Are you a Groundswell HERO?

In two years of research with people in marketing, sales, and other customer-facing parts of companies, here's what I've seen: it takes guts, caginess, political skills, and energy to launch something new. The people who do this are amazing people.

Like Boyd Beasley at Electronic Arts, who built a system so people could contact technical support from within the games his company creates.

Like Barry Paperno from FICO, who figured out how to get people involved in a community around, of all things, credit scores -- solving a regulatory problem and increasing sales at the same time.

Like John Bernier, who made it possible for Best Buy employees to solve customer problem through the Twitter tag #twelpforce.

In researching our new book, we've met a bunch of these folks and realized they are the future. They make change possible. They are Highly Empowered and Resourceful Operatives: HEROes.

Their creativity and perseverance make their success possible. We can all learn from them. And that is why we are making HEROes a central concept in our new book.

And it's not just employee HEROes we are profiling. It's also customer HEROes. Highly empowered and resourceful operatives in the marketplace are the customers who challenge your company. It's our basic premise that it takes an employee HERO to build systems that can deal effectively with customer HEROes.

This idea was so compelling, we've made it our new title.

GROUNDSWELL HEROES: Harnessing the Power Shift in Your Workplace and Marketplace

The content is still the same, but HEROes are the focus. We've interviewed a bunch of them. We'll be sharing their stories with you.

We'd love to hear your story, too.

Photo: Randy Son Of Robert

What Will Be In GROUNDSWELL HEROES

by Josh Bernoff

For several months now we've been researching "Harnessing the GroundswellGroundswell HEROes", the followup book to Groundswell. The focus is on both empowered customers (think "United Breaks Guitars") and empowered employees. In both cases, the empowerment comes from the pervasive social, mobile, video-enabled, cloud-propelled technology available to them.

A funny thing happened during the research, though. We found that all the employee examples were in marketing, sales, and customer support. Why? Because those customer-facing departments have both the budgets and the desire to connect with customers using the new technologies. And they are moving forward, in most cases without much involvement from their own IT departments.

In fact, it's the urgency created by empowered customers that's driving the employees to build their own solutions. So we came to this principle:

If you want to succeed with empowered customers, you must empower your employees to solve their problems.

Whether it's Zappos, Best Buy, or Intuit, staff are building solutions to help their customers, and not just in customer service. THAT is what the new book is about. (It's a relief to have figured this out, believe me.)

Based on this, here's a revised table of contents. Look for the book next year from Harvard Business Press.

HARNESSING THE GROUNDSWELL: Empower your employees to solve customer problems

GROUNDSWELL HEROES: Harnessing the Power Shift in your Workplace and Marketplace

by Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler

PART I: THE TREND

Chapter 1. Empowered people and what to do about them. How customers got so much power. Four forces: mobile, video, cloud, social. Empowering staff to solve customer problems.

PART II: YOUR CUSTOMERS

Chapter 2. Customer heroes. A new metric on the value of your customers. Customer word of mouth and media.

Chapter 3. Reimagining customer service. Customer voice. Service is now marketing. Social CRM.

Chapter 4. The mobile imperative. Pervasive information empowers customers. Using mobile information to create loyalty.

Chapter 5. Mobilizing fans. Amplifying promoters and blunting detractors. Efficient ways to enable fan voices.

PART III: YOUR PEOPLE

Chapter 6. Employee heroes. What empowered staff can do. Technology projects -- matching effort to results.

Chapter 7. Is your organization ready? Measuring employee empowerment. Do your staff feel they have permission? Are they ready to solve customer problems?

Chapter 8. Helping people work together. Collaboration and innovation tools. Social technology for the enterprise.

Chapter 9. Leadership for constant innovation. What management can do to encourage innovation and empower employees.

PART IV: YOUR TECHNOLOGY

Chapter 10. How IT can empower your people. How to say yes. Select, scale, and socialize.

Chapter 11. Empowering people safely. When to say no. Empowering people while managing risk.

PART V: YOUR FUTURE

Chapter 12. The future of the groundswell.

***

Now all we have to do is write it. Look for case studies and lots of data in the coming posts.

Note (12/21): We changed the title around the concept of HEROes (highly empowered and resourceful operatives).

Want to give your clients signed copies of Groundswell for the holidays?

