Many online shoppers now use social media to make informed decisions about their purchases. Are your stakeholders any less discerning? Perhaps management should consider going beyond an annual report to decision-makers and integrate them into your operational rather than just strategic processes. Are “active” stakeholders in your product or services aware of what your customers “really” say about your products or do they receive summarized, massaged statistics that have a 4-figure precision? Have you noticed that with the emergence of a Global Village, there are now many self-appointed “town criers”? Social media forums and blogs provide the digital equivalent of a local village square. As a manager, do you have the resources to provide your stakeholders, assuming they are interested, with raw and timely “online buzz”? Can they “(with)stand the truth”?

A meaningful picture of key performance indicators (KPI) is not complete unless they are somehow linked to critical success factors (CSF); the two are very different but ultimately affect the same bottom line – stakeholder ROI! Defining a critical factor that will make a product successful doesn’t necessarily have to come from the boardroom or the Research and Development department. In today’s Global Village, a critical success factor more than likely comes from an unsolicited comment made in some public forum! Social media not only keeps Jane and John Customer informed but actually helps “must-have” features crystallize in their minds before they make their purchase. Failure to integrate “must-have” features into a product design is an obvious mistake that is relatively easy for a product manager to avoid. It takes however, an interaction between the identification of what is exciting and innovative today with tomorrow’s performance indicators to eventually achieve a product’s critical success.

Stakeholders have cultivated a very specific point of view – otherwise, by definition, they wouldn’t have the wealth, education, or power to be a stakeholder. Product managers similarly have a viewpoint,  although it, again by definition, is very different from that of stakeholders. A synergy can arise however, if a third perspective, an aggregate measure of customer satisfaction, is added to the “product mix”. Customers want satisfaction; stakeholders want success; the two are fundamentally the same. The successful product manager can extract many actionable insights that ultimately translate into significant returns on investment from what customers’ and stakeholders’ want; they just need to know where to look for their solutions

Joel Rubinson, Chief Research Officer of the ARF, in his post “To understand social media, marketers must drop the C word”, quotes

“Lynne d Johnson, the ARF’s head of social media (formerly head of communities at Fast Company mag.) asked our expert panel about ROI, it was clear that we don’t have all the answers yet.  However, the answer I liked best was Heather’s; “What is the ROI for you to send your mother a mother’s day card?”  So I might add, what is the ROI for authenticity?  Who cares?  What kind of company do you want to be? “

I have an answer for Ms. Heather Maxwell from General Mills’s rhetorical questions – I am sure that among other things, General Mills wants to be a profitable company. Perennially unprofitable companies have a nasty habit of disappearing from the business landscape, along with the employment they provide to social media visionaries.

I am not arguing against authenticity, transparency and other virtues mentioned in Joel’s post, in fact I strongly support them. However dismissing core business value, just because we cannot figure out a sound methodology to formalize it, is disingenuous and is bad advice.

ROI has nothing to do with authenticity – it is a tool to help us make choices. The choices we make can be authentic or not.

Next time you have to choose between an invitation to a friend’s pool party and helping your uncle with a move, think of ROI and be authentic.