Recently in Business relationships Category

Yesterday ABC Radio National's Future Tense program did a special feature on the future of conferences.

Beth Etling, CEO of The Insight Exchange, was one of the three panelists interviewed, along with Matt Moore of Innotecture and Katie Chatfield of Jack Morton Worldwide.

You can listen to the future of conference program here as a podcast.

It provides a great overview of where the events industry is heading, with some excellent insights from Beth and the other panelists, particularly on the specific things that The Insight Exchange will be doing to push the boundaries on the industry, making events that are far more valuable to participants than traditional models.

In particular there was a great discussion on the role of blogging and Twittering at events. This is something that event organizers must understand and work with effectively to add value to conferences. Beth also spoke about the role of online community building before, during and after events. This is about combining the rich value of face-to-face interaction with the potential of online discussions.

If you want to experience real innovation and value-creation in events, attend The Insight Exchange's inaugural event, The Power of Influence luncheon, in Sydney next Tuesday!

Tomorrow I am giving the opening keynote at the Direct Selling Association of Australia Conference 09 which is on the theme of 'Defining our Future'.

The slides for my presentation are below. As always, these are intended to accompany my keynote, not as stand-alone slides.

The presentation includes a diverse range of examples of markets that are currently growing:
Guitars
Home renovation tools
Home gardening
Books
Cookware
Lipstick
Quality jewellery (in the case of my wife's business www.victoriabuckley.com)
Brain fitness
Clean energy
Robots
Aged care
Mobile applications
Events (done well, in the right sectors)

I'll write more soon about the array of growth markets that offer great opportunities at the moment.

For many, many years I have felt that the vast majority of conferences were very poorly run, continuing to apply ancient, didactic approaches. That’s one of the reasons that a few years ago I started running events, organizing the Future of Media Summit, which annually links Sydney and San Francisco, the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum (the second annual event is on next week), Web 2.0 in Australia etc. Earlier events including what was at the time the extremely innovative Living Networks Forum in New York in 2003, using social networking technologies embedded in the event. Even though the events industry is vastly oversupplied, the majority of them are crap, so there’s ample scope for something better, as the consistent success of our events has demonstrated.

Certainly the last few years have seen the beginning of a transformation in how events are run, with in the US, Europe, and Australia (less so in Asia so far) many novel and highly interactive formats. However there is still a massive opportunity to create immense value with face-to-face events, and we’re currently looking to spin off our events business into a new company that will grow aggressively. News on that soon.

I am unusual in that a large part of my work is as a keynote speaker, speaking primarily on the future of business (including sometimes the future of events), usually within a traditional conference format. However at the same time I endeavor to create (or help my clients to implement) participatory formats that transcend the talking head syndrome.

Now the issue is getting mainstream media attention. News.com.au has released an article titled: Networking trend: the ‘unconference’, which examines the plethora of interactive events that are arising, such as unconferences, Lightning Talks, Ignite, and Pecha Kucha, and drawing on an extensive interview with me on where the space is heading.

The entire article is well worth a read. Below are excerpts of the direct quotes from me in the article.

I recently gave the keynote speech for a Sun Microsystems Partner Executive Forum, where Sun brought together the top executives from its extensive partner network for an update and relationship building session.

Below is an 8 min video containing brief excerpts from my keynote, titled The Future of the Network Economy.

Topics covered in the video include:

* In the Depression of the 1930s there was little structural change in the economy; in the current downturn there will be massive change.
* In a connected world you can – and must – reposition yourself across boundaries.
* Scale-free networks provide a common structure across society, web, infrastructure and more.
* Collaborative filtering is where the web is going: it enables us to find what is most relevant to us from infinite content.
* Open innovation requires identifying and stimulating the social networks where relevant ideas are proliferating.
* Our individual and organizational reputations will precede us, giving us and others insights into our expertise, reliability, and credibility.
* Strategy in an economy based on the flow of information and ideas requires us to rethink alliances and identify opportunities in new domains.
* The law of requisite variety means we must be at least as flexible as our environment.
* Studying ants' collective behavior can help organizations understand how to tap emergence to create value.

I’m giving the keynote, titled Embracing the Future, at the Defining our Future conference in the Gold Coast 22-24 March, run by the Direct Selling Association. Below is an introductory video on the event, briefly reviewing the event and main speakers.

DSAA 2009 from Tom Walter on Vimeo.

I’ve never spoken to the direct selling industry before, but certainly the themes I often cover of the evolving network economy and media landscape is highly relevant to the audience. I’ll go into more detail later on what I’ll be covering in my keynote.

The September issue of the Consulting News magazine of the ASTD (American Society for Training & Development) includes an article I wrote on Building Better Client Relationships. The article is below:

Building Better Client Relationships
by Ross Dawson

In an increasingly money conscious and global economy, where consultants often spend large sums and substantial energy in obtaining new clients, the key issue they face is how to build long lasting and deep relationships with valuable clients.