Groundswell (the book) continues to spread. What excites me most is the number of times I hear "I gave copies to my staff/clients/customers to help them understand the trend." If you did this, I humbly thank you.You are the reason the book is still spreading 18 months after publication.

If you were thinking of doing this, let me gently encourage you by signing (up to 100) copies for your clients. I'll ship them back to you for free, too. We did this last year and people loved it, so why not do it again? Here's how it works:

• Email my research associate, Jenny Wise (jwise at forrester dot com) and copy me (jbernoff at forrester dot com) to let us know you're participating. Jenny can also answer any questions you might have.
• Buy at least 5 copies from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, 800 CEO READ, or your favorite book supplier. Can't sign more than 100 copies per customer, sorry.
• Ship the books to us at Jenny Wise, Forrester Research, 400 Technology Square, Cambridge, MA 02139. Telephone contact number 617 613 6000. Please get them to us by 15 December.
• I will sign them and add a short message of your choice. Nothing too salesy, please (think "Thrive in the Groundswell" not "My company is so great").
• We will ship them back you (any US address) at our expense within two business days of receiving them.

Hope to hear from you soon!

What are the best (corporate) mobile applications?

by Josh Bernoff

Mobile is a big part of our new book "Harnessing the Groundswell". To that end, I'm looking for your suggestions for the best mobile applications.

It's my contention that consumers are surrounded by more information, with more immediate access to it, than ever before. Mobile Internet access (but also mobile email and SMS text messages) are a big part of that. Mobile applications can get access to location, a camera, your identity, your phone number, and SMS messages, not to mention the plain old wonderful real-time Net. This changes things. As a marketer or other corporate staffer, your best action is to provide mobile customers as much information as possible, as instantly as possible.

So in the comments here, or by email, I'd like to hear your suggestions for mobile apps to go in the book. The best examples for this purpose:

• Empower consumers with instant access to information.
• Are of long-term value, not just for a short-term campaign.
• Can be iPhone apps, but I'm also very interested in Blackberry, Android, Windows Mobile, and SMS apps.
• I have a bias toward corporate, government, or non-profit apps, vs. startups.

Think of this as a contest. If your favorite application "wins," it gets profiled in the book. Looking forward to hearing your ideas.

Dear Groundswell: Is it ok to use mobile devices in a meeting?

by Josh Bernoff

As I continue my Social Netiquette investigations this question comes up over and over again. No less than the New York Times weighed in, but not in any definitive way.

There are countless netiquette sources that say it's rude to take a mobile phone call in a meeting, and you should turn your phone off. But this advice dates to when phones were used to make calls. Now you could be checking email or sports scores, or you could be checking something relevant to the meeting on the Web or taking notes.

I expect this question to generate a lot of divergent opinions, so let me state the obvious -- I know my answer, but I would like to hear yours.

Let's start with four fundamental rules of social netiquette:

1. The golden rule. If the roles were reversed, would you be happy? If not, don't do it. (Remember this from kindergarten?)
2. Don't deceive and don't lie. If you get caught, you'll be sorry, since you're destroying trust. This is rarely worth it.
3. Balance your own needs with those of others. You are important, but not the most important. If your boss needs your help -- or your staff does -- how will you balance those needs with yours?
4. Your habits are your own problem. If you have a drinking problem, that doesn't mean you can whip out a bottle in the meeting (unless it's on Mad Men). Same with your compulsive need to check email. If you can't stop, get counseling.

Having internalized these, which of course you all agree with, let's look at the problem at hand. Continuous partial attention is a systemic problem that causes us all challenges, but it needs to be addressed on a case-by-case basis, since I don't believe a single solution works for all meetings.

