Jennifer Johnston Canfield – Writing on Open Leadership and Social Technology

Open Leadership by Charlene Li (Book Review)

I’ve spent the last month writing about the wide range of opportunities social technologies provide business, also thinking about how to overcome typical barriers to adoption. So shiny, new, and fast moving, social technology has gotten a lot of buzz, especially by marketing and sales functions. Yet becoming a solidly entrenched buzz word won’t convince most CEOs and skeptics that blogging and tweeting are worth the time and risk, let alone essential for today’s leaders.

Few people have taken the time to fully understand the underlying principles pulling social technology into business and leadership. Charlene Li is now a most noteworthy exception. In her forthcoming book, Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead, Li builds a strong, holistic business case for integrating social technology into leadership and corporate strategy.

Social Technology, Competitive Advantage, and Return on Investment (ROI)

Chapter 4, Understanding and Measuring the Benefits of Being Open, captured much of my attention because it is where the rubber meets the road. Li digs into the measurable benefits of open leadership, and convincingly argues that social technology integration can help build competitive advantage. Open leadership and social technology help businesses improve reputation management, scale efforts, increase employee and customer commitment, pump up word of mouth marketing internally and externally, ease information gathering and sharing, improve hiring, and much more.

Li organizes the benefits of open leadership into four basic categories: learning, dialog, support, and innovation. She then calculates stunning ROI for open leadership adoption. Learning – 94% return. Dialog – 1667% return. Support – 307% return. Innovation – 605% return.

These numbers speak for themselves, but Li keenly reminds us via John Hayes, chief marketing officer at American Express, “We tend to overvalue things we can measure, and undervalue things we cannot.” She reminds us that generally half an operating budget is spent on activities that have no direct impact on the bottom line. Thus, ROI shouldn’t be the sole driver of open leadership adoption. “What’s the ROI of a fire insurance policy or a handshake?”, she asks, pointing out that important business choices don’t necessarily benefit the bottom line directly. After all, leadership and business, just like social technologies, are about relationships and the people within them.

Recognizing people aren’t necessarily swayed by numbers contradict their world view, Li also includes compelling and clearly presented case studies to support social technology adoption in leadership. She describes how Comcast drove customer sentiment from 30% negative down to 10% in two years with blog and Twitter initiatives. She presents pertinent information on how Dell Outlet increased sales of $3 million in its first year on Twitter. She discusses how Sodexo embraced social technology to increase job applicants by 25% giving them strong competitive advantage in an industry notorious for high turnover. This book is packed with examples and case studies that might just convince the most die-hard social technology curumudgeon.