This SmartBrief Insights guest post comes from Deirdre Reid, CAE is an association consultant, speaker and trainer focusing on member engagement and social media at Deirdre Reid LLC. Connect with her @DeirdreReid.

Umair Haque, in his Harvard Business Review post, From Social Media to Social Strategy, believes social strategies will change the essence of organizations and social media tools can be a catalyst for that change. He talks about seven social strategies that will be the key to success and help organizations provide meaningful and sustainable value to members, customers and communities. I’ve already examined Character, Control and Creativity. Today let’s look at Culture.

Culture

Haque defines culture as “how an organization makes sense of the world, a set of assumptions internalized by all its members.” He believes that social media can help an organization redesign “accountability, roles, tasks, processes and incentives” – factors that shape its culture. It’s not the tools that will spur these changes; rather it’s the new mindsets and behaviors that result from participating in social media.

Ideally, social media isn’t housed in one department, but is part of everyone’s job. Staff collaborates across department walls to listen to and engage with members and to collect or create content for them. Job descriptions change to reflect these social objectives.

The fuzzy line between personal and professional blurs even more. We are all indexed by Google. If a member searches for our name, they will find both our personal and professional social media presence. Like it or not, we are our associations’ ambassadors online. We shouldn’t be expected to censor our personal interests or opinions, but should be thoughtful about them, applying the grandmother test when in doubt – “what would grandma think?” This may be the most troubling and difficult area of the social media revolution because it does hit home, literally.

Just as being ‘out there’ may cause anxiety for staff and supervisors, having a public social media presence may cause indigestion for leadership. We like the idea of controlling our message but now we’re at the mercy of our Facebook page or blog visitors. This is a new relationship with the outside world, but a healthy one. We stand for what we believe in and create a community of fans to help us spread our message.

In a new space like social media that is still evolving, we experiment to see what works best for us and our members. We expect to encounter some missteps and failure – that’s part of the learning and growth process. At many associations staff is not incentivized to stretch or take risks. We’re expected to draw within the lines and are rewarded for that. Staff should have the opportunity to suggest a new idea and (1) not have someone else take credit, (2) not hear “never going to happen” or “not the way we do things” before it’s been thoughtfully considered, and (3) not be worried about being seen as someone who rocks the boat.

Although our goal is to succeed, not every new idea will. What is the real penalty for failure? A poor performance evaluation? Loss of credibility? Loss of access to leadership? Loss of budget? There has to be some room for pilot programs or experimentation with the agreement that it’s possible they won’t go the way we planned but that we’ll make adjustments and learn from the experience. Let’s use our social media programs to practice failing forward and experimenting with ways our culture can evolve to be more collaborative, learning-oriented, meaningful and brave.

This SmartBrief Insights guest post comes from Deirdre Reid, CAE is an association consultant, speaker and trainer focusing on member engagement and social media at Deirdre Reid LLC. Connect with her @DeirdreReid. Read Part 1 and Part 2 of the series at SmartBlog Insights.

Umair Haque, in his Harvard Business Review post, From Social Media to Social Strategy, believes social strategies will change the essence of organizations and social media tools can be a catalyst for that change. He talks about seven social strategies that will be the key to success and help organizations provide meaningful and sustainable value to members, customers and communities. I’ve already examined Character and Control. Today it’s Creativity.

Creativity

Haque says most organizations “defend old (ideas) tooth and nail: a formidable source of antisocial behavior.” There are many reasons for this, some I’ll discuss when I look at Culture as a social strategy. One culprit is group-think and its cousin, the leadership bubble. It’s easier to climb the leadership ladder and be endorsed by those in power when you think like them and view the world through the same spectacles. You’re a safe choice; you won’t threaten their legacy. But what are the chances for new perspectives and ideas in this environment? Is there a way to combat this group-think?

Haque suggests, “The creativity strategy hinges on utilizing social tools to explode how imaginative organizations are.” How? Implementing social media is a learning process for everyone – how to use the tools and, more importantly, how to behave in this new space and adopt new approaches to member relations, member service, marketing, professional development, public relations, political action and more. We have to stretch and move out of our comfort zone as we do new things in new ways – effective exercises for our creative muscles.

As more staff and members become involved in the social media space, they’re exposed to new ideas and perspectives and new sources for professional development – all catalysts for new ways of thinking and creativity. Another side effect of social media is collaboration. Social media can’t operate in a silo. Integrating social media into an association’s operations requires staff to work together across departments. When walls break down, people are often more comfortable in changing together the way they’ve always done things.

Social media platforms are continual online focus groups. If you listen you can learn a lot about your members – their interests, needs and worries. By being receptive and responsive, you give members permission to provide valuable content and ideas that help you steer the association in the best direction.

Social media can also give people their chance to shine. It may be the medium that finally allows some staff and members to contribute in a way that’s more natural to them. It’s a conversational and content-rich space. There’s a greater emphasis on personality and “being real.” Perhaps it can help loosen up some folks who feel left out by the existing culture and protocol. Now instead of bringing only their left brain to work or a meeting, their right brain can come along too. These social sharing types are assets in this new space. Encourage them to collaborate and experiment. Get them in a conference room (or online chat room) with others and let them come up with new ideas and approaches for making your association more meaningful and valuable to your members.

