1 June 2010 | Posted inBlog News & Updates, Featured
Posted by Mike
Trust: The New Golden Handcuffs
(a guest post)
I invited Dr. Cindy Frewen Wuellner, FAIA, an accomplished architect, educator, researcher and blogger, to share some insights on the value and potential of online communities like ours. Prepare to be inspired, challenged and enriched…
How do you build your professional reputation? There’s an old way and a new way.
In the old way, you work for a star firm, build expertise, cultivate relationships, get recognition, awards, advancement, grab a couple of friends, and bolt for the door. Voila, the birth of a next-generation firm where you can spread your wings, design, lead, and develop your expertise.
The cost to the mother ship is enormous. They lose their best people. Project knowledge vanishes, as do friendships, clients, and projects. In short, the most talented people outgrow the firm. In the old way, influence was finite.
There’s a new scenario developing. You can see it at HOKLife. While inside the firm, you build your own brand. You express your views using the firm’s resources. Your brilliance appears on Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. People come to HOK specifically to find you, ask your opinion, and seek your expertise. Your influence can literally extend globally; you are limited only by the strength of your ideas. When your influence grows, so does HOK’s.
From HOK and Me to ‘We’
Paradoxically, by giving you freedom to express your ideas, HOK increases the stickiness of its network. Trust is the new golden handcuffs. You stay with a company because they allow you to directly shape that collective persona. Rather than a monolithic top-down message, HOK becomes an aggregation of many voices and moves the relationship from the firm and me, to we. Those voices bloom every day on HOKLife and change the public face of the business.
Freedom of expression generates greater resilience for the firm and breeds a new type of brand, more inventive and diverse through multiple voices. While HOK benefits by drawing more deeply on the resources of individuals, each blogger gains the HOK presence which lends immediate credibility. The public, including clients, experience the vast levels of knowledge and resources that comprise the entire organization.
HOKLife offers a megaphone to cultivate stronger bonds with the firm’s most precious resource – you. It’s a gamble. Yet I wager that no field benefits more from high-performing social technologies and open leadership approach than the design professions. Because each firm member is a professional expert, it generates a competitive advantage previously constrained by the limits of specific project roles. Digital territory offers every person infinite free space for engagement and consequently influence.
Models for Social Engagement
I recently met one of the leading social technology analysts, Jeremiah Owyang of The Altimeter Group. He identifies five organizational models for social engagement: centralized, organic, coordinated, hub and spoke, and holistic or “honeycombed.” From what I see, HOK works as a coordinated or multiple hub and spoke model. People from Hong Kong to St. Louis across disciplines and interests contribute. Most comments come from inside, with a few external comments on blogs and Facebook. Those blog posts and comments begin the conversation.
HOKLife may evolve to the holistic “honeycombed” approach. Each employee is empowered to experiment. The social portion of the website grows according to each action and becomes the firm’s voice. The result is a seamlessly integrated engagement between employees and clients. Eventually, HOK’s website can merge with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other networks. Known as a Freemium business approach, general research knowledge is shared openly to grow influence while clients pay for customized design services. The industry, HOK, and you as an influential expert benefit.
Building Influence and Trust Communities
In some ways, websites didn’t do professional design firms any favors. They set the stage for static sites centrally controlled which freezes social potential. At one time merely having a web presence represented a leap of innovation. Not now. It’s the difference between walking into an empty room versus a room full of engaged people.
Rather than merely broadcasting, social technologies enable dialogue and let the site ebb and flow based on the energy of the conversation. The visitor’s experience shifts from an online brochure to an ongoing roundtable discussion. Firms who still believe in the brochure model will be left behind.
In the new social engagement model, clients and the public don’t visit just to become familiar with HOK. People return repeatedly as though it’s a combination of coffee shop conversation, resource library, television broadcasting, and newspaper stand. You create a must-stop location. While building careers and reputation, you’re cultivating relationships and developing communities based on trust. When people want an expert opinion, they will come to HOK to find you.
What’s Next?
HOK people already blogging are brave scouts; you opened new territory. Here’s some thoughts about your next opportunities to expand your influence and relevance.
- Comment, comment, comment. Create a commenting frenzy that builds high quality dialog. That energy and vitality will attract others to the table.
- More firm leaders join the conversation by writing and commenting on others’ postings.
- Highlight particularly vital conversations so others join in.
- Find your clients online; share information at those sites.
- Link clients and colleagues to specific blog posts and conversations.
