This document discusses Humana's efforts to transform and innovate through social media engagement. It outlines Humana's goals of studying customer needs, aligning internal teams, and experimenting with new approaches. Key challenges mentioned include controlling user information and intellectual property issues with new forms of social collaboration. The document advocates aligning different departments and continuing experiments with new platforms like mobile and social networks to better serve customers.
15. fundamentals
Authenticity
Active Listening
Going Where They Are
Personal Voice
Learning Through Action
Sharing - Open Source
16. new demands
Control Reality 1
– Bottom up groundswell and top down control colliding
Information Security 2
– Malware attacks rise with social media use at work
Workforce Culture 3
– Labor Intensive, Highly Involved, Non-Standardized
Intellectual Property 4
– Who owns ideas and contacts, employer or employee?
1 Douglas Pollei, VP of Internet Strategy and Corporate Development for IKANO Communications Inc.
2 MarketWatch
3 Jim Cuene, Director, Interactive, General Mills
4 Warwick Ashford, Computer Weekly
17. new corporate focus
HR IT
• Capacity Building • Security
• Acquisition and • Access
Retention of Talent • Development
• Associate Experience
• Performance
Management
Marketing Law
• Conversation • Intellectual Property
• Brand Management • Compliance
• Media Law
• Liability and
Indemnity
33. Appendix: fundamentals
Authenticity
Active Listening
Going Where They Are
Personal Voice
Learning Through Action
Sharing - Open Source
34. Authenticity
• We’re honest, accurate, and thorough
• We’re not marketing; we’re having a
conversation
• We don’t keep secrets or spin the truth
• We’re people, too
35. Active Listening
• We’re taking the time to stop talking and just
listen
• We want to hear what you have to say—even
if it’s negative
• When we enter a new space, we’ll listen first
before we start talking
• We’ll listen for how we can make your life
better or easier
• We want to change the way we work based
on your needs
36. Going Where They Are
• People go to the places they know, trust,
and enjoy
• You don’t have to come to us—we’ll come
to you
• If it’s necessary for you to come to us, we’ll
build you a bridge
37. Personal Voice
• We will interact with you as people—not as a
corporation
• I am accountable to you as a person—not as a
corporation
• We will use language that you can
understand—not just what is convenient for us
38. Learning Through Action
• Nobody has found the magic bullet
• We will try new things
• We realize that we’ll make mistakes and do
things incorrectly, but we will learn
• We’ll be honest about what we’ve learned,
and celebrate our smart failures
• We’ll get better every time we try
39. Sharing - Open Source
• We need to adopt a culture of sharing, both
inside and outside Humana
• If we can’t share our successes and failures,
we severely limit our potential to learn from
mistakes
• We don’t have to control, but we do have to
communicate
• We will create a culture that emphasizes and
values collaboration and sharing
44. Step 1: Build participation and anticipation
Used Meetup.com to identify 8 biking groups in Denver representing over 1,000 cyclists –
who are already using the internet to connect. Arranged group rides and word-of-mouth
campaign
Created a page on
facebook; advertised it to
people in Colorado and
Minneapolis. Generated
thousands of page views
and ~1,500,000 ad
impressions
45. Step 1, continued: Build participation and anticipation
Reached out to bloggers
who’ve covered us;
arranged for them and
their readers to meet up
for a ride
Created a micro-blog feed
on Twitter; followed by
600+ biking enthusiasts.
Sending several posts per
day about Freewheelin
46. Step 2: Generate Content Content Brings Community;
Community creates Content
After registering, users are given a card
encouraging them to share their
freewheelin experience – in pictures,
videos and stories
When they return their bike, they’re directed to an
“upload station” where they can plug in their digital
camera or cameraphone and upload images and
videos directly to the Freewheelin Community site.
They’re given a free memory card reader imprinted with the Freewheelin Community
logo so that they can continue to upload images throughout the convention.
47. Step 2, continued: Generate Content
We had Humana volunteers armed with smart-phones cycling
around the city and “seeding” content to generate interest
All content was moderated in real time
and then posted to our portals on YouTube
and Flickr
48.
49. Appendix
appendix: the toolbox
• Tools
Photo by todbot
http://www.flickr.com/photos/todbot/3492542234/
Transforming a business takes time, thought and hard workEspecially a big, traditional oneThere are some techniques we’re trying at HumanaThey are ALL about thinking differently about the business
STUDY. Read everything.Call people you trust.Talk to people who’ve already done what you’re trying to do.
