Dave Gray and Thomas Vander Wal believe that power is shifting in organizations to networks of customers, partners, and employees. Armed with social media, they set the agenda and determine how your business should operate and interact in its market. To help prepare for this shift, Gray and Vander Wal have provided 8 lessons.
Lesson 1: Focus on Service
We no longer live in an industrial economy. We live in a service economy. services cannot be designed in isolation, they are co-created with customers. Customers want services to be convenient for them, not for you. And they want to access them together. Therefore to define our connected businesses, we need to connect to customers.
Lesson 2: Focus on Customers
As we become successful in our markets, we identify and create other potential growth areas. We become greedy and forget the customer. However, becoming too focused is also a problem. We forget that markets change and mature, and unless we change as well we can get left behind. We need to face the market. We need to listen, watch and learn.
Lesson 3: Focus on Learning
To adapt, companies must interact with their environment and seek continuous improvement, based on experiments and feedback. Learning requires feedback to ensure improvement, and the most important critic is your customer. Customers not only compare your service to what you have done in the past, but they also compare you to alternatives, to your competitors.
Lesson 4: Be Organic
Connected companies are not hierarchies, divided into centrally controlled, functional parts. Connected companies are organic: complex systems working together, with each part a fully-functional whole in its own right. Connected companies are popular. Additionally, with this connectivity, connected companies can experience first-hand what the customer requires.
Lesson 5: Focus on PODS
In a popular organization, you divide labour into units, each of which can function as a complete service in its own right, giving an increased level of flexibility and adaptiveness. Podular design is like a franchise model: providing the pods with support and structure while allowing them to do business in their own way to meet local challenges.
Lesson 6: Focus on Platforms and Networks
Podular organizations need an underpinning support structure which networks the pods together. This allows them to coordinate activities, share learning, and increase the company’s overall effectiveness. Where the needs of one part of the organization differs from another, a balance must be created. Connected companies are living, learning networks that exist within larger networks. Network power comes from awareness and influence, not control. Leaders create clarity, trust, and shared purpose, while management focuses on designing and tuning the system to support learning and performance.
Lesson 7: Focus on Measuring
As a leader, we should be the most connected person in the company. Connected leaders focus not only on those who are inside the company, but also on suppliers, customers, and investors. A way of gauging how your business is performing is to take the temperature of your company. A company that is running too cold will have rules that are so strict that they get in the way of the work. A company that is running too hot will find itself reinventing the wheel, solving the same problems over and over again. Your aim is to be a bit of goldilocks: not too hot, not too cold
Lesson 8: POD Cultivation
We should form new pods by seeding them with individuals from existing pods. In this way, tacit knowledge, as well as the passion and energy for the work, are maintained and spread as you grow. Foster teamwork by ensuring staff are aware of the common goal and that the goals of sub-groups are not isolated from each other. Eliminate goal conflict within the organization and put your people first. In order for a pod to learn and deliver real innovation, it must be independent and connected to the environment.