Here is a comment I added to a recent discussion about Charlene Li’s keynote address on open leadership at the ASAE tech conference in Washington DC. I thought this contribution would be valuable to the marketing and strategy leaders that read this blog.

Photo via ASAE’s Photos on flickr

Having spent my career in various for-profit businesses, I found Charlene’s remarks to contain some squishy ideas that those in leadership positions might have trouble translating into concrete business plans. Here is the post I am responding to and here is my comment:

An alternative way to wrap your head around the ideas that Charlene lays out is to run her concepts through the P.O.S.T. approach to marketing, engagement, and customer relationship management. P.O.S.T. methodology helps incorporate the “Learn, Dialog, Support, Innovate” steps into a plan for impacting your organization’s key performance metrics.

P: People – Spend time identifying the different personas that you are trying to reach. What are their needs, problems, expectations, and communication preferences?

O: Objectives – What are your goals for each persona? Building a framework of objectives helps keep less concrete ideas and initiatives focused on meeting the needs of your target audience while staying true to the culture of your organization.

S: Strategy – How would you like your relationship with your target audiences to change? This is an area that Charlene espouses often when discussing open leadership. Given the people you are focused on and your goals, what would you like your relationship with these people to look like after a week, a month, 3 months, 6 months, or a year?

T: Tactics – What are the tools and technology you are going to use to accomplish this strategy? Only now can you start to think about selecting the right technical (or non-technical) solution for your organization.