Why we should embrace GDPR

The General Data Protection Regulation due to come into force next May should be regarded as the biggest hint yet for companies to reshape themselves for the digital world - aligning with The 10 Principles of Open Business.

Rather than fear at the number of sticking-plasters that need to be applied to support business as usual, forward-thinking companies will be taking the hint; data ownership is no substitute for genuine relationships.

That's the real message of GDPR - stop hoarding data to exploit customers.
In fact it's very difficult to see in a post GDPR-world why any customer would choose to allow a company to retain their data unless (and they have to be transparent about this) their is a genuine and positive partnership defined in their data notices.

Of course companies can (and many should) spend time, trouble and money ensuring compliance by (for example);

• Appointing a Data Protection Officer
• Reviewing each and every business process to ensure data protection is designed in
• Ensuring default privacy settings are set to high at each and every touch point
• Making it crystal clear exactly what data is being stored about whom, for how long and for what purpose - at every relevant interface
• Providing complete data portability - enabling users to withdraw access to all of their data and take it with them, at any point they choose,
• Devising Data Protection Impact Assessments
• Developing new processes to respond to requests for data and complaints about use
• Preparing to defend your use of logarithms for the decisions they deliver and offers they make or do not make

With up to 4% of last year's global revenue at stake as a sanction, there's much sense in taking this very seriously indeed. However, much of the data storage, privacy and permissions issues become much less onerous if you shift  the nature of your relationship with customers - and in doing so your relationship with their data.

Start to think of data as less a substitute for a relationship - and more an enabler for building one through genuine engagement. 

The start point requires three simple steps:

1. Understand the role of the customer in your business: (Hint - the passive consumer no longer exists, if they ever did).

• Where are the benefits in partnering; how far into the centre of the organisation can customers be brought
• How do you score for trust?
• Set a new goal state, roadmap for organisational change and supporting technology architecture

2. Why do you want to know more about your customers - what is driving you to build engagement?

• Is it to build trust?
• Get direct insight?
• Get help in decision making?
• Find savvy co-creators?
• Deliver a better experience, better serving need?

3. Now you should devise a customer data strategy;

• What data could be available to you – what can you learn from customer interactions? 
• What value for third parties and customers could that generate 
• Consider role of Decisioning (NBA)

By now you have a handle on what you want to achieve with customer data and how you are going to 'sell' that to customers in a way they will see as a fair exchange.

And that's a far better place to start from when working towards compliance with GDPR.y 2017

*This is always the case with my writing - but given the legal complexities of the GDPR I want to make it even more clear than usual - these views are mine and mine only and should not be assumed to represent those of my employer.

Digital is not a destination

I see a lot of talk about the journey to digital transformation as if its some kind of destination.
Becoming digital is not the end point. In many ways it's a launch pad to becoming a business prepared to engage in an increasingly digitized world.
There are some basic essentials with anything digital - understanding the technology requirements, the role of the data ( where you are going to get it from, store it, what it's going to inform, how you are going to draw insights from it) - the architectures required to bring business, hardware and software together, the layers of integration demanded; The people and the processes; the skills and the new ways of working, etc
But all you will achieve is the same but faster and cheaper (ideally) if becoming digital is your end game.
Becoming a different kind of business is where you should be headed; one which places customers in a different role; and one in which the business itself sees itself playing a different role. Setting this new goal, this new destination, is your first essential step. The roadmap comes second.
Digital is the way we connect ourselves; it reveals to us a connectedness which requires us to open and think differently about our role in the world. Does our presence in the life of customers offer us unique opportunities to understand behaviour; does that understanding reveal new business opportunities - does it reveal new benefits for society?
Uber is valued so high because it set out to value data first. It figured that by being a peer-supplied taxi service it would get lots of data about moving people and things. It is this data which they see as their long term business - delivering what ever you need where-ever you need it when-ever you need it.
That *may* reduce the carbon footprint of vehicle deliveries in the long run. It *may* reduce your costs or benefit your convenience. Soon they are going to have to be explicit about this every time your data is shared with them.
Be sure that businesses must  begin to think holistically about this - about having the best interests of their customers at heart and being able to demonstrate this. Without this they will not be allowed to take advantage of the new bounties data is offering.
Digital Transformation has always been a journey, not an end in itself. The end remains becoming an Open Business.

