that test.

Tell me what you like, but unless I can discover the truth of your promise from the experience of my peers, I'm not going to believe you. That's our reality. How is that impacting your next web design, your next social media content strategy?

The shift suggests that now all content (that will have any value in building trust, inspiring action, at least) has to be created by people like us.

Companies must think long and hard about this shift. It demands a rethink in the role of content and in your relationship with your customer. There is no mileage in simply telling people what you are. You will have to demonstrate what you are - prove it, giving them the experience of it, which they may choose to publish to their peers.

Organisations will have to be more transparent - more ready to involve customers in open innovation, more ready to share and connect - to collaborate

Customers become partners - not dumb recipients with wallets attached.

This in itself demands a more socially focused approach to CRM than ever before, a more customer-as-partner approach. It must answer how we create, discover, reward and scale advocacy; it must back the customer's judgment when they make referrals; it must understand the difference between Lifetime Value of a customer who couldn't care less about us but has little option but to trade with us and the Customer Referral Value of someone who loves us but - right now, for whatever reason - isn't buying from us; it must understand customer intent as well as map behaviours.

Ultimately it can solve many of these challenges by turning to the same social web that is causing the rethink because there - in our digital footprints - is the reality of our referrals, the clarity of our click-paths, the negative sentiment of our disapproval.

Reading this in total (and it occurs that separating acquisition from retention, loyalty and search cannot help matters) will help us make businesses more able to respond to, learn from and be led by their customers.

By the way - Paul didn't write his presentation about the shift to the social web this week (in fact, he's no longer at Google). He presented it at the Voices That Matter Web Design Conference in San Francisco in June... 2010.

Yes. I know. It probably is about time to act.

The 10 Principles of Open Business in the press

Open Capital in the FT on March 11 - with a plug for The 10 Principles

In the interests of collating and curating the press coverage of The 10 Principles of Open Business as it emerges... 

LATEST ADDITIONS AT THE TOP:

June 2014
The Guardian publishes my article on Open Business and its role in sustainable business. (June 5)

I'm interviewed on the subject of crowd-funding (Open Capital) for the June issue of the BA inflight magazine Business Life - online version here

Subscribers to ADMAP magazine's June issue receive a three-page article on each of the 10 Principles of Open Business - and there's a front page mention, too. I'm afraid ADMAP don't allow sharing of their articles.

May 27 2014:
Forbes Magazine includes quotes from and references to The 10 Principles of Open Business in its piece on attempts to rebuild trust in big business: People Don't Trust Leaders Who Say: Trust Me

The Chief Learning Officer at global PR business Ketchum wrote an article/review on The 10 Principles of Open Business for the Ketchum blog on April 8 (2014).

In his post The Purpose Driven Organization - Moving from Talk to Walk Robert Burnside concludes: "I highly recommend you check out the thinking in this book. It's ahead of the curve and a useful glimpse into the future."

B2B Marketing Magazine published a review of the 10 Principles of Open Business in its April 2014 issue.

Written by Harris Interactive's UK Head of Marketing Ian Smith, the review concludes: "The book will get you thinking about ways in which you can apply the open business ethos to benefit your business, direct stakeholders and society in general. Open business is our present and our future. You can't afford to ignore that, or this book - 'Open up, and win!'

Cambridge Business Magazine published a three-page interview with me about The 10 Principles of Open Business in its April 2014 issue. You can view an e-magazine version here. The article starts on p58. It's flash so no use for apple devices I'm afraid.

Intelligent HQ ran a a lengthy and positive piece on March 24, 2014 concluding The 10 Principles of Open Business is an important new book which can benefit society as a whole...

The Huffington Post ran an article on March 13 (2014) featuring The 10 Principles and concluding that Open Business is an idea whose time has come:

Extract: "We seem to have a rare convergence between demands from the marketplace, driven by the real-time collaborative Internet culture, and a desire by entrepreneurs to define success as something more than making money. I think it's really happening, and it's time to take a reality check on your own business, and your own shopping habits, to capitalize on this trend." (writer Marty Zwilling - on twitter as @startuppro)

And on Tuesday (March 11, 2014) Financial Times readers found a reference or two in a column about crowd funding by Andrew Hill (it will be online the evening before). What was particularly gratifying about the FT column was its emphasis on Open Capital over crowdfunding - in line with the book and its principles.


