We are fortunate at The Community Roundtable to work with some of the leading community program owners in the world – and that means we are able to spot trends early. A few years ago, our members were starting to think about executive engagement because they recognized how critical is was to the success of a community approach to doing business, whether internally with employees or externally with customers. That led us to invest in and publish The Social Executive research in 2012, which included The Social Executive framework for understanding their adoption path, case studies and a toolkit for those coaching executives.
Our research confirms that executive engagement – not just support – matters. Executive engagement correlates with higher overall engagement, funded community roadmaps and the ability to measure value. Leaders themselves also realize they need to change but are not always sure how.
This topic has generated a lot of discussion and sharing of experience in TheCR Network and has continued to generate a lot more interest. There is more information available about what it means – most recently with a new book by Charlene Li called The Engaged Leader, designed as an easy to understand guide for executives themselves. It a great digestible read that links value to engagement approaches.
We are also continuing to evolve our own assets in this area and have recently finished a Social Executive Shorts video series, designed to quickly help executives understand how to engage in a way that generates value for themselves, their teams and their organizations. These short three-minute videos address the following benefits:
- Why Get Social? What’s In It for Me?
- Align Your Team?
- Generate Insights?
- Scalable Intimacy
- Remove Filters
What we’ve found is that executive rarely have time to dig in and understand all the dynamics of what makes online communities and ecosystems work and they often feel like they don’t have time to add another communication channel to their already overflowing schedule. What this series is design to do, is to show them practically how to replace what they are currently doing with a more efficient and effective alternative – allowing them to scale themselves in a way that saves them time while generating value.
Interested in finding out more about the work we are doing in this area? Contact us.
