Last week I posted about hosting a meeting on the Influence Scorecard. The post was testing the water to determine the level of interest such an event might generate, and I was answered by dozens of emails, direct twitters, comments and even some direct editing of the post itself, as I'd hoped! (MarCom Professional allows an author to permit others to edit a post, wiki-style.)
I even received tentative enquiries about sponsorship, so it looks like we are on to something here...
Moreover, the interest was split almost 50:50 between Europe and North America, and it was spread fairly evenly amongst each of the required participant groups.
What is clear from all the queries and interest is that we now need to put some meat on the bones. Here are a few top line thoughts on 'influence', 'scorecard' and what we hope to achieve. Your thoughts are welcome.
Influence
Organisations want to influence the opinion and behaviour of their stakeholders. They do this via the various marketing and communications disciplines and approaches - PR, advertising, branding, community building, conversational marketing, direct marketing, events, product placement, public affairs, sponsorship etc..
Of course, stakeholders also influence each other and some will want to influence an organisation - how ready an organisation is for this dialogue is another matter.
Scorecard
The 'scorecard' is inspired by the Balanced Scorecard, one of the most widely adopted organisational performance management methodologies (generally known as "business performance management" or just plain BPM). According to the Balanced Scorecard Institute:
"The Balanced Scorecard transforms an organization’s strategic plan from an attractive but passive document into the 'marching orders' for the organization on a daily basis. It provides a framework that not only provides performance measurements, but helps planners identify what should be done and measured. It enables executives to truly execute their strategies.
"It is a management system (not only a measurement system) that enables organizations to clarify their vision and strategy and translate them into action."
Balanced Scorecards usually consist of four perspectives: financial, learning and growth, customer and internal processes.
The Influence Scorecard
So, my thinking is that influence could be an additional perspective of the Balanced Scorecard and other BPM approaches. Possibly. But it might also be a filter across or augmentation to current perspectives.
The Influence Scorecard:
- Translates influence (marketing and PR) objectives into operational goals
- Helps to communicate the objectives and cascade them down to specific groups and individuals
- Guides the selection of measurement criteria
- Defines the ways in which these measurements can be made and presented for incorporation into the BPM process, reports and dashboards
- Informs the mechanism for learning from these measures and the adjustment of the influence strategy then required.
Steps 3 and 4 are, I believe, the most difficult to accomplish traditionally and where SWA steps up. They also represent the core part of the Influence Scorecard that sets it apart from attempts to incorporate traditional marketing into BPM to date, imho.
The Influence Scorecard plugs the converged 'Influence Department' (or the more traditional marketing and communications departments) directly into organisational performance management. It gives all marketing and communications disciplines board level authority, responsibility and accountability in planning, implementing, measuring and reporting influence.
Next steps
We've started to take a look at running the event mooted in my previous post, and the more we look at it the more it has become apparent that we need an interim step to crystallise the purpose and approach so that we can then put something up to shoot at and build upon in a more widely attended event. So we're going to convene a smaller group first up during the next couple of months followed as closely as we can by the wider event.
I look forward to your ongoing feedback, and of course the list of interested organisations and individuals remains editable here.
Watch this space!
Duncan Brown says:
Hi Philip,
Just a quick, but important, question regarding the focus of influence - who are we really trying to influence?
You say that "organisations want to influence the opinion and behaviour of their stakeholders". In fact, I think most firms would rather influence the opinion and behaviour of their customers and prospects, via influencers. That is, using influencers as a conduit for messages to customers.
Why is this important? Firstly, it puts the customer at the heart of any programme, which makes it more likely to drive real revenues (and hence get funding). Secondly, if influencers really are influential then it will be hard, sometimes impossible, and often counter-productive to try to influence them. Influencers are so called because they wield influence, not because they are easily influenced.
What does this mean? It means that you can't market to influencers in the same way as one might market to a customer community. Influencers are too smart for that.
I also think that the focus on "stakeholders" embeds this misdirected thinking. We should be more interested in the stakeholders of our target customers than our own stakeholders. And, no, they're not the same.
Food for thought?
9 February 2009 — 10:30 am
Philip Sheldrake says:
Thanks Duncan, and I'm with you.
We deliberately christened this initiative "Influence Scorecard" and not "Influencer Scorecard". Influence is a complex beast. Our personal decisions to buy a Vaio over a Thinkpad, or change from IE to Firefox, or to recycle, or to buy organic, are formed from compound multiple touch points, multiple points of influence. (Your own choices will be influenced, albeit in a small way, by the very examples I've chosen to pepper this response with.)
Some influence is exerted, or at least attempted, direct from an organisation to current and prospects, and much is exerted via intermediaries, the individuals you refer to as influencers. In Gladwell-speak, these people are connectors, mavens and salesmen.
And you are right to query the definition of "stakeholders" as it can be applied in slightly different contexts. I am careful to include a definition: any and every party with whom we have or would like to have a relationship and interaction for our organisational success.
This changes the slant of your last para above... by this definition, our customers' stakeholders are also then ours.
Overall, you could say that the two of us are just getting a bit too semantic, but I believe, like you I think, that we are not. It's important to define the terms when we're attempting to look at something in a new way.
Cheers.
9 February 2009 — 10:57 am