FOREWORD
This book will make practitioners in marketing, PR, advertising, communications, and any professional with the word digital in his title uncertain about the future of his discipline. Philip Sheldrake makes the case that the traditional boundaries of these professions must morph into a more holistic expertise, which he calls the influence professional. And while such professionals must retain their creative right-brain talents, they must become far more skilled in left-brained analytical competencies.
The convergence of markets, media, and technology raises the bar further. New business models, the proliferation of social media, the relative power shift from producers to consumers, and the overwhelming amount of structured and unstructured data make managing our businesses more challenging than ever. It seems that we increasingly know more and more about less and less. Change is constant, and accelerating.
What to do? The author proposes a creative, structured approach to the business of influence, which is to say, business itself. He identifies the interactions between stakeholders – businesses, employees, customers, competitors – and maps the primary influence flows among them. He provides a practical framework for seeing, and acting on, the drivers of value creation. He proposes an Influence Scorecard that integrates strategy, objectives, and processes in an actionable influence framework. The scorecard provides structure, focus, and a common language – across organizational ...
