• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
QuestionPro

QuestionPro

questionpro logo
  • Products
    survey software iconSurvey softwareEasy to use and accessible for everyone. Design, send and analyze online surveys.research edition iconResearch SuiteA suite of enterprise-grade research tools for market research professionals.CX iconCustomer ExperienceExperiences change the world. Deliver the best with our CX management software.WF iconEmployee ExperienceCreate the best employee experience and act on real-time data from end to end.
  • Solutions
    IndustriesGamingAutomotiveSports and eventsEducationGovernment
    Travel & HospitalityFinancial ServicesHealthcareCannabisTechnology
    Use CaseAskWhyCommunitiesAudienceContactless surveysMobile
    LivePollsMember ExperienceGDPRPositive People Science360 Feedback Surveys
  • Resources
    BlogeBooksSurvey TemplatesCase StudiesTrainingHelp center
  • Features
  • Pricing
Language
  • English
  • Español (Spanish)
  • Português (Portuguese (Brazil))
  • Nederlands (Dutch)
  • العربية (Arabic)
  • Français (French)
  • Italiano (Italian)
  • 日本語 (Japanese)
  • Türkçe (Turkish)
  • Svenska (Swedish)
  • Hebrew IL (Hebrew)
  • ไทย (Thai)
  • Deutsch (German)
  • Portuguese de Portugal (Portuguese (Portugal))
Call Us
+1 800 531 0228 +1 (647) 956-1242 +52 999 402 4079 +49 301 663 5782 +44 20 3650 3166 +81-3-6869-1954 +61 2 8074 5080 +971 529 852 540
Log In Log In
SIGN UP FREE

Home Uncategorized

Are You Ready for “Open Leadership”?

imageA note to all business owners and executives:  COMMAND AND CONTROL COMMUNICATION IS DEAD!

If you ever wanted proof of this, think back to Tony Hayward — yeah, that guy right there.  How many of you watched in secret agony as the camera’s shined on this guy and he fell apart and thought “Glad I’m not YOU!”  A little investment in “Open Leadership” on the part of BP might have saved them more than a little anguish.

What’s Open Leadership? And Why Should I Care?

Open Leadership is the name of the next book you should pick up if you’re a business owner or executive.  It’s written by Charlene Li (who was also co-author of Groundswell – the primary information source about how social media works for business).

Open leadership refers to societies new requirement of its leaders — to actually share and tell their customers /shareholders/constituencies what’s going on.  It doesn’t mean that we care about what you’re having for breakfast (although that’s entertaining), it means we demand to know where you are taking the company.  We want to know how you’re solving the problems that you have and we want to know what your vision is for the future.

Doing “Open Leadership” right also means being in touch with your constituencies – and that means looking at market research information on a regular basis and not just as part of some meeting where your market research team comes up and shows graphs and charts.  It means having dialog and discussion about what’s important to your customers today and how you will respond to them.

Examples

image

Tony Hsei shows you how it’s done.  Just so you know — this guy is written up in countless business books as “Doing it right”.  His company is profitable, his employees are happy and it seems that his customers are happier.  If you’d like your name to be in that sentence — then this is how it’s done.

I also realize that this may NOT be year style.  You can be open — but talking turkey on your Twitter stream may be a little too much.  No problem.  Check out Paul Rosenfeld – he’s the CEO of Fanminder, a text messaging service for small business.

image

Here he’s sharing information about his company and also information he’s reading.

What do you want me to do?

  1. Let GO.  I’m asking that you consider the possibility of letting go.  Command and control doesn’t work.  You can’t control the myriad communication channels out there where you name and brand can appear.
  2. THINK before you type.  Don’t make the assumption that social media is TOTALLY spontaneous.  It’s a giant DIGITAL BILLBOARD.  It’s a camera.  Before you do anything – think about who you want to be in cyber space?  What voice will you have?  Will you be casual like Tony Hsei from Zappos, will you be a little more formal like Paul Rosenfeld?  My advice is to first be yourself, decide how you will communicate, decide on what you will communicate.  Then relax and follow through.
  3. Be Real.  Honest, frequent, consistent communication will build your brand.  Don’t be afraid of getting into conversations with your audience.  Be the person that you are at the cocktail party or at your kids’ soccer game.  Talk about your management team, talk about great things you see your employees doing.  Talk about a customer problem your team solved.  Make “friends” with your audience.

