by Dale Shumaker
4spirit@gmail.com
The Now Revolution by Jay Baer and Amber Haslund, is about the shifts in business that are making it a real-time event. The real-time shifts include engineering a new bedrock, finding talent you can trust, organizing your armies, answering the new telephone, sharpening response-ability, building fire extinguishers, and setting up your calculator.
In each section Baer/Haslund included "Now Hear This" features of ideas you can put to work. In this summary, those ideas will be featured too.
The adoption of the social web opens the way for the whole culture to participate. Inside and out side the glass bubble in which your business now exists. Along with the business of making money, how you balance your goals with the human and emotional sides of business becomes critically important. A healthy real-time culture has solidarity (reflections of one voice), demonstrated trust, curiosity to try things and see what works along extensive feedback lines, diversity of individuals and their ideas and rewards systems that fit their being-appreciated language. Now Hear This: If you suspect your employees would like to give feedback but are intimidated, set up an anonymous email account with a public password that anyone can log into and send an email to management with their thoughts. Know what you stand for as an organization beyond your product or service.
The second shift is finding talent you can trust. Every person is a spokes person for the company.
The best way to build this is hire the right ones. Before you bring then in, observe their LinkedIn profiles, blogs, Facebook activity, twitter and where they show up on search engines. Now Hear This: When possible, try to pair self-starters on teams with more reluctant, skeptical, or less confident employees to see if the motivated members can help instill and nurture this quality in others.
Communicate your cultural manifesto, values and guiding principles for your business in video, a public page on your website. Like Martin Luther nailing his 95 thesis to a church door, both your team and customers will have a visible, tangible picture of your values.
The third shift is organizing your armies. We all need to communicate faster without and within, with more fluidity and less friction. Crushing the things that have given us a false sense of security and bottle-necking consistency, real-time communication makes skills of social media a necessity. Stay flexible and build integrated social media teams. Each base of social media should follow this path... authenticity, listening, going where they are, personal voice, learning through action, sharing and open source.
Use your internal social networks or collaboration tools to centralize meeting notes, highlights, and let others in your organization/associate network read about what everyone is doing. Keeping everyone informed in real time. You can conduct quick, free online polls in just minutes using software programs like Polldaddy.com. Routinely share stories of triumphs, mishaps... both successes and failures teach us important lessons about speed and inter-connectivity. Everyone needs training from each other on this.
Shift four is answer the telephone. Everyone's talking online... tweets, social forums, Facebook, blogs, so we need to be listening and respond when it affects us. They may not call you to complain about your service directly, but post a comment on their Facebook wall. This is our phone ringing and we need to answer where they are talking. look for key words like "I wish they had" or "really needs". A few tweets could turn it around. Create technology tools to listen for when your name comes up. Collect, report, respond. It's a listen, respond, then talk to your group. It's real time and the committee method is too slow to get opinions and respond. In real time business, everyone on deck is the voice of the business.
Shift five emphasizes response-ability. The communication highway starts with listening, responding, participating (in a corporate blog, category blog, topic blog), and storytelling. Email is commonly use as a dissemination vehicle, but it can be used to implement stories collected. Create a story dedicated email (story@...) and ask your team, associates, fans, customers to send in all interesting tidbits to share experiences. Re-share through email, blog, your intranet page. Wiki's, LinkedIn groups are sources to consider. Add alerts at the top for "message of the day."
Shift six is to build a fire extinguisher. Real time business has it dangers. The more who know you and know what you do the greater the chances of someone lighting fires of discord, within and without. It's easy to complain and discredit someone on the social social web. If it happens, you need to be ready and have your fire extinguisher near by. People can make a mountain out of a mole hill, set a forest on fire with one match. Fires grow with wind, fuel and direction of the wind. A person or company can be hurt greatly in a short period of time. This fear was demonstrated in the financial meltdown that launched the great recession of 2009. In hours, days, within a week a country could have been ruined.
If your fire extinguisher is set up, and near by, an incident can be warded off quickly. Keep binoculars close by so you can see the smoke. Create systems to sound the alarm so the fire trucks can be dispersed quickly.
