I guess, what you're asking is - what the heck is a social business strategy consulting firm?
Social business is the new term (or meme, if you will) that is emerging to describe organizations that are leveraging social software and tools to connect with customers and other stakeholders - that's right folks, bringing the social web into the organization.
As I have believed - such tools (call them web 2.0 or whatever) help in facilitating transparency and openness and help achieve the true goals of Organization Development
In my role in 2020 social (follow it on twitter) I would be looking at the enterprise practice - or essentially how organizations can deploy social tools to empower employees, build collaboration, develop knowledge and positively impact business. Yeah, some people call this Enterprise 2.0 too.
It takes me back to the starting point of my career - when I started out looking at organizational processes for Knowledge Management and then e-learning.
However as much as I love tools - I know that culture always trumps tactics, tools and even strategy. So I am looking at leveraging my HR and OD learnings to help client organizations deploy these social tools.
And I am super-excited to be working along with the amazing 20:20 social team that includes an old blogging acquaintance Gaurav Mishra who blogs at gauravonomics.com. What makes Gaurav a kindred spirit is his openness and transparency as CEO - he blogs about the organization as he manages it :-) Check out Gaurav's posts on how to build an Open and Collaborative Professional Services Firm, and Top 10 FAQs on Building a Social Business Strategy Firm in India.
Am also looking forward to working with a true blue Thought Leader Dave Evans (not the AC/DC guy ;-) author of a book on Social Media Marketing who blogs at http://readthis.com
You can download 20:20 Social's position paper on Social Business Strategy as a pdf, or read it on scribd.
Who are the other folks who are doing something similar?
Well there are two that I know of - the Altimeter Group and Dachis Group.
20:20 Social has just started its journey and I am very excited to be part of something so new and emergent.
Whee! Wish me luck!