There are two main types of consulting: black-box services and knowledge-based services. A black-box service is one where something is done for the client, but they aren’t party to the process or activities involved. In a black-box situation, the client hires your expertise; they want you to do a specific task, but they are not engaged in the process. On the other hand, knowledge-based services engage both the client and the consultant, who work closely together to create an outcome that neither could have created alone. One impact of this process is that the client is different as a result of the mutual engagement, and the company can make better decisions due to this increased knowledge transfer.

It is necessary to understand how positive client relationships progress in order to position yourself to maintain the clients you attract. Relationship development can be broken down into four stages: engaging, aligning, deepening, and partnering.

After the news of the deal between LinkedIn and New York Times I wrote about a couple of days ago, LinkedIn has just announced new deals with LexisNexis and Outlook plug-in Xobni.

The LexisNexis deal is particularly intriguing. Back in 2003 a number of corporate social networking applications were launched, notably Spoke, VisiblePath, and Contact Network Corporation. I knew all the players well, and Spoke was in fact the Gold Sponsor of the Living Networks Forum I ran in New York in December 2003. At the time there was one other significant player which was in a similar space, which was InterAction CRM software, owned by Interface. The CRM software was primarily sold to legal firms, where it had a strong presence. Its functionality included a “who knows whom” function, so that lawyers could find out who in their firm knew people at client or prospect firms. As with all the other corporate social networking applications, this included a high degree of user choice on what personal contact information was made available.

In December 2004 LexisNexis, the largest provider of legal information, acquired Interface, making InterAction CRM part of its suite of offerings. Since then LexisNexis has very actively acquired software companies, notably VisualFiles in case management, Juris in pratice management, and Axxia in backoffice legal solutions, repositioning itself far beyond being an information provider.

Download Chapter 4 of Living Networks on Emerging Technologies

Every chapter of Living Networks is being released on this blog as a free download, together with commentary and updated perspectives since its original publication in 2002.

For the full Table of Contents and free chapter downloads see the Living Networks website or the Book Launch/ Preface to the Anniversary Edition.

Living Networks - Chapter 4: Relationship Rules
Building Trust and Attention in the Tangled Web

OVERVIEW: Connectivity allows companies to integrate their systems more deeply and form many more business ties, but these opportunities are often neglected. In an increasingly transparent world, trust is becoming more rather than less important, and organizations must take steps to develop trusting relationships with their partners. The one scarce resource today is attention, so you must earn it from your clients and partners in order to create and maintain profitable relationships.

Chapter 4 of Living Networks - Commentary and updated perspectives

I opened the introduction to my first book Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships with the words: “Knowledge and relationships are where almost all value resides in today’s economy.” For the last decade I have explored the apparent paradox that in an increasingly digital world, human relationships, particularly trusted relationships, are becoming ever more important. At the same time, as the amount of information available swells, attention is becoming an increasingly valuable commodity. It is commonplace to talk of the attention economy, where value is based primarily on attention.

The feedback loop of customer attention and personalization
(See below for description)

Since trust and attention are so fundamental to where business is going, this chapter is absolutely as relevant today as when it was written. Arguably the underlying principles will become even more important in coming years.

I first caught up with Greg Oxton a few years ago while I was in San Francisco. It seemed like an obvious connection, as he runs the Consortium for Service Innovation, a group of very large organizations with significant service and support operations. Their focus on Knowledge-Centered Support overlaps with my idea of Knowledge-Based Client Relationships, and in the second edition of my book on the subject I referred to the very interesting work of a couple of their members.

Greg will be in Sydney on 20-21 February to speak at the Services Industry Best Practice Showcase and to run a one-day workshop on Knowledge-Centered Support. This material definitely represents leading global practice for service and support.

Tomorrow I am presenting a keynote at the Network Roundtable conference at University of Virginia on Tapping Networks to Bring the Best of the Firm to Clients. This is the fruition of many years of work applying network analysis approaches to high-value client relationships. I will be talking about the big picture of what has been learned from a wide range of different studies of client relationship teams, and I will then hand over to Robert Burnside, Partner and Chief Learning Officer at Ketchum PR, who will discuss how Ketchum PR has been applying organizational network approaches to a number of situations, including enhancing the performance of one of their largest offices, leadership development initiatives, and their relationship with a large global client.

I usually don’t share my Powerpoint slides online, as they are primarily visual accompaniments to my speeches and don’t make much sense on their own, however in this case my presentation is far more text-based than normal and is probably is of some use to read, so I’ve put it here.

