Social Media as a Driver of Organisational & Cultural Change Within Financial Services

Martin Thomas @crowdsurfing

“Digital communications is a destabilizing force in a bureaucratic environment. And I am sitting right in the middle of a bureaucratic environment.’”Senior corporate communications director

“We’re not set up for this shit”UK CEO

The Real Social Media Effect

o Driving new behaviours & expectations Dramatizing institutions’ structural, operational

& cultural weaknesses

Connected Consumer meets Disconnected CorporationConnected Consumer meets Disconnected Corporation

Social Media Success Built On

o Being responsive

o Being human

o Being open/transparent

Slow & bureaucratic

Faceless

Opaque

Thriving by Loosening Up

o Operational & cultural traits of successful organisations

TrustingOpenAgileInformal Collaborative

Tight Thinkers Need Not Apply

o Organisations & people that struggle with this new worldHierarchicalBureaucraticProcess orientedDistrustful

1. Trusting

o Bedrock of strong internal cultureo Allows shared responsibility & real time

decision making

The best company rulebook ever written?

Nordstrom Revisited

“Prescriptive rules have the effect of infantilising staff & make it harder for them to adapt to different situations. This goes as much for digital communications as for selling socks … Like the Nordstrom handbook we’re trusting staff to follow the spirit, not just the letter, of our guidelines”Meg Pickard, writing about The Guardian’s new social media guidelines, November 2010

How to Build an Empire

“Presumed Competence”

Trust Your Own People

2. Open

o Transparency & honesty non negotiable

Capable of transforming reputations

Openness is more than this …

Openness is …

o Encouraging real conversations with people inside & outside the organisation

o Being transparento Engaging critics & embracing criticism

A Simple, Proven Formula

Openness

Trust

3. Agile

o Responding to hyper-speed culture

“The trouble with McDonald’s is it’s too bloody slow”

Instant access, instant response, instant gratification “living life through shortcuts” MTV

Acceleration of News Agenda

1952Lynmouth

flood disaster

1952Lynmouth

flood disaster

1988Piper Alpha explosion

1988Piper Alpha explosion

May 2008Sichuan

Earthquake

May 2008Sichuan

Earthquake

Jan 2009Hudson River plane crash

Jan 2009Hudson River plane crash

2 days 1 hour 30 minutes

Real Time

Real Time+

Spring 2011Live blogging during Arab

Spring

Spring 2011Live blogging during Arab

Spring

Service Innovations Heightened Expectationso Speed & responsiveness

Crisis Management in Real Time

Why Many Institutions Struggle

o Not configured to work in real time, in terms of speed or resources

10 minutes10 minutes60 minutes60 minutes

* Critical response time for responding to negative comments

Organisational Agility

o Ability to improvise & operatein close to real time & to act on real time information

o Long-term planning has its place… but successful institutions have the ability to improvise & respond smartly to unexpected opportunities as the emerge

4. Informal

o NPD: Living life in Beta

o Design: Messy vitality

o Creativity: Authenticity more important than production values

Informality in the Workplace

o Emphasis on freedom & trust

o Encouragement of creativity & individual responsibility

“We’re giving people the latitude to go off & do their own thing. We trust them to do their regular jobs & to experiment, innovate & have fun”Microsoft Snr Mgr, quoted in Business Strategy Review

5. Collaborative

o Tapping into spirit of collective self expression

o Leveraging people’s willingness to shape service & product offers

No Excuses

o Being highly regulated may require caution but doesn’t excuse inaction

o Why would any institution not want to be: Trusting? Open? Agile? Informal? Collaborative?

o This could be the change driver that financial services industry needs

@crowdsurfing

Get your organisation & culture right … & the social media will look

after itself… & it will also make you

a better business