Here's a link to the result of an interview conducted with me about Open Business by The Irish Times.

Extract: "Openness is not just a nice to have corporate social responsibility virtue but is a vital element in 21st century organisations. While born-digital ventures, for example, instructively know this, all organisations need to move to this model quickly if they are to survive in the networked age."
For the full article (as it also appeared in print on February 24, 2012) go here.

Brand Republic ran the press release about the book pretty much as is on February 3, 2014 (read it here) as did another magazine in their group - which I've lost track of, sorry.

The Cambridge Evening News' Business Magazine ran an article on The 10 Principles in its latest issue - March 2014 (give them your email for a free e-edition here) . 

And, for the record... .SO magazine ran a double page spread in their autumn issue of 2013. Find that online here.

Other stuff in the pipeline includes an indepth article in the April issue of Admap and an article on the theme of sustainability through Open for The Guardian.

10 Principles of Open Business launches in London

Last night I was delighted to host a gathering of friends, supporters and influencers, most of whom had been involved one way or another in shaping the output of my last seven years of work - a book.

The 10 Principles of Open Business is the result of a great deal of collaboration, of shared thinking, of wise counsel and challenge. But it struck me that while I knew all of the people involved in my journey, few knew each other.

Yes I wanted to celebrate the launch of a book, and yes it was great that we even sold some copies at the event, but the most important thing for me was that those who came got to meet each other and spend some time talking to each other.

I hope everyone gained from it. I'd like to thank the folk at Grey London and colleagues at The Social Partners for providing the venue - and everyone who showed up, naturally.

The pics above are from Stephen Waddington's instagram. I'll try to gather up a few more to add as I come across them or they get shared directly with me.

My bit for Davos: Rethinking IP in the Digital Age

I'm linking to this from  the WEF site. Principle 6?

Over the past six to nine months I've been one of "100 experts from media and technology industry, government, civil society and thought leaders, including innovators and artists" gathered from all around the world to contribute to the World Economic Forum's Seven Principles for Adapting to the New Digital World.

Today the principles are being launched at the WEF's 2014 meeting in Davos.

As is inevitable with so many voices to consider, the outputs are broad.

What they aren't is a How-To guide. How they are implemented by organisations and businesses raises a whole world of new questions and challenges.

The principles do at least provide a framework to ask the right questions within. For example -

" inform users about ownership and rights. "

This in itself can trigger a wide-ranging debate including new definitions of ownership and new measures of return on contribution. The Co-Ip model, considered in my chapter on Open Innovation in The 10 Principles of Open Business springs to mind.

The seven principles - in the words of the WEF

“The way we create, consume and share content and information has changed dramatically in the digital era,” said Diana El-Azar, Senior Director of Media, Entertainment and Information Industries at the World Economic Forum. “The principles lay out a vision for the way we want our online culture to evolve.”

Developed by over 100 experts in workshops and interviews in 2013, the Principles for the Creative and Information Economy in the Digital Age encourage governments, policy-makers, the private sector, civil society groups and individuals to:

• Foster and reward creativity
• Build an ecosystem for innovation
• Expand access to content
• Inform users about ownership and rights
• Give creators and rights owners control and choice
• Enable people to be creators
• Strengthen global collaboration

The Norms and Values in Digital Media: Rethinking Intellectual Property in the Digital Age present a shared set of goals to help adapt business practices and policy-making to changing norms and values in a hyperconnected world. The principles are part of a World Economic Forum initiative which examines digital issues related to privacy, freedom of expression and intellectual property.

 Full release and supporting information,

Brands can't live on a promise

Performance is essential in social media. Nothing moves in a peer-to-peer environment unless a behaviour is impacted.

No matter what you may say your brand is - through deeply-thought positioning, emotionally charged TV advertising or carefully crafted copy, what your brand actually is, is what other people say it is.

