Dimen Designs

CEO Online Identity Means Owning Your Online Brand

I posted recently about CEO's creating & maintaining their online identities and it was a compilation of everything I've read and heard over the last 10-12 years of being an avid Net Native.

But that was my own gut so it was nice to see Fred write a post supporting my basic premise as well:

So to all the people out there wondering about the role of social media in their career plans, I second David Karp's recommendation. Build and own your online brand and don't let others define it for you.

How Do CEOs Create and Maintain Their Internet Identity?

This question came over the transom today at work from a potential client in the IT function of a Spanish company that manages mobility & telecommunications infrastructures, how would you respond? 

"This is about creating/maintaining CEO’s internet identity.”

I removed specific work references but here was my overall response:
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But I know some prominent CEOs do blog (Ford; former Sun Microsystems chief Jonathan Schwartz—been blogging for a long time, quite good at it; Zappo’s, etc.) so there is a precedent for CEOs owning their online identity.

Here’s my advice, not work-certified at all, completely my personal feelings based on all the reading & studying that I’ve done in the online identity space over the last 10years:

Here’s what to tell him to do, which is quite simple—write a blog (or better yet, do a quick video blog so that people start recognizing him as a real person and not a CEO in the ivory towers) and talk about what’s going on with your company and the industry. But DON’T write press releases or write it like a typical CEO writes or presents to analysts or to Wall St. Be a human, be honest, and be conversational AND DO IT EVERY DAY. I’m not running to blogs as the answer to everything, because they’re not, but they are the right answer or platform in this situation.

Does a CEO email every day? Then he can surely blog every day. It’s as simple as that-- overcome the noise with your own words.

But this is inherently hard work. There is no shortcut to success here. It’s going to take at least 2-3 years of HARD WORK & DEDICATION to blogging (or whatever platform or channel he chooses) to really craft/maintain the online identity that he wants. And he better be insightful or an expert in what he’s talking about or otherwise people won’t link to him and that what he needs, to be seen as an influencer, authority, and thought-leader in his space—that’s what creates & maintains your internet identity.

Writing and contributing to the community will ensure that you create/maintain/own your online identity because a CEO has an online identity right now, whether he knows it or likes it or not, so he can let others define it or he can start writing, posting, commenting on what’s going on with everything his company and industry is involved with and shape his online presence to what he wants. Address the controversial topics and tell Legal to back off, that he/she needs to write openly and honestly whenever possible. You no longer control the message or your identity (privacy is dead, see Scott McNealy at Sun again) so the CEO themselves have to own it.

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How'd I do?

Innovative Customer Service Organizations - Zappos Mini-Case Study

I used to work exclusively researching the customer service function of Fortune 500 companies but since moving to London, I'm moved into a new role more involved with product management.

For that reason, I do excited (as only a researcher can) when you read positive coverage in the mainstream news about customer service successes. We have experienced and read about the horror stories about customer service (long wait times, never speaking to an actual person, having to call back multiple times to resolve issues, etc.) so those rare stories about satisfied, happy customers that do reach the media really stick in my mind. The reason we don't hear more about happy customer service stories is because most often customer service does it's job and customers don't think twice about it; conversely, one bad experience with customer service and that's what you remember and tell your friends

Beyond the rarity of those positive customer service experiences in the media, however, is the even more unusual coverage of innovative practices or stores from the customer service world. When you read those stories in the press, you really get excited.

  logo via Google.

So with preface, I wanted to make sure Zappo's recent coverage was recognized. Zappos is an online shoe company that has made a name for itself with it's quirky, non-traditional approaches to customer service. And what's garnered them their most recent news coverage is their policy of paying newly hired staff to quit, if the employee doesn't feel that they're a good fit with the company.  As a researcher  of the customer service function for Fortune 500 companies, I'm not suggesting that what Zappos is doing is best practice or even the right policy for *most* companies.

But the idea, or insight underlying Zappo's policy is valuable and transferrable across industries and different sized companies: it's not company culture that Zappos is directly going after with this policy (although it's a nice side benefit), what this policy underscores is that retaining staff is more cost-efficient than the hiring and onboarding training of new staff.