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.

VW will bounce back stronger for learning the lesson of Open Business

It's all too easy to join in with the doom and gloom brigade about VW. They have done very naughty things. And they have been caught doing them.
But let's have a little context here. The auto industry has long been accused of tweaking its test performance figures in its favour.
It is not unheard of for motorcycles to be tested with their wing mirrors off and tyres pumped up to super-high pressures to reduce drag, for example.
The car industry is no different with much hemming and hawing from both public and press over their claimed mpg figures for decades. We haven't trusted those figures for a long time. VW's re-calibrated version of the emissions truth is arguably just further along the same continuum.
Even so, all of a sudden VW, and much of the rest of the car industry (don't forget GM and Toyota are both currently paying hefty fines for misleading the public, according to Automotive News Europe and BMW's share price is plummeting on concerns about their emissions) have a mountain to climb to rebuild trust.

OPEN BUSINESS

Lack of trust is a drag on performance of the intangibles of a business: So your trust in the VW brand will have reduced. That will have some impact on your car choices. But so will how much you desire their designs, mechanical reliability and performance, build quality, drive quality, comfort, style, the sound the doors make, the cache of the badge etc etc. In other words whether or not you trust the absolute veracity of their performance figures is just one parameter and, when the dust settles, perhaps a far less important one than the feeling you get from driving it. Or simply how much you want that car.
So my guess is VW, et al, will bounce back. Nose bloodied, bowed and ready to be better, more open businesses for their experience.
They will be reborn as organisations for whom trust IS more important in future and in which the governance is aligned with building trust.

OPEN TESTING

For example, if they had performed their testing out in the open in the first place they would not be in the trouble they are today.
In the connected car future they will be able to aggregate real-world results from real world users results, in real time, and share those results with all drivers and to anyone else who requires them via open data.
All of this is very do-able with the technologies of the connected car.
Combine this with a new regime of open governance ensuring accurate measurement, and VW has the opportunity to respond and leap ahead of their rivals for trust.

Trust should be priority 1 in digital transformation

Many companies are waking up to how far behind they are on the Digital Maturity scale referred to in the recent Copgnizant sponsored paper by Brian Solis.

But it seems to me too few are seeing their efforts toward digital transformation as more than a way in which they get to do more/faster to their customers. In my work on Open Business I have always argued that the single biggest win of digital transformation for organisations comes from the shift in relationship it enables.

Yes there is great efficiency and effectiveness to be had from learning more about your customers' behaviour, their needs and their implicit and explicit desires. But it's unlikely you'll generate a meaningful relationship of trust purely by serving needs (think of the difference between helping to fix and then enjoy a family meal, and rushing in and out of McDonald's to grab a bite on the run).

I don't argue that servicing need (and making it as easy as possible) isn't of extremely high value. I do argue that it is the tip of the iceberg that can be released through the shift in relationship with the consumer; from customer to partner. Trust, sense of ownership, shared purpose - all drive loyalty and increase spend. One regional co-operative I worked with boasted 50% membership among its customers. They accounted for 70% of the spend.

The transparency and free communication digital delivers offers the promise of making all organisations accountable to their customers in the kind of way member organisations have always enjoyed.

Trust accounts for the vast majority of the value of any brand.
It therefore remains a mystery to me that building trust isn't always top of the digital transformation agenda.

Antifragile: my contribution to a networkshop

Antifragility consultant and long term supporter of Open Business Sinar Si Alhir was asked to host a workshop at the Center for Technology Innovation at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.
Rather than go it alone, he turned to his network to create a more antifragile response.
I was among those he chose to reach out to and you can see the output of the whole here: (Demystifying Antifragility).
The concept, if you aren't aware, comes from Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book Antifragile - Things That Gain From Disorder (which I thoroughly recommend).

Here's the full text of what I shared with the networkshop:

For me antifragility is about networks (and as is my interest) primarily about the relationships in those networks.

Networked organisations are antifragile. The Mob, Al Queda, these are difficult to destroy because the idea resides not in a boss at the top but in everyone everywhere.

Facebook is fragile. It's fixed networks can be severely damaged by the removal of prime nodes - or superconnectors. Twitter is antifragile - made of nodes where the ability to organise and re-organise around interest in adhoc ways means the loss of one node has less impact on the whole.

