The fourth leg of Web 2.0 strategy – Culture

‘KEY’ TAKE AWAY: Culture is one of four aspects of a Web 2.0 strategy (along with business, users, and technology). To not embrace the culture of Web 2.0 in your organization is to risk the ability to efficiently and successfully benefit from Web 2.0.

I have a great deal of respect for Jeremiah, and have been recently thinking about a concept in particular that he has shared about long term web strategy. Jeremiah explains that, “Typically, I’ve found that there’s a trilogy within a long term web strategy; Business, Users, and Technology over the long term.“

I would agree. For Web 2.0 strategy, I believe there may be one other aspect that I would add – culture. In experience and in observation, culture is a significant aspect that can delay, limit, or even destroy the long term web 2.0 strategy of a company if it is not in favor of the strategy. It appears that only with all four legs (business, users, technology, and culture) does Web 2.0 really get running.

As in most companies, culture comes from the top. Even if the culture of a company is driven from ground level, it must be supported by the CEO in order for this ‘bottom-up’ culture to survive and flourish. The same goes for web 2.0 strategy in an organization.

I personally experienced the critical importance of culture first hand at Zappos.com when I was a business and web strategist there. It was there that the CEO, Tony Hsieh, really embraced and maintained a culture of collaboration and transparency that has taken Zappos.com from an idea to a $600 Million company and revolutionized footwear retail in only 7 years.

Even before the term Web 2.0 was coined by O’Reily and the Web 2.0 technologies we have today, Tony had custom built a system from scratch that shared information both internally and externally so that everyone could work collaboratively. I had never before seen such openness with data as I had at Zappos. The system was called Site Manager and from it, both internal employees and vendors could track all types of information including sales all the way down to specific SKU’s in order to empower them with information necessary to improve their business. Vendors would often track sales in real time and make suggestions to Zappos.com buyers because of the system. As a result, there was a high degree of collaboration between vendors and Zappos to ensure that each footwear brand was optimized for sales and markdowns at all times based upon historical sales and future trends. Vendors were even encouraged to submit their feedback directly to Zappos about how the Site Manager system can be improved. From that the vendor feedback system, a feature that included images of footwear styles next to SKU data was created and became a feature that led to a universal improvement to the use of Site Manager system by internal and external users alike.

Similarly, on the customer side, Tony fully implemented the culture of Web 2.0 by allowing users to not only rate the service provided by Zappos, but also the footwear they received. Most important was the fact that Tony would consistently choose to allow the few negative comments about particular footwear styles to appear on the Zappos.com’s website from customers. It seems natural now in a Web 2.o world, but back then it was unheard of to knowing keep negative comments from users on a company website. What Tony established was that transparency was paramount in creating the trust that was necessary to have the community of customers tell their friends that Zappos was a honest business.

The results are clear. I believe that the trilogy that Jeremiah has taught us is definitely correct as it relates to long term web strategy and Zappos was no exception. As it relates to Web 2.0 strategy, the additional aspect of culture is a critically significant leg since it implies doing business in a way that is so different from the ‘command and control’ world of the past and the collaboration and transparency of today.

As a business leader, be aware that for you and your organization to fully embrace the advantages of Web 2.0 you must also lead the cultural change along with the other aspects of Web 2.0 strategy in order to be successful.

MORE LINKS WORTH YOUR TIME:

• Enterprise 2.0 as a corporate culture catalyst
• Web 2.0 As a Catalyst for Corporate Culture Change
• How To Build An Enterprise 2.0 Culture – Empowering Everyone to Have a Voice and Starting Small
• Web 2.0 is Easy – Culture is Hard

James Key Lim