- Expose projects on the boards or under construction, which truly are social as much as they are technology.
- Think in terms of: what do our clients need to know? What keeps them up at night? Write about that.
The work that HOK does is thrilling; you plan, design, and build cities every day. A website can have the energy and vitality of a job site or design studio. When people begin to frequent the site simply to engage and find expertise, HOK will have a valuable asset. So will each committed person that built it. Using HOKLife to engage people and blur the boundaries of the firm brings richness and experience unique in the design and planning professions.
Instead of bricks and mortar storefronts, the new geography is digital; space is free. Consequently, time becomes the most precious commodity. Can you attract the attention of influencers? Moreover, can you gain their trust? You attract people through intriguing ideas; you capture their hearts and minds by developing real relationships.
Resources
Owyang, Jeremiah. “Four Laws of Social Business.” Presentation Slides from Smash Summit, May 2010. (image source for social engagement models)
More Links at http://delicious.com/cindyfw key words: socialmedia, socialmediabiz, twitterstories
Image credit: Cadenhead, Rogers, Rcade. “Newseum: Do You Trust Blogs.” Uploaded 19 Feb 2009, Flickr Creative Commons. http://www.flickr.com/photos/44221420@N00/3284555653/
Dr. Cindy Frewen Wuellner, FAIA, LEED AP, founded and operated an architecture firm for 20 years before merging it with another design firm in order to shift her focus to long-term strategies for designing and building cities. Example projects are Kansas City Downtown Civic Mall Master Plan for 60 blocks of the central business district; Kansas City, Missouri Police Department Facilities Master Plan; Charles E. Whittaker United States Courthouse Interiors; and the Ilus W. Davis Park, a civic park in downtown Kansas City. She teaches in the Graduate Program in Futures Studies at the University of Houston as an adjunct professor and at the University of Kansas. Frewen Wuellner is currently writing a book on how social technologies are transforming the ways we use and build cities. Web site: http://urbanverse.posterous.com; Connect at Twitter and LinkedIn.
Post a Comment
Enough said…amazing article.
Cindy,
This is an interesting article and sets the stage for a great dialog. There are some assumptions you make that I’m not sure I agree with – or at least completely. I believe that at a certain point, architects are service providers – and a large percentage of what they are selling is personality. In this scenario, the spoke version social model you use really would benefit people in the design industry. HOK, despite being a leader in this emerging platform, may not be a typical example. They are certainly made up of individually thinking experts, but to a certain extent, they are a known product. As such, clients are coming to them to provide a specific service – as opposed to me; just as social interesting, with good original thoughts of my own, but certainly not the grey hair experience and technical proficiency a firm like HOK. What if it wasn’t HOK we were talking about but another known service provider in a different sector all-together – like McDonald’s? Since I am coming to that provider to get a known value or product, despite the great personality of the individuals, I know what to expect because a systematic set of procedures, processes, checks and balances have been put in place to protect the provider while providing the client what they came for. These measures exist so that business futures can be predicted and services quantified so an appropriate amount of fee is charged.
I do believe that the models you talk about are viable but I wonder if the results are still measurable once you get to a certain size. Not everyone is a designer, or a construction manager, or even a project architect. They all have different interests, skill sets, even different perspectives on the same events within their offices. If trust is the new golden handcuff, I see that being true far more often at small to medium sized firms (under 50 people) where fewer people wear many more hats. Hopefully the dialog will continue here, even I could shoot holes in what I am saying – there is simply too much here without getting a dialog going back and forth.
This is an amazing article and I couldn’t agree more about the need to get out and comment. While blogging might not be for everyone, dipping your toe in by engaging in the dialogue through a comment here or there feeds the overall energy of the site, making it more “real” and more fun. Perhaps its a cultural thing, or fear of failure, who knows but maybe by following some of the wonderful guidance you suggest in this piece, we can break down those barriers even further. Great resource articles. Thank you Cindy!
Thanks Nikki! You’re right, ‘nuf said – by me anyway! Thanks for reading and for your kind words.
Hello Bob: Intriguing ideas, I hope I understand what you are saying. Social tech works better for or can bolster the reputation of small or medium size firms more than a mega-brand like HOK that is already known. Is that what you mean?
If so, you bring up an intriguing point, the different value of ST for various size firms. I agree wholeheartedly that it will help smaller and mid-size firms. As you point out, it gives them a megaphone that they don’t have otherwise. They can gain market exposure.