The internet is antifragile. Indeed if the web historians are to be believed it emerged as a military application designed to outlive more formally structured communications channels.

Hierarchical companies are fragile. Take out Steve Jobs and...

Familes outlive the oldest companies and will continue to do so; they are networks of connections with both close and weak ties creating a fluidity and adaptability that is essential to be antifragile. They are tied by something which connects them all to each other, not each node to a leader.

The key test of the antifragile is that it has stood the test of time; the weather is antifragile, evolution is antifragile (hence life in aggregate rather than in particular).

Designing for antifragility requires us to think about the survival and continued flourishing of the whole, of the web, rather than of the individual, or the node.

Getting advocacy on to the balance sheet

If you've read many of my previous posts you'll know of my views about the role and value of social media - its effectiveness as an exercise in relationship building and therefore its value as a one-to-one relationship marketing tool (which you'll find emphasised in my book The 10 Principles of Open Business).

Its job is to create advocates. But what does advocacy mean on the spreadsheet?

To make such a calculation you need five things:

1. A clear and measurable definition of advocacy
2. A behaviour change which can reasonably be defined as identifying a shift from standard customer to advocate.
3. A cash value which can be reasonably attributed to that behaviour change
4. A robust 'number of friends' each of us could influence.
5. A mathematically robust formulation of transmission of positive influence in networks.

Let's tackle the difficult one first. Number 5. How do we calculate pass-on in networks. Well, it happens that there are some very clever people with massive brains and even larger computers who have been working on this exact problem for many years. And they've come up with their 42 (look up Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy if that's confused you).

Dr Martin Nowak - himself a professor of maths, biology and evolutionary science at Harvard - quotes a very useful ratio (in his book Super-Cooperators) discovered by Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School and James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego. It suggests we are swayed by the good mood of not only friends, but of those indirectly related - through second and third degree iterations.

In the first generation the chance of them displaying a positive response is 34% . In the second (friends of friends) it is 10%. And in the third (friends of friends of friends) it is 6%.

It turns out this is a function of the structure of human social networks - not of the nodes within them... And it dries right up after the third iteration. This seems to me a very reasonable proxy for advocacy. You have to be happy with what you've been provided with in order to advocate it to your friends. Very happy.

This is very useful indeed.

It means that if we know the value of the behaviour change (X) and the number of friends (Y) we can use the transmission formula to understand the network effect - in real cash terms - of creating one advocate. We can put a price on the value of over-delivery - of creating happiness...

Here's the formula:
Pass on to friends (F) = Y * .34 * X
Pass on to friends of friends (FF) = Y * .1 * X
Pass on to friends of friends of friends (FFF) = Y * .06 * X

Add them together (F+FF+FFF) = Value of advocacy in a network.

Still with me?

Now we have to start reducing the number of variables. The most important is the value of Y: number of friends.

Again, we are indebted to the canon on peer-to-peer relationships. The number of friends who could typically be called 'close tie' at each iteration is just six. It's the typical number of people you text, for example; Facebook offers you 'six friends' when looking at someone's profile - based on close ties; in Britain only six friends will last your whole life through. Philosopher's of friendship think you can only maintain 6-12 friends at a time.

Six may sound low when you look at the number of twitter followers and facebook friends you have - but it turns out about right if you take a closer look at the number of people you maintain daily contact with. Remember - we aren't trying to make a case for reach here but for the ability to create behavioural change through advocacy.

Let's bring this to life with an example.

Let's say we can track the value of a group of customers. Let's call them group A.
On average they spend £300 with us. But we take a subset of these, group B, and provide them with exceptional customer service.

We find that group B end up spending £100 more on an average transaction with us than with their peers in group A.

The additional spend is the behaviour change we have identified as a marker of someone who is happy enough with us to advocate us to their peers.

This £100 then is the financial representation of a behaviour change which illustrates someone has changed status from customer to advocate.

Just to be clear, it doesn't matter how many times this person spends more money with us - that isn't their advocacy value, that's repeat business. In other words another impact of treating a customer well may be a rise in that customer's lifetime value, but that's not what we are calculating here; that increase in total spend will be recorded directly in your sales figures.