This SmartBrief Insights guest post comes from Janet McNichol, SPHR, CAE, is the Human Resources Director at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. She is passionate about health and wellness and blogs about her experience managing ASHA’s program at Inside Workplace Wellness. Connect with her on LinkedIn or  Twitter at @jmcnichol.  

We’ve had a lot of success with our wellness program over the years. Many staff members participate in screenings and educational events and 25% of the staff take at least one exercise class a week in the office. While we are pleased with the level of participation, there are still more employees that we are hoping to reach. We decided to build on the TV excitement and kick off a Biggest Loser program in January 2010 — 99 staff members (40% of the staff) signed up to participate! This far exceeded our expectations.

We have an ongoing relationship with LifeWork Strategies, an affiliate of Adventist Health Care. They have done our on-site screenings for years and our staff trusts them. We contracted with them to handle all the screenings and most of the education for our Biggest Loser program.

We calendared out the whole program and shared that information with staff before they made a commitment to participate. This turned out to be critical to the success of the program. People knew what to expect and what they were committing to do from the start. We even had everyone sign a pledge of participation and encouraged everyone to take the commitment seriously.

We formed 11 Biggest Loser Teams. Our 12 week program included the following components:

Screenings and Assessments

We conducted assessments at the beginning, middle and end of the program. Each assessment included weight, BMI, body fat, waist circumference, push-ups, sit-ups, flexibility and blood pressure. The initial and end point assessments also included a blood draw with a lipid panel and a glucose test. These blood tests were the biggest expense to the program. About a week after the initial assessment, each individual met one-on-one with a nurse and received a written report with the results. People also set individual goals for themselves.

If we do this again, we’ll probably keep the screenings simpler — just weight, body fat, and maybe cholesterol and blood glucose. We’ll save the fitness related assessments for other programs.

Weekly Weigh-Ins

We required all the participants to weigh-in weekly and report their weight confidentially via our intranet. Although public humiliation can be motivational, we decided to deviate from the show in this respect. We have good doctor’s office type scales in both our men’s and women’s locker rooms, but we used a basic digital scale at the initial screenings since it was easy to move. Afterward, we put it in the HR area for people to use for their weekly weigh-ins. LifeWorks Strategies kept the “official” numbers for our participants and we recognized our winners at the conclusion of the program based on the “official” numbers.

Team Challenges

The program included three Biggest Loser Team Challenges. Participation increased with each challenge and there were lots of smiles and laughter. True Athlete Performance planned and executed the events for us. They have experience running high school sports combines, so putting 11 teams through three challenges in two hours was a walk in the park for them.

A few people asked us what the activities would be, but we decided to keep the specifics under wraps much like the show. We did let folks know that there would be a speed and agility challenge, a strength challenge and a balance challenges. The activities were all things the participants could do dressed in their casual Friday attire and tennis shoes. We declared first, second and third place with bragging rights being the prize. You can read more about each of the team challenges and see pictures here, here and here.

Next week we will explore the rest of the program components and share our results.

Peg Stomierowski Gould is a writer and editor, focusing on executive leadership, health and wellness, financial services and other business topics. Connect with her on LinkedIn. Her first post in this series “Pitching your projects” can be read here.

We’re still basking in the lessons from the American Independent Writers annual conference –“New Realities, the (R)evolution of Writing and Publishing.” AIW is expanding and changing with the times, raising a collective voice in behalf of writers. Now the organization is unveiling plans to found its own publishing arm, AIW Press. Its first book, using self-publishing technologies, will chronicle lessons about the writing field from its membership.

Last week I discussed how writers waited in line at the recent AIW conference to briefly pitch writing project ideas to publishing agents.  I also recalled a reflection from broadcast journalist Barbara Walters, whose wrote in her memoir Audition about how often in life she felt she was trying out for one thing or another — with the vulnerability that entails.

Many of you can relate to her observation. Outside of work, you audition for relationships of all kinds, trying not to lose yourself along the way. You will audition repeatedly during the course of your career, alongside others of various ages, backgrounds and talents, for jobs, projects and other opportunities.  And if you’ve been around for awhile, you may be identified with projects that have run their course and that can help or hurt, so it’s critical to stay ahead of change.

How well do you know how to express to your group or audience the essence of who you are today, what you want, and where you intend to go and take others? Consider it a matter of coming up with your own special brand. At the same time, part of the challenge is being coachable – able to improve your skills — while preserving your authenticity: knowing who you are and what you want to convey.  Audiences respond to that as well as to creative content, so be attentive in selecting coaching systems for yourselves and others.

And if effective presentation isn’t a strength of yours, some business coaching may help.  Use whatever tools are available that can help you stay ahead of developments in your field — SmartBrief newsletters are a good start. Learn to deliver your pitch with presence and flare.