What’s this got to do with market research?

Corporations need to step out of their tower and participate.  Market research is no longer a disconnected communication – it’s on going.  Having your leadership team participating in the conversation your customers are having will help you improve your market research and what you will measure.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE:

About the author
Ivana Taylor
Ivana Taylor provides DIY Marketing advice, marketing trends and marketing how-to tips and strategies for small business owners and CEOs.
View all posts by Ivana Taylor

Reader Interactions

Trackbacks

  1. So where DO leaders come from? « Authentic Voice says:
    Feb 9, 2011 at 6:56 pm

    […] Are You Ready for "Open Leadership"? (questionpro.com) […]

Primary Sidebar

Gain insights with 80+ features for free

Create, Send and Analyze Your Online Survey in under 5 mins!

Create a Free Account

RELATED ARTICLES

HubSpot - QuestionPro Integration

Top 20 Employee Engagement Software Solutions: Guide 2025

May 03,2024

HubSpot - QuestionPro Integration

Microsoft Forms vs Google Forms: Which one should you choose?

Jul 23,2024

HubSpot - QuestionPro Integration

15 Best Data Management Tools for Research

Jan 10,2023

BROWSE BY CATEGORY

  • Academic
  • Academic Research
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Assessments
  • Audience
  • Brand Awareness
  • Business
  • Case Studies
  • Communities
  • Consumer Insights
  • Customer effort score
  • Customer Engagement
  • Customer Experience
  • Customer Loyalty
  • Customer Research
  • Customer Satisfaction
  • CX
  • Employee Benefits
  • Employee Engagement
  • Employee Engagement
  • Employee Retention
  • Enterprise
  • Events
  • Forms
  • Friday Five
  • General Data Protection Regulation
  • Guest Post
  • Insights Hub
  • Life@QuestionPro
  • LivePolls
  • Market Research
  • Marketing
  • Mobile
  • Mobile App
  • Mobile diaries
  • Mobile Surveys
  • New Features
  • non-profit
  • NPS
  • Online Communities
  • Polls
  • Question Types
  • Questionnaire
  • QuestionPro
  • QuestionPro Products
  • Release Notes
  • Research Tools and Apps
  • Revenue at Risk
  • Startups
  • Survey Templates
  • Surveys
  • Tech News
  • Tips
  • Training
  • Training Tips
  • Trending
  • Tuesday CX Thoughts (TCXT)
  • Uncategorized
  • VOC
  • Webinar
  • Webinars
  • What’s Coming Up
  • Workforce
  • Workforce Intelligence

Footer

MORE LIKE THIS

Best Tivian Alternative

Best Tivian Alternative in 2025: QuestionPro, the smarter & affordable competitor