What we are seeking here is the impact of that person's "happiness with us" on others - their close tie friends, their friends of friends, and their friends of friends of friends.

Ok - so - if you will indulge me - we have numbers 5-2 on my list covered. How will we define advocacy in a way it can be identified and measured?

Advocacy is the act of publishing (posting/tweeting) about a positive customer experience.

Those of you thinking a few steps ahead will already have noted that the formula for calculating the amplifying effect of advocacy in networks must be a consistent number.

We'll work through a simple example taking our formula and using real numbers (in which £100 uplift in spend is the value ascribed to the behaviour change which indicates shift from customer to advocate) to illustrate why:

Here's the formula:
Pass on to friends (F) = (6) * .34 * £100 = 204
Pass on to friends of friends (FF) = (6*6) * .1 * £100 = 360
Pass on to friends of friends of friends (FFF) = (6*6*6) * .06 * £100 = £1296

Add them together (F+FF+FFF) = £1860.

And if we divide by the base behaviour change figure (£100) we end up with 18.6.

So - if you know the value you can ascribe to a behaviour change which indicates a shift from customer to advocate (such as an increase in the amount they are spending with you) you can simply multiply by 18.6 to give you the advocacy value of an advocate.

Calculate the number of instances (as defined by someone publishing their positive experience) and you are able to put a very reasonable number on the value of inspiring advocacy. In my view at least.

I'd be interested in your views on the methodology I've used.

I believe I have erred on the side of conservative assumptions. But they seem reasonable. If I rave to six of my friends about a great customer experience I had with X, the assumption is that the next time (at any time in the next five years) these guys have an option on which brand to choose a third will recall my positivity about X and give it a try... and so on to 2nd and 3rd generation ties.

This is less that perfect I'll grant, but for every challenge that can lower the output (will a third of your peers buy or just think nice thoughts?), there's another to consider to raise it (is six really a big enough number of friends to consider at each iteration?, what about all the advocacy that happens face to face but not online).

My response is this is the best I've got to so far, it ploughs a reasonable and conservative middle course, and it is based on the summation of much of the best of thinking, theory and testing in network science.

Using it allows me to set realistic and accountable KPIs and steer social media and social content strategy in the right direction.

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.

Beware the business bots

Image via: http://www.inspirefirst.com/

In the future every business will be digital.

For many that future has already arrived. You know you have arrived in that future when 50.1% or more of your revenue comes via digital. You can probably draw a line on your revenue growth and decline charts to identify the point at which that becomes true for you.

In the future every business will be a technology company. Being digitally, socially connected, always on via the cloud and mobile will be an essential of even the most mom & pop business.

Yes those businesses which require your corporeal presence (those that will congregate in High Streets) may feel this effect later than most, but feel it they will. If I can choose to book a haircut via my mobile vs turn-up and hope, over time even the strongest habits and relationships will be challenged. You can be sure new habits and relationships will more likely be established via the technology route. Old habits die hard - but time kills even the oldest in the end.

So it would be sensible to prepare for your digital and technological future.
But in doing so never lose sight of what will make all this technology work for you - the scalable human relationships it empowers.

Without the human heart of your business - its purpose, your belief, your demonstration of your values through what you do (not what you say) you'll end up with a business which acts like a bot.

In a dark, bleak future there is a world of business bots all following each other and trying to sell to each other based on the faked behaviours each is demonstrating to each other- rather like twitter would become if all the humans left over night.

It's easy to imagine organisations sleep walking into this future - focused on getting technology to do everything for you and for your customer. Bots see and bots do but there is no meaning for them or those they interact with in what they do. Transaction after transaction without meaning.

In the bright, belief-filled future, businesses are using technology to enable and enhance rather than to mechanically do. Here humans are connecting with humans building trust through relationships in which each has the other's best interests at heart. They are partners. They are working together to achieve a shared purpose. They generate meaning.

The role of technology is to reduce the friction in each transaction - whether that be purchasing goods, connecting people with shared purpose, or sharing ideas.  Reduce the transaction cost and you reduce the cost of action.

But we must always be careful to keep the meaning in. Industrialisation took it out. We have the opportunity to rediscover it through the human connectedness the web enables. We can take advantage - or we can build bots.

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.

