Martin Cleaver, masterfully.

Canadian corporations need to experiment with Social Media technologies such as blogs and wikis.

Twopointouch: reports in Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Britain :

A new UK report into customer engagement produced by e-consultancy reveals that UK firms are likely to significantly deepen their commitment to Web 2.0 technologies over coming months. The authors, who polled 800 internet and customer experience professionals to obtain the results, found that:

42% are planning to apply user-generated content (UGC) to their websites in the next 12 months; 23% are using it already.

35% are planning to use corporate blogs in the next 12 months; 17% are using them already.

33% are planning to use podcasting in the next 12 months; 18% using it already.

35% planning to use videocasting in the next 12 month; 17% using it already.

Which made me think: how does Canada compare? It’s clear that Maggie Fox of Canada’s SocialMediaGroup sees an uptake in the public reading blogs, but from verbal conversation I’ve with many in Toronto’s tech community (and links here would be appreciated) its clear there’s widespread agreement that Canada lags in its uptake of social technologies.

Lack of uptake is damaging. Established Canadian corporations waste their staff talent by not giving them the means to voice, persist and action on their ideas.

Meanwhile other countries and new companies are storming ahead. Only by fully engaging people can you really get their attention, inspiration and perspiration. Working hard (perspiration) without first being inspired is tortuous. We’re all busy and it’ll certainly not get people to think outside the box if they can’t run forward because they fear the unknown or they are not inspired in something acknowledged as a common goal.

Canada’s corporation leadership own the responsibility to keep their firm innovative. Its a top CEO priority. That’s hard to do if everyone’s doing what they’ve always done. Its harder with the world shrinking, bringing more competition.

Social Media technologies provide a platform to engage your people. Always remember: your staff have a choice where they work. People want to be motivated and be part of a winning team.

Visionaries have to educate their peers. Social technologies allow staff to talk outside their normal sphere of contacts, and give the means to engage with conversation outside normal tracks of thought.

Showing and telling, generating conversation and experimenting are crucial. Tools such as Blogs and Wikis are experience-goods. No amount of your own reading can convince, groups need to try for themselves and swap stories about their successes.

Our firm, http://www.helixcommerce.com can help you make sense of all of this, and put a workable plan in action. We can teach you the leadership competences.

You are welcome to call me on 416-786-6752.

Technorati : Canadian Competitiveness, Social Media, mesh07

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 25th, 2006 at 1:54 pm and is filed under Innovation, Blogging, Canadian Competitiveness, km2006. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.