Leading a Tech Savvy Team [My talk on National Sales and Marketing Professionals Convention]

I gave a talk dubbed “Leading a Tech Savvy Team” at the National Sales and Marketing Professionals Convention held at SMX Convention Center on March 23-24, 2010. This yearly gathering is being organized by Ariva Events. This year, web 2.0 revolution is their theme.

Anton Diaz of Our Awesome Planet, who is also one of the resource persons, requested to have me blog my talk since he missed the 2nd day, so here it is buddy 🙂

Being an entrepreneur or being part of the senior management team in an era where social media is being recognized as business tool, and the workforce slowly being dominated by the “y” or millenial generation, needs a well thought balanced strategy. Well because, 1] Social Media in business is still in sun rise stage, thus, we all learn and commit mistakes as we go on, and 2] The “y” generation has unique behavior and needs to be recognized.

Since I am the last speaker, I have to make sure that the event is concluded in a high note and we will all leave the convention in the same page.

To knit together the highlights of the topics discussed, I used the Social Media Landscape by Fred Cavazza. It is of importance that online marketers understand the nature and purpose of each platform so that online strategies are defined and properly orchestrated.

To help participants evaluate whether to embrace new media in their marketing plan, I shared with them one of the findings of a Yahoo! commissioned study. This involves young asians and was conducted by Synovate, the survey is done last year

From there, we slowly moved to the main point with a simple exercise to help them appreciate the multi-generational work force that can affect the online philosophy  and budget for the online campaigns of a company. These generations are:

• The baby boomers- those who were born on 1965 and earlier. These people need extra effort to appreciate technology, thus, they can be considered as the most “tech challenged” in the present work force. But take note, they are also the decision makers or they control the purse.
• The generation x- born between 1965 and 1979. These people can easily adopt to the changes in technology. I call these generation as “the adopters”
• The generation y or the millennial generation- these generation is the most tech savvy, and they are the rapidly growing segment in the present workforce. This is the generation that the x gen and y gen should manage.

I shared w/ them too the adoptability matrix I prepared. These are the likely scenarios of companies and the SWOT [strength-weakness-strength-threats] that every marketing head should appreciate.

The wine represents the employees and the wine skin the company [and management]. We both know the biblical principle behind the wine and the wineskin. New wine should go with new wine skin, otherwise, both will be wasted. Thus, by understanding this, the marketing head will know the modalities s/he is facing and make the appropriate action plan.

With the proper foundation properly laid, we are now ready to answer the question, ” Can we lead a tech savvy generation?”, and our answer to that is :

You

The marketing head should take an inventory of himself, he should be able to take note of 2 areas, namely:

1. How tech savvy s/he should be, and
2. Her management style can affect the productivity of the “tech savvy” generation.

e-frastructure

This involves both tools and policies/guidelines. As rule of thumb, expectations from a team should be commensurate with the tools at his disposal. Likewise, online philosophy as the core, there should be guidelines on the use of personal accounts, privacy [what is shareable and not] and internet usage.

Strategy

The most important aspect of leading a tech savvy team is to have a clear strategy. Without this, then each will strut his own strategy and in the end, the online campaign can do more harm than good. A strategy should have a central command. This is needed to maximize campaign and coordinate efforts.

On personal note, this talk is a confirmation that I have crossed over to the marketing field. I’m giving lecture on marketing several times but this is the 1st large scale speaking engagement on social web marketing. Though I am used to speaking in large gatherings, but these are on People Management [I will always be an HR guy] and Cyber wellness, another topic close to my heart.

Thankful and happy for the opportunity to add value to the organizers and the participants.