Who would you select? I was reading this article on CNet News about ex-googlers working on stealth social search [hat tip Charlene Li] and was thinking about all the innovation we have seen in my neck of the woods from ex-DuPont teams.
In the article, Max Ventilla, a former business development manager turned entrepreneur, said he left Google because "it can be tough inside the search giant to make new, big things happen, as well as to marshal enough talent away from the company's main search and advertising products to build new services."
It seems that often the only way to lead change is to break away and start from scratch. This also seems to be part of evolution overall.
Evolution of business was one of my favorite posts at Conversation Agent because it talked about breaking away to create breakthroughs. That is very hard from the inside out. In the post, I outlined four areas essential to creating breakthrough performance in any organization and outlined how they would apply to the evolution of business with the introduction of social media dynamics. Those points were:
- Market reputation and authority create new options - How do you get authority online? Through participation, sharing, listening and responding where the answer may not necessarily be: your product or service.
- Consider the costs of not doing - The hidden cost is that of not doing the right things.
- Customers and markets don't stand still - As a marketer, and a business person, your job is to figure out where that value has shifted to for your customers.
- Simplicity gets results - Make it easy for people to sign up and to sign off as well.
Taking all of these points combined and looking at the current talent pool of marketing colleagues and friends, I cannot help but think that there is a dream team out there that could really help businesses evolve and innovate. I have a few ideas on who I would select for my dream team.
Are you looking around and building your team? In times of great disruption, which is where we're now, there is even greater opportunity to get a jump start onto what's next. In the article and for ex-DuPont employees, these were people who had worked together before.
Is social media giving you the opportunity and the exposure to experiencing and interacting with people you'd work with? Lists are great, but selecting partners and colleagues is an entirely different thing. Who would you trust with your business?
[ppsst - don't forget to meet me at SXSW]