The Blog Has a New Home!

Think of this not as a farewell but as us just moving across the street. The Social Business Insights blog is now the Social Business Spotlight blog and has a new home at http://ift.tt/1L2J7eM.

Our mission hasn’t changed – we are still dedicated to bringing you great thought leadership around all things pertaining to social business, collaboration, customer and employee engagement and much more, from authors, influencers, millennials, IBMers, industry leaders, and beyond.

What has changed is the look and feel of the site, with easier navigation, a more eye-pleasing design, categories for quick discovery, and links to other eminent IBM blogs. This new platform enhances our ability to shine the spotlight on timely news, trends and opinions from around the industry. We encourage you to start and join in on discussions by commenting on posts.

We thank you for your loyal readership over the years and we would love to hear your thoughts on the new blog. Be sure to bookmark http://ift.tt/1L2J7eM and stay in touch.

Dan Davis and Sam Klein

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Learning to Fish for Data Insights

A few years ago, the chief data officer was not well known. Now the CDO role is popping up at many organizations as the ocean of business data deepens and the demand for analytics expertise becomes more urgent. Data exhaust will be compounded by the growing number of inputs from marketing, commerce, social media and the Internet of Things.

Data is fundamentally changing the way business is done. But most companies aren’t anywhere close to being ready. Currently, only 0.5 percent of the world’s data is analyzed. According to Gartner, by 2020 up to 33 percent of data will be valuable if analyzed properly. Some companies, however, are staying ahead of the inevitable.

The new IBM study “Teaching organizations to fish in a data-rich future” reveals insights from data pioneers who are investing in highly skilled data leaders – roles such as chief data officers, chief analytics officers and data scientists. These organizations have realized that formalizing data capabilities and roles allows them to turn data into business assets and actionable insights.

In particular, companies create business value as they:

• Make data a priority: Establishing a data strategy and getting stakeholders across the business involved early to set up a framework and processes allows companies to better use data as a strategic asset.
• Develop from within: Getting the right data skills sets is important, but that can happen not only through new hires but also training within the company to nurture data skills.
• Free the data: As the volume of data compounds, extracting value becomes more meaningful in the right hands. Companies should share data through the right tools with the right roles, and shift the company culture to place an emphasis on the value of data insights.

While closely linked to the CIO, the CDO and other data roles permeate departments across the business, providing the framework, tools and insights to enable marketing, sales, customer service and finance. Across the board, data leaders echo the direct correlation between data skills, mining data insights and the impact on the bottom line. In this vast new ocean of data, teaching organizations how to fish may be the biggest opportunity.

 

Teaching organizations to fish in a data-rich future: Stories from data leaders from Amanda Sirianni

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Life Hacks: Empowering Women in the Workplace

It’s time to face embrace the facts: men and women are different, bringing a diverse set of strengths to the workplace.

 

We fought hard (and are still fighting) for equality and rights, but equality doesn’t mean fitting into a “man’s world,” it means being accepted for the powerful, persuasive team players that we are. For years we’ve been trying to adapt women to the workplace – think shoulder pads and masculine attitudes – instead of adapting the workplace to fit the professional attributes and needs of women. Women are still making less than men for the same jobs … and even in 2015, promotion and rating systems are geared toward rewarding male employees.  

 

Companies that begin to not only understand gender differences, but appreciate and encourage them, will find themselves with a more innovative, thriving and complete workforce.

 

These tips aren’t focused on changing women, but empowering them. As a proud woman, I bring you the next edition of the IBM Life Hacks: Empowering Women in the Workplace.

 

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Millennials are screwed

When IBM approached us to become their Social Business Book of the Month for August (as well as when we first started writing 2 Billion Under 20 back in late 2013), if you typed the words “Millennials are” into Google, the autosuggestion dropdown menu would spit out the words “entitled,” “narcissistic,” “lazy,” and of course, “screwed.”

 

Of course, we here at 2 Billion Under 20 (and our new holding company StartsWith Group) and our partners at IBM know that millennials are not, in fact, screwed, and that instead we are the future of the consumer marketplace, workplace, and society as a whole.

 

In our book, which became a #1 New Release in Business Leadership on Amazon, topped ProductHunt on the day of its release, and has even been seen in the hands of Presidential Candidate Chris Christie, we bring together 75 ambitious, talented millennials who share their stories in order to slash negative stereotypes surrounding our generation and replace them with inspiration for young people to act on their passions in life and education for older generations on what makes us “tick.”

 

It’s important for businesses especially to understand how millennials are shaping the workforce, as well as how to market to them, if these companies wish to remain in business, let alone relevant, over the next 15 years as millennials becoming well over 75 percent of the global workforce. To push you in the right direction, we want to give three quick tips, all on how to work better with millennials.

