Shel Israel Interviewed Michael Dell On Social Media At Dell
Shel posted an excellent interview with Michael Dell this morning. He believes it is it is the “longest and deepest interview on social media ever conducted with a CEO of a Fortune 100 company.” I wonder if it might be the most extensive interview with a Fortune 1000 CEO ever.
If you read this blog periodically, you know I had the pleasure of working with Dell on all of these programs. Michael Dell’s championing social media experiments and initiatives at Dell is not often reported on, but his support has been and continues to be critical to their success. It’s what allowed the newly named “communities and conversations” team to move decisively and very quickly once they had a strategy and plan. It allowed them to cut through legal and IT and HR issues and to get to “the conversations” rapidly. We tripped a few times early on, but there have been many more successes. The Dell team does not look in their rear view mirrors often! They just keep adjusting and improving and moving forward… In fact, they are the first to admit they are just getting started, and they have an ambitious roadmap of projects for the coming year.
A lot of executives ask me “what else should Dell be doing?” Of course, their roadmap is confidential to our relationship. But at a high level they must continue to expand their conversations with customers in key segments — enterprise, gaming, etc. — and in major markets around the world in their local languages. Dell will have to pioneer these areas since few companies are implementing social media programs at this scale.
One Response to “Shel Israel Interviewed Michael Dell On Social Media At Dell”
1 The Secret to Proactive Change « Public Relations Rogue 16 February 2008 @ 10:46 am
[...] February 16, 2008 in Corporations, Social networks, Strategy, Web 2.0 Given my experience at Dell - where I was lucky enough to be part of a small team that transformed the company from social media laggard to leader (not just my personal assessment) I am often asked the secret to our success…how we shifted gears so dramatically and rapidly in such a huge company. There is no magic formula, of course, but as my friend and former agency partner Paul Walker notes in his blog, the most critical factor was the leadership of Michael Dell. Without his unequivocal support and encouragement - and occasional nudges to avoid getting bogged down - I’m not sure we would have been able to do so much so fast. A close second was knowing folks like Paul who could provide education and guidance on the brave new world of social media. (As point of reference, I knew next to nothing - ok, nothing - about social media, or blogs, or wikis…before I joined the effort at Dell and started my digital boot camp.) The lesson: it’s always much easier to break some glass when your CEO is the first one to throw a brick through the window. Categories [...]
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