My book Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships has popped up again on a few Popular lists on Amazon.com, notably on Consulting and Customer Service. The first edition, which came out in January 2000, was for two months #1 on Amazon.com from Australia, and spent two years in the top 20 book purchases from Deloitte & Touche among other topseller lists. Sales of the second edition have been solid and consistent but not spectacular so it's good to see it get some more prominence. While one of the chapters is devoted to how technology is used in professional client relationships, very little covered by the book dates quickly, which means it continues to be relevant over the years and has a long shelf life. Maybe a third edition in 2010 or so?

Dennis Howlett of AccMan fame recently wrote a brief review of the book, excerpted here:

If you don’t know the book, I recommend it goes on your must read list. It is packed full of examples, presents a coherent set of arguments and provides a framework for action.

A little while ago I was interviewed for an article in CIO magazine titled Remote Control, which looked at the issues in having employees work remotely. The article quoted me as follows:

While companies tend to think of telecommuting and remote access as something to support domestic employees, business strategist Ross Dawson believes it will be increasingly important to offer access to employees and collaborators working overseas. He believes companies should strategically review their information holdings and identify what information they would benefit from sharing with trusted partners and clients, and then establish an information infrastructure to support that.

Dawson says a first important step for companies that want to create a collaborative environment is to perform a strategic information audit. "An organization can categorize its information three ways: information which is openly available, information which it is happy to share with trusted partners and information which it does not share. Once you have worked out which information sits where, then you put in place the supporting technology and business processes. So far very few organizations have looked at this from a business process and technology view," Dawson says.

For a long time in my workshops and client work I’ve used the three core categories of organizational information, as illustrated in the diagram below, as a basis for strategy and organizational design.

When I was in Singapore last week to do a keynote for a client I was interviewed by Yiep Siew Joo on 938LIVE, the largest English-language news radio station, for its Bottomline business program.

Click here to go directly to audio of the radio interview, and here for the Bottomline Podpage where the article is described and featured.

Some of the issues we covered in the 4-minute interview were the role knowledge and relationships in the economy today, why the Chinese concept of guanxi is different from knowledge-based relationships, how commoditization is driving relationships in a global economy, and what the world’s largest multinational corporations are doing to improve their client relationships.

A recent article in Smartcompany magazine titled Sites for more eyes examines how companies can build online communities for their customers. It offers 10 tips on building communities, drawing on an interview with me for two of the tips:

Tip #3 – Create champions for your product

Find the people who are the champions of your community and get them on board. Contact them individually, have lunch with them and persuade them to make a contribution by writing a blog or participating in your forums.

If you can make opinion leaders in your area passionate advocates for your product, they can be very powerful in attracting eyeballs to your site.

Web 2.0 innovator and Future Exploration Network chairman Ross Dawson says you may only identify your champions through the participation opportunities provided by your site, but once identified it is important to make a connection with them.

“Not only will they bring other people in their orbit to your website, they will bring useful or thought-provoking opinions, which are a vital resources, so champions can be very important,” Dawson says.

…

Tip #7 – Let your customers interact – with your business, and each other

Forums are a crucial way of fostering a community around your brand. Ideally, your website should become a place where people who are connected by a common interest in what you do come to talk and socialise. This, more than anything else, will create content and keep people coming back to your website.

“Interaction is the main drawcard for any website; in effect, it is the payoff you offer visitors for coming to your website,” says Ross Dawson, chairman of Future Exploration Network.

Dawson says you can also give people a stake in your product by giving them the opportunity to participate in the way your business works: a competition to name or choose a colour or style for a product can give people a reason to come to your website, and tell their friends.

Yesterday I gave a keynote on Creating the Future of Business at the Q400 Business Summit in Brisbane, which was themed Future Shocks. The feedback was fantastic; I’m hoping to be able to post a video of my presentation soon.

One of the key themes of my presentation was the Open Economy, in which everything is laid out open, across business processes, visibility, transparency, borders, industry boundaries and more. One of the stories I used was that of Goldcorp, which I told briefly in my book Living Networks, in the context of business applications of open source models:

Open source thinking can be applied to completely different domains in business. Rob McEwen, chairman and CEO of Canadian gold miner Goldcorp, believed his company’s 55,000 acre stake had massive potential, but didn’t know how to access it. When attending an information technology seminar at MIT, McEwen drew inspiration from the session on open source software. He did what was previously unthinkable in the mining community—exposing all of their geological data online, and announcing a competition for the best analysis of where they should mine next. All four mines the company has drilled on the winners’ advice have hit high-grade ore.

Since then, the story has appeared in many different contexts, including being used as the opening example in Don Tapscott’s excellent book Wikinomics, and in Procter & Gamble’s internal communications promoting their open innovation initiatives. It remains a good inspiration for open business initiatives. It is told in more detail by Fast Company magazine.

Some of the other topics I covered in the speech were the acceleration of the global economy, how it is now impossible for businesses to hide, non-zero sum thinking, the role of competent jerks in organizational networks, and the characteristics of high-performers.