• If you are having a one-on-one meeting with anyone, then don't use the mobile device. You need something from each other. So concentrate on each other's needs. Better to get 15 minutes of full attention. Using a mobile phone in such a meeting sends the message "you are not important." (This sounds silly, but I have experienced it, and it sucks.)
• In any small meeting where you are reasonably expected to participate, it pays to ask permission.
• For example ("I'm going to look that up on the Web" or "I am checking the agenda" or "I am making a note."). You could also say something at the start of the meeting ("I'll be using this to check the Web sites we're discussing.") If you would feel embarrassed saying "I am going to check my email while you talk" then don't do it. (See Rules 1 to 4.)
• In a larger meeting, people may not require your full attention. (The sync up meeting with 12 people in the part where they are talking about the stuff that doesn't apply to you.) I don't have a problem with mobile devices used in this way.
• The person running the meeting has the right to say "please put your mobile devices down, what I have to say now is important." It is useful to follow this with an announcement that is actually important, like "I have just laid off half the staff," or "We are reorganizing and you are about to get a new boss," as opposed to "We are about to get new carpeting."
• People running meetings have a responsibility to have fewer of them and make them shorter. Count up the hourly compensation of the people in the meeting and the time they are spending. Is it worth that much? Is there another way to accomplish the goal? By Rule 1, if you have fewer meetings, perhaps you can get more attention during those meetings.
• Don't Twitter during a meeting unless it is a public meeting. Most people have an expectation that the contents of a meeting are confidential. For example, tweets that say "My boss is so boring," "Disney just offered to buy our company for $150 million," and "My company is going to announce a new product next week" will all get you in trouble, even if true.

OK, folks, let fly. I'm interested in where you land on this. And if you say "I do it to, but others should not" then please start your comment with "I am a hypocrite."

[Side note. As I described the state in which you cannot concentrate on one thing since your attention is continuously drawn to other things, my wife Kimberley said "There is a name for that. It is called 'motherhood.' "]

Announcing our next book "Harnessing the Groundswell"

by Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler

We've begun work on Forrester's next book about how technology changes business. While "groundswell" is in the title, the new book is not quite a sequel. Instead, it focuses on individuals empowered by technology -- both employees and customers -- and how businesses can efficiently turn them into a force for better performance.Here's a short description:

Harnessing the Groundswell: Drive Your Business With Empowered Employees and Customers

Who are these empowered people? They're employees using simple technologies to solve business problems -- but in ways management hasn't sanctioned. They're customers, armed with a sea of ambient information and friend connections, who redefine your brand. Either way, empowered individuals are a problem for locked-down and unprepared managers stuck on control. "Harnessing the Groundswell" explains how to enable, select, scale, and socialize this energy -- that is, how to embrace empowered individuals and use them to drive your business forward.

Harvard Business Press will publish "Harnessing the Groundswell" in summer, 2010. If you don't know Ted Schadler, he's a long-time, accomplished Forrester Research analyst and vice president in our IT business.

As you read the table of contents below, ask yourself: do I know a company that's doing this well (or poorly?). We're looking for case studies, and not just successes. So if you know a company that embraces its technology problem solvers or its fans, let me (Josh) know and we'll follow up. I look forward to your comments.

--

PART 1. Why Empowered People Are Driving Your Management Crazy
Individuals will always get the latest and best technology and services first. Why? Because that's the simplest path to market for device makers, publishers, social entrepreneurs, and other individuals. Because many of these technologies are mobile, they get into the enterprise regardless of corporate policies. This changes the dynamics of technology-led innovation forever.

Chapter 1. The forces that created empowered individuals
Chapter 2. How to act empowered (and how to manage people like that)

PART 2. Harnessing Empowered Employees
Individuals in the workforce bring their personal devices and experiences to work. The result? Innovation erupts in a thousand incremental, and sometimes disruptive, ways. With computing power available so cheaply in the Internet "cloud," employees can often create solutions with a budget they can charge on a credit card. Managers can either erect ever-higher walls in a fruitless effort to contain this disruptive energy or identify and harness the power of these improvements.

Chapter 3. A framework for managing empowered employees
Chapter 4. Empowered innovation [Leadership]
Chapter 5. Selecting and scaling solutions [IT]
Chapter 6. Socializing the enabled employees and solutions [Management/Collaboration]
Chapter 7. Hiring and retaining an empowered workforce [HR]

PART 3. Harnessing Empowered Customers
Your customers are using technology to gather any information they want. They have every Web site in the world to draw on, as well as their peers in social environments from Facebook to Twitter to blogs to customer ratings. And it's all coming to the mobile devices they take with them everywhere. A business that depends on the ignorance of its consumers is doomed. And in this environment, any service flaw is magnified and repeated endlessly. As a marketer, your best alternative is to become one of them – provide them with the very tools, information, and peer support they crave – and generate positive word of mouth through this enablement.

