It's the new normal. Now all of your employees are Twittering away and friending clients on Facebook. Not to mention customers--who feel obligated to update your Wikipedia entry with product complaints.
In this new world, dealing with empowered employees and customers --Insurgents — is only going to get more challenging. Employees are using this technology in the workplace and customers are using it in the marketplace, and neither obey the rules you set up.
This chaos is your future as a manager. You could try to shut it down and shut it off. Or you can harness it and reap the business benefits.
According to Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler of Forrester Research (the organization that brought you Groundswell), your defense against insurgents is to enable them. At its heart, this is a book about how to scale the management of insurgency, both the innovation of insurgent employees and the energy of insurgent customers. The key is a process Forrester calls E Triple S, for the four elements of managing insurgents effectively: empowering, selecting, scaling, and socializing.
While it's based in current trends, the core concept of Managing Insurgents — that the next management and innovation challenge is harnessing individuals empowered by mobile, social, and connected technology — is a new idea. In the wake of Groundswell, dozens of social-technology-for-business books cropped up. And there are plenty of books on improving your customer service. But there's no serious business book about management, marketing, and innovation in the throes of this trend. When Insurgency hits, it will be perceived not just as a sequel to Groundswell but as the start of a new management philosophy.
