I won’t tease this apart in detail here, but suffice to say you’ll notice how it assumes the death of the command and control hierarchy of the traditional firm. It emphasizes the opportunity to equip every individual with tools to help them determine and articulate their needs, desires, knowledge, skills and values in ways that are useful in working out how best to come together to do stuff of mutual value.

At Attenzi, we’ve begun to move away from our traditional hierarchical structure to flatter and more autonomous but still very much aligned and accountable teams, looking to our improved performance management capabilities for sensory feedback. Of course, some organizations have pursued this kind of structure before us, but interesting qualities and opportunities emerge in our social business context we think that help make it all happen more reliably, transparently and productively.

Attenzi is becoming a network, slowly but surely.

Perhaps this new vista will require a redefinition of the organization, the firm, but there’s no need for us to think about that in operational terms just yet.

Does this question convey a vision for 2025? Sooner? Later? Ever? Who knows until we get there, but we think it conjures up a fascinating potential and one that can inform progress towards social business in the nearer-term.

(Interestingly, as a quick aside, we get positive reactions to this exacting take on social business from people with viewpoints spanning the full political spectrum, but I’m not going to get all political on you here.)

Now then, I won’t keep you any longer… there’s stuff to be done right!

We hope you’re using our story here to cajole your colleagues to sign up for the ride. And as part of that communications process, if you’re looking for a slidestack that builds up to this challenging question, check out: What, exactly, is social business?

While we’re talking slidestacks, here’s one that effectively sums up the approach we’ve taken and referred to in our story here that enables us to recognize the value of social even when its impact is one or more steps back from the cash register: What, exactly, is the value of social media? It’s what we’ve come to call social business performance management, or just social performance in short.

Of course, I’ll continue to add such comments and links to the attenzi.com website, and hope to see you there. And indeed at a Social Media Today conference.

All the best.

It had been a quiet day. I found myself staring out the window thinking how much I missed Rachel and daydreaming about living right next door to Myra so we could still be more of a family. I tore myself away on seeing Saket approach.

“Is this a good time?”

“Sure, pull up a chair.”

“So.”

I looked at him, waiting. He simply raised his eyebrows so I assumed he wanted me to pick a topic. So I did. “I have a question. Will all this stuff pay dividends? Will Lorenz Capital cash out? Actually, more to the point, how well does this bode for my long-term career prospects?!”

Saket adopted an appropriately serious posture. “Attenzi isn’t in the business of making money. It’s in the business of creating great products that celebrate great food and great cooking to the benefit of everyone involved. And when everyone derives value that includes Lorenz Capital. They can’t do it without you. You can’t do it without them. Everyone comes together to make this thing happen.

“So Lorenz Capital will cash out when you’ve helped everyone come together to create greater value all round faster than otherwise. And you’ll realize your full potential by helping everyone else achieve theirs.”

I guess I felt we were doing the right things, but even a Chief Executive needs some validation from trusted advisors. Make that especially the Chief Executive. We chatted for quite a while about what our performance metrics were starting to show – more on that later – and then Saket asked me if anything particular was making me nervous. I did have one itch I needed to scratch.

“Well, I can’t help but think about customer-centricity. You see, when I contemplate the stuff we’ve worked through together, I think I can start to see why you relegate customer-centricity. I think in fact you called it stupid.

“But then just as I think I’m getting it I pick up any management textbook, read any business magazine, talk to any peer at another firm, and there it is looming large. Maxims such as: ‘the customer is at the heart of everything we do’; ‘without customers there is no company’; ‘it’s the customer who pays the wages’; ‘there is only one boss – the customer.’ How do you reconcile that?”

Saket leaned forward. “I like a good pithy quote as much as the next man, but don’t confuse pithiness for accuracy.