What advice can you give to other executives who want to transform their organizations into a fully collaborative social business?

We’ve learned many valuable lessons along our social business transformation journey. One of the biggest lessons learned was that social business transformation involves more changes to culture than technology. Remember that your employees are your most important asset. Shift your focus from documents, project plans and other temporary artifacts to the source of the energy, creativity and decision making that moves the business forward: people. Remember that trust is a key element to becoming a social business. An organization needs a certain level of trust to empower its employees to share their ideas and expertise and it must demonstrate this trust by rewarding behavior. At the same time, this trust must be balanced with an appropriate level of governance or discipline that sets the parameters of appropriate actions. Lastly, becoming a social business is not simply a matter of deploying some collaboration tools and hoping for the best. It is a long-term strategic approach to shaping a business culture and is highly dependent on executive leadership and effective corporate strategy, including business processes, risk management, leadership development, financial controls and business analytics.

via IBM Case Study: A Lesson In Social Business Transformation | Social Media Blog by Michael Brito.