Virginia Rometty

Dow Jones reported late yesterday afternoon that Virginia M. Rometty will become IBM’s new president and chief executive. History was made because the Dow Jones article did not mention her gender. No headline that a woman is taking the reins. Just a straightforward story. Oh, have we come a long way, baby.

I just had to write about this because it’s so significant for the women who were the pioneers in establishing equality for women in the workplace. It took a long time but a woman CEO is no longer considered unusual. There still aren’t enough of them. This condensed Dow Jones article is another sign that it isn’t unusual for a highly-capable woman to become CEO of a Fortune 500 company without it being a big deal. Whoopee!

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) tapped company executive Virginia M. Rometty as its new president and chief executive, electing a company insider who was long seen as a front-runner to succeed current chairman and CEO Samuel J. Palmisano.

On Tuesday, the blue-chip company said Palmisano will step down from the helm of the company but keep his seat as chairman. Palmisano, 60 years old, became IBM’s chief executive in 2002 and chairman in 2003. Palmisano helped transform IBM by easing focus off hardware and shifting toward software and services.

Rometty, 54, who will take her post at the start of next year, is now IBM’s senior vice president and group executive for sales, marketing and strategy. Before running sales, she served as senior vice president of IBM Global Services and helped lead the unit’s integration of PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting.

Congratulations, Virginia! Give ‘em hell!!

President Obama on LinkedIn, Getty Images

LinkedIn hosted President Obama on a live webcast this afternoon to answer questions that were submitted online by LinkedIn members and  LinkedIn employees in the studio audience.

This astute President knows the viral power of social media. While watching the broadcast live, viewers could also follow a stream of Twitter and Facebook updates that would spread to millions of followers and their followers.

If you missed it, here are the key topics he covered:

Job Creation

This was at the top of the list in most questions. The President, as might be expected, pushed for the Congress to pass his American Jobs Act. This includes an expansion of the payroll tax break, along with more spending on school and road projects. He said that independent economists estimate the legislation would generate a 2% increase in GDP and 1.9 million in jobs.

He took special note of the programs to help veterans find jobs. For example, if a 25-year-old veteran has spent years as an emergency medical technician in the service and wants to attend nursing school he shouldn’t be required to start all over. There should be programs in place for veterans and employees in the private sector to credential them for their work experience. Their skills should translate directly to jobs.

He noted that the problem wasn’t with the people out of work – many of whom have the skills and credentials to find jobs. It’s the state of the economy.

Small business

In answer to a question about onerous taxes and regulations on small business, he claimed that his administration had cut taxes on small businesses 16 times. He said business would get tax breaks for hiring, making capital investments, hiring veterans and other measures. He’s also proposed no capital gains on a start-up new business.

President Obama seemed a little startled – and certainly happy – when an audience member asked him “Will you please raise my taxes?” Turns out he was retired from a start-up search engine company (he left us to guess which one). The questioner asked in particular that tax cuts expire that benefit the wealthy.

The President said he has also instructed government agencies to “look back” at old regulations to re-examine the ones that have outlived their usefulness and to eliminate bureaucracy and red tape.

Education

Getty Images

The President commented that the U.S. had fallen woefully behind other countries in graduating students from high school and college. He encouraged more technical training and for community colleges to train its students for jobs that exist now and not old jobs.

He pointed to an IBM program with the New York City school system. If students commit to work hard and follow the program, IBM will hire them at the end of the process. It will be a practical application for what they are learning in school even if they don’t have a four-year degree. He lauded the concept of apprenticeship and vigorous training for potential careers.

Social Security and Medicare

In a response to a young women’s question in the audience about her 65-year-old mother, Mr. Obama said Medicare and Social Security will always be there as a safety net. But he acknowledged that long-term challenges will have to be met to keep the programs viable. With people living longer, fewer workers are supporting retirees. Adjustments will have to be made. He suggested one – to lift the cap on payroll contributions so that millionaires will pay their fair share.

He pointed to technology – such as sharing electronic medical records – to help reduce Medicare costs.

How Did He Do?

President Obama, as usual, seemed relaxed and smiled often in exchanges with the audiences. You would never have thought his popularity in the polls has dropped so precipitously. Maybe he was just glad to get out of Washington. I’m sure that was a temporary tonic for what ails him as he struggles to help lift the economy.

