Embracing our modern cliché: change is now! Political, technical, economic, and societal. The whole world is in flux.
This is not a time to retreat into the comfortable. Now is the time to explore, stretch comfort zones and learn. Quick. If you don’t you risk more than you might think.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of moderating a panel entitled: Social Media – The Making of a Movement for a program sponsored by the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce called Leadership Champlain. It’s a highly regarded professional development/management program that attracts professionals eager to reach forward. This should be a room of early adopters, right?
We polled the room to get a sense of adoption of social web tools such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. Adoption was probably around 30% at best. Disappointing.
The fact is that we really don’t like change. Even I don’t sometimes. When Facebook redesigned Pages last week, I nearly had a cow. Then I banged on it and now think the new layout is better. Change is difficult but I can’t stress how important it is to push ourselves harder now to adapt quickly.
One of the important points that Elaine Young (social maven & Champlain College Assoc Professor of Marketing/e-Business Management) stressed is the need – especially now to be constantly banging on the “new stuff”. I don’t care what you do or what industry you do it in, there is new stuff everywhere and a lot of it can help you and your company. There is an extreme to this of course, and chasing shiny objects is a risk. Instead you want to pursue the new stuff strategically.
1. Awareness: be aware of the “new stuff” in your sphere
2. Quick research: Google it to capture the key plusses and minuses, and see what others think
3. Select the stuff that promises the greatest return on your investment (time)
4. Bang on it with goals in mind to understand its value to yourself or your organization
5. Share that knowledge (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Wiki, Knowledge base…)
Late adopters are at risk right now, especially when it comes to Social Web. Those not networking and sharing right now will be the last to learn of what will affect them tomorrow. For those in the news media, its well known that tomorrow’s news is today’s Twitter conversation.
As my buddy Ted Adler at Union Street said in the panel discussion “As G.I. Joe says, knowing is half the battle.” Yes, Ted quoted G.I. Joe and so have I now by extension. Lord.
