Leveraging Technology & Social Media to Impact Military Wellness & Quality of Life

Meeting people who work in a variety of organizations and industries is quite enlightening. Interestingly, no matter their field or nature of their organization, I hear fairly consistent themes regarding technology adoption. This is particulary true as it pertains to wellness. I lectured at the Symposium for the Army's MWR leadership in Louisville, KY on January 26, 2010. The fine people at the American Logistics Association and their representatives Bob Ellis and Chris Rottner sponsored the lecture. You can view content in the slide show below.

Leveraging Technology & Social Media to Impact Military Community Wellness & Quality of Life

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My talk on technology and social media adoption and its potential impact on the health of military personnel and their families led to a series of conversations with the rank and file of the Army's MWR community. No matter the venue, there exists a great opportunity to educate leadership on how solutions like cloud computing, social media, and wellness technologies can be adopted to positively impact the missions of organizations at much lower cost than extant methods. While the rapid pace of change happenning today makes adoption a challenge, we've got to do a better job of unleashing the potential solutions offer to solve important problems. That is why the symposium was such a great event.  Watch this video. As John Chambers of Cisco points out, organizations can change how they fundamentally work to become more productive.

The ALA also sponsored Dr. James Sallis, who spoke on environmental considerations relating to wellness. His talk was very interesting and pointed out important facts regarding how simple changes in the manner which communities are designed can have a meaingful and lasting impact on wellness. Great work and worth a review.

My thanks to the men and women of our armed services and the leadership of the ALA and MWR. I particulary thank my father, who recently passed away , for being the stellar military officer and distinguished pilot and academy graduate he was. He would have enjoyed attending the symposium and meeting the fine and dedicated professionals I had the privledge to address.

Socialgraphics - A Practical Guide to Understanding Consumer Social Behaviors

I am a big fan  of Charlene Li and Jeremiah Owyeng . Their firm the Altimeter group is doing good work and sharing views on how to practically evaluate and employ social media as a strategic advantage. Of particular interest is their research on socialgraphics and other topics addressing social media. Their concepts show how organizations can utilize social media which gives a voice to buyers who can now describe their experience and disappointment to a global audience. And, wow, are they saying a lot. 

B2B or B2C marketers, eager to know how social media fits into the marketing mix, can use Social Technographic Profiles of decision-makers to design marketing programs that not only capitalize on emerging social behaviors but also fundamentally change the nature of the marketing relationship between buyers and sellers.

A recent webinar “Understanding Your Customers’ Social Behaviors“ contained some great content and practical tips on how to approach social media spaces. The slides and a video recording are available herefrom Slideshare.net (for slides) - see below - and drop.io (for the recording).

There is this cool tool from Forrestor research (below) that enables you to evaluate the social profile of B2B customers.

Also, there is on-going and vibrant conversation taking place on sites like Twitter, using the hashtag #socialgraphics. Check it out.

Understand Your Customers' Social Behaviors

View more presentations from Charlene Li.

Message To The Fitness Industry - Real Innovation Requires Changing Your Thinking

One of my favorite quotes is that of Daniel Boorstin who observed, "The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." Boorstin, a renowned historian and former Librarian of Congress who wrote numerous books including, The Genius of American Politics, Democracy and Its Discontents, and The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson, was right. Overcoming challenges is largely a function of letting go of assumptions. As he put it, "If we think we know something, then we face an obstacle to innovation." In his 1983 bestseller The Discoverers , the author chronicled the achievements of Galileo, Columbus, Darwin, Gutenberg and Freud, among others, who emerged as drivers of creativity and courage, and committed ingenious acts of revolt against ingrained habit. Great discoverers dispel illusions and reveal something new about the world as is further evidenced by Boorstin's interpretation of Thomas Jefferson's contributions and philosophies, when he said,

"Jefferson, in my opinion, was the apostle of experience. In other words, he was the person who believed that everything had to change. He thought that every generation should have the opportunity to have its own revolution, to write its own laws, and that was his vision of the past and the future"

Given the crisis of obesity "Globesity as Phillip and Jackie Mills call it" should we not evaluate how the growing fitness industry has not really impacted the problem ? Reliance upon Boorstin's realizations and the lessons of history are more relevant than ever, as is the need for leaders to emerge, dispel illusion and move us forward via our own revolution in the fitness and wellness industry. Obviously what we have been doing has not been working.

