Social CEO

On my travels, I met with the CEO of Ocean Park (disclosure: a client) in Hong Kong. Ocean Park is a theme park that promises to connect people with nature and provide memorable experiences for all. Although I had several memorable experiences seeing my first Panda and getting a personal behind the scenes tour of how Pandas are taken care of, I also had an unplanned memorable experience that had simply to do with people.  After my presentation on Social CEOs to the executive team, Ocean Park’s CEO Tom Merhrmann joined us outside as we started our tour. Tom is a very social CEO as you can see in his discussion of the Halloween bash with Marketing Magazine or impersonating Elvis, let alone his presence on Facebook and LinkedIn.

When we were outside the meeting room, we quickly ran into two Ocean Park visitors who were enjoying the park. Within seconds, I saw Tom offering to take their picture with one of the girl’s cameras. I had no doubt that the visitors had no idea who he was but were only glad to have their picture taken together to create their own memories of the day. It was nice to see that how observant he was of his customers’ concerns. A few seconds later, I turned around to see him picking up some litter that had fallen to the ground. Between watching a CEO connecting with customers and picking up a speck of garbage to keep a park pristine as it could be, he reminded me that being socially-media savvy is just one element of leadership.

As I mentioned, I am traveling in Asia to talk about social CEOs and generally spread the good word about our thought leadership and Weber Shandwick. It is so terribly interesting to present our research and learn what people have to say and listen to the kinds of questions they ask. Today in Shanghai  someone asked me what type of emotional commitment a CEO has to make to become a social CEO. What a great question! It definitely takes an emotional commitment. Not only does a CEO have to commit time and resources but there is a genuine personal commitment as that goes hand in hand with being social. You are putting yourself on the line as well as your ego. It also takes courage. In our new upcoming research which we have not released yet, executives are quite aware that being a social CEO takes courage. It is not for the faint-hearted. However, one CEO reminded me that the CEO job is all about risk anyhow. True.

In addition, at a presentation yesterday  in Beijing, someone mentioned that even if you cannot get your CEO to be social (meaning using social media in some shape or form), CEOs need to commit to “the intrinsic value of sociability.” He rightly said that sociability (whether online or not) should not be ignored in this business environment. It can make a significant difference. Smart advice.

Am on a tour of Asia to talk about our research on social CEOs. Obviously, social media is at different stages in various markets which is making my presentations very interesting to me (hopefully to others too!). When I was in Tokyo earlier this week, we found ourselves talking about how new social media was still new (only 10 years old at most) but how quickly it had grown in Japan recently. My Japanese colleagues told me how the reputation of social media or SNS (social networking systems), as they call it, has improved after the horrific earthquake and tsunami of two years ago. Since the telephone networks were not working, people turned to Twitter and Facebook to communicate. On the Twitter blog, they said that there was a 500% increase in Tweets from Japan when the earthquake hit. In turn, I told the story of how websites changed from static brochureware after 9-11 into two-way gateways when it became apparent that people wanted to be able to find out from company websites if people were okay, if financial transactions were still going through and what time to show up for work the next day in New York. Interesting parallels of how disasters can quickly change behavior and how social media’s reputation turned positive when emergencies are at hand.

Am trying to keep my eyes open. I arrived in Tokyo late last night or should I say early this morning and hoping to adjust before I hit the road visiting our offices, talking to media, presenting research on social CEOs and meeting clients. I thought it would be a good idea to look at The New York Times and understand a headline I saw about “fire ice” in Japan. Why that would necessarily keep me awake, I can’t explain. Perhaps I thought it would distract me from wanting to sleep.

But I was glad because I also found an uplifting oped from David Brooks. I was drawn into it because he started out talking about how he goes to conferences hoping they will provide him with fodder for his twice-a-week columns. His conclusion is that these conference conveners are the same ones that make it on the glossy covers of business magazines and other upscale publications. They are flashes in the pan. He then goes on to say that all those quiet, unassuming, downhome executives are the real movers and shakers we should be hoping to learn from. He says the following as way of contrast with the cover boys:

“Meanwhile, the anonymous drudges at American farming corporations are exporting $135 billion worth of products every year and transforming the American Midwest. The unfashionable executive at petrochemical companies have been uprooting plants from places like Chile, relocating them to places like Louisiana, transforming economic prospects in the Southeast. Most important of all, the boring old oil and gas engineers have transformed the global balance of power.”