Win a copy of the 10 Principles of Open Business

To mark the UK launch date of the 10 Principles of Open Business I have another batch of copies to give away.
Here's how you can get your hands on one:

1. Two will go at random to anyone who has retweeted the following by 1am GMT on January 28, 2014:

"RT this for a chance to win The 10 Principles of #OpenBusiness - http://amzn.to/1eyDweN"

Two winners will be selected at random and sent physical copies of the book - worth £19.99 each. To qualify the amazon link must be included in the tweet, and the user of the twitter handle must be demonstrably human (bots need not apply). Qualifying tweets must be shared by 1 am GMT on January 28, 2014.

2. One copy will go to the person who gives the best reason for getting a freebie by commenting on this post, below.
The catch here is that you have to commit to writing a review (creating a video one if you prefer) for your own social channels AND add a review to amazon. Naturally you are free to publish what ever you like, you just have to commit to doing a review, good, bad or indifferent.

3. The final copy in this batch will go to someone who is prepared to read it, then hand it on to someone else who they think will get value from it. 
Ideally you'll make that a condition of giving it to the person you pass it on to (as will they, and so on). Just drop me your details and postal address to the gmail address you'll find at the top of the desktop version of this blog.

The deadline for 2 and 3 is February 24, 2014.

Edelman trust barometer results align with Open Business approach

Edelman's 2014 Trust barometer survey is out and with it vindication of a key trend we've been observing in Open Business.
The clear majority of respondents to the annual survey (84 percent) believe that business can pursue its self-interest while doing good work for society.

This very much aligns with what we explore in The 10 Principles of Open Business - particularly in the chapters on Purpose and Open Capital. Indeed - The 10 Principles argues that doing good for society offers a competitive advantage in our connected world.

More evidence that 2014 really could be the year of Open Business, perhaps?

From the chapter on Purpose:

There have never been greater drivers for businesses to become Purpose-led.

Apart from anything else, it will reconnect you with the world, re-tying those strands cut loose when CEOs first decided that shareholders mattered more than anyone or anything else.

“It’s a reversal back to the old days,” says Mark (Earls), “when corporations felt part of the world and felt a responsibility to it."

And from the chapter on Open Capital:

Peer-funded partnerships also offer the opportunity to create value beyond the back slap in the boardroom and the bottom line on the balance sheet; value creation which acknowledges resources are finite, that people, communities, societies and ecologies are connected and matter to each other.

And this in itself provides a genuine competitive advantage that the wisest global entrepreneurs are quick to identify. As Sir Richard Branson puts it: “…the boundaries between work and higher purpose are merging into one – where doing good really is good for business.”

In a connected world, where to win is to work together with ever greater numbers of people who care about the same things you do, few are going to sign up to support businesses which are damaging the ecosystem in which they exist – let alone support those organisations with their own money. Open Capital will therefore be a key driver of ‘doing good is good for business’.

• Pre-order The 10 Principles of Open Business now for delivery on launch day - January 28 UK/February 28 US.

The role of Open Business in emerging holacracies

How Holacracy works - image from http://holacracy.org/how-it-works

With Ev Williams’ Medium and now Zappos going the Holacracy route, it’s no surprise this ‘new’ management model is getting attention from the likes of mashable

Its Flattened/No job titles/Goal-rather-than-management-led approach is an enviable fit with the more open business philosophy companies of this kind are comfortable and familiar with.

In many ways it’s simply putting a name to and combining many of the learnings those pursuing the 10 Principles of Open Business have already acquired. - but it may also provide a useful additional toolkit for the internal development of some Open Businesses.

The following brief extracts from my new book (out on January 28) The 10 Principles of Open Business, illustrate the point:

South African entrepreneur Arthur Attwell – found similar effectiveness from following the principle of Transparency:

“... you get a productivity boost from people who properly understand their importance to the company and the role they play. So many people – even unconsciously – think that they are just a tiny cog in a big machine.”

 “They feel an alienation from the products of their work,” says Arthur.

Without transparency it’s difficult for people to find meaning in their work. And without meaning there is little ambition and even less joy.

The job descriptions he offers people are just three lines long. There is no task-by-task list of things to do every day.

Everyone must have the ambition to own their space in his company.

