We’re all clamoring for real live examples of what’s working and what’s not, and I’m more than pleased to turn the stage over to Greg Matthews from Humana to share what’s he and his team have been up to over there.

Greg is the Director of Consumer Innovations where he’s focused on using social media to create different kinds of interactions with consumers, and he blogs at CrumpleItUp.com. As we wrap the “Building a Social Media Team” series, what better cap off than to hear – straight from the organization – what’s working for them? This post is big, but it is FULL of ideas and takeaways. Grab a bevvy, sit back, and learn.

Humana made the decision to step – lightly – into social media last year.  But the interesting thing is that it wasn’t really one decision, but many . . . perhaps dozens of decisions, happening all at about the same time. And when you think about it, it’s really not all that surprising that in a company of 29,000 people operating a complex business, the benefits of using social media became obvious to lots of us.  Or, at least, too enticing not to try.

For those of you who don’t know our company, we’re one of the bigger health benefits companies out there.  Here’s a pop quiz:  How many of you love your health insurance brand?  Nobody?  OK, how many of you find your health insurer easy to work with?  Ahh, yes.  A few more, but still not many.  How many of you find the health system easy to navigate?  Crickets again.

Can you imagine why we might want to make a deeper connection with consumers?  Why we might want to collaborate better with doctors and hospitals to make sure that our members get the best care for a reasonable price?  To connect healthy people with programs that will keep them healthy?  Then you can imagine why social media started to appear on everyone’s “solution radar” in 2008.

How it started

For me, it started with a realization that I couldn’t keep telling people that social media was a solution unless I started actually living it out.  So, I started doing the usual stuff – blogging, setting up a facebook page and even a twitter account.  You can read more about it here and here .

But things really took a turn when our team got some good press from the social media campaign for freewheelin.  That led to a presentation to Humana’s executive committee, and a directive to create some kind of company-wide platform that we could use to help bring together Humana’s social media activities into a common place. After having done some pretty low risk exploration, we figured that the first thing to do would be to lay out a set of principles to live by – and the Town Square was born.

The Town Square is a concept that says every department in the company can get a “lot” on the town square, and build whatever kind of building suits their business needs best.  It’s the place for Humana to understand, explore and use social media to take its business forward. It’s not about tools or technology; it’s about a new model for interaction and collaboration.  It’s for our customers, yes, but not JUST our customers.  It also applies to the way we work with doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, employers, the government and – yes – each other.

The Town Square model

We figured that if we were going to be working in social media, we needed to apply social media principles to the way we worked.  And that means that we weren’t going to be a governance committee.  Or an approval board (oxymoron alert!).

There’s only one rule in the town square . . . but it goes with six fundamental principles.  The rule is: We Share.  We share our ideas and plans.  We share what’s worked and what hasn’t.  We share vendor recommendations.  We share reference materials and resources. The fundamentals are important too, although pretty obvious:

  • Authenticity – We’re honest, accurate and thorough.  We’re not marketing; we’re having a conversation.  We don’t keep secrets or spin the truth.  We’re people, too.
  • Active Listening – We’re taking the time to stop talking and just listen.  We want to hear what you have to say – even if it’s negative.  When we enter a new space, we’ll listen first before we start talking.  We’ll listen for how we can make your life better or easier.  We are changing the way we work based on your needs.
  • Going Where They Are – People go to the places and do the things they know, trust and enjoy.  You don’t have to come to us; we’ll come to you.  If it’s necessary for you to come to us, we’ll build you a bridge.
  • Personal Voice – We will interact with you as people, not as a corporation.  I am accountable to you as a person, not as a corporation.  We will use language that you can understand – not just what’s convenient for us.
  • Learning through Action – Nobody has found the “magic bullet” in enterprise social media.  We will try new things.  We realize that we will make mistakes and do things incorrectly, but we will learn as we go.  We’ll be honest about what we’ve learned, and celebrate our smart failures.  We’ll get better every time we try.
  • Sharing/Open Source – We are adopting a culture of sharing, both inside and outside of Humana.  If we can’t share our successes and failures, we limit our ability to learn.  We don’t have to control, but we do have to communicate.  We will create a culture that emphasizes and values collaboration and sharing.

So now that we had a framework, we needed someone to start building around the square.  I mentioned before that there were a whole lot of people who’d begun to work in the space.  Our Perfect Service Innovation team was the first part of the company to work with an internal wiki for knowledge sharing.  Our Web/New Media team has launched a series of videos (over a million views on YouTube – pretty amazing!)  And another part of our marketing organization had launched a real social network for pre-retirees.

Continuing the Town Square metaphor, we needed to find a way to bring together the right people from around our business to carry the learning forward – we call it the “Chamber of Commerce.”  A group of 17 people – none above the Director level – from 14 different departments of the company.  They are all either currently engaged in some form of social media or preparing to be.

How we run it

We run it as a radical social media democracy.  It’s an un-committee.  We don’t have a charter, and we don’t have rules.  We don’t have a P&L and we don’t have a budget.  We don’t have a leader and we don’t have any formal reporting structure.  We even live-tweet our meetings (watch for hashtag #hcoc for Humana’s Chamber of Commerce).

We’re what a management guru might call a self-managed team.  The Chamber of Commerce itself doesn’t actually do any work or have deliverables … but it does set up workgroups that people in the team can voluntarily join – and since they’re all leaders in their organizations, they can also commission others to help. The Chamber of Commerce meets every 3-4 weeks, and our agenda usually looks like this:

  • Updates from last meeting
  • 1 member presents an update of their social media work: what is it, how and why did they do it, what have they learned?
  • We incorporate a “voice from outside” to provide expertise
  • One or more work-groups present updates

How does it work? It’s amazing.  It’s the only team I’ve been on that has nearly 100% attendance at every meeting – even, as it turns out, when they’re called at the last minute.  And you don’t have to look hard to figure out why.  It adds value to people’s jobs.  It fuels their passion.  And it’s one of the rare groups that actually lives up to the saying “you get out as much as you put in.”

What it means for Humana

We’ve recognized up-front that this new way of doing business will stretch and redefine the capabilities of every department in our company.  As a group  . . . so #hcoc will advise:

  • HR on Creating a culture of collaboration, and on hiring, training and rewarding people for collaborating and sharing
  • Marketing on having a conversation and building a brand based on collaboration
  • IT on issues of security, access development and toolsets
  • Legal on IP, compliance, liability and indemnity

I have to admit at this point that this is a new team – we’ve only been meeting since January.  We have really tough issues to tackle, and we all have “day jobs” that keep us busy.  And frankly, the biggest threat to the Chamber of Commerce is biting off more than we can chew.  But the value we can bring to our company is this:  There are very few large companies that have really made social media a differentiator for their business.  And I can’t really think of any in health or health care.

We know that health, and the health system, have to change.  Humana intends to continue leading that change through innovation and our focus on consumers. There’s a lot of work to do . . . but luckily we work in a company with 29,000 other people who can help.  And that’s what the Chamber of Commerce will be tapping into.

Special thanks again to Greg Matthews and the kind folks at Humana for sharing their experiences (follow Greg on Twitter and tell him thanks, too!). Let’s talk about what you’ve learned. I have to say that if a big, monolithic company like Humana can pulll this off, maybe you can too?

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