New LinkedIn deals – LexisNexis and Xobni – extend the reach of professional social networks

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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.

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Living Networks – Chapter 4: Relationship Rules – Free Download and Commentary

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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.

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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.

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Knowledge-centered support: Greg Oxton workshop in Sydney

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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.

Tapping Networks to Bring the Best of the Firm to Clients

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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.

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Developing Knowledge Based Client Relationships popular in Consulting and Customer Service

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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?

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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.

Defining information boundaries provides a fundamental platform for organizational strategy

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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.

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Interview on building powerful relationships in a global economy

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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.

The measure of success: whether you can create meaningful and useful participation for customers

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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.

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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.

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Keynote speech on Creating the Future of Business

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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.

The role of shared corporate language in staff and client communication

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The June issue of BOSS magazine has a very interesting piece titled “Lost in Translation”, which examines the role of building a shared corporate language for employees and clients. (The article is currently available online though AFR often takes these offline after a period.) The article quotes me as follows:

“Management consultant Ross Dawson, from Advanced Human Technologies, says there’s good reason for specialists to talk this way. “You have to think about the broader context. When people become specialised they need a specialised vocabulary. It’s useful to get a verbal shorthand. But it can create barriers

to understanding, both within and outside organisations.”

One of the perennial debates in linguistics is whether language is the origin of thought or the other way around. This seems like an odd question to a layperson. Surely it’s a no-brainer to conclude that without thought there can be no language? But there is evidence that changing the way language is used can alter the way people think and then behave. It’s the theory behind neurolinguistic programming, a still-controversial amalgam of linguistic and psychoanalytic techniques designed to improve the subject’s ability to function, usually in the workplace.

Some psychotherapists contend that NLP practitioners try to duplicate their function without their qualifications. But at its simplest, NLP is a technique that asks people what they really mean, to encourage them to think and communicate clearly. It represents what Dawson sees as a kind of harmonising of language across different communities.

However there is another approach to reining in linguistic anarchy that Dawson describes as codification. Codification occurs when a company provides a strict definition of commonly used words and phrases. Take the word “incident”. Does it just mean something that happened? Or does it go further than that?”

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