 

When Marketing to Millennials, Include Them in the Conversation

 

When it comes to selling to the savviest consumer group the world has ever seen, made up of people who have more computing power in their pocket than the U.S. government had when they put a man on the moon, maximizing the production of your widgets and squeezing out profit margins at the expense of high-quality solutions or experiences for your customers simply won’t sustain businesses in coming years. Instead, those companies who focus on high-quality solutions to actual consumer challenges, coupled with inclusion of millennials in product, customer experience, and marketing conversation will yield better results. Do you have millennials on your advisory boards (or have you thought about being one of the first companies to have an all-millennial advisory board)? Have you made the product creation process iterative and data-based, opting more for the Silicon Valley model of split-testing everything and creating customer development feedback loops rather than settling for biased and misrepresentative focus groups? Point is: don’t market to millennials. Work with millennials.

 

When Hiring or Recruiting Top Millennial Talent, Are You in Your Own Way?

 

We really hope you’re aware that the 9-to-5, work 40 years and retire model of employed life is well out the window by now. It’s 2015! Millennials are looking to work for companies that give them the opportunity to design work around their life, not vice versa. For companies who are doing this, and providing lifestyle design considerations rather than mere salary and equity considerations in their hiring practices, they are noticing something unique happening. Turns out that when you equip a millennial employee with the space and flexibility to “have a life,” they end up working harder for your company, staying with your group longer, and providing higher quality work, whether they are in the office or at home or on vacation, but still connected via multiple devices and taking care of business … with a smile. Lifestyle design is sexier than salary, so leverage that when recruiting top millennial employees.

 

Are You Losing $15,000 (and Lots of Talent) by Not Taking Care of Your Millennials?

 

Companies who learn how to retain and engage their current millennial employees will be light-years ahead of their competitors at the end of this upcoming generational “changing of the guards.” Each millennial employee who leaves your company costs on average $15,000 to replace, and that doesn’t even take into consideration the amount of brainpower, problem-solving abilities, and overall hit on company culture and employee engagement you will suffer from if that employee leaves on anything less than stellar terms.

 

Keep millennials under your roof and heavily engaged in your company’s success by giving them ownership of various projects, metrics, etc. within your company. We are some of the most entrepreneurial thinkers yet, so utilize that to get the most engagement and entrenchment as possible from millennial employees who wish as much as you do that your social media metrics (or marketing metrics, or sales metrics, etc.) increase by the predetermined goal. Also, open feedback loops with employees and ask them what’s going well in their role, what’s a challenge, and what are some good ideas they may have for your company’s growth. You’ll get great ideas from younger employees who are more technically savvy and on the front lines than from a typically older, less focused C-suite.

 

In a Sentence

 

Understanding the millennial generation starts when you work with millennials.

 

Join the Conversation

 

2 Billion Under 20: How Millennials Are Breaking Down Age Barriers and Changing The World is IBM’s Social Business Book of the Month in August. To learn more about 2 Billion Under 20, StartsWith Group, and everything that co-authors Stacey Ferreira and Jared Kleinert are up to, feel free to say hi at stacey@2billionunder20.com and jared@2billionunder20.com. 

 

 

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5 New Ways to Work with IBM Verse on Mobile

Now available for iOS (iPhone and iPad) and Android (smartphone and tablet).

IBM Verse is more than email. It's everything you need to take control of your workday.

The IBM Verse mobile app combines the intuitive functionality of text and messaging services with the most advanced analytics software—giving you a better, smarter way to manage your workday.

View email, event, and action updates, chat and share files from the cloud, manage your to-do lists, and keep track of the people you work with closely. All in one place with IBM Verse on your mobile device.

Take a look at some of the ways the new IBM Verse app is changing the way we work.

The Widget
You don't have to be in the app to stay in control of your day. The drop-down widget displays upcoming meetings and events, pending actions, and email updates from your workplace VIPs. And when a conference call is about to begin, you can join simply by tapping Join Meeting.

Important People
The IBM Verse mobile app identifies the people you work with the closest, so your workplace VIPs' notifications get your attention sooner. From the app or the widget, you can tap on a portrait in your Important People tab to find pending and completed actions, chat threads and email updates.

Message Threads
Enterprise communication should feel as fluid as it does in a messaging app. That's why IBM Verse's intelligent threading model lets you review full conversation threads and individual messages. And the mobile app makes it easy to start a real-time chat with colleagues instead of waiting for their emails.

Meetings and File Sharing
To stay competitive, you need to be able to connect with your team from anywhere at any time. The IBM Verse mobile app lets you join screen-share meetings and share files from the cloud as easily as you could from your desktop.

To-Do Lists
It's time to take control of your email and calendar. The IBM Verse mobile app lets you filter your actions to see only the most pressing deadlines—and it can send actionable notifications to your locked screen. The widget includes your to-do list, so you don't have to be using the app to know what's due.