Image via CrunchBase

[tweetmeme]Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, thinks so. In the Sunday magazine section, he writes a rare bylined article entitled: “The Twitter Trap.”

His main premise: “Basically, we are outsourcing our brains to the cloud. The upside is that this frees a lot of gray matter for important pursuits like FarmVille and ‘Real Housewives.’ But my inner worrywart wonders whether the new technologies overtaking us may be eroding characteristics that are essentially human: our ability to reflect, our pursuit of meaning, genuine empathy, a sense of community connected by something deeper than snark or political affinity.”

Why So Negative?

He knows he will get “blowback” but I admire him for going on record with what a lot of people are thinking.  First, where I stand.  Social media is gobbling up a lot of people’s time. Remember, it’s still so new. We’re all learning how to use it so that it works for us as individuals – such as connecting on Facebook with far-away friends and relatives or looking for a job on LinkedIn. So, in my mind the jury is still out on its long-term effects on our brains.

Where I take exception to Keller is that he devotes his column almost exclusively to the negative aspects – “Twitter and YouTube are nibbling away at our attention spans…why remember what you can look up in seconds?” he asks.

Social Media Spurs Innovation

I predict that 2011 is the year that companies will jump into social media with both feet. Those on the sidelines will find they need to catch up to the early adopters. Enlightened companies such as IBM have an army of employees writing blogs under the IBM imprimatur “IBMers’ blogs: A menu of expertise and insight from a passionate crowd”  – with the links to dozens of employee bloggers. Note the words “expertise and insight.” By unleashing their employees the company has an army of brand advocates reporting on IBM’s newest innovations.

The web has revolutionized customer service. At Comcast’s Twitter account @comcastcares customers can get their complaints taken care of by a team of Comcast employees, such as Bill Gerth, “also known as @comcastbill. We are here to Make it Right for our customers.” He’s posted some 74,000 tweets.

Web-based Communities

The internet has enabled many companies to form communities of employees from around the globe  – focused on innovation, problem solving and client service. In the past, if an engineer in the U.S. needed an expert to help solve a sticky problem, it’s doubtful he would know the very person he wanted works in the Hong Kong office. The web has changed that. We can even have face-to-face communications via Skype, making the connection personal.

I won’t even go into how Twitter is forming communities that are forcing radical changes on governments around the world. You’ve read all about that.

So, Bill Keller, while I appreciate your frustration with a lot of the dreck that passes as discourse on social networks, the good far outweighs the bad. We don’t need to memorize books like they did in the olden days. After we take a minute to find what we need in a web search, we can take the time we would have devoted to memorization to reflect on new ideas that will make things easier, cheaper, faster and maybe even earn some money.

[tweetmeme]Corporations tweet more often than any other social media activity according to “The Global Social Media Check-up 2010,” just released by PR firm Burson-Marsteller. The firm examined the Fortune Global 100 and found Twitter activity was up by 18%, YouTube channels by 14%, Facebook up by 13% and blogging flat except in the U.S. where it was up by 29%.

The study also learned that companies are using Twitter to push out news while using Facebook to build communities. I found it somewhat surprising that the firm didn’t examine how companies are using LinkedIn which now has company accounts. Possibly it will be included in next’s year’s survey.

As the study points out, these statistics can be misleading. The use of social media is up dramatically in Asia (up 68% for Twitter) while it is flat in Europe. Also, the U.S. figures are skewed for Twitter and blogging. IBM went from 43 to 76 Twitter accounts and Walmart from 11 to 39. Hewlett-Packard increased its employee blogs to 83 and IBM has 86 employees blogging. Note to companies reading this: you can trust your employees to say the right things on Twitter, in corporate blogs and other social media.

Here is the company’s presentation of the findings, where you’ll find much more detail. The conclusion is obvious: companies are increasing their use of social media and the trend will continue, in my view, exponentially in 2011.

I am constantly impressed with IBM and its open attitude towards its employees’ use of social media.  The company has on its website, for all to see, its “IBM Social Computing Guidelines”.  

I wrote about this on the Blogger’s Bulletin, a LinkedIn subgroup.  With the start of 2010, other companies, who are floundering with their social media policies, would do well to check out IBM’s guidelines.  One of many lines in the guidelines that intrigued me: “IBM is increasingly exploring how online discourse through social computing can empower IBMers as global professionals, innovators and citizens. These individual interactions represent a new model:  not mass communications, but masses of communicators.” What a profound statement.  Gone are the days when a company can tightly control its message through advertising and printed materials.  IBM has recognized that thousands of its employees, within certain guidelines, are the touch points for communications with customers, prospects and the general public.

