The ROI

What’s the nature of the system? Then a leader must evaluate what kind of leadership skills are required to be successful when leading people in it. How will I engage those I require to move my efforts forward?Then, and only then, does it make sense to think about the tools and tactics you’ll use to inspire people to engage with your brand, movement, or cause. Because tactics and tools change. Especially in and around the social web. What should matter to you and I is finding those enduring templates that travel with us through the changing realities of our careers, our company’s strategic landscape, and the people who flow in and out of our leadership contexts.In my view, the deeper meaning that underpins all the treatises from social media “experts” is really a reframing of what leadership books and thought experts have studied for years.

What the study was interested in understanding (based on my reading – there are certainly more conclusions to make as Pink shows) is the value of social contracts. By removing the connection parents had with the people behind the center, and creating more of a pure transactional relationship, they’ve turned late pick-ups into acceptable behavior. They removed the social contract.I give a presentation called Leading in a Social World. In it I suggest that in order to grasp the significance of the social web, a leader (by leader I mean all of us – anyone involved in trying to inspire one or more people to do something) must value it first. What’s the asset or capital the social web brings to bear for me or my company?

Then a leader must understand what makes it tick. Permission, Thank You, Naked, Trust, fillintheblank-a-nomics…these are really just new concepts for building social capital. And social capital has long been an asset that any leader in any time has always had to concern themselves with.As an asset, social capital results in many tangible benefits. The value of a social contract, as the Israeli daycare centers learned, is one of them. So is the idea of a social license.

Most businesses need various licenses to operate: liquor, tax, BMI/ASCAP, water rights, mining. But they need social licenses too. Neighborhood buy-in for the nightclub. Community approval to divert water.Newmont mining knows this to be true. Their ability to operate in a stable environment and open new mines with greater efficiency depends on their deliberately-planned social license programs. (You can read more about social licenses in the natural resources industry here.) The result? Consistent growth in earnings, and the first gold mining company to be named to the Dow Jones Sustainability index. As for the rest of us, I use everybody’s-favorite-animal Erik Proulx and a remarkable redhead by the name of Erika Napoletano in my presentation as tangible, everyperson examples of leaders who understand how to build social capital, and the value it can bring.