To learn more about IBM Verse on Mobile, click here.

To learn more about how technologies such as IBM Verse are helping companies take advantage of digital disruption, click here.

 

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Social Business Internal and External: Why Both Should Work Together

For years now companies have been trying to leverage the power of social for business benefits both inside and outside the organization. Internally the key drivers for social are business functions like HR and product development, and the users are employees of the organization. External social business is driven by marketing or sales and reaches out to customers and others who access social media online. These changes have had many positive effects on the world of business – but not all changes have been positive.

Learning has been without a doubt one of the area most positively affected by social. Learning has moved from the classroom to online and this is undergoing further transformation through interactive delivery mechanisms and adoption of social approaches to learning. File sharing, commenting, tagging, rewards and recognition, gamification are other features enhance the learning experience by sharing information and providing motivation to learners.

Skill building through learning programs is an ongoing activity for an organization in the knowledge industry; for example IT, financial services, research or consultancy. Social Business has changed the design of learning programs, learning methods, interaction and measurement of results. Participants to a learning program can now learn through communities and forums and keep updated on the trends within the community. Employees learn from each other and there is more knowledge sharing which has improved the effectiveness of learning.

As much as social business has been a positive force for change in the workplace, so too has it disrupted old models and forced companies to change their approach to marketing, customer service and more. Customers can take to social media to provide bad feedback about a product or service and cause damage to the company or brand in ways they couldn’t have before. There are many famous instances of negative posts on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blogs which have gone viral. Social media is a very important channel for companies to address customer complaints and a proactive approach is required to monitor and respond to queries from customers. A strategic social media strategy that includes building a community of advocates is essential to counter the threat of bad buzz. Customer support for a company can use social media to enhance the feedback and loyalty of customers.    

The customer support team can use social business for their daily work, sharing knowledge, building skills, creating a knowledge base for support and so on. All these activities are internal to the organization but the results can be seen externally through better customer support and feedback, quicker resolution of issues and cost optimization.

To create a competitive advantage and stand out in the market companies need to make their social business initiatives work in sync and create a differentiator. In our example we saw how customer support can leverage learning to improve skills. Leading companies are differentiating themselves by delivering superior social experiences to employees and customers. It is time to look at your internal and external social business and start bridging the gaps. 

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Your Customers Are Like Snowflakes

I'm aware that mention of snowflakes in July could be somewhat out of season (unless you believe the recent claims that there might be a mini ice age in 15 years), but I'm going to go ahead and do it anyway.

 

Customers are like snowflakes. At first glance they are all very similar, but dig deeper and you start to notice differences. For example, it’s possible to categorise snowflakes at a high level, based on their size or shape. This relates to how marketing departments are able to categorise their customers based on demographics such as gender, age and location. This is important, as it allows organisations to shift from traditional scattershot marketing campaigns to higher value, tailored marketing campaigns. The benefit here is twofold: reducing the cost of marketing campaigns by not wasting money advertising to people who will not engage with your business, and improving return on marketing investment.

 

Any organisations that are already planning marketing campaigns based on customer demographic information are in a good place; however they are not necessarily pioneering. The snowflake analogy can actually be taken further.

 

No two snowflakes are alike

 

You may have heard the old adage that 'no two snowflakes are alike', which has actually been backed by research. The creation of snowflakes is a complex process, with many variables at play. We can, and should, view our customers in the same way. Performing categorisations on basic demographics such as age and gender provide powerful business benefits, but it’s not the pinnacle. There're a multitude of potential data points to collect about your customers, with each data point being like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle; collect enough pieces and you start to build up a powerful picture of that customer at an individual, personal level. This is often referred to as 'segment of one' marketing.

 

Building a system of engagement

 

Segment of one marketing is incredibly powerful and diverse. It requires organisations to stop thinking of their customers as a number on a spreadsheet, and start thinking about them as they truly are: complex, unique, constantly changing individuals.

 

Analysis of historical sales data provides a starting point for building tailored marketing campaigns by enabling the distribution of customised content and offers through the right channel, at the right time and to the right person to maximise chances of conversion. Further insights can be gained via A/B testing to experiment with and optimise variables such as content, channel and timing.

 

These insights can even be augmented with social media data, using analytics to gain a live voice of the customer and act on new opportunities in a timely manner by keeping your finger on the pulse of the newest trends and developments across the globe.

 

The ability to treat customers as individuals has become a key differentiator in maximising revenue generation. All of the data is out there; the challenge is piecing it all together to create a coherent, intelligent system of engagement that adds value for both the customer and the organisation. Organisations that have implemented these solutions are reaping the rewards and emerging as leaders in their respective industries.  

