Say goodbye to the illusion of control
Now we are 2010 and some companies really didn’t get the message. It even scares the hell out of them, so they wanted to proof that they could still control things. This means that in 2010 we have a new mission towards larger enterprises: let go of the ‘illusion of control’.
The policies that companies have in place to control word-of-mouth of their employees (like blocking Facebook, Twitter, …) is not working and is even decreasing the business value of these companies.
By blocking social media two things happen:
- Your lousy employees find other ways to kill their time and are still not productive (you should fire them instead of blocking useful sites)
- Your superstar employees don’t have the means to express their positive attitude towards consumers, suppliers and future employees, which decreases the value of your growth.
These people are the means necessary to promote your brand. A policy to stop people from communicating about your company is the biggest illusion there is in corporate life. This is the metaphor (I love metaphors :-)) I like to convince people about this.
Find yourself a wet piece of soap and find out what works best to hold the piece of soap: grab it as hard as you can or just open your hand and place the piece of soap on it….