“That’s why we don’t have job descriptions in the conventional sense. We have a maximum three bullet-points of functional responsibility. Some people have just one or two,” says Arthur.

“What that means is the things in those bullet points are your problem. It means people have to engage with more than just a narrow task list defined by key performance indicators,” adds Arthur.

“Make your people the boss of what they do.”

This will sound familiar to those trialling holocracy.

As will the impact of Principle 4: Shareability:

Definition: Packaging knowledge for easy and open sharing both internally and externally

Sharing is the cultural key to collaboration. It is where the organisational design principles of collaboration reside.

It is a principle which has the powerful benefit of flattening hierarchies, distributing responsibility and making the organisation more strategy and goal-led than management and task directed.

Shareability provides the tools for a radical re-organisation of resource. Deployed effectively it means people gravitate to what they care most about and can do most about. It can allocate people to work with their passions – generating a giant leap in effectiveness and productivity – not to mention morale.

And from the chapter on Principle 1: Purpose...

“If every employee is clear about the Purpose of the org, if they express this in what they do and it is expressed in what they see of the behaviours of the business and of their colleagues, then they will be better able to make decisions which are truly aligned to the Purpose...

The decisions your people make are what drives the success of your business. Ensuring those decisions are made towards your shared goal (Purpose) is... more critical than ever.

Since we have seen that telling teams is not enough (and even less likely to succeed in distributed structures), ensuring they know the Purpose, through belief and behaviours, becomes even more essential.

10 Principles of Open Business half price until December 31

In the last few weeks I've been putting the final touches to The 10 Principles of Open Business - re-reading for final changes, selecting back cover quotes etc. 

I'm pleased to say it should be going to print any day now - ready for its launch date: Jan 28, 2014. (Feb 28 in the US. 

I've heard from a number of bloggers  offering to review - which is very kind and copies will go out to a handful in the New Year. 

In the meantime you can, until December 31, 2013, order your copy at 50% off*.
UPDATE: This offer is NOT meant to be available on books which are not yet published but in the case of The 10 Principles the publishers have agreed to offer the discount in advance of publication.

• To get yours email palgravemacmillan@palgrave.com 

• Mark your email for the attention of Vince. 
• Make sure you tell him its The 10 Principles of Open Business you'd like to buy.
• Vince will email you back offering the option of a form for you to complete or a phone call (during office hours) to take your order.
• You must quote FESTIVE 13 for the 50% discount to be applied.
• If you email before December 31 Palgrave Macmillan will honour the deal - even if your call to place the order happens in the first week of January.

My apologies to those of you who have tried to purchase this from the PM website and found the discount code did not work - we now know why.

*The discounted price is available to individuals only. This offer is not available to trade and library customers. Orders must be placed direct with Palgrave Macmillan

Customer collaboration shifting from products to business strategy

There are still those who think the customer is a thing to be done to. Then there are also those who think that if a customer is to be listened to at all it is only to take part in a vote on stuff you've already decided to make or do.

And there are others still who are Open Business enough to consider allowing customers to shape products and services. This is the staple of the open door social media offers to business.

But business strategy? Surely that's one step beyond.

No. Not for a vast chunk of CEOs at the  highest performing businesses.

IBM's Customer Activated Enterprize report reveals that: "More than half of CxOs expect to open up their enterprises – bringing down barriers to extend collaboration inside and outside. 

Their most radical shift may be a new view on what it means to collaborate with customers."

The report is the result of interviews with  4,000 CEOs, CMOs, CFOs, CIOs a similar leaders from 70 countries and across 20 industries.  It reveals 60 per cent of CEOs plan to directly engage their customers and proactively apply what they learn to set their business agendas in the next three to five years.

Already 43 percent of CEOs include customers in the development of business strategies. 

And it's not just any old companies. IBM says there is a key correlation between the companies that succeed and their levels of external collaboration. Outperforming companies are 54 percent more likely to collaborate extensively with customers.

IBM's own story of collaboration features in my book, The 10 Principles of Open Business, available for pre-order today.