 

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Earning Your Upvote with Millennial Customers

There’s a new elephant in the room for client-facing businesses. It’s targeting the millennial customer. The world’s largest generation is rising to the store front with unmet needs and it’s time to start pairing marketing efforts with those needs. If you’re tapping into the millennial segment for the first time, here are a few critical millennial must-haves to keep in mind:

 

Be relevant.

Millennials are fully aware that a correlation exists between technology and competitiveness. One of the best ways to hold millennial customers’ attention is to prove your relevance through innovative offerings. This means having a cutting-edge digital presence and a customer experience that reflects conscientiousness. Around the world, success is being defined by incremental innovations to old technologies and services that transform a previously tedious effort (like catching a cab) into a non-negotiable necessity for daily life. This relevance and accessibility make millennials uber-excited. (Yes, we’re talking about Uber.)

 

Be personal.

Millennials aren’t looking for a one-size–fits-all solution to their needs. Millennial customers expect to be engaged in a specific, compelling way from day one. Thriving companies, such as Warby Parker, capitalize on customer preferences to create tailored customer experiences like never before. Be prepared for millennials to judge you based on their first impression, and you want their perspective to be 20/20 in your favor. Let’s face it, everyone wants to feel special, and millennials are no exception!

 

Be excellent.

We don’t need to see you do it all; we need to see you do one thing with excellence. (Really, we want to know where you are head and shoulders above the rest!) How far are you willing to go to refine your offerings to truly meet the needs of your up-and-coming millennial customers? Having one excellent solution is worth its weight in bitcoins. The days of providing a marginal solution to tackle many problems at once are over.

 

This new buyer group is forcing companies to think and act for the future. If you think it’s time to take the next step with your customers, check out the Digital Experience Website. If you’d like to read more about IBM's millennial research, you can download the study.

 

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CloseUp with Aaron Horowitz

Meet Aaron Horowitz, Co-Founder and CEO of Sproutel, a platform for health and wellness education and the creator of Jerry the Bear – a robotic learning tool for children diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Aaron is a maker; from sculptures to business, he is fascinated with the process of taking an idea from concept to reality. He also happens to be the winner of IBM's New Way to Startup, an exciting entrepreneurship program and web series featuring 10 of the country’s top millennial-led startups with a social mission. Congrats to Aaron and the incredible team at Sproutel!!

It's time for Aaron's CloseUp...

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Now Trending: Millennial Employees

Just who are the millennials?  The renegades of the digital world? The dreamers? The trendsetters?

 

As the first generation raised in an immersive digital world, millennials represent the key to the digital transformation and survival of companies across the globe. There’s no doubt, we are the beauty and brains behind some of the most innovative entrepreneurial and strategic business initiatives springing up daily. (Just take a look at companies like Warby Parker, Facebook and FourSquare.)

 

As this new group of leaders, thinkers, and believers rises in the ranks, it remains imperative that employers keep close tabs on the habits, expectations, and motivations of millennial employees.

 

Here are a few cultural investments businesses need to make to equip, empower, and retain their millennials:

 

1.   Inspiration – Inspiration in the workplace is a major component of millennial motivation. Some major questions you might find millennials asking ourselves include: Where are the leaders in this picture? Who is setting the pace? How does this impact the overarching goals of the business? Providing millennials with the tools to deepen their general understanding of business fundamentals is a quick way to inspire and educate.

 

2.   Individualization – All in all, millennials mirror other generations in a desire to contribute purposefully, be recognized, and develop professionally. The truth is, we desire to be perceived simultaneously as a team player and an individual.  Companies that successfully inspire millennials to cultivate their unique talents and gifts where they overlap with business outcomes keep employees incentivized and empower. Feeling like “just a number” is a no-go for millennial strivers.

 

3.   Collaboration – The ultra-connected personal lives of millennials contribute to our desire for connection, teamwork, and collaboration in the workplace. In many cases, collaboration is a way for millennials to stay in the know with latest news or business trends. Working on collaborative projects or in a more “open office” environment is a way to enhance each employee’s general awareness of what is happening within the business, what’s important, and what’s not. Collaboration on teams of diverse talents and backgrounds serves up a potent cocktail of potential for innovation.

 

4.   Innovation – This global generation sees no boundaries to the positive impact we can have within the workplace, and even the world at large. As our global society expands rapidly, millennials want to make an impact using creativity and efficiency. Nickel-and-diming your way through business is not a way to keep millennials invested. Companies that voraciously explore new technologies and seek new ways to accomplish old goals keep millennials motivated and interested. 

 

If you think it’s time to take the next step with your employees, check out the Digital Experience Website. If you’d like to read more about IBM's millennial research, you can download the study.

 

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Traveling Is about Making Connections

Summertime is upon us in the Northern Hemisphere, and for many that means getting on a plane for a well-deserved vacation. Or a couple planes, as the case may be. They say you should never have a layover shorter than an hour, just in case your first leg is delayed, but I like to leave extra time so that I can grab a meal or at least a snack before my connecting flight. I like to make travel as stress-free as possible, and as much as I like my co-workers, that includes disconnecting from work.