Chapter 8. A framework for managing empowered customers.
Chapter 9. Empowering customer service problem solvers [Customer Service]
Chapter 10. Empowering the mobile customer experience
Chapter 11. Selecting and scaling fans
Chapter 12. Socializing empowered customers: collaborating on innovation (10 pages)

PART 4. Leading the Empowered
Empowered people challenge management. The hierarchical management of large companies gets its power from standardization, rewards, and scale. But leadership in this new era does not mean being out of control. It means creating an environment where everyone knows the end goal and feels empowered to contribute, where attempts are lauded along with successes, and where scaling innovation is the true advantage.

Chapter 13. Leadership among the empowered
Chapter 14: The future

--

I can't wait to read your reaction.

Social technology growth marches on in 2009, led by social network sites

by Josh Bernoff

We just published our third annual Social Technographics Profile in a document called "The Broad Reach of Social Technologies" . The author is Sean Corcoran, with help from out data expert Cynthia Pflaum. The data across North America, Europe, and Asia will be available later today.is now available.

Starting with the book "Groundswell" and continuing now for three years running, we've analyzed consumers' participation in social technologies around the world with a tool called the "Social Technographics Profile." The profile puts online people into overlapping groups based on their participation (at least once a month) in the behaviors shown in the ladder. We've kept the ladder categories consistent to allow us to make comparisons year-to-year, across ages and genders, and across geographies. This provides something that's often sorely lacking in analysis of online social phenomena: perspective.

The headline: in 2009, more than four out of five online Americans are active in either creating, participating in, or reading some form of social content at least once a month. In a bit more detail:

• In the US, social technology Creators and Collectors grew slowly, and Critics didn't grow at all. Creator activity appeals only to those who like to create or upload content, and regardless of the ease of blogging and YouTube uploading, this doesn't apply to everybody. If you believe in the future that everybody will be creating or organizing content, we disagree -- it's a matter of temperament, not technology. As for Critics, those who react to content, this group hasn't grown at all. Looking deeper into the data, this is a result of a small but actual decrease in the number of people contributing to discussion forums. Why? Probably because much of this activity has been sucked into social network sites like Facebook.

• At the same time, Joiner activity exploded and Spectators became nearly universal. The explosion in Joiners from 35% to 51% of online Americans reflects the appeal of Facebook, as both press coverage and invitations from friends suck more of us into social networks. Meanwhile, Spectators -- those consuming social content -- reached all the way to 73% of online Americans, which should end any remaining skepticism about whether this social thing is real. Soon, with the level of social content being put out there, it will be virtually impossible for an online consumer not to be a Spectator. Marketers, if you're not doing social technology applications now, you're officially behind. We expect a wave of Web site reorgs and redesigns to include social activity.

Looking at the data by age, we now see that participation among those under 35 is nearly universal (less than 10% Inactives) and even among those 55 and over, about two-thirds are participating. The trend is clear, soon, if you're online, you'll almost certainly be consuming social technologies.

We are now releasing international data at the same time as this US data. A few highlights: Europeans continue to adopt these technologies more slowly than in the US, with about 40% Inactives in the countries where we do surveys. The Netherlands and Sweden have the most participation, Italy has the most Creators, and social networks are most popular in the UK. For more details see the summary of Rebecca Jennings' report on social technologies in Europe.

Asian social participation is typically as high as or higher than in the US. For example South Korea, where I'm going next week, has only 9% Inactives and 48% Joiners, as a result of the popular CyWorld social network site.

The international data by country, age, and gender is here. will be available later today. You can even put the data on your own site -- we've made it embeddable. In my travels, I've found that marketers have a variety of attitudes about social technologies, ranging from "it's obvious that they're growing" to "it's a flash in the pan". The point of data like this is to provide a real, solid, objective basis for planning and discussion that goes beyond personal experience. No matter who you market to, and in what country, you need to know what your customers are doing. These surveys can help you take that first step+.

Added: Since the embeddable widget with the new data is now available, I've posted it below:

Writing another bible

by Josh Bernoff

Many have said that Groundswell is a bible for companies using social technology. (Yes, I know there is a book that came out after ours called The Social Media Bible but indulge me for a moment here.) With apologies to my more religious readers (it's a metaphor, people), here are some qualities of the bible that I hope Groundswell shares.

