Survival of the most adaptable?

I’ve been a volunteer Board Member of the Halton Learning Disabilities Association  for many years.  It’s an organization filled with good people and good work, but  is always struggling financially to survive.   Its mandate is to provide help and guidance to kids and families dealing with learning disabilities, and over many years, the organization has been a source of hope and information to countless families in the Halton region.  

So, with a long and successful track record and many happy “customers” why does the organization still have financial survival concerns?   It certainly isn’t alone in its fiscal uncertainty, hundreds of similar smaller organizations are always on the brink, so what can be done to keep these worthwhile community service organizations alive?

Our Executive Director initiated a Twitter and Facebook site for our organization this past summer, hoping to bring some awareness to a fund-raising  ”read-a-thon” that the organization sponsored in October.  While both sites seemed to be working pretty well,  gaining followers and providing lots of good information, the level of participation in the actual event was much lower than  hoped.    We are aware that these are not good economic times for most people, so participation in our fundraising efforts may be lower than ever before, but, still some organizations thrive while others struggle or disappear. 

So what to do?  I think we really need to focus  and adapt  – relying on some  old- style  fund-raising events, dinners, draws, road races and walkathons – backed up and supported by an active social media/website platform – kind of something for everybody approach.   I also think we should probably partner more with similar organizations for our mutual benefit – a hard sell to individual organizations that want to focus on their specific interest areas and target audiences.   So what would you do?  If you were a small non-profit, how would you survive?   Vote  in the Survival of the most adaptable poll and/or comment with your thoughts!! 

Taking the leap

There goes my daughter floating over the skies of New Zealand, fortunately, tethered to an experienced sky diving partner.   She laughs when I express misgivings about the merits of jumping out of a plane; ” it was great ” she said.   

While somewhat alarmed at her holiday bungee jumping/skydiving activities, I must say I also admire her desire to take a calculated risk and leap into adventure.

For those of us who are deskbound most of the time,  risk taking is not about the physical risks but about whether a business risk is worth the potential of harm to your organization or your career.

I think that’s why so many organizations seem to be backing away or holding off embracing social media.   It is probably hard to grapple with as there really are no formal procedures or  guidelines to adoption – like my daughter – it is really just a case of assessing the individual risk, taking appropriate precautions via social media policies, then leaping in – feet first – and learning to enjoy the ride.

Twitter for Dummies author Laura Fitton

 

 

Laura Fitton, whose daily tweets and a book, Twitter For Dummies, have brought her a huge following, details the profound impact Twitter’s real time connectivity between individuals and their network.

Social Media revolutionizes old business models?

We’ ve been debating a bit at work  about who from the company will participate in the corporate social media program and how it will work.   We’ve discussed our social media policy and have a first draft ready to go, but I think a hurdle we all will have to jump over is really understanding that this represents  a business model game changer.  

In the past,  a limited number of people in a  company might participate in a marketing program as contributors and implementers and the results of each activity would be monitored and tracked by just a few people.   As companies adapt to  social media,  they will have to come to terms with the new reality that this old  model, just won’t work.  

In an ideal environment the social media platforms will permeate a company so that everyone becomes an active participant, regularly collaborating and contributing as a team in a variety of ways.   But the journey from where we are today to the ideal  scenario is probably a long one. 

To implement a  social media program in a company or any organization, you must first engage a  large group of  people  who all have varying degrees of interest and knowledge in it, and demonstrate the value to them, so that they will feel empowered and interested in participating.   So my questions are:

• How to introduce a new social media program into a company? I’m thinking we probably need to run intro programs for everyone and initially ask for volunteers to participate, then provide feedback to everyone on progress and activity and encourage collaboration on an ongoing basis.
• How do you retain commitment so that the person who starts a blog today is still actively working on it 3 months from now?  Does this become part of their job description?
• What level of participation and time is it reasonable to expect from professionals who are already extremely busy?

and most importantly

• How do you engage your customers who might be feeling the same hesitation as your employees about  participating  in social media?

We are all probably wrestling with the same questions so you might have some interesting ideas to share.  Despite the issues and questions,  isn’t it  a great time to be working with so many interesting things  changing and happening all the time?

Follow up to those whippersnappers…..

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the different generational approaches to Social Media and whined a bit about how the Generation X crowd is claiming social media as their own.  My point was that although they are the innovative and experimental crowd, it’s us old fogies that are beginning to expand the business use of these tools.

So I was deligheted to read  an article in IT Business.ca  today called “Marrying Social Networking with Business Process  Transformation”  in which Cisco CEO John Chambers is quoted as follows:

“While social networking may seem like a tool for the young, Cisco CEO John Chambers said it’s actually the more mature enterprise users that can drive real productivity gains from Web 2.0 tools.

Our early studies show that as the 40-plus year olds learn to use the technology they’re more efficient at it,” said Chambers. “At first we were confused by that, but we saw (they) bring process. It’s technology with business process change.”

So we applaud the kids who dream this stuff up and congratulate all the 40+ who work hard to catch up and contribute their experience and knowledge to  help  transform and grow  the tools provding benefit and value to a wider audience.