SSP knows about both kind of connections—the airport kind and the workplace kind. As the owner, operator and franchiser of food, beverage and other concessions at airports around the world, the company known as “The Food Travel Experts” helps travelers make the most of their time in between connecting flights. Internally, the company is expert at connecting its more than 30,000 employees via a new social networking platform based on IBM Connections.

With a company like SSP, which operates more than 400 travel locations around the globe, meeting customers’ needs means understanding and being able to serve many different markets and cultures. Yet this type of diversified customer base and dispersed workforce makes it more, not less, important to connect employees so that they may share experiences and insights, tap into expertise and work together to come up with new ideas. These are demands that cannot be addressed by email alone.

Recognizing this, SSP sought to build a social platform that would allow employees to form networks and communities to spark knowledge sharing, and give them a more intelligent way to manage agendas, meetings and documents. The result was SSP Connections, built in conjunction with IBM Business Partner Atriom. By promoting the platform through blogs, an email campaign, hands-on workshops and more, SSP had more than 1,500 employees adopt the system in the first five months, and plans to continue that success with more workshops, regional awareness programs and absorbing business processes into SSP Connections. The system is accessible through a range of mobile devices, a must-have with a workforce as dispersed and on-the-go as SSP’s.

Internal social platforms are drivers of productivity and innovation as well as employee engagement, with workers feeling more connected to their company and to each other, even across international boundaries and cultural divides. An intelligently designed and implemented platform like SSP Connections provides an invaluable discovery tool for workers to form new relationships with colleagues they would otherwise not have met. With mobile integration, these platforms let workers stay connected and productive even when they’re away from their laptop – just hopefully not when they’re on summer vacation.

Click here to learn more about SSP and its social platform.

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The POWER of Crowdsourcing

It turns out that the world's first 7 nanometer chip wasn't the only INCREDIBLE thing IBM accomplished last week!

 

Just last week it was announced that a virtual supercomputer created by IBM helped scientists in discovering a phenomenon that could enhance access to clean water for one billion people.

And I can proudly state that I helped make this possible.

 

How? By simply installing the World Community Grid app on my laptop and smartphone and letting the good work begin!

 

Scientists at Tsinghua University in China announced the discovery of the conditions required for moving water via carbon nanotubes 300 percent faster without the need of further energy.

 

The computational simulation study that led to this new method of improving water filtration and water quality was powered by IBM's World Community Grid.

 

We’ve all heard the benefits of crowdsourcing in digital age, but I have never heard a more inspiring and amazing crowdsourcing story than this!

 

This discovery would not have occurred without crowdsourced computing. Researchers executed a vast number of simulations using the donated surplus processing power of IBM's World Community Grid, harnessing three million connected computers from more than 700,000 "citizen-scientist" volunteers globally.

 

The one hundred million calculations carried out by IBM's virtual, crowdsourced supercomputer for the Computing for Clean Water project would have cost $15 million if they were performed commercially, and the study would’ve taken over 37,000 years had it been undertaken on a single-processor PC. Talk about the “power” of community crowdsourcing!

 

If you don't have World Community Grid downloaded to your phone / laptop, please make sure to check it out here: http://ift.tt/fWG7Ag. One of the coolest parts of being a community member, besides powering science and enabling good in the world, is that you can share the amount of hours you’ve donated per week with your social networks – now that’s what I call social currency!

 

 

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CloseUp with Ed Brill

Meet Ed Brill, author of bestselling book and our Social Business Book Club selection for July, Opting In: Lessons in Social Business from a Fortune 500 Product Manager. He also happens to be a VP of Social Business Transformation at IBM, speaker, blogger, as well as an avid traveler, foodie, and cyclist. Talk about a busy man!

Get ready for Ed's CloseUp...

 

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Opting In & A Culture Of Participation

Ten years ago, a group of IBMers came together to answer some questions - How can we encourage the individual voices of our people, the experts upon which our company is built, to be heard in the marketplace? How can we take the wisdom of the crowds and apply it to our products and services? How can we change the perception of IBM from faceless conglomerate to an organization that is engaged, transparent, and agile?

The catalyst for these questions was the effort to create IBM's first blogging guidelines. Several of us who were exploring new Internet social networking tools such as blogging, wikis, and discussion forums recognized their potential as a tool for IBMers to connect with our clients, prospects, influencers, partners, and suppliers. A few of us were already actively blogging, but in a nebulous space where it wasn't clear whether we were simply speaking for ourselves, or as IBMers, or as IBMers with individual points of view. The blogging guidelines would help us resolve these early questions, but we had a much more important goal. The blogging guidelines - which today are the IBM Social Computing Guidelines - needed to be an empowering document, not an oppressive one. We needed a policy that encouraged IBMers to share their thoughts, ideas, and expertise, out in the open, where the market could engage and learn.

