Best Buy has created their "Blue Shirt Nation" thanks to Steve Bendt and Gary Koelling, the corporate marketing guys behind the project. Blue Shirt Nation is a social media platform where Best Buy employees have the opportunity to create an account and interact with one another via the internet.
It was created to listen to what employees had to say and that is why it became so successful. Because management was talking and listening to their internal groundswell. It does not only educate management "but also enables employees to help each other" (p. 218). For years, Best Buy had built tools in a vacuum, without talking to our employees, without understanding their problems, without understanding who the user was.
Blue Shirt Nation isn't a confusing thing for any of their employees to access and use; another strength of their engagement. "Thinking about the relationships, not the technologies" (p. 224). The success of the network doesn't depend on sophisticated technology. Success depends on the trust employees put in Blue Shirt Nation.
Now that they have been able to engage their internal groundswell, they are able to build stronger relationships and a stronger company.
The implications of the ability to engage with their inner groundswells are key to a company's success. If you can create a culture for your employees in which they feel heard, similar to the external groundswell's role, positive things will happen within your company. "No matter what you're after, in the internal groundswell, the secret to thriving is culture" (p. 230).
AND, since this is the last blog post that is assigned for this blog, I will leave you with a piece of advice from Li & Bernoff: "You should learn to think as [the groundswell] does" (p. 234).
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