Empowering employees to be brand advocates for the company takes courage and a great deal of trust.  From the guidelines, “In 1997, IBM recommended that its employees get out onto the Internet – at a time when many companies were seeking to restrict their employees’ Internet access.  In 2005, the company made a strategic decision to embrace the blogosphere and to encourage IBMers to participate.”

IBM says that when it wishes to communicate publicly as a company it has a well-established means to do so – through employee blogs and other forms of online discourse.  Isn’t this refreshing?  That a company as huge as IBM is empowering and leveraging its employees to enhance its brand?  There are other companies, too, like Zappos and Comcast that understand the value of employee involvement in social media.  But there are too few companies who understand the power of the Internet.  And some companies are still muzzling their employees – but it’s too late.  Their employees are already out there.

Jon Iwata, SVP, Marketing & Communications, spells out IBM’s social media policy in this video.  Jon Iwata – Social Media as an Internal Tool. Well worth watching.

You’d think that Coca-Cola, long #1 on Interbrand’s “Best Global Brands List,” would achieve the same prominence on the Internet.  But, no, Coke only ranks 12^th based on number of mentions online in 2009, according to an analysis by Sysmos, a company that provides business intelligence on social media.

There could be many reasons for the variation, including a lack of social media communications programs.  The variation is also seen among other top ranked Interbrand brands.  For example #2 IBM slides to #15 in online mentions.  Conversely, and perhaps not surprisingly, Google is #1 in online mentions while #7 on Interbrand’s list, which is based on financial data, international scope, and value added.  Only Microsoft achieves equality, at #3 in both the “Best Global Brands List” and with mentions online.

So, why does it matter that a company is tops in economic value but below par online?  I believe that it will begin to matter much, much more in coming years, as the Internet increasingly becomes the principal source of information about companies and everything else.  If your company is not commanding the Internet among consumers, you may no longer be dominating the marketplace.  But leading brands have it in their power to improve their online rankings.

One way is by enlisting their employees as brand advocates in corporate communications. Employees are already surfing the web and participating in social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.  Large companies have a golden opportunity to dominate the Internet “air waves” with their employees as their most important cheerleaders, commenting on corporate and employee blogs, and engaging in online conversations with consumers.

Getting back to Coke, the company has 3.7 million fans on Facebook, and 92,4000 employees spread across the globe.  Just think of their cumulative power to communicate key messages about Coke that zoom around the world on social networks.  I wonder if Coke has an organized program for their employees to reach out to Coke’s followers on social networks?  I read through last year’s Annual Review and didn’t see anything.  I don’t mean to pick on Coke.  I’m just using the company as an example of a missed opportunity.

Employees in all companies will welcome the opportunity to be empowered to represent their company in the blogosphere.  All it takes is trust:  trust your employees to promote your brand well in online communications.

[tweetmeme]Smart companies are waking up to the idea of their employees being their most important brand advocates. As I’ve written before, employees are still largely underutilized in this role. When there isn’t a positive culture of communication within a company, management doesn’t trust employees with carrying their message to the outside world through new social media tools like blogging and Twittering.

Trust is the operative word.

In a video on social networking at IBM Jon Iwata, SVP, Marketing & Communications, points out the company can’t control what employees say. This scares the heck out of CEOs who don’t trust their employees to do the right thing. But as Iwata points out, the same policies that apply to an employee who might give away company secrets in a bar apply to the employee who is posting a tweet. IBM isn’t afraid of social media because, as Iwata says at the conclusion of the video, “employees can be trusted.”

Probably the most notable example of a wide-open culture with employees talking directly to their customers is Zappos. As those devoted to Twitter know, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is a committed Twitterer.  Type in twitter.zappos.com and you can also read the tweets of all 431 Zappos’ employees on Twitter. Just think of the good will being sown among the many customers and potential customers who are following Tony Hsieh (735,000+) and all those employee tweets.

Yet, surveys show that most companies are still in the old command and control mode. Management hasn’t begun to tap into the power of employees as advocates of the company on social media networks. When will they wise up?