Today, by many measures, that objective has been far exceeded. IBM is routinely recognized as the biggest corporate presence in social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter. IBMers by the thousands have created blogs, Tumblrs, Instagram accounts, and other social streams. We went on to invent a category of social networking solutions for business, and have lead that market every year since its inception. Most importantly, we put into practice the themes of the social computing guidelines - engaging in the market, transparently, and being responsive and agile to what we learned.

Social Business: Lessons for improving IBM products and services

In a previous role, I was responsible for the overall business and strategy for several of IBM's collaboration and solutions products. I found early on that I could "walk the talk" of social business - engage directly with clients and prospects, find out more about what the market wanted in terms of capabilities or support, and share our plans and perspectives. Though I never intended it, after a few years of writing at edbrill.com, I built an audience comprised of the thousands of companies using these IBM products, those considering doing so, and even our competitors. This direct engagement lead to business outcomes - faster decisions and time to market, more responsiveness to requirements and market conditions, and in what became a hallmark of business blogging at the time - transparency around competitive positioning and roadmap. I learned how to make decisions around whose "voice" I was writing in - myself as an individual, or the representative of the product team, or a broader view from IBM as a company.

Clients and prospects responded. Can we directly correlate the growth of these products during 2004 to 2008 to the nascent blogging policy and presence? No, of course not. However, the sense of community that developed during that time brought clients closer to IBM than ever, IBM closer to the market than ever, and clients closer to each other. User groups formed. Other bloggers entered the fray. Heck, there were even marriage proposals, as people came together with similar interests and ideals.

I wrote the book Opting In: Lessons in Social Business to try to capture what came from that experience. In Opting In, I explore lessons learned around real-world social business: the need to see the big picture, to communicate strategically, to create a three-dimensional personality online, to make oneself accessible. Each chapter of the book examines a set of online activities and their outcomes, told through real stories. Most chapters feature guest contributors from the protagonists themselves: clients, analysts, IBMers. The chapters all conclude with the lessons learned on the subject topic - things like the concepts of personal branding and unique voice, delivering unique outcomes, and how to be transparent in a competitive market.

Join the Conversation

Opting In: Lessons in Social Business is an Amazon bestseller and has earned consistent 5-star reviews. To learn more, participate in our #socbizchat on Twitter on Thursday, July 9 at 1 PM US EDT with @edbrill (me!) and Marcia Conner (@marciamarcia), author of The New Social Learning (2nd edition). You can also connect with me via LinkedIn, or email to ed_brill@us.ibm.com.

 

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Make Every (Leap) Second Count

A lot can happen in a second. A bumblebee can beats its wings 200 times. A runner can break the marathon world record. A tweet can be sent that may damage a reputation for life. You can change someone’s entire day.

At midnight tonight, on June 30, 2015, we will all be gifted an extra second … a "leap second." Because Earth's rotation is slowing ever so slightly, we occasionally need to add an extra second to re-sync our super-precise atomic clocks to our planet's rotation.

I thought we’d take this opportunity to ask you, our loyal readers, to think about what you plan to do with this extra second with a fun poll.

Don’t forget, some of the best things in life happen in a single moment. 

Use your leap second wisely!

 

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Being a Corporate Millennial

This week marks an important point for me: three years ago I started my placement at IBM. This is of course punctuated by returning to university, graduating, travelling and then returning to IBM.

 

I can honestly say that choosing to do a placement was one the better choices I made as a student. Also, turning down a placement offer at another company in the hopes of working for IBM when I was only at their application stage was a risk that paid off. Now 10 months back into IBM as a graduate, I stumbled across an article the other day titled ‘How a corporate cult captures and destroys our best graduates’. A quick synopsis of the article – The corporate machine will take graduates who said they were going to change the world and turn them into some sort of suited and booted, 9-5 terminator.

 

This article hit a couple of nerves with me for a few reasons. Firstly, great entrepreneurs and innovators who have changed the world have done so in their own, unique way and those committed to it will continue to regardless of whether they started or joined a ‘corporate’ organisation early on in their careers.

 

Secondly, and maybe most important, the word ‘corporate’ doesn’t mean what it once did (for me at least).

 

As a millennial, and as those who know me well are aware, I hate being called ‘corporate’. Not because I dislike working for a corporation, but because of the outdated, negative connotations that come with it. When people ask me about where I work they assume I sit in a 4×4 cubicle selling commoditized products over the phone with my Britney Spears-style headset whilst I play buzzword bingo.

