The Social Business Frontier: Randal Ries on Measuring Progress

Published on the IBM Social Business Insights Blog on April 30, 2015.

“The Social Business Frontier” is a video blog series consisting of a number of short interviews taking a deeper look inside the IBM Research Labs to explore the groundbreaking and innovative social analytics research that's redefining the future of social business. 

In the fifth and final episode of The Social Business Frontier we speak to Randal Ries, IBM Senior Research Analyst, about how IBM is providing an example for businesses to measure the progress of their social business journey. A key aspect of an organization’s transformation into a social business is culture change. In order to measure culture it’s necessary to rely on traditional research methods. It’s Randal and team’s mission to understand employees’ attitudes and behaviors toward working socially. To do this they’ve developed a survey that measures different aspects of a social workplace. Their strategy helped them understand how employees felt about the value of working socially, how their management was embracing social and if there was enough education on how to work socially. Listen in to hear Ries explain how these results helped IBM understand where it is in its social transformation journey and how it can continue to grow as a social business.