And what other people say it is, is what people experience it is: How it performs and how they say it performs.

Image via cuddlycomments.com

That's the message you'll find in Chapter 10 - Trust, in my forthcoming book (Palgrave-Macmillan, January 2014) -The 10 Principles of Open Business.

It's the same position arrived at by Google and Brian Solis in their work on The Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) and - more recently - Brian's Ultimate Moment of Truth (UMOT).

ZMOT asserts we start our path to purchase in our perception of the expression of experience of others in our social circle. We hear good things. We hear bad things. We act accordingly.

Our own research (at The Social Partners) supports the idea that social media (which can almost wholly be defined as the expression of shared experience by our peers and people like us, as viewed from a variety of individual perspectives ) is THE place we turn to for evidence of performance: Advertising makes the promise, social delivers the truth.

Brian's UMOT is a neat expression of a concept I have been applying to my own work in social media strategy:  Building trust through performance at the level of the one-to-one relationship.

Since the brand is what people say it is, having experienced it, how do we encourage people to express their joy? What we do know is that people don't express their meh! So-so performance, mediocrity, blandness - of these we have nothing to report to our peers through social. The technical barrier remains that little bit too high. We don't tweet 'coffee in Starbucks was, you know, ok '. We do tweet 'awesome service in Starbucks today' or 'Starbucks was super sucky this morning'.

We go to the effort to report the out-of-the-ordinary, not (yet) the ordinary.

Brian's response is to encourage expression (reporting the out-of-the-ordinary) we must engage them - by which he means do something to make them love you (and that is most assuredly NOT clicking the Like button or browsing over your centre-out messaging content).

My own work in relationship marketing suggests similar (indeed the whole concept of Open Business shared in The 10 Principles of Open Business is about taking customer engagement to a whole new level by making partners of customers in everything you do).

Engagement, Brian argues, is about emotion.

Again, agreed. And here's the thing to guard against: Social Media is not good at broadcasting emotion - just as it can't broadcast trust.

Emotion resides in the individual and in their interaction with their peers.  Winding up a John Lewis Christmas TV ad and setting it off among your targets won't do the job.

You have to provide the out-of-the-ordinary. You have to build trust in your performance, You have to build the relationships, one person at a time.

This may sound expensive but we are already finding methodologies to track the effectiveness of this over-

delivery, of how far and for how long the emotional impact of feeling a little bit of love resonates.

My belief - one for which I am busy gathering evidence (and there are many anecdotal examples) is that being 'insanely great', as Steve Jobs put it, pays massive dividends.

At the end of the day since the aggregate output of what other people say is what your brand is, then this is where you should be focusing your  brand budget.

All the rest is just a promise.

Expectation and reality

I spoke with my publisher this morning about (among other things) the cover of my next book: The 10 Principles of Open Business.

I've seen a draft cover - which I had no input into - and in the next day or two I'm going to share it with you for your thoughts.

But before we get to that, I wonder what your pre-conceptions might be? The book's full title is The 10 Principles of Open Business - Building Success in Today's Open Economy.

The full contents listing is available here.

What would expect the cover to look like, what kinds of colours, fonts, imagery. What wouldn't you expect, what should it avoid?

I'd be really pleased to hear any thoughts formed before you see even a draft. (Post them below or tweet them @davidcushman #10OBCover or email the address found on the full-web version of my blog.

Many thanks

Farewell 90:10 hello The Social Partners

I've never learned so much as I have learned in the last four years of my life. When Jamie Burke and I founded 90:10 Group we made it our business to drive transformation in organisations with the power of the new connectedness the social web had revealed.

We had to develop the market, create new terms of reference and rules of engagement, new job roles, new products and services, new ways of pitching for business, new ways of delivering the results.

And not just once. Constant reinvention and adaptation was the only response to a fast shifting landscape.

We grew fast. From 2 to 50+ employees in three years. Offices in the UK (we had to move three times in less than three years as the business expanded), France, Germany, Spain, Holland - and eventually into the Middle East in three cities. We were able to do so because we attracted £3.5m of revenue in consulting fees with clients from Tesco to Bupa, First Capital Connect to Citrix, Honda to Mastercard.

