Favela’s Finest: From Networks to Dogs in 7 Posts

- Time to look back -

Posted on August 1, 2012 by Favela Fabric

We’ve been around for a while now, and with our new website up and running it’s time for a recap on what we’ve written in the past couple of years. All sorts of topics have passed through, most of them related to communities, co-creation, social business, social network analysis, and the like. It’s always good to see that, though our wording may have changed, we’re still on a track that’s very similar to a few years ago.

We still believe that there is more to be made from your, or your company’s, (social) network. ”[A] network also contains value, and depending on the purpose it can be heavily underutilised, with nobody really knowing”, Bas wrote recently, but in a post from 2009 he showed us that it’s not just about connecting people:

“The question is how to extract ‘smart’ behaviour from a group of social human beings.”

Even so, if you’re planning on building a community, you do need to have some sort of critical mass to get started as I wrote at the beginning of this year.

“Those first couple of hundred members of your online community are vital to its existence and to keep it self-sustainable.”

We’ve always had different approaches for engaging employees within a company or for having a company engage with its customers. This has recently manifested in our different Social Business Areas (SBA). In the end it’s all about taking people serious. It’s fine to start a platform for dialogue, but it has to be part of a culture of participation. As Bas wrote in 2010:

“Employee engagement can only thrive if management is really participative. Employee engagement can never be the sole objective; it can only co-exist with participative management.”

Giving your employees more freedom can be scary, but we also have to consider that times are changing. We can keep our heads down, but the times of controlling the media and concealing the inner workings of your company have long gone. It has become more and more important to have a widely adopted strategy and vision for your company. As Raul wrote in 2010:

“Companies need to be able to assess the daily torrent of events in the light of their own strategy and purpose. They should not be too much troubled if things temporarily run an unexpected course.”

Employees can become ambassadors, but so can customers. Your customers often know the most about your brand.

“Your customers know more about your brand than any brand consultant ever will”

That’s what Regina wrote last year. We can try and hold on to ‘old’ ways of handling brands, identity and marketing, but it is time to accept that “your brand will never be ‘sorted out’”, Regina says. That’s why we need a deep respect for our customers, after all they’re the ones investing their trust in us. And trust is something you don’t buy. That goes for dialogue too. ”Gifts were seen as a business transaction, a cold reward that did not do justice to the personal and intimate dialogue people experienced during the course of the project. The disregard for the relationship that had grown was felt as a profound disappointment”, Sander said in 2009. Customers are not Pavlovian dogs waiting for a treat.

“Cocreation is about Maslow, providing an exciting, relevant experience while nurturing true dialogue. By rewarding your audience with honest attention and a clear path to results. Pavlov was about dogs, Maslow is about people.”