About a week and a half ago, IPDI hosted a book discussion with Brian Reich, one of the co-authors (Along with Dan Solomon) of the book Media Rules! Mastering Today’s Technology to Connect with and Keep You Audience.

This is maybe the third or fourth time I’ve heard Reich talk about Media Rules in about as many months, and Reich’s analysis has become, for me, a new organizational leadership guide — for the digital age. Reich himself calls the book “organizational management in the new media age,” and he was compelled to write it out of frustration from working with so many organizations that lack a core understanding of how to use the Internet. “All they have,” Reich said, “is tactics.”

Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned from my time reading and listening to Brian Reich:

1. Before you begin to look at incorporating Internet tactics into your organization, focus on the meat — the information, experiences, and stuff that your organization produces. No one has room for crappy “stuff” (or information or experiences). Start with creating good “stuff.”
2. Success is measurable and unique to each space. We’re sometimes so obsessed with new media that many of us have moved away from focusing on our own core principles. All the activity in the world does not equal success. Instead, focus your organizations goals, strategies, tactics, and resources on creating measurable change.
3. Very few new media things actual create measurable change. However, in the digital era, collaboration among groups and organizations with common interests, not competing interests, is the best way to achieve meaningful, measurable change.
4. Digital leadership is defined by a two related abilities. The first is the ability to listen and hear. “We’re collecting information online, but we’re not synthesizing it,” says Reich. Once we learn how to listen, we can use all the online tools that encourage interaction and interactivity in useful ways. This includes collaborating on problems and sharing information. The second ability is the ability to teach people how to have an impact on society or in your issue area.
5. In order to create change, an organization needs to accomplish a few tasks. First, raise awareness. Second, connect, engage, and enable people on the substance of their issue and what their role can be. Third, mobilize them.

According to Reich, “old school organizations are still trying to convince people to do what the old school organizations want them to do.” Unfortunately, those old school management tactics aren’t working anymore. Media Rules! is Reich’s call to change for organizational managers. Sadly, too many organizations lose their commitment to solving issues and instead become organizations that are focused simply on surviving as organizations. They serve the cause instead of solving it.

There’s something sad and ineffective in that, but Reich’s observations is entirely true, and his message should resonate with any leader at any level trying to help guide his or her organization into the digital era.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 20th, 2008 at 10:32 pm and is filed under Digital Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.