3 levels of change needed to become a conversational company

Companies are really suffering to adapt their situation towards the era we are living in. Most companies realize that change is needed. However, the difficulty is the road to implementation. I’m also convinced that the current (r)evolution we are in, is more tough than previous changes.

The problem is that to succeed, a company needs to change at three different levels:

1. Personal change: every individual in an organization needs to do efforts in leaving their personal comfort zone. The majority of employees is not using Twitter, but has an opinion about it. This is really strange for me: having an opinion about something you don’t really know. It’s not only strange, it’s also kind of dangerous. People need to change on a personal level and we all know that they just hate it. People love routine and we ask them to break with routine.

2. Structural change: our current company structure is not sufficient to deal with the demands of the modern consumer. Consumers don’t understand the silo structure of a company. Silo’s lead to non communication which leads to lousy customer service. This will need to change to cope with the conversation revolution.

3. Cultural change: trying protect company secrets and avoiding all negative conversations is still at large in most companies. Being open in what you do good and bad, is still very difficult. Social media policies are often written out of fear. Engaging your employees to share their corporate experiences with their friends, is a strong marketing weapon these days, but still most companies are afraid of it.

So you see, three levels of change we need to go through. This explains why it takes longer than expected to welcome the companies of the future: the conversational companies.