Raise your [SQ] - It is The Key to Social Business Success

IQ, KQ... move over. Here comes [SQ]... and it's here to stay!

Intelligence Quotient, Knowledge Quotient... are both vital elements of success. But the future demands something more.

It's no longer about:

How experienced you are
How connected you are
How skilled you are
How educated you are
How global you are

Don't get me wrong. While all of that is important, what's business-critical today is:

How generous you are
How genuine you are
How emotionally aware you are
How giving you are
How human you are

It's all about how social you are.

At the risk of sounding like Deepak Chopra's social media clone, it's time to put more heart into business. Tom Peters' words have never rung truer:

"The soft skills are the hard skills."

In times of technological parity - where everyone has equal access to cutting-edge innovation and new tech - the future belongs to companies and individuals with a higher Social Quotient [SQ].

Social Intelligence (emotional intelligence in a social context) directly impacts business results:

• How well do you relate to your customers? 
• How well do you understand their needs?
• How well do you connect with customers, employees, partners, suppliers...?
• Sure, you service and support them. How well do you surprise and delight them?

How well you empathize and 'resonate' with stakeholders has a direct link to innovation.

Success today is still about getting 'Marketing 101' or 'Business Basics' right but... within a new socially, globally, digitally connected marketing ecosystem - that's the real game-changer!

When a business makes that transformation on the inside and outside, in heart and mind, body and soul... it becomes a Social Business.

A Social Business Model Integrates Social into Core Business Processes :- Internal + External

Image Source: Esteban Kolsky on MyCustomer.com

Why become a Social Business?

At its most simplistic level, here's how the old, linear, one-way business model used to work: Everything began internally as 'content' and ended up externally as 'customer experience'. Whatever happened between launch and purchase determined the project's success.

Today, our lives are played out in a social environment. Most popular activities - entertainment, marketing, games, events, news, sports, TV, commerce - have become two-way inter-activities.

In the 'social' business model, customers are co-marketers, co-creators of brand and content, co-idea generators. Through feedback channels, customers are shaping and designing products by telling businesses exactly what they like and what they don't. Truly, a community of co-innovators.

Sandy Carter's Social Business (#SocBiz) Agenda for Enterprise-wide Collaboration

By leveraging social technologies to create a culture of readiness internally, and enabling e-commerce via multiple channels externally, a social business performs better by being an effective listener of customer needs, and an efficient executor/ deliverer of consumer demands/ desires.

The traditional customer-to-company funnel is gone. Now, it's one, big pipeline with CRM, Sales, Marketing, R&D and Innovation - all processes going two-way simultaneously. With smarter use of data, better application of insights and real-time analytics, the pipeline continually gets refined.

However, once the social (digital, mobile, retail) technology is in place, everything depends on the quality of relationships. Good enough reason to become a social business, and raise your [SQ].

Two well-written pieces on the same line of thought:

• Danya Williams' blog post - Social Quotient and Recruitment

“Social Intelligence describes the exclusively human capacity to effectively navigate and negotiate complex social relationships and environments."

"Someone with a high social quotient will have the ability to positively influence and inspire others to achieve, whilst also being able to prioritize their work to generate the biggest output."

• Jure Klepic's article on Huffington Post - It's Time for Businesses to Get Socialized

Social Business starts on the inside and it starts at the top. 5 ways to explore the concept:

1) An excellent presentation by Jennifer Dubow:


2) Books:

Social Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

Return on Relationship (#RonR) by Ted Rubin

Socialized! by Mark Fidelman

Get Bold! by Sandy Carter

3) Follow Sandy Carter, IBM Vice President, Social Business Evangelism




To view all videos in the social business series by Sandy Carter, click here.

For more, watch Sandy's YouTube Channel or read her blog From Social Media to Social Business



4) Attend/ Follow this event: IBM Connect 2013

@IBMConnect (#IBMconnect) - Jan 27-31, Orlando, Florida

5) A Social Workforce Is A Smarter Workforce

a. Download this study by IBM's Institute for Business Value: The Business of Social Business.

b. Visit the IBM website for e-books, whitepapers, reports... dedicated to Social Business

c. The Rise of Social Business: Liking isn't Leading - Download this brilliant PDF