Big shifts are usually inevitable.  There is no stopping an eventual high ocean tide as it roars onto a beach.  There was no stopping the “customer first” movement in American business once it started back in the 1980’s.  Today the decades-long march toward consumer takeover and participation in the media is continuing unabated.  Every organization is therefore  inevitably headed toward a future where it will use some sort of social media as an internal means of coordination, and as an external means of connecting with its partners and customers.

Though this shift toward de-centralization and customer power cannot be turned back by any organization, it can be turned into an advantage – but only through one thing:  Anticipation. Correct anticipation of huge tides have led smart ocean communities to build channels and walls in order to avoid destruction, and in some cases even to generate energy.  Correct anticipation of the “customer first” movement led organizations like LL Bean, Spalding and others to implement policies which were able to not only meet, but also to exceed stringent customer demands and thereby create fierce customer and employee loyalty throughout the 80’s and 90’s.

To anticipate these shifts a good deal of education, imagination and strategy is required.  Once the event or the shift is upon the town or upon the organization, it may be too late to change.  The era of heavy customer social media use is already upon us.  Organizations that hope to thrive must begin to strategically do the following if they are going to anticipate changes:

1. Educate ourselves on the history of media, business and culture which have led us to our current point in time.  Without an understanding of the past, it is difficult to anticipate the next few years of market shift.
2. When we’ve begun to understand the past and how it has led to the present, we must then imagine how our future could and should look.  The organizations who anticipate have a chance to shape their own future.
3. Strategically begin to build the human, structural and procedural organizational capabilities which will allow us to move toward that desired future.
4. Be careful of overly-simplistic “best practices.”  Many best practices work or appear to work in the current environment and in a particular context.  They may not work for every organization, and they may not continue to work forever as things continue to change.  Most organizations will be better off concentrating on coming up with their own “next practices instead.”

In my reading of the history and potential future of markets, organizations who are right now merely dipping a proverbial toe into the social media ocean – who are putting off making any sort of strategic long-term investment into understanding and ramping up for the use of social media – run the very real risk of misjudging the height of the oncoming tide and building the wrong sort of wall and/or waiting so long that they will be laying blocks down with the waves crashing over them.