A greater need for social software for business has grown out of the fundamental changes to how businesses operate today. In the world of start-ups and killer apps, we are competing in a space where your neither your history nor ‘established’ channels dictates your customers’ choices. The end experience. The end product. The end solution — will help you get picked over your competition.

As an organization, how do you ensure that you are as competitive as the new lean start-up? How do you remain relevant? How do you ensure that you are providing what customers of tomorrow will seek?

It will only come when organizations change the way they have worked for the past 20+ years. Information is power and it allowed you to rise to the top.  You kept the do-ers on the factory line and managed them from the top. Information remained at the top — with the management.

However, that begs us to question — what happens when senior management is out of touch with the reality and decisions are made by HIPPOs? Seth Godin asked the same very question today in his post.

A forty-year old internet executive who has been running his company for decades misses one new trend after another, because he’s still living in 1998.

One thing that happens to management when they get senior is that they get stuck. (As we have seen, senior isn’t about old, it’s about how long you’ve been there).

If you’ve been doing it forever, you discover (but may not realize) that the things that got you this power are no longer dependable.

Reliance on the tried and true can backfire (Rupert keeps missing one opportunity after another, and keeps misunderstanding the medium he works in).

“Arthur C. Clarke’s lesser known three laws:  “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is probably wrong.”

However, as many experts have already mentioned, the current “factory” business  models don’t work. They are developed to be replicate-able and easily deployable and remain effective it does not ensure that you remain the most innovative nor competitive. Heck, its replicate-able for a reason and can be duplicated by your competition as well. So, how do we bring value into our ecosystem? In our client’s ecosystem?

So how do we ensure that we are able to tap into our experts that work for us — the folks who get it, the folks connect with their customers, the folks who are passionate and hungry for change? How does an executive, a leader, figures out what works and what doesn’t?

How do you ensure that your team is able to collaborate and share information effectively? Remember, information is power. But it’s useless if its contained or hoarded. Social Software, Enterprise 2.0 movement, Expert Locater program, and many other similar ‘collaboration/change’ management programs are being discussed at various levels of the organizations to solve this problem.

IBM recently released an article that describes the need for change and I was interviewed on social ‘biz’ models as well. Check out the IDC report results and Social Software needs here. Special thanks to Mark Miller and Marjorie Madfis for their insights and a wonderful ‘think-tank’ like discussion.