What is a Chief Listening Officer and does your company need one or do you need to be one (even if you’re a solo-preneur or small company)? I might have to start using that title because when I’m doing my work in a room with ideas and emotions flowing, I am the active listener in the room.
Why is listening the new buzz word anyway?
This morning at the International Coaching Federation (ICF) conference, Jeffrey Hayzlett gave an amazing keynote address about the role of listening in companies. You may know him as the marketing guy who turned Kodak around when they went from selling $15 billion dollars worth of film to $200,000 in a few short years.
All of a sudden when the digital world arrived, that company who was known for creating generations of “Kodak moments” suddenly found themselves wondering if the “body was still alive.”
Jeffrey’s talk was about how Kodak had to get back into what they really do.
Think about this–they create the only product that people would save from a burning building. Wouldn’t you love to have that kind of value attacted to what you do?
Their brand is about emotional technology. So tapping into the trust they had created over the years was key to their turnaround.
Twittering in 140 countries.
Being a listening company, social media is a huge part of their effort. They are on Twitter in 140 countries (and you think you’re overwhelmed by your Twitter stream) and have Facebook pages all around the world so they needed someone(s) to listen to what’s happening in those conversations. And they want those to be actual conversations.
For Kodak’s new waterproof camera (it really is–he poured a whole glass of water on it!) they croudsourced the name. The camera did $400 million dollars in sales with NO advertising.
What’s the cost of ignoring listening?
So listening is about building hearts and minds. Tending to your tribe. Creating brand ambassadors. And you can do that no matter what size your company is. I try to do that with mine.
And I’m not writing all this just because Jeffrey promised me a book. But we’ll see how well he does on meeting my condition of satisfaction. Ahem…..