Of course, it's much more than *just* that, but I have enjoyed watching as our CEO becomes increasingly adept at "leveraging" this technology. A couple of examples...
The CEO wrote a blog post about our mobile strategy and plans, citing some successful examples. He linked to a group in our community that's all about mobile, and suggested that everyone working on mobile should list what their projects are, so we can coordinate across the enterprise, share ideas and best practices, and learn from each other.
Presto! A document was created in that mobile group and people added their initiatives to it. Someone else started listing contractors and platforms, along with impressions of and experience with them. Someone else started listing upcoming meetings with outside companies, and others chimed in and asked to join those meetings. Requests were made to see demos of some of these projects and questions were asked about re-using code. The document has grown into an invaluable resource for everyone across the company who is working on or thinking about anything mobile.
See what I mean? Reach in, pull the lever, and make things happen.
Another example I noticed recently was a comment the CEO made in a group in our community, in which he both praised the efforts reported there and lamented that we didn't have a comprehensive or coordinated effort across the entire company to make sure we were neither missing opportunities nor wasting resources on redundant efforts.
Within an hour another very senior executive commented there that this was, indeed, something we should look at. Poof! A document appeared in the group and people from all over began listing what they are doing in this area. The document has grown every day for the past week and suddenly the overall picture is becoming clear. With this view, we can assess how to most effectively move forward.
Once again, he reached into the machine -- our online community -- and pulled a lever, making things happen almost instantly, almost magically.
Now, how would this have been accomplished in the past? I suspect he would have had to contact his direct reports and explained what he wanted. They in turn would have contacted their direct reports and/or anyone they could think of working on these things and made a request to assemble information. These requests would have worked their way down the management ladder until they (hopefully, but far from certainly) reached the people who had the information. Hopefully the whisper-down-the-lane effect would not have distorted the request, and so the information would then begin getting fed back up the ladder, where it would eventually be fed in pieces back to the CEO, where his assistant would have the task of attempting to assemble it. And he would then have a static snapshot to look at with no ready or efficient way to ask questions, make comments, or act on it, besides repeating the down-the-ladder communication process.
Tell me our new way, using our online community in social business software, isn't much better than that.
I could cite other examples, but I think you get the idea. We've gone way beyond having the CEO simply posting in his blog. He's figuring out whole new ways to manage our global enterprise that were never possible before. I wonder what he will think of next...
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