In fact, in the medium and long run (6months and up to 3+ years), customer service will see a much larger return on investment (staff productivity in this case) from the retention of the *right* staff versus the hiring and re-hiring of staff who don't stay with the job for long enough-- that may seem obvious but less known to most people is that retaining those *right* people, even if they're not the all-stars, is more cost efficient than trying to hire the very best of the best who don't stay in the customer service position for as long (they're promoted or poached by competitors).

So for all of those reasons, watch the Harvard Business Review video below on paying non-*right* new hires to quit and better understand this mini-case from Zappos. Think about how you can apply the idea of retaining your solid performers versus hiring the all-stars in your particular business or organization.

Battelle's Web2.0 Interview With Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg

Calacanis recommended Evan Williams' presentation from the Web 2.0 Summit last week but since I'm on a PC and I think Evan's presentation is in Apple's Keynote format, you'll have to settle for John Battelle's interview with Mark Zuckerberg:

And I had to laugh, as Battelle also noted when Mark come on stage, that he was wearing the now  ubiquitous Adidas sandals/slides. Those sandals are like Steve Jobs' jeans, no belt, and black turtleneck attire, Zuckerberg is always wearing those sandals (and usually a North face fleece too) whenever you see him.

I wonder if he'll be wearing those sandals to the big Facebook company-wide meeting this Tuesday?

Seven Takeaways on Innovation (No, the World is Not Flat)

A few important takeaways on The Economist’s recent special report on innovation. Worth reading for anyone interested in economic development, global competitiveness, and entrepreneurial activity in the world. And for the Friedman ‘the world is flat’ crowd and Richard Florida’s ‘creative class’ disciples, there’s something here for you too (emphasis added).

1. The debate between idea creation and execution isn't as important as you think, more critical is the filtering process between ideas and execution


2. Failure is good but fast failures are key (the U.S. has an advantage here, e.g. the ease of declaring bankruptcy and starting a new business endeavor without any baggage)


3. Radical innovation and disruptive innovation are different and the two are often conflated


4. User-driven Innovation: Listening to only your best (high value, etc.) customers can skew your innovations towards the niche and erode your market share with the mighty middle. Kenneth Morse of MIT's Entrepreneurship Center advocates firms should keep closer watch on new and dissatisfied users, who are much more likely to be source of disruptive ideas.


5. Richard Lyons of NBER and Goldman Sachs argues that “commoditisation often occurs even faster in services than in physical products because innovations are easier to copy, patents can provide less protection, upfront costs are lower, & product cycles are shorter


6. For businesses that use open, networked innovation, it matters less where ideas are invented and more about extracting value from ideas wherever they come from.

[This seems to fly in the face of Michael Porter’s work on innovation clusters and Richard Florida's new book/research that location does matter (listed to his keynote from the Human Capital Institute conference last April, podcast here, where his new data shows that it's still job satisfaction, job challenge and responsibility, and relationships with coworkers BUT that it's also about your community's openness to new ideas and people.]

7. Sergey Brin insists that “Silicon Valley doesn't have better ideas and isn't smarter than the rest of the world' but has an edge in filtering ideas and executing them (there's that filtering idea between innovative idea creation and the execution of those creative ideas, no. 1 above). Or put another way, domineering bosses and governments can only drive innovation so far because 'creative people like to challenge constraints and authority.'

(From the articles A dark art no more (#1-3), The Love-In (#4-7), & The Age of Mass Innovation (#7))

So what does all of this mean? Or why are these takeaways worth mentioning?

I studied International Political Economy in school and combined with having worked in economic development for the city of Colorado Springs, I like to read and study about economic development, innovation, competitiveness, and globalization for the long-term, macro reasons.

At a more personal level, I want to know how where the economy and business world is going in the next five to ten years and how this will affect entrepreneurs: given the changes we’re seeing above, how can new companies or business models develop that  harness the knowledge and implications of these insights above?

And just so you or I can make a buck (which there’s nothing wrong with) but also so society in general can enjoy an expanding economic pie. Improving our own lot can, should, and does improve the lot of others.

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Now playing: Stars - My Favourite Book