Brooks pays homage to the “Material Boys” — the people who grow grain, drill for fuel and lay pipeline. He calls them the real winners. This peaked my interest because it was unusual to read such reputational support for the oil and gas industry but here it was. The oil and gas industry is usually a fairly maligned sector but Brooks gives them a thumbs up for providing jobs, keeping emissions down and making us energy independent in a big way. Always good to see a reputation shot in the arm.

As you already know, I am keenly interested in how CEOs manage their tenures. In my book on CEO reputation, I referred to the various stages of a CEO’s tenure as the seasons of a CEO. When I wrote it several years ago, it started with the Countdown period (pre-announcement), the first 100 days, the first year, the middle years and ends with the last 100 hours and legacy-setting. Since then, I have continued to follow CEOs closely but have been particularly fascinated by how CEOs can use social platforms to build their companies’ reputations and to some extent, their own. That is what I explained in this new article on CEOs getting social in their early tenure. (See also Weber Shandwick’s Socializing Your CEO II)

Surprising to me, despite billions of people communicating and socializing online, little has changed in experts’ advice to CEOs or other executives on how to navigate their early tenure by taking advantage of social tools. In three separate research investigations on how CEOs spend their time by Harvard Business School, the European University Institute and the London School of Economics, and Fondazione Rodolfo Debenedetti, the words “social” or “digital” did not appear once in the nearly 30,000 words written.   Management consultants’ white papers on CEO transitions reveal little attention to how to effectively use social platforms.  I have about 15 articles with smart advice on CEO successions and transitions that I send to new CEOs and not one mentions using social media. Further still, an online search of the most relevant 30 hits for “how CEOs should use social media in their first 100 days” does not retrieve a concise blueprint whatsoever. Instead, the mentions consist of lists of Twittering CEOs, reasons why CEOs don’t use social media, events and primers for getting into the social game, articles written by CEOs of digital agencies, and do’s and don’ts for CEOs who use social media.

Social media should be incorporated into new CEOs’ early playbooks. Whether CEOs are communicating, engaging in two-way conversation or simply listening in, social media platforms should be gradually adopted.  As technology increasingly permeates all aspects of business and society, CEOs cannot afford to be out of touch with their cultures, how their products or services are being received and what their competitors are up to. Moreover, as the next generation of technology-literate CEOs start taking office as 77 million baby boomers leave the stage, being socially-literate will become the norm, not the exception.

For these reasons and because all these management consultants seemed to be overlooking social media as a leadership tool in their early CEO days, I wrote this article titled Get Social: A Mandate for New CEOs. It just appeared this week on MIT Sloan Management Review’s nicely redesigned Social Business site. Please take a look if you are a new CEO and getting the social bug! Or if you are advising CEOs to jump on the social bandwagon even a little. I firmly and proudly believe that this might be the first (or among the very first) articles on how and why CEOs should be social citizens at the start of their tenures and not wait til their seasons come to an end. There are some great examples from CEOs and presidents of companies such as Aetna, Etsy, GM, MassMutual, Best Buy and BAE.

Bill Keller wrote this fascinating piece in The New York Times about how the Catholic Church could repair its reputation. As he points out, the Church operates just like a business with more than one million workers, one billion or more customers, more outlets than Starbucks, more real estate than Trump and a powerful lobbying arm. And like many companies today, it just lost its CEO and has the opportunity to reset its reputation and restore its luster now.

Keller asked several consultants how they would go about advising the Church to repair its reputation as they name a new Pope and move forward. Here are their suggestions:

1. Find the right new pope. One with drive and charisma who is communications savvy. One who is more than a caretaker. A Pope who is dynamic as well as a road warrior with unending energy to persuade customers back into the fold.