May 30, 2025

synthetic-sample

Synthetic Sample: Use Cases & Best Practices in Research

May 30, 2025

Walmart-NPS-2025

Walmart NPS & Its Loyalty Scorecard in 2025

May 29, 2025

synthetic-data-use-cases

Synthetic Data Use Cases: Solve Real Problems with Fake Data

May 28, 2025

Other categories

  • Academic
  • Academic Research
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Assessments
  • Audience
  • Brand Awareness
  • Business
  • Case Studies
  • Communities
  • Consumer Insights
  • Customer effort score
  • Customer Engagement
  • Customer Experience
  • Customer Loyalty
  • Customer Research
  • Customer Satisfaction
  • CX
  • Employee Benefits
  • Employee Engagement
  • Employee Engagement
  • Employee Retention
  • Enterprise
  • Events
  • Forms
  • Friday Five
  • General Data Protection Regulation
  • Guest Post
  • Insights Hub
  • Life@QuestionPro
  • LivePolls
  • Market Research
  • Marketing
  • Mobile
  • Mobile App
  • Mobile diaries
  • Mobile Surveys
  • New Features
  • non-profit
  • NPS
  • Online Communities
  • Polls
  • Question Types
  • Questionnaire
  • QuestionPro
  • QuestionPro Products
  • Release Notes
  • Research Tools and Apps
  • Revenue at Risk
  • Startups
  • Survey Templates
  • Surveys
  • Tech News
  • Tips
  • Training
  • Training Tips
  • Trending
  • Tuesday CX Thoughts (TCXT)
  • Uncategorized
  • VOC
  • Webinar
  • Webinars
  • What’s Coming Up
  • Workforce
  • Workforce Intelligence

questionpro-logo-nw
Help center Live Chat SIGN UP FREE
  • Sample questions
  • Sample reports
  • Survey logic
  • Branding
  • Integrations
  • Professional services
  • Security
  • Survey Software
  • Customer Experience
  • Workforce
  • Communities
  • Audience
  • Polls Explore the QuestionPro Poll Software - The World's leading Online Poll Maker & Creator. Create online polls, distribute them using email and multiple other options and start analyzing poll results.
  • Research Edition
  • LivePolls
  • InsightsHub
  • Blog
  • Articles
  • eBooks
  • Survey Templates
  • Case Studies
  • Training
  • Webinars
  • All Plans
  • Nonprofit
  • Academic
  • Qualtrics Alternative Explore the list of features that QuestionPro has compared to Qualtrics and learn how you can get more, for less.
  • SurveyMonkey Alternative
  • VisionCritical Alternative
  • Medallia Alternative
  • Likert Scale Complete Likert Scale Questions, Examples and Surveys for 5, 7 and 9 point scales. Learn everything about Likert Scale with corresponding example for each question and survey demonstrations.
  • Conjoint Analysis
  • Net Promoter Score (NPS) Learn everything about Net Promoter Score (NPS) and the Net Promoter Question. Get a clear view on the universal Net Promoter Score Formula, how to undertake Net Promoter Score Calculation followed by a simple Net Promoter Score Example.
  • Offline Surveys
  • Customer Satisfaction Surveys
  • Employee Survey Software Employee survey software & tool to create, send and analyze employee surveys. Get real-time analysis for employee satisfaction, engagement, work culture and map your employee experience from onboarding to exit!
  • Market Research Survey Software Real-time, automated and advanced market research survey software & tool to create surveys, collect data and analyze results for actionable market insights.
  • GDPR & EU Compliance
  • Employee Experience
  • Customer Journey
  • Synthetic Data
  • About us
  • Executive Team
  • In the news
  • Testimonials
  • Advisory Board
  • Careers
  • Brand
  • Media Kit
  • Contact Us

QuestionPro in your language

  • English
  • Español (Spanish)
  • Português (Portuguese (Brazil))
  • Nederlands (Dutch)
  • العربية (Arabic)
  • Français (French)
  • Italiano (Italian)
  • 日本語 (Japanese)
  • Türkçe (Turkish)
  • Svenska (Swedish)
  • Hebrew IL (Hebrew)
  • ไทย (Thai)
  • Deutsch (German)
  • Portuguese de Portugal (Portuguese (Portugal))

Awards & certificates

  • survey-leader-asia-leader-2023
  • survey-leader-asiapacific-leader-2023
  • survey-leader-enterprise-leader-2023
  • survey-leader-europe-leader-2023
  • survey-leader-latinamerica-leader-2023
  • survey-leader-leader-2023
  • survey-leader-middleeast-leader-2023
  • survey-leader-mid-market-leader-2023
  • survey-leader-small-business-leader-2023
  • survey-leader-unitedkingdom-leader-2023
  • survey-momentumleader-leader-2023
  • bbb-acredited
The Experience Journal

Find innovative ideas about Experience Management from the experts

  • © 2022 QuestionPro Survey Software | +1 (800) 531 0228
  • Sitemap
  • Privacy Statement
  • Terms of Use