 

Questions I frequently get asked are, ‘Do you ever feel like your voice is heard?’ or ‘Are you just a cog in a big machine?’ Admittedly, working in a 400,000 people strong company can be daunting, but do I feel like I am a voiceless robot while the highest echelons in the hierarchy, the illuminati of Big Blue, dictate every aspect of my life? No. In fact it can be quite the opposite: just the other week a 26-year-old IBM employee successfully petitioned to overturn a company ban on the car service Uber using the internal social networking platform IBM Connections.

 

An article from the U.S. Chairman of PWC Bob Moritz highlights how millennials want to feel connected to the vision and purpose of a company to remain engaged. While I believe the word ‘corporate’ is changing, companies must also change their goals and strategies to align and attract talented millennials.

 

For me, working at a company that acts behind the scenes to keep some of our most frequently used services running so we can carry on doing things such as access our favourite websites or use our credit cards to make purchases is pretty cool.

 

Watching Wimbledon or the 6 Nations and seeing 1 point/Try come to life and being able to say ‘We do that’ is also cool.

 

 

However working for a company that’s using cognitive technology to help fight against cancer ... that’s pretty amazing.

 

 

If anyone reading this is considering a placement scheme, Do it. If you’re considering IBM, Definitely do it. In fact feel free to get in contact with me if you would like advice!

 

To learn more about how IBM are changing the way companies becoming more social and pioneering a new way to work, click here.

 

To read the PWC Article, click here.

 

 

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Life Hacks: Managing & Retaining [Millennial] Employees

It’s time for another edition of the IBM Life Hacks! And as I’m typing this from a plane destined for Las Vegas, about to attend my first SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) conference, I can’t help but contemplate one of the hottest topics in HR right now – millennial employees. It’s hard to miss the mass amount of news surrounding this controversial generation, and maybe you’re even annoyed by it, but it makes sense to focus on understanding them as they will soon make up 75% of the workforce, even taking on leadership roles in your organization.

 

Generation Y is the largest, most educated, tech-savvy generation – and with degrees [and debt] in hand, we are entering the job market by the masses … but according to research, we’re not staying long once we land the jobs we so desperately want. This is causing a huge problem for companies, as losing employees is extremely costly.

 

So what makes this generation different from the rest and what can you do to keep us as productive, loyal employees? Start by understanding the “millennial mindset” and make sure your company fosters an environment where your employees can thrive.

 

While our parents saw hard work as putting in long hours, millennials believe in quality of work and being rewarded based on results versus time spent … we have the technology to get things done faster than before, so we expect flexibility in our schedules.  We thrive in collaborative environments where ideas come from all levels. We demand transparency across the organization and ongoing, honest feedback. And of course, we want to be working towards goals we believe in and feel as though our interests are supported. 

 

This is a mindset that older generations are adopting as well – we all want to feel appreciated, be rewarded for hard work and make a difference. It’s with this insight that I offer the June edition of Life Hacks: Managing & Retaining [Millennial] Employees.

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Connecting People to Their Waterfront – and to Each Other

Urban waterfronts, like cities themselves, are always in flux. What might be a thriving landscape of shipbuilding, canneries, or ports in one decade might experience a sharp decline in the next as fish stocks deplete or shipping traffic moves elsewhere. While some cities have turned their backs on their decrepit waterfronts and surrounding brownfields, other have sought to turn them into new industrial centers, parklands, public spaces and more. In the spirit of today's Handshake Day, many of these renewal efforts have focused on building communities that connect neighbors to each other. When the quasi-governmental agency Waterfront Toronto set about its plan to revitalize the city’s lakeshore and improve the lives of citizens, it knew that it would have to put collaboration and social capabilities front and center.

Waterfront Toronto’s priorities are to “put people first and reconnect them with the waterfront,” according to its website. The revitalization effort is expected to take at least 25 years and around $30 billion to complete*. More than just real estate development, the project’s goal is to “transform the waterfront into a marvelous public destination with vibrant public and cultural spaces.” As lofty and as admirable as that goal is, Waterfront Toronto knew that it would need both input and buy-in from all stakeholders to make it a reality.

To this end the project teamed up with IBM Premier Business Partner Element Blue, LLC, to create a new community portal powered by SoftLayer cloud and IBM Connections social business software. The portal, dubbed New Blue Edge, brings together current and future residents, retailers, students and staff in a virtual community that includes digital content and services such as wellness advice, an events calendar, social feeds and an online marketplace. The portal also showcases Toronto as a leader among smart cities. In fact, the Canadian metropolis was named the 2014 Most Intelligent Community of the Year by the Intelligent Communities Forum.

