Open Text need to innovate to survive and prosper or they face extinction (average lifespan is only 40-50 years). Many companies have failed to survive. Why?
An organization’s natural mind set is to focus on protecting and repeating past successes. As a result, they become more and more inward facing.
And as they become more and more inward facing, they lose touch with their customers and the socio-cultural context in which they exist. They lose their creativity.
To put it another way: Companies die because their managers focus on the economic activity of producing goods and services, and they forget that their organizations’ true nature is that of a community of humans. The legal establishment, business educators, and the financial community all join them in this mistake.
This was written in a Blog post by Joyce Hostyn (except that she didn't started with 'Open Text need to invent' it should be companies, but i think Open Text is a company too). It rendered here 3 comments – however and perhaps a little bit sad, they where all comming from the Open Text itself.
After reading this and also posting a (stupid?) comment to a blog post without reaction from the author. I started to think – how Social is Open Text actually? (beeing one of the great evangelist in this area). It's quite a tricky question and there are certainly experts that could answer such a question better. However I started to analyze the public sources.
Linkedin was a bad surprise - eventhough the Open Text group had 938 members (241 from Open Text) i could only find about 10 discussions. So instead i turned to the main Web Site.
Open Text Conversations - Meet the Experts
This is the Main Public Channel where Open Text Meets there Customers. Analyzing all the posts in this forum I found the following communication Pattern:
In Average about 27% of the Posts had one or more comments. I then divided the comments in two groups; Comments from other people and Conversations where the author also replied back. So about 30% of the posts had a comment and in these comments over 70% never had a dialog, just a few comments.
That's quite interesting. How come? Here is a chance of dialog but there is no one answering back.Well - how social are these experts? Could i measure it? I put there underlying blogs into "Delicious" and checked if other people are following them and here is what "My Delicious" came back with (putting in the blog as bookmark).
- Martin's Fulcrum Musings - 2 bookmarks
- The Evolution of Communication (Kimberly Edwards) - 0 bookmarks
- Product Four (Deb Lavoy) - 6 bookmarks
- Marci Maddox - 0 bookmars
- Ap Optimization Blog (Tom Walker) - 0 bookmarks
- iVision (Janet Luisser) - 0 bookmarks
- Managedemail.blogspot.com (Jeremy Barnes) - 0 bookmarks
- Peter Near - 0 bookmarks
- ForeWebSake (Craig Hepburn) - 10 bookmarks
- Joycehostyn - 0 bookmarks
- Adam Howatson's blog - 0 bookmarks
- Branding 2.0 (Jennifer Mccredie) - 0 bookmarks
Delicious is perhaps not the right place and I did perhaps something wrong - but the number of people bookmarking the Content Experts is not huge.
Open Text Conversations - The Great Communicator
If you drop a comment to one of these experts who is most likely to answer? It's hard question - I think for example that no one (never?) has commented anyting that Tom Walker has written, so some of them never got the chance to get back.
But it looks like the Great Communicator is Deb Lavoy of all the posts done in the Open Text Conversation Forum - June 2009 she had a post with 17 comments . And looking at her posts - if someone is putting in a comment she often replies.
How Social is Open Text - Conclusions
If we don't look at broadcasting information (like Twitter where OT broadcasts about 820 Tweets to 1962 people) it looks there are some room for improvements. Perhaps comming back on comments from people are one way to start a dialogue.
The questsion could also be twisted around, How Social are the customers of Open Text? Do Open Text have 5 customers, 100 customers or perhaps over 1000 customers? Why are they not bothering - are they too stupid to understand, to ignorant, to uninterested or ... ?
For me it's quite hard to understand how the Experts at Open Text could put in hours and hours of work in broadcasting content and then not thinking about why no one is replying or starting to argue about what is send. Or have they lost touch with their customers and the socio-cultural context in which they exist? Or am I to blind, blunt or both? But as Joyce put it:
Companies die because their managers focus on the economic activity of producing goods and services, and they forget that their organizations’ true nature is that of a community of humans.
Hi Sten - you're right to notice that we're evolving in this space, and I'm amazed and delighted by how important you feel this is. Your analysis here is impressive, and gave me the chance to review some old posts of my own.
SvaraRaderaWe're very excited about how our social presence - and that of our customers - is developing. Look for more of us on twitter and linked in - not just @opentext. I look forward to engaging with you more here, there and everywhere. - Deb (your "great communicator ;-)
Hi Sten, nice to see you've found my blog! Your excerpt above is from my very first post on Feb 17, so am not surprised that comments are low to start as it takes time (along with great content) while to build readership and conversation. My most recent post generated more dialog (see the exchanges in the comments on last week's post on designing a holistic customer experience - http://www.joycehostyn.com/blog/2010/03/31/designing-for-a-holistic-customer-experience-%e2%80%93-thinking-outside-the-product/
SvaraRaderaGoing social is a learning journey... both for individuals and for companies. Like any learning journey, it take experimentation, feedback, and adaptibility.
I'll be experimenting with posts in the upcoming months to see what engages people and stimulates conversation. I hope to see you there!
Joyce
Great to have some comments - it feels quite stupid to write about comments and then not getting any comments.
SvaraRaderaIs it still so that blogging, reading bloggs and commenting is not seen as real work? It’s perhaps like when the Web was growing 10 years ago, surfing during working time was not good behavior (regardless where you surfed). Do we have to replace the word Social Media with a word like Professional Media to make it acceptable?
I think you've nailed it with your comment that "blogging, reading blogs, and comments is not seen as real work"... this is still the case in many companies. Though it's starting to shift. Maybe for those in business, the new term gaining popularity - social business - will help make it more acceptable. As will the stories that are beginning circulate more and more on value being realized.
SvaraRadera