Great findings. I enjoyed reading your maturity model. I am a firm believer that for any business to fully “transform” to a social business there has to be a complete change of culture starting with at the very top with the leaders of company. I wonder where that dynamic, which I think is the most important, fits into your model?

Michael

Really interesting findings. From the work I’m doing in the UK I’ve not encountered anything that would generally run counter to your findings.

With regards to point 2 – garnering executive support. What I am seeing signs of is not necessarily a lack of support, but almost too much support that doesn’t actually result in any actions. People going round and round discussing big concepts like ownership. Departments want to own social, almost like putting it on their bookshelf, and once it’s there, discussions stall and the next barrier is raised. All the while, customers merrily Tweeting away.

The one thing I might add in, although you may group in under one of your existing points, is the need to address a company’s culture. I think this is a fundamental question that often gets ignored in favour of focussing on the social toolset. Opening a Twitter account doesn’t suddenly make a company open. A transition needs to take place within the company. Openness and being social in many ways starts from within an organisation.

guy
(@guy1067)

The maturity model above is interesting but it is pretty universal to any process/operational innovation. Maybe I am missing detail that makes this specific to social business maturity but just wanted to drop our point of view on this. We build the Community Maturity Model which is intended to be used to ope rationalize social/community structures across an enterprise and included the competencies we think are necessary to focus on to do that. See: http://community-roundtable.com/2009/06/the-community-maturity-model/

Regardless of the model, it is good to see people thinking in this direction!