Social media crisis has eight components. Acknowledge the crisis. Fight social media fire with social water. (Make sure your CEO has a small camera with him at all times to respond quickly where ever he may be.) Be sorry, say it and mean it. Create an FAQ. Have a "communication alert" built into your social connection network so they hear your side of the story quickly, and you build your base of support quickly. Build a pressure relief valve. Create a mechanism that enables interested persons to subscribe to crisis related notifications via email or text message. Know when to take it offline. Arm your army. So they know what's going on and how to respond. Their social network will ask them. Learn your lessons. Evaluate what just happened and if your response system worked as you liked. Then rebuild your fire extinguisher for the next fire.
Shift seven is to make a calculator. Use social media to measure your culture. Create a mechanism for collecting stories and anecdotes that don't show up on graphs.
We are in a new era of democracy. The influence of size, budgets, location, product mix is waning. In their place are speed, smarts, humanization, and an embrace of social media.
The Now Revolution:
http://nowrevolutionbook.com/
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus said that everything covered up will be revealed, and all that is secret will be known to all. (Luke 12:12)
In the Revelation, it says we will be judged by all we have done on earth, in the open or in private. What we do in the dark will be brought to light, and made known to all. (Luke 8:17) We will be given at the end of our lives all that we deserve... if good, eternal reward, if bad eternal devastation. (Revelation 2:2)
It says in Hebrews(1) that we each have angels assigned to us. They exist to care for us and watch over us.
When you think about it, when you are alone, they (angels) are there. Everything you are doing is being monitored and recorded. It will eventually be brought to light. What we are dong will be either rewarded or exposed to our demise. We really can't get away with anything if it is not a good thing. It eventually comes out in the open. First by our behavior as it will change and then the acts themselves may be revealed. What is done in the dark and brought to light is made evident with our technology age.
It is said a computer's hard drive contains information, even if stripped manually, that skilled technicians can recover whatever was ever on the hard drive. When we inadvertently have a hard drive crash, skilled technicians can recover what was on it. So what was done is there forever. What we have tried to hide can be found out. We have seen the quick devastation to lives who use text, email with inappropriate communication. When discovered, it can in an instant be shared with the whole world. Those who tried to conceal things, will have it brought to light and the whole world will know. Nothing can be concealed today securely so no one knows.
God said he would remember our sins no more, if we confess them. It is better to come clean, admit indiscretions and seek His forgiveness as soon as possible. He said He will forgive and, even more so, forget them, and we are to continue on a better path. If we have a weakness, the more we do this(sincerely ask forgiveness), the stronger we will get to eventually overcome it. God's love is enduring and will work with the sincere broken heart over a matter.
If we become arrogant and don't ask God for His help, and try to act like all is great and fine, it will be found out, and exposed to all. Some may continue in pride to do wrong in secret but act like a wonderful saint in public. Those sins will be found out, and this person will be judged on the last days. If the person does not repent and beg God's forgiveness, he will be lost forever.
So it's better to stay humble, recognize our shortcomings, admit them to God, ask for help, and not act so great around others. "Those with a humble and contrite heart are close to the Lord."
What is hidden will be brought to light. So may what is hidden be good deeds, fair actions, kind gestures to others... that the good you do is brought to light. As Angels watch over us, may they be our assistants in doing good, and not our record keepers of what we are doing wrong. Be true to God in private and in public. What you do in secret is expressed in public. May the good you do, be matured in public that helps mankind, spreads love and shows the Love of God in the universe.
Our choices then.
Know that God knows. Admit mistakes and seek His forgiveness. He will forgive and forget.
What we do that's good, that no one knows, God knows. He will note and reward us according to the good we do on earth. It encourages us to know that the good we do, even if no one knows, that God knows and He is faithful to reward us.
If we do wrong, in secret, and we try to hide it, and show arrogance in acting like we are such a wonderful person, the truth of our hypocrisy will be found out. It will come to light.
Angels are watching over all things. Think again, do what is good, commendable and worthy of praise. Angels are around us to help us do good for people. "... servants to care for people who will inherit salvation from the coming destruction." Through Jesus we escape horrors. With Jesus, all things are possible to be victorious in all we face.
Two choices... pick doing good in secret. The rewards are greater.
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