As with many great projects, Waterfront Toronto achieved goals beyond its primary vision: In reconnecting the people of Toronto to Lake Ontario, the agency also succeeded in connecting people to each other. Revitalization efforts and strategic initiatives from Miami to Johannesburg to Rio de Janeiro are resulting in smarter cities with more involved citizens. Not just on Handshake Day but every day, portals such as New Blue Edge not only let people engage with one another, they connect them to businesses, services and governments. They give people real-time traffic data, tips on saving water, new ways of managing energy consumption, and an efficient means of providing feedback. With cities like Toronto leading the way, citizens all around the globe will get to live in better communities, and enjoy a higher quality of life.

To learn more about Waterfront Toronto’s efforts to build connect the city’s citizens, click here.

* New Blue Edge website, About section.

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IBM and Box forge a global partnership to transform work in the cloud

Organizations continue to look for ways to empower their most precious asset – people – with flatter organizations, data-driven insights, and flexible work styles. To create these more engaging workplaces – which in turn improve customer engagement and the bottom line – organizations of all shapes and sizes are becoming social businesses. IBM has been thinking about this for some time. That thinking, like the 2014 CEO Study, and the Millennials in the Workplace study, has been helping customers understand how leaders create competitive advantage from employee and customer engagement.

 

The definition of a social business continues to evolve, driven by rapid evolution in technology and employee diversity. It’s a vibrant marketplace, with hundreds of companies cooperating and competing for ways to help businesses harness social engagement. IBM’s leadership in the space is due to our maniacal focus on driving customer success. And I couldn’t be more proud of those results:

• IBM is the market share leader in enterprise social solutions for five years running.
• IBM was also named a Leader in the 2014 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace.
• IBM was also among the vendors that were cited as a Leader in Ovum's Decision Matrix: Selecting an Enterprise File Sync and Share Product, 2014-2015.  

 

A vibrant social business ecosystem is needed to create the right business value for your specific organizational needs. That is why an open, easy-to-integrate, yet secure platform approach is so important. A platform that ideally is delivered in the cloud as well as on premises, to a wide range of mobile devices, and is informed by intelligence and analytics.

 

Building upon that vibrant ecosystem, IBM and Box today announced a global partnership that will combine the best-in-class technologies and resources of both companies to transform work in the cloud. You can read more about the announcement, including the press release, on ibm.com.

 

This announcement is about supporting customer choice, open platforms, and heterogeneous environments. IBM and Box will work together to continue integrating their existing services for customers, while developing and reselling a new set of secure and innovative solutions across a comprehensive content management portfolio. For social collaboration, in addition to improving the existing Box Plugin for IBM Connections, IBM and Box will look for opportunities to drive further social collaboration innovation for customers, including not just IBM Connections but also our most recent and exciting addition to the collaboration space, IBM Verse.

 

We encourage you to join the IBM and Box announcement webcast, “Transforming Work,” taking place Wednesday July 15, 9am Pacific Time. Click here to learn more and register for the webcast.

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Ingredients for Millennial Marketing Success

Hold the presses. A miracle has occurred. A brand mastered the art of millennial marketing. 

Channing Tatum participated in a Reddit AMA last week to promote Magic Mike XXL and a charity campaign for the Runa Foundation. AMA stands for “Ask Me Anything” and was something created by Reddit users as a way to have an open democratic interview with any individual. The interviewee could be anyone – from the President of the United States to Big Bird, basically anyone with an interesting story. Using the Reddit platform allows for any person in the world to ask a question and the best ones get voted up and are answered in real-time by the interviewee.

During Tatum’s AMA, he was asked the following question by a user:

Hello Channing Tatum! This is something I've always wanted clarified since it happened ... were you ever in Sea-Tac airport at the Chili's restaurant looking for a beer but IDless? I was the one working there who had to make the difficult decision as to whether we could serve you or not.

It all ended with a picture of you giving each of us a peck on the cheek, myself included. It's still one of my favorite stories to tell so I hope I wasn't just duped by a very convincing look-alike.

Tatum answered with the following:

That absolutely was me. Because I love Chili's. And no one believed me that i got into an airport without my id. I just wanted a beer and some chicken crisps, and i actually couldn't get either of them for a while, because i remember you guys didn't have chicken crisps either! what's a Chili's without chicken crisps?

Are you ready for the best part of this story? Yes, it gets even better.

Within hours after Channing Tatum told this hilarious story, Chili’s took to their Twitter to not only personally apologize for being out of Chicken Crispers, but to also tell Tatum that they hoped to make up for his poor experience with a donation to the charity organization he was promoting , Runa Foundation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Channing Tatum story was one of the week’s most popular topics on blogs such as TechCrunch, Mashable, USWeekly, Vanity Fair, Gawker and CBS. Audiences, especially the millennial demographic, couldn’t stop talking, tweeting and posting about it.

So what’s my point? I believe Chili’s cooked up the marketing recipe for capturing the hearts, and wallets, of the millennial consumer: listen and pay attention to what’s going on outside your own social and cultural channels, respond in a timely and personalized way – and don’t forget the side of social responsibility.

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