Empowered by Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler

Bernoff, Josh & Schadler, Ted (2011) Empowered: Unleash Your Employees, Energize Your Customers, and Transform Your Business. Boston, Mass. : Harvard Business Press. 

I read this late 2011 - the Kindle version

One of the key changes that social media is bringing with it, is the empowerment of ordinary individuals. It is now possible for one person to take on a big corporation and change the way it interacts with all of it's customers. As a result of this, we need to ensure that our staff are also empowered to respond quickly and in a way that meets the demands of our customers.

This is a big challenge for both businesses and non-profits/governmental agencies. We tend to have historical reasons for why we interact with our customers the way we do, and the larger the organisation we work for, the more structured those interactions generally are. It's also often more difficult to free up layers of bureaucracy and allow staff the authority to make decisions as they are needed, and in a timeframe that is now expected by the customers (i.e., almost instantly).

This book (by one of the authors of Groundswell) gives examples of how different organisations (from a range of sizes and industry types) have used different social media tools to bring about a change in how they interact with their customers.It's about being deliberate about introducing social media, but not waiting for the perfect solution. It's ok to make mistakes as long as they are acknowledged and lessons learnt.

They also talk about people they call HEROes — highly empowered and resourceful operatives.Without these leaders (in the sense of those who lead others, not necessarily having a job title or salary that implies leadership), transitioning to a more innovative and responsive organisation is much more difficult. They provide tools that can be used to evaluate organisations and their readiness for change, on their website as well as in the book.

Although I didn't find this as useful as the first title (Groundswell), it still made me think. Always a good thing!
Specifically, I considered current structures including roadblocks, some of the ways that roadblocks can be overcome, and who to target when working towards implementation of more responsive customer service in our organisation.