2. Manage the culprits out. Out with those who have sullied the Church’s reputation. Or as they say, “managing out” the ones responsible for the abuses of recent years.  This would include full disclosure behind how predatory priests were allowed to stay within the institution. And third, hire a highly-regarded compliance or ethics officer who would have full support from the top. Keller quotes Wharton’s Michael Useem and his experiences helping to clean up the Tyco mess of years past.

3. Understand the past but look ahead towards the future.  One consultant suggested a big time summit or strategic review that would be responsible for developing a new and improved Church strategy, mission and values with a plan to execute accordingly.

4. Adopt a global/local point of view. The article describes one consultant’s idea to let its 220,000 parishes make their own decisions attuned to local customs and preferences. “Rome could encourage the parishes to be laboratories of worship.” Interesting idea. Beta labs full of women participating, gays welcomed, local music.

5. Go social. Bring the Church into the digital age…fast.  I did not realize this until Keller pointed it out but Pope Benedict tweeted as @Pontifex but only 35 times despite having 1.5 million followers. A social media strategy would go far in encouraging meet ups and spreading news and information to the committed. I have just the right document for him too….our research on social CEOs. Perhaps the Church could get some lessons from President Obama’s social media machine.

6. Get PR support. Interesting since that’s the business I am in. Keller rightfully states: “Its stock response to criticism from without or dissent from within has been to been to drop into a defensive crouch, stonewall or go negative. That can come across as bullying and arrogant — in other words, not very Christian.” Media training and message development would definitely be high on the list here.

What would I add to this list..

7. Build a solid crisis plan that raises red flags when early warning signs show up and design rapid response mechanisms. Figure out how to stop the leaks and understand how it happened in the first place so it does not happen again.

8. Measure the Church’s reputation now when it is at its most challenged so that the Church could mark progress as a new Pope begins and reform makes it to the agenda in the year(s) ahead.

9. Commit to a strategic internal communiations plan that engages its customers and followers. Get everyone on the same page. Start by going on a listening tour and asking what needs to change and what can stay the same. Feed back that information and describe how the Church will tackle its greatest problems and improve on its strengths.

10. Build a reputation advisory council that can help restore the Church’s reputation for the long-term. This is serious business.

We just issued our study on Socializing Your CEO II. It is a sequel to the audit we did in 2010 on how CEOs were using social media. It was one of the earliest explorations of social CEOs and we found that two-thirds of the largest revenue producing company CEOs were bascially UNsocial. Two years is a long time in Internet time so we were curious how  these chieftains were faring in the social dimension now.

We learned that CEOs are more social — hurrah! Good news. In 2012, 66% of CEOs of the world’s top 50 companies engaged online compared to 36% in 2010.  There was heightened visibility on corporate websites and usage of video such as corporate YouTube channels. Where they failed to show a surge like we saw in other social activities was in their usage of social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest and LinkedIn.  In fact, in 2010, 16% of CEOs of the largest companies in the world used social media compared to 2012 where the incidence was 18%.  Interestingly to me, the current usage of social media platforms at 18% is similar to what the IBM CEO survey found in 2012 (16% of CEOs participate in social media). However, when IBM asked CEOs whether they’d be using social media three to five years from now, a whopping 57% said yes. They may be over exuberant here but let’s just say that they are acknowledging its importance and their commitment to get the hang of it.

What do I think about all our results? I think that CEOs are still dipping their toes in the social media waters but for the most part, I’d have to say they are decidedly taking their jobs as social storytellers to heart, whether on their About Us/home pages, in video, and to some extent on social media. They are covering all their bases, trying out different channels to find out what suits them and reaching out to stakeholders in the many places they may be — be it prospective talent visiting their career pages, investors checking out their credibility quotient on YouTube or customers visiting their Facebook pages. Of all the social media we examined, the greatest increase over the past two years was for CEOs on Facebook. Usage of Twitter declined which is curious. Perhaps Twitter appears to pose more risk than most. Mind you, these are the largest companies in the world in mammouth sectors – oil, automotive, telecom, financial — and not the usual Internet technology companies that feed off of social media. Also, those of us in the U.S. do not quite realize that CEOs in other regions consider being on a home page to be a big giant social step and in some regions, there are security issues about plastering your information or picture widely. I should add that U.S. CEOs are more social on social networks than their peers in Europe, Asia and Latin America — 26% vs. 18%, respectively.

