I work at a big company, (our reported headcount is larger than the employee base of Microsoft or Google combined) but my mission is to think small.

What does small mean?
It means that every single voice is important, and so is every customer. It means that every customer has specific needs and no too alike. It means that there are real people behind those forums, blogs, and trouble tickets, both at our company and customers.

• I’m listening to the marketplace.
• I teach the right people in our company to listen.
• I want to have individual conversations with people using the web.
• I teach the right people in our company to use web tools to have these small conversations.
• It means that we don’t think of marketplaces but we think of individuals that are talking to each other using the conversational web.
• As the Community Manager, I’ll be an internal advocate for customers.
• Using the web, we can be a better company, listen, converse, and build better products and services with our customers.

I’ll be having lunch with Anil, an industry blogger, and a data storage expert in a few weeks. Hu, our CTO Blogger wanted to come, but he’ll be traveling –I’ll be happy to host Anil.  Anil, this doesn’t mean I think you’re small, but it means that your individual opinion and comments matter both to folks in our industry and to us.

Who said big companies can’t think small?