For more about the story of the business and Jamie's learnings from it, see Jamie's post here.

After a spectacular journey - more of the mission to the moon, than the roller coaster variety - I decided in September last year it was time for me to consider new roles. My tenure as Co-Founder and MD had lasted longer than any single role I have held as far as I can recall - a testament to the regular but inspiring challenges we faced and the continued stimulation that delivered.

I took a series of consulting gigs, developing social media strategy for two start-ups and one blue chip (I'm still working with the blue chip) between then and mid January this year. This gave me the space to think about what I value and the kind of people I want to work with.

That process ended when I reconnected with Ivan Palmer (who I have known for some many years), at The Social Partners. I'm settling in there now as Strategy Partner in Hatton Garden, London and the more I learn about the team and the scale of their ambition the more I am sure I have made the right decision.

Of course, we face daily challenges - but we do so armed with a collective wealth of experience and range of skills to which I can now add. If you'd like to add yours we do currently have vacancies.

The spirit of 90:10 continues through Open Business. 

Jamie and I (with contributions from many other 90:10 colleagues) developed The 10 Principles of Open Business through working at the chalk face of the social business and marketing space. We have codified and made this available to share. Read Jamie's blog for more on how we are making the IP available for all. Palgrave-Macmillan will be publishing our co-authored book on the subject in early 2014 (I have a July 2013 deadline for delivery). If your company has been an exemplar of any of the principles, I'd like to interview you for the book. Perhaps you can suggest someone I should speak to?

Finally, Jamie is continuing with 90:10 but taking it in a new direction. Rather than consulting to other businesses, his focus is shifting to creating start-ups based on The 10 Principles. Of course I wish him and the board every success with that. We remain very good friends.

I still believe there is much good and valuable work to be done with existing organisations, helping them learn from the world as it it to make them a better fit with it and a greater success in it. That's what's led me to The Social Partners.

And if you'd like to contact me there the easiest way is by email: david.cushman@thesocialpartners.com

The fifth Principle of Open Business: Connectedness

Today - over at 90:10 Group - we've published the sixth post in our series on The 10 Principles of Open Business.

Principle Five is Connectedness.

Again, this is not a tactic - it's a design principle:

Connecting all employees internally to one another and externally through open social media

We've learned through experience that simply buying tools is not enough. Ever heard the expression: All The Gear But No Idea? That's where so many organisations find themselves having been sold on the tech - convinced by slick sales folk that there really is a button you can click to make you 'social'.

Sure, you need the gear. But first, get the idea. I guarantee you'll make better selections of the gear as a result.

Here's an excerpt. For the full post visit 9010Group.com.

"Rather than working against connectedness (usually out of fear), work with it. You’ll be working in the same direction as your teams.
Without our daily connectedness to others our ideas remain un-nurtured and un-tested, our understanding of the realities of the eco-system within which we all live, severely limited.

This eco-system, this market, is not something you can take a snapshot of once a year, it is ever changing, something you are part of and which must be listened and responded to in as close to real time as possible if you are to maintain a best possible fit with its needs.
Connectedness is an essential part of this. Connectedness scales the organisation’s ability to listen, respond and adapt to the market.

Connectedness provides an early warning system for changing need, for rising dissatisfaction, for new competitors.

But beyond all of this, connectedness humanises a businesses. It allows your customers and other stakeholders to interact with the living, breathing, passionate, caring people on whom your business depends. It takes down the walls."

Related articles

• Connectedness Is Zappos
• Connectedness Means Mastering Audiences, Not Channels
• Judgment Call: Can You Be A Global Business and Idealistic?
• 10 Principles of Open Business - 9010 group
• Introducing the Open Business Program
• Connectedness Is Philz Coffee
• Connectedness spotlight: Gary Vaynerchuk
• Open Business Principle 2: Open Capital
• Open Business Principle 4: Sharability
• Open Business - Principle 3: The Networked Organisation