Collaborating, loosening the reins on creative control, sharing information, crowdsourcing, automatically extending trust, being exposed to more risks (not necessarily real), and engaging with authentic communications are all indications of openness in business. As your customers, employees and community members in general become more adept at using social and other related technologies (i.e. mobile), they will push you and your business to be even more open. Guaranteed.
Charlene Li, founding partner of Altimeter Group and co-author of Groundswell, recently released her new book, Open Leadership. I was very fortunate to be able to participate in the early stages of her book's development and review, and think it's a must read for anyone who values and understands the currency of relationships in business. Further, if you believe social technologies are changing how we do business then you'll find Open Leadership is a great resource and business-case builder. Here's a quick preview about why Charlene wrote the book and what's in store:
There are many tools and take-aways in the book and online via the open-leadership community. For example, Charlene discusses how all open-driven objectives create common benefits, in that they:
- Remove friction: removing barriers in business, and providing more access to information and people, lowers the cost of decision making
- Scale efforts: a culture of sharing means things spread faster and wider
- Enable fast response: the real-time nature of social technologies means you can respond quickly to needs and opportunities
- Gain commitment: businesses that win the hearts and minds of stakeholders gain business and competitive advantages
For me, this book fits like a glove because I tend to be an open person and prefer to work with other open leaders and practitioners. Close to home, I doubt that I would have landed a dream job this month if both employer and new employee did not share a passion for innovation and openness.
Try moving out of your comfort zone to reap the rewards of really being open for business.