• It helps a lot of people, so it sells a lot. (We're about 6 billion copies behind the other bible.)
• It’s full of useful advice (e.g. “Thou shalt not kill.” "Listen first before engaging the groundswell.")
• People get inspired by it and tell others to read it.
• It attempts to be the definitive authority on the topic.
• It uses stories to communicate messages.
• While it's useful by itself, it also creates an opportunity for people (priests, analysts) to spread and interpret the word further.

If you ever wanted to know what I'm doing next, here it is: I'd like to write another bible. We're looking at possible topics right now inside Forrester. They will be important, groundbreaking ideas for business; they won't necessarily be about social technology (since that bible's already written).

Assume any bible I write has the qualities I describe here. Keeping in mind that any future bible won't be out until spring 2010, what sort of bible would you like to read? Think big.

Photo from Robotlab, 2007, www.robotlab.de/bios/bible.htm , via Gastev

"Marketing in the Groundswell" -- a new way to reach marketers

We created a new spinoff of Groundswell just for marketers. This new edition includes only chapters 5 (Listening), 6 (Talking), and 7 (Energizing) from the original version. There is also a new introduction that talks about how valuable the groundswell is for marketing in a recession.

Groundswell continues to sell really well, often within Amazon's top 500 books, but we wanted to create this new version for a few reasons.

First, to make it cheaper and easier for marketers to get the book. The book lists for only $18, and is available on Amazon for just $12.24.

Second, this new edition is allowing us to get into new distribution channels like some airport displays, and to reach more people that way.

If you've already bought Groundswell or want the full version, don't bother with this. You already have this content. (Unless you have a fetish for green and yellow books, of course.)

However, if you know a marketer with a short attention span -- or maybe a department of a few hundred of them -- this is the quick way to get them up to speed.

Nominations are now open for the 2009 Forrester Groundswell Awards

For the third year in a row, we will be recognizing the most effective social technology applications at the Forrester Groundswell Awards.

I have to say, these awards are one of my favorite things. First of all, the people submitting entries really care about the work they did and spreading the word about it. Second, the applications we've gotten the last two years were fantastic -- creative, effective, and clever -- and they make it easier for me to tell the story of the power of social applications. And finally, I think it's great that anyone can win -- whether you're Accenture or Starbucks or a tiny credit union in Alberta, Canada.

So, starting now you're free to submit an entry for the Forrester Groundswell Awards. The submission form is here. If you're going to enter, we strongly recommend that you read the Forrester Groundswell Awards Rules before submitting your entry. You can submit each entry only once, and once submitted, you cannot modify it.

We've added a new twist this year, too. We've divided the categories for the prototypical groundswell objectives (listening, talking, energizing, supporting, embracing) into business-to-consumer and business-to-business. And we've added a new business-to-business category, "spreading," to recognize social applications in which you sell ideas or products to employees of a company, then get them to sell others at that company. We've still got the category for pro-social applications ("social impact") and applications within an enterprise ("managing"). That's 13 categories, folks, so while I expect even more entries than the 150 we received last year, there are more ways to win.

A few key facts to remember.

• Be smart. Read the rules first.
• The entry deadline is September 2, 2009. But the earlier you submit, the more time people will have to review and vote on your work. (If three months is not enough time to prepare, you'll have to wait for next year.)
• On your own site or elsewhere on the Web, create a “My Forrester Groundswell awards submission” page or document describing your application. Also include a single screenshot that represents the application.You'll need to put these into the application.
• Only submit your own work. Agencies and vendors can submit work they do for clients, provided they have obtained permission from the client. (This is your responsibility, please don't embarrass yourself in front of the client by posting without getting permission.)
•  Anything in these submissions becomes on the record. Submissions go live immediately and are open for ratings and reviews.

If you are a winner in the business-to-consumer, social impact, or managing categories, we'll present the award to you in a new, expanded awards ceremony at the Forrester Consumer Forum 2009 in Chicago on October 27 and 28. We'll be having a nice party for all the attendees of that event, so they can meet and learn from the winners. We'll be awarding the B2B awards separately.

Go ahead. Impress us. Enter your application. We're looking forward to it.