Video: How Open Business is shaping the 21st Century Org

If you couldn't make it in person, and were tied up while it was broadcast, yesterday's panel 'Open Business - 21st Century Organisations' is now archived and ready to watch at your leisure.
I do a short intro and then fire the questions at a stellar line-up:

Mark Earls (Author of  Herd: How to Change Mass Behaviour by Harnessing Our True Nature, I'll Have What She's Having, and Welcome to the Creative Age – Bananas, Business and the Death of Marketing). Mark is also winner of an Emerald Insights Award and a significant contributor to the chapter on Purpose in The 10 Principles of Open Business,
Andrew Hill: Associate Editor and Management Editor of the Financial Times.
Dave Coplin (Author of business bestseller “Business Reimagined: Why work isn’t working and what you can do about it” also joins us. He is Chief Envisioning Officer at Microsoft & The Envisioners).
Chris Hirst, CEO of Grey (London) Since his appointment as CEO in Jan 2010 Grey London has been the fastest growing large agency in London driven through significant new business success, strong organic growth and acquisition. Grey (London)'s success is built on Open Culture.
Dorothy Mead (Commerce innovator. Head of Marketing at Blur Group)



I've also been urging people to take a look at the result of latest research commissioned by The Social Partners (where I work). The video below has founder Ivan Palmer taking us through them.
Highly recommended particularly if you're ready to start making your social marketing something ROI can really be comfortable with.

SMW London: Open Business and the Future of Community

Fire up your diaries - Social Media Week London looms and with it three events I'm taking part in - and more that I'd like to recommend.

First, I'm chairing a panel on Open Business (which given the forthcoming book makes a lot of sense).

On the panel (which starts at 1pm on Monday, September 23 at The Johnson Building, Hatton Garden, London) are:
Mark Earls (Author of  Herd: How to Change Mass Behaviour by Harnessing Our True Nature, I'll Have What She's Having, and Welcome to the Creative Age – Bananas, Business and the Death of Marketing). Mark is also winner of an Emerald Insights Award and a significant contributor to the chapter on Purpose in The 10 Principles of Open Business,.
Dave Coplin (Author of business bestseller “Business Reimagined: Why work isn’t working and what you can do about it” also joins us. He is Chief Envisioning Officer at Microsoft & The Envisioners).
Grey (London) CEO Chris Hirst will be there, too (Since his appointment as CEO in Jan 2010 Grey London has been the fastest large agency in London driven through significant new business success, strong organic growth and acquisition. In addition to the core business, comprises four business units: GreyPossible, The Social Partners, Dialogue and GreyWorks. Grey (London) is built on Open Culture.
The line-up is completed by Dorothy Mead (Commerce innovator. Head of Marketing at Blur Group) and Stuart Harrison (The Open Data Institute). Grey (London), Blur Group and The Open Data Institute all feature in the book, I'm pleased to say.

UPDATE delighted to say Andrew Hill, Management and Associate Editor at the FT will also be joining this panel.


If you'd like to join us, follow this link. Entry is free.

I'm also joining two panels on The Future of Community which are on at 3.30pm on Tuesday September 24 and 1pm on the 25th. Both are at The Johnson Building on Hatten Garden.

To find out more about them and other events organised by The Social Partners for Social Media Week London, click here.

Tesco must trust us if they want us to trust them

Tesco is right to start the communications rolling in the aftermath of Britain's horsemeat-in-beef-products scandal. Emails to every customer (that they have emails for - which is a lot, thanks to Clubcard) about the value of trust, promises made about rigorous testing (the stuff we had trusted they were doing anyway) and a commitment to a new website to share progress and outcomes is all great.

But the more exciting, and both business changing and business winning, idea contained in Tesco's new commitments is in the pledge to 'open up our supply chain'.

This not only brings them the benefits of applying some of the 10 Principles of Open Business, it also goes some way to enabling customers to get closer to the wizard, rather than the curtain - in other words, the source of the brand.

And IF they are wise and consistent in the application of Open Business, if they truly wish to become customer-led, then co-creating the fix to this problem with those for whom it is intended will become second nature.

That's the part I see missing from the Tesco plan right now. It feels like the customer is being treated as a receiver of outcome rather than a key stakeholder in the decision making process. CEO Phillip Clarke has told us what he is doing for us, but he hasn't asked us what we think the solutions are, what we think will rebuild trust.

Getting closer to the source is a critical part of that. Being part of steering how that is done is another.

Tesco must first learn to trust us if it wants us to trust it.

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