"...a social strategy doesn’t mean doctors on Facebook"

How's your patient engagement strategy working out for you?  This article might help:  Engagement is a Strategy IV: 10 Reasons Value-based Health Care Orgs Need A Social Strategy.

If you want to influence behavior (which you do or will), you really can’t ignore a social strategy. We’ll need to get really good at engagement and behavior change on a massive scale. Social media strategies may be our best bet at influencing behavior on a massive scale. Not to push behavior in a direction, but to provide systems that let behavior naturally migrate toward the health people already seek."

7:11 AM

My Healthcare Innovation

We're shaking up healthcare with social innovation, says John Soloninka, CEO of the Health Technology Exchange:  

"Health systems have been very slow to innovate and we under-realize our return from our investment in medical research and human resources. What we need is a health system that can distill and articulate its high priority problems, share them to the innovation community (internally and externally), reward innovators and facilitate rapid implementation of "disruptive" technologies. HTX is interested in My Healthcare Innovation as a way of creating and interconnecting communities of interest to share problems and best practices, while maintaining a safe and secure environment for frank discussion."

[Read more...]

4:30 PM

"Aggravate a traveler, then hand them a smartphone..."

Especially a traveler who is also a composer and musician.  From Alexandra Samuel, blogging at HBR Blog Network about Qantas Airways' misadventures through the social media minefield: 

"We've been saying this for a while now but it's worth repeating: Social media turns branding into a true (if often accidental) collaboration between company and customer, in the way it enables constant and often bottom-up collaboration within organizations, and in the way it accelerates the pace of conversation and organizational change. Social media tends to flatten hierarchies, disempower gatekeepers, and give a voice to anyone who cares to speak about an issue, or a brand."

Still a doubter?  Maybe you should Google "United Breaks Guitars"  - another airline but still the poster child for customer revenge, and the point that started this post...

3:36 PM

Social Media In the C-Suite

C-Suite denizens have had difficulties warming up to social media.  Most are used to being, if not the entire conversation, at least in charge of what's said, when and to whom.  Social media's democratizing effect threatens that neatly-ordered world.

And it's humbling to learn that your thoughts and opinions aren't crystalline, brilliant or even very persuasive.  Readers talk back, using adjectives like idiotic and clueless, sometimes alone or in very creative combinations.  (Happens to me all the time, in case you're wondering.)

A critical (though common) misperception is that social media is about "Me talk.  You listen.  Me talk more.  You do what I say!"  That never worked with my daughters and I doubt it'll work for many hospital CEOs.

In "Social Media in the C-Suite: Listening, Learning and Creating a  Strategy from the Top Down" Knowledge @ Wharton interviews author Michael Lewis about the opportunities and pitfalls in implementing a social media strategy in the C-suite.

Says Lewis:

"...most people misinterpret what social media's about. They use it as a talking vehicle. Social media is a listening vehicle. It's both. But most people don't understand that the real power is to be able to listen to the customer in a real time and effective way."

[...]

"It (starts) with listening and evangelizing throughout the organization. And enabling (active participation) in social media. And gearing up for the fact that the world is changing at a rapid rate right now. And it affects every business, as Eric said, every aspect of the business. That's not easy, to re-imagine your entire organization in the time frames that social media will affect it. But look, social media can topple governments. It's going to affect your business."

There it is:  "Social media can topple governments.  It's going to affect your business."  

I'd change that last sentence to read "It's affecting your business, right now, today."  Your job, dear C-suiter, is to screw up your courage, don some adult underwear, join the conversation and turn it to your competitive advantage.

10:23 AM