Could institutional thinking in fitness and wellness be the very "illusion of knowledge" Boorstin identified? Classic institutions are by nature closed, selective and controlling. Persons participating in institutional thinking have to be "careful" of what they absorb, guarded with whom they interact and controlling of everything. Essentially, risk aversion and maintenance of the status quo is the dna of most institutions and thus the reasons most institutions are failing in an increasingly network oriented world. Are our institutions then at the heart of the problem ?

No matter the debate; be it health care, education, or your organization's effectiveness, adopting network strategies and dispelling institutional dogma is at the core of true innovation. Watch the video by Thomas Power who describes institutional thinking, its limits and the opportunity that the new paradigm provides.

What do you think ? Does the fitness and wellness industry need to change its mindset in order to become more effective at impacting the health crisis we face today ? Please contact me Bryan O'Rourke, and share your views.

Organizations & Social Media in 2010

Where is social media headed? Its a common question posed by businesses leaders I speak with who want to know how they can prepare for the future. Jeremiah Owyang of the Altimeter Group recommends that businesses start by understanding what is happening today. See his video below.

Many brands and organizations are struggling to be effective with SM despite its rapid growth. Businesses have to learn what consumers are doing now in order to be successful going forward.

A concept that is critical is to this evaluation is that “real-time is not fast enough.” Customers are quick and organizations, no matter how big their staffs are, cannot keep up. Advocacy programs must be created to address this issue. An advocacy program is a group of customers that act as a company’s “army” and take care of problems that arise. Since many organizations already have a group of people that support them, all they have to do is enable them for the task.

Another important consideration is that consumers find corporate websites irrelevant. Businesses should, therefore, utilize platforms such as Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect, and Twitter Connect to bring a social experience to their own website. In addition, organizations should personalize content for customers.

By keeping these points top of mind organizations can be far more effective in creating and deploying effective uses of social media to grow their business and achieve their mission.



How Health Care Kills People

My Dad, William R. O'Rourke, Jr., passed away on Sunday, December 27, 2009; a day after his 72nd birthday (details here for friends and family). He suffered from CLL, a form of leukemia and had a tough battle during his final days. Dad was a terrific man. He had a distinguished career as a highly dedicated Air Force officer and pilot. He was a consultant to, ironically, the health care industry and served as a contract executive for a number of firms. He was a professor and intellectual while being a very down to earth and personable man and I loved him very much. Thanks for everything Dad - you will be missed.

We all have or had fathers and many of us are lucky enough to have received their support and love during our lives. Given this, what is painful to see first hand is the nature of the health care system they enter into when they are very ill. My experience personally during the past year is wrought with evidence of a dysfunctional system. When people get really sick, its broken nature becomes all the more apparent. This is not meant as an affront to the many professionals who attempted to provide care, nor is it about being able to afford care because Dad thankfully had the means. My sentiments are based on witnessing a SYSTEM that fails to provide quality because it is based on flawed economics.

If you haven't read David Goldhill's New Yorker article, How American Health Care Killed My Father, you must. See some of his views above in the video. While my Dad was ill, I can promise you the quality of his life and his experience of care was woeful and would have been much better if the system were changed fundamentally. David's testimony above reflects many of the same things I experienced.  As a business executive like me, David began a personal exploration of a health-care industry that for years has delivered poor service and irregular quality at astonishingly high cost. It is a system that is not worth preserving in anything like its current form. And the health-care reform now being contemplated will not fix it. He has a radical solution to this agonizing problem.