Yet large firms always have to innovate and grow their expertise and profile. At any size, a business is either passing or being passed. Social tech represents a place where they can tap the resources of people that otherwise are not necessarily being used on projects, thus gain a new advantage.
In fact, a large firm might be able to do research that small and mid-sized firms cannot afford. HOK people can investigate new building systems or enter design competitions that might over-tap a smaller firm’s capacities. And if they share that knowledge, such as in the Freemium model, the whole field gains. So their posts may be different because their resources are different.
As you know, many architects feel that they are not contributing at the level that they are capable. That may be truer at larger firms. At small and medium firms, people may be doing so many things, they are fully extended, as you point out. Yet they want a public voice too, for career development, marketing, growing knowledge in the field, building relationships – many of the same reasons as HOK. but with subtle differences.
So maybe a key difference is: small and mid-sized firms benefit by raising the exterior profile of the firm. Large firms benefit by raising the profile of the people that constitute the firm. The types of firms have different limitations and therefore social tech expands different facets of their public face.
Does that make sense? or can you clarify your ideas further? thanks for your perspective, excellent points!
Cindy
Hello Jeannette: you make an excellent point – commenting can be done more quickly and still constitutes a contribution, adds to the energy.
I have read that some ppl can post 25 comments in 30 minutes. Clearly, they make really brief comments. Maybe I could learn from that!! heh. Rather doubt it. Not my way.
Glad you enjoyed the article, thanks for reading and commenting.
Cindy
Great post Cindy!
I think this idea of ‘the outlet’ is the real key. Sometimes blogging is just getting something off your chest and immediately you feel better about it. So, at a personal level, it’s very rewarding to know and work for a company that understands that the voices, opinions, challenges, interests of its people are what is the most important about the firm itself.
One of the real challenges I forsee is not necessarily that large firms can innovate b/c there can always be a tendancy to become complacent. So just because we’re large doesnt mean we’re ‘the best’ per-se.
Bob, you make some good points I think the issue of transparency and elitism are what drives architects to be their worst in my opinion. I think what I see at HOK is that the blog is a ‘social networking’ platform that is totally separate from, say, Facebook or Twitter. In those spaces you ‘craft & curate’ your friends and peer-sharing information, however on a site like this is where I think the most powerful stuff comes from b/c of the complexity of the connection to others. In other words, I’m connected to HOK-life b/c I have an individual voice, but I also share a space with people that I don’t have any curatorial control over, rather we are connected by some common goals, values and probably differences!
I love this dialogue!
John, thanks so much, glad you are jumping in! Maybe through your voice and many others, HOK will never be complacent, aim at being best.
Agree completely with you, the differences within common interests makes a rich mix on HOKLife; and should create lively conversations. Excellent points.
You might like the book Engage by Brian Solis, a brilliant fellow I met last fall. Its heavy on PR info and metrics, not usually our interest. Brian’s ideas about conversations and affinities, which are personal connections, dovetail with yours, esp his first chapter. He’s a bit more aggressive about it: Engage or Die! heh. drama.
He shows how online conversations are actually business. Business has somehow become global and personal all at once. You can tap into that.
Do you have some ideas that might engage your HOK colleagues in a dialog? Could you take your comment and make a follow up blog post? Say, you are at the water cooler, what is the best story you can share for engagement? that’s how I think abt posts anyway. what is the question bothering me today? what did I learn today? what memorable thing happened? What are people wondering about and I have something to contribute? as you say, is a dialog!
Cindy
do u trust the blogs as much as news
Nice post!! Very interesting article Cindy or should I say Dr. Cindy,:) We definitely are entering into a whole new realm, with blogging and social media. It certainly has the potential to help equalize the playing field between small, medium and large firms. Although the larger firms still have the more resources to throw at it.
Craig: thank you! all true, agree. Many imagined that the internet and open access might level things off so that a small, medium or large firm would look similar and have similar opportunities. Proof of that fallacy: HOK hosts this site. Only another large firm could do that. look at all the contributors and experts. In fact, it allows the monolithic face of a corporation to become multi-pixelated with many faces.
A talented, aggressive smaller group can compete. but it takes that special small group to set the pace. Then something like this site gets developed and boom, a big firm can create a fantastic asset. Any firm has to be very smart in using resources on the Internet. its a black hole, yes? An Internet presence requires even more resources and more contributions. Glad to see HOKLife setting the pace.
Cindy