Twitter: Building a Bigger Boardroom

Humana recently held a meeting bringing together leaders from around the company to determine how best to shape their social media policy. What we found interesting was that before the discussion even got underway, a decision was made to host the high points of the meeting on Twitter – essentially creating a digital archive of minutes – that anyone in or outside of Humana could read and comment upon. Despite some initial reservations about being too transparent – certainly basic rules for what should and shouldn’t be shared need to be in place – the prevailing attitude that asks “how better to understand the pluses and minuses of social media then by participating in it?” is particularly notable for its hands on approach to the subject.  And including the medium in the conversation, helped to simultaneously inform the outcome.

We felt the following takeaway was applicable to any organization attempting to employ social media and points to the ability of these technologies to leverage innovation from anywhere: 

The idea behind the Humana Social Media Chamber of Commerce is that no one organization will own “Social Media” for all of Humana.  We are a large organization made up of individual departments with separate customers/demographics, individual social media needs, and budgets.  We want to use the Chamber of Commerce and Electronic Commons areas that we are creating as an extension of the Web 2.0 world that we all live in today on the internet. The need to share and exchange best practices will replace the need to control.

 Crumple It Up: Meeting of the Minds