One of the main reasons for this gap is the distinction between knowing what the mechanics of social media are and harnessing them to effect change in the bottom line of an organization.

For an “expert” to manifest this ability they must have more than the “mechanics” of social media in their tool belt. It requires a broader set of skills that include deep or broad knowledge across marketing, operations, finance, sales and or the industry vertical in which you are working. ie The Dachis Group at the top has someone how has deep experience running and operating a business – therefore allowing social media to be effective within an organization.

Educating both clients and industry professionals on the mechanics and how to apply them tangibly to business is a start. Therefore the explosion of social media events such as Church of Twitter bit.ly/7TYmpB and others over the last 12 months.

This will continue, and hopefully the gap in talent will begin to close as we progress into 2010.

- SoMed Requires Special Skills – Successfully engaging in somed demands a unique set of understandings, motivations and cognitive abilities. Often these are very different from those required in a typical enterprise position.

- Enterprise Folks are Frustrated and Confused While Feeling Acute Need to Do Something Now – We focus on just B2B somed consulting, and our clients are caught between the senior leaders saying get this under control and the field, often global, who are proliferating somed activitity ad hoc. Trouble!

- There are No “Answers” – Like any new technology the rush to handle uncomfortable emotions precludes learning. Answers will come. But probably exactly in the opposite place we want to expect them to be.

We are also sensitive that core business processes changes threaten people’s livelihoods so are mainly fear-inducing. That’s just human.

Ultimately, new tools are tremendous luck and an opportunity. If you use old tools you have to always be better than everyone else because everyone is using the same tool (Our experience with something like SalesForce). But with a new tool your have your competitor’s fear holding them back and a whole lot of running room.

Regards

First – social media / social business activities are inherently a series of constant very small decisions (communication, etc). It’s simply not realistic for each decision to be handled collectively. As a result, you will inevitably see drift and spread and an accrual of small failures over time.

Second – cross-disciplinary teams are financially feasible for large businesses, but are problematic for the SMB world – and are likely fatal for consultancies and service vendors. If every significant decision and action must involve 3 to 5 people collaborating – you will be non-competitive when faced with a vendor who has hired broad-thinking talent.

Third (and most importantly) – humans are not naturally collectivists. It would be great if we were. But fundamentally, we look for leadership based structures. In any group (such as one of these teams) a structure of dominance and relationships will be established. If everyone in this team is a deep narrow thinker (a specialist) then the person who ends up being the leader will bring their own discipline’s perspective to bear and that discipline will dominate and skew the decisions. Worse than that, in many cases if the group is large enough there will also be one discipline that will be established as “the opponent” or “the outsider” and will be deliberately depreciated.

All great predictions. Regarding talent shortage, I really appreciate the DGC effort to raise the overall competency in our industry and provoke deeper thinking. I’m looking forward to your summit in March. Great idea to bring together such a stellar line up! Let me know if there is anything I can do to help you guys out at all.

Steve