I thought, however, that I would use this post to talk about social CEOs and reputation since that is what my blog is about. I will return to our Social CEO study often so keep a watch. Not only will I continue to observe social CEOs because I am interested in reputation but because I firmly believe that being social will be a prime driver of reputation in years to come.

Here goes. We learned in our audit that CEOs of the world’s most reputable companies consistently demonstrate greater online engagement than peers at less reputable companies. 81% of CEOs from Most Admired companies (using the Fortune World’s Most Admired study) engage through company websites or in social media, compared to 50% of those from less reputable or “contender” companies worldwide.

The growth in engagement among CEOs at Most Admired companies exceeds the growth in engagement among CEOs at contender firms. While contender company CEOs are more social in 2012 than they were in 2010 (50% vs. 28%, respectively), Most Admired company CEOs essentially doubled their sociability in the past few years. I have no doubt about it. Most Admired company CEOs may more acutely recognize the relationship between social media engagement and positive reputation and the importance of having a dialogue with customers
despite the risks.

It is that time of the year. Last day of 2012 and the start of a new 2013. I posted an article to Huffington Post on what I see ahead by looking backward at reputation trends bubbling up and trends on the vast horizon.  Here is the post if you want to settle into the new year with a clear lenses on reputation possibilities.

Wishing you a happy new year!

I have been traveling in Brazil and Peru for business to talk about reputation. It was a terrific visit because I confirmed once again that reputation is on the agendas of most companies wherever they may be. One of the challenges I heard several times on my visit was how non-U.S. companies do not have to deal with government relations as much as LatAm companies do. This challenge to reputation-building came up as well in several media interviews I did prior to my trip. Each time it came up, I had to chuckle. The truth is that government involvement and regulations in US markets also feel very real and intrusive. I always talk about how government used to be an “invisible hand” but today plays a decidedly “visible hand” in business affairs. For many companies, it is literally like a new line of business. In fact, I have been asked several times nowadays how government affairs departments are being restructured to more effectively manage upcoming policy and government regulations.

I was in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro for two seminars on reputation management. In our research on corporate reputation, 91% of executives in Brazil told us that they were increasing their efforts at reputation building. Much of the discussions in the Q&A period in addition to government intervention centered around culture, B2B reputation-building and dealing with social media threats. In one market, we also discussed social CEOs, a favorite new topic of mine. Apparently there are fewer socialized CEOs in LatAm than in the U.S. due to security issues I was told. I found that illuminating.

When I was in Lima this week at an evening reception, I had a discussion with two businessmen who told me how optimistic they were about business growth in Peru. They were noticeably ebullient. Considering their past history, they said they had never seen so many doors opening to them. There seemed to be no ceiling on their optimism about the future. Refreshing.

As always when I travel, I catch up on magazines because I find myself on planes. I caught an article in The Economist that ties into this post’s train of thought. One line particularly stood out…”…place matters more than ever in a globalized world.” The writer was making the point that in a global world where everything has become so homogenized (like “a universal airport lounge”), people crave a sense of place and the more distinctive, the better. While I was in Brazil and Peru, it felt like there was a definite pride in their “place “for being different than the U.S. and other regions and for the boundless opportunities ahead. That could only be a good thing for sparking innovation, building top flight reputations and surprising the global competition.

Great social CEO Q & A in today’s WSJ on Aetna’s CEO Mark Bertolini….

WSJ: Why do you use Twitter?

Bertolini: I have three objectives in my role as chairman of the company. One is to make sure that I set the company on a path for the next 160 years. I have an obligation to keep it moving forward. The second is to make health care reform real and tangible for people, because the system is broken. And the third is to re establish the credibility of corporate leadership in the eyes of the American public and that’s the loftier of all of them. And the only way I can do that is by humanizing the job. And humanizing the job means I have to be out there. I have to be available. I have to be willing to hear the bad, the good, the ugly.

I have to be willing to interact when things are difficult. We’ve got to a point where people [on Twitter] are saying ‘I need this done,’ or ‘this is happening to me,’ and I get them to the right people.