Learn at the feet of masters.Don’t be limited to Frank’s Gardening and Social Media Consultancy.Find the best thinkers in the business and align with them.
This is the most important step.The innovation center is a “safe” – low risk – place to experimentDon’t worry about a 100% solution or even an 80% solution. 50% is fine – just get out there and try it.No amount of reading and consultation will ever produce change on its own
We wanted to let 10s of thousands experience bikesharing – so we created a social media campaignWe used all kinds of toolsAnd brought them all together on one page
Be the change you want to see – that means if you want to think different, start acting differentStart doing everything differentlyShare freely and learn We built our own web site to do that – and its pretty differentSEO guys will hate itBut it gets the point across
We had to create a platform for Humana to understand social mediaWe think in stories and pictures, so we created a Metaphor for how we’ll use social mediaThe Town SquareEvery department has a “lot” on the town squareThey can build whatever kind of “social media building” is going to best serve their needs (and their stakeholders)We have a library and a commons area where we share everything
The goal of the model is simpleTo have a common place and common wayTo understand, explore and utilize social media
We operate under these fundamentalsThey’re not new or radicalOnce you’ve hoovered up information and consulted expertsJust sift through and find the ones that make sense for your business
Be ready for tensionWhen you want your business to think and act different, it raises a LOT of important questionsGet ready to deal with them
In order to effectively enact these changes, we need to make some of our own. Certain sites must become accessible to key stakeholders. Resources have to be made available for training. Directives must be given to infrastructure developers to focus on these important issues. Relationships should be formed with qualified vendors. The company should be notified of our vision by an authority and encouraged to integrate our plan with theirs. HRHR can start augmenting their talent acquisition strategy to reflect our new goals. They should start to reward behavior that is concordant with these goals and implement these ideas in new training programs.MarketingOur marketing department is the master of outside communication. A culture of sharing and social media can enhance existing processes and communication. In the future entire initiatives can be focused on social media. ITOur IT department is the gatekeeper for much of this infrastructure. An understanding must be struck to reinforce the importance of this initiative to the future success of the company. Our IT department can use their considerable talent and creativity to help us explore new avenues of open source collaboration and communication.LawOur Law department will be concerned about intellectual property rights and privacy issues. This department will need to be well versed in media law and understand how other companies are dealing with these concerns. Information about this type of law is readily available and constantly evolving.
The Humana Chamber of Commerce (#hcoc) is:Cross-functionalVoluntaryUncommitteeNo charter or governanceNo approvalsNo work!Just learn, share and adviseAnd commission the work from others!FLY LOW.
Example of “Being 2.0”Instead of taking meeting minutes, we live-tweetThen the tweetstream becomes the minutes
This has gotten us some nice noticeHumana is beginning to be seen as a cool, transparent health companyStill have a long way to go, but this is a taste of our goal
Have to keep listening.We like Google Reader paired with FeedlyWe need to do something more significant – our PR agency uses Radian6 and advises us
We keep aligning hcoc with the best in the businessRick Murray, President of Edelman DigitalPeter Kim, former Forrester; current DachiscorpJason Falls, Doe-Anderson and Social Media ExplorerAmber Naslun, Radian6 and Altitude Branding
And it was amazing to have Chris Brogan and Justin Levy doing a bootcamp in our HQMore being 2.0: We opened the doors to the community; the class was half Humana; half other folks
What’s coming up from us in the next cycles of social innovation
We launched a social network for pre-retirees in December (realforme.com)We launched a series of videos to help people understand the health system (staysmartstayhealthy.com)The vids have well over 1M views on Youtube. MASSIVE for an health insurance company!
We’re working on games for health – most of which have strong social aspectSee humanagames.com and horsepowergame.com for more info
Every Innovation Center employee has a fish in the virtual tankThey’re powered by our stepsWhen we exercise together, our fish school together and do cool stuffDon’t know what we’ll do with it yet, but it’s a fun experiment
We don’t have anything to do with twittervisionBut we think its cool, and that the market is ripe for more social toolsSo we’re building some that we’ll be using ourselves and giving away
Mobile, social games will be hugeSo we’re building some
We don’t have anything to do with patientslikeme, but we think it’s coolSocial media will be really important in helping sick people get wellWe’d like to create communities to help that happen
We’re looking to be a part of a consumer-centered social revolution in health . . . Come and join us.
We had resultsSeveral Members of Congress participatedGovernors, mayors, state officials, and county execs rode bikesIndividuals from all 50 states and various countries