Executive 2.0
Bill Taylor on Havard Business Review’s site had an immensely popular post about Zappos offering $1000 to employees to walk vs. starting their position. It was essentially a test a test of commitment. His latest post starting digging into why that post was so popular: “what would it take for you to leave what you are doing?” Taylor asked.
Interesting enough, a commenter pointed out that Tony Hsieh is more like CEO 2.0, he wonders what it means that his employees follow him on twitter but he asks them directly to hear their thoughts. He understands the importance of his front line and (as I pointed out in my comment on the thread) his business model surprises customers with their customer service. Here’s the comment:
Tony Hsieh is part of a new generation of CEOs who understand that the front-line to customers has grown beyond the 1-800-number. Whether it’s by paying new customer service reps to leave to see how dedicated they are - or by listening and engaging customers through Social Media platforms, Tony gets that customers are king.
What this lead to, is me thinking about executives and how they are embracing social and other technologies in different ways. I wish I had a visual for this one but just yesterday I attended a conference arranged by the Executives Club of Chicago, during the second half of the conference, Jonathan Swartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems, attended and gave a speech via his avatar in Second Life.
I was immediately amused but I also listened to how Sun has held events virtually and encourages their staff to keep blogs.
Coming back from the conference I came across this Adweek piece featuring Dell’s CMO, Mark Jarvis. The article focuses on Dell’s reaction to negative feedback on their customer service in the blogosphere and how they’ve come to embrace social media. What interested me was how clearly Jarvis understands social media and the importance of it.
“The Germans and British no longer believe anything you say in an ad,” he said. That makes advertising pretty pointless. You have to think of how you’re going to reach people in different ways.”
Post by post, link by link Direct2Dell gained credibility from bloggers. One key reason: It didn’t censor negative comments posted about problems. A post last August about the delay in shipping new In-spiron notebooks drew hundreds of comments from frustrated and irate customers. Taking the criticism when the company screws up builds authenticity.
Of course CEOs writing blogs is not a new trend, Seth provided his recommendations for CEO blogs back in 2004. But we’re starting to see how some CEOs are embracing social media themselves to engage with their companies and understanding what impact it can have on parts of their business.
