Archive for July, 2007
by Rob Paterson
July 28, 2007 at 7:13 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
[photopress:grant.jpg,full,alignleft] Life and literature is full of the conflict between the “Warrior” and the “Bureaucrat”. General Grant could not fit into the peacetime army or civilian life either. But when war came, his ability and achievement won him Lincoln’s confidence. Grant then fulfilled this trust and won the war.
[photopress:240px_GeorgeMcClellan_1.jpeg,full,alignleft]When war broke out, General McClellan was seen by all as the man to win the war. He was the public’s idea of a real soldier. Smooth, smart, a great recruiter and organizer. But he and none of his smooth successors until Grant and Sherman had the right stuff that only a real warrior had.
So what is this short history lesson got to do with social software?
If social software has the power that I think it has, it will “Out” the bureaucrats for what they are and shift organizations away from self serving to actually serving the stated mission of the enterprise.
How might this happen? It will show the difference between meeting the needs of the mission and meeting the needs of a career. It will highlight the difference between people who have something to say because they know their stuff and have a passion for the work and those that have no real voice and only a passion for themselves.
Most bureaucratic authority is merely the result of the position – the skill and effort that took the person there was usually skill as a bureaucrat. Such people tend to have a “voice” that is distinctive. They tend to be well-behaved, rule-keeping and mistake-avoiding and of course smooth-talking. General Haig is a good example of the Pentagon/White House soldier.
There are others who may have that position but who have earned it by their innate skill and by their record of achievement. I label them “warriors”. General Patton, Col David Hackworth would be the “Warriors”.
The Warrior wins the battle, has high morale in his unit, runs the best region in the bank, really can teach and make a difference in kids’ lives, is a godly man whose life is an example for his parish. Would give his life for his country etc. But they tend to have little or no power in large organizations. Except in wartime or times of exceptional crisis, the General Grant’s, the Churchill’s and the Mandela’s are excluded. The great teacher never runs a school. The great priest never becomes a bishop. The patriot never becomes President.
The Bureaucrat’s achievement is that he is an expert at climbing the slippery pole. Climbing the slippery pole is actually the real achievement in most large organizations. Making internal deals and looking after the club is the work. These are the skills and this is the achievement that is rewarded. It is the bureaucrats who serve themselves that tend to have the positions of power.
That is why they hate the idea of Social Software. Why? What social software is doing is “outing” the bureaucrat. Most often, if an organization is using social software well – it drives debate and conversation. Good ideas and good people rise naturally to the surface in such an environment. The Warriors start to have more influence. The Bureaucrats tend to lose influence because they have poor skills related to the task rather than to the organization. These are exposed by silence or evidence of their technical frailty.
I say all of this not as a moralist but as a man entering old age who has been around a bit. I think that this is the way of the world. But my hope is that the transparency that comes with the use of Social Software and the reality that all those under the age of 25 use it all the time and will force it into organizations – may actually shift the balance of power away from bureaucratic achievement to real achievement.
“By their works, shall ye know them” (Matthew I think) This is becoming important again.
by Dana Gardner
July 27, 2007 at 9:11 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, Microsoft, Mobile, SaaS, Social Computing, Social Media, Web 2.0
Looking over the reports from the Microsoft financial analysts gathering this week in Redmond, Wash., I’m reminded of baseball … modern ballparks in particular.
Far as I know, most major league baseball teams have been profitable for many years, many decades. Most of the teams in large cities are doing better than ever, in spanking new stadiums.
What’s different now is the explosion of advertisements, endorsements, sponsorships, hucksterism and crass visual commercialism. Whether you attend a game or watch one on television, there isn’t a time or place where you are not treated to literally dozens of commercial pitches while you try and figure out the real pitches.
Why on Earth would people who love baseball, or even just tolerate baseball, allow such a plastering of advertisements across their consciousness (and perhaps unconsciousness)? Well, because they don’t have a choice, of course.
Baseball, like Microsoft (and soon, Google?), is a monopoly. There are few if any real choices for most anyone who wants to watch a major league game but to incur the ad wrath.
And that’s why it’s only a matter of time before Microsoft starts injecting scads of ads through their “software plus services” portfolio. That’s right, when you open your online (or offline or hybrid-line) applications for a spreadsheet, word processor, email, calendar, ERP interface — just like you’re now thoroughly accustomed to on Web pages and services — there will be ads. Lots of them. Targeted right to you as an individual or business (or both) with your pre-analyzed budget to spend in anticipation
Local, state, regional, mobile, location-based, keyword-oriented, and fuzzy-warm branding types of ads. All over your visual perimeter — just like at the ballpark — you’ll be served up ads, ads, ads while you toil away to offer more cookie crumbs of insight into what the next ad should be that you see. Attention!
The implications for this, of course, are enormous. If Microsoft and the other services providers — for they will all have to follow suit, just like each ballpark followed the other — can better target these ads to you based on your relationship with them and the technology cauldron that forms from your use of “software plus services,” then all the other providers of platforms for online ads will be sunk.
We used to have the division of church and state between media editorial and advertising, but what of the division between technology and advertising? There isn’t one. You may think you own your PC (vendors would differ) but you don’t own the servers that toss up your “software plus services.” You want to play ball? You gotta look at the ads. You gotta see the craplets.
Reminds me of the line from fictional Southie strongman Frank Costello in The Departed: “I don’t want to be a product of my environment, I want my environment to be a product of me.” You, dear readers, will be a product of the environment that your “software plus services” provider wants for you, based on what’s good for their investors.
Even, over the next 3 to 10 years, as the newspaper business thinks it can reinvent its paper-based revenue streams from the Internet, in comes the IT vendors. These “software plus services” providers will — from start-up of the first craplets when you turn the thing on until the last mouse click before you die — have you pegged. They will know what you want before you do. No other entity can better match ads to users than a combined IT platform provider and online services provider whose business is based on advertising revenue. The marketers will finally have the tools they’ve always wanted.
And so those other media company web sites that dish up the highest-quality content, that provide top-line fourth-estate journalism will do okay (we hope), but the largest ad dollars growth will go to those “software plus services” providers that can give the advertisers the best on-target and metrics-based match-up between buyers and sellers. And then the IT companies buy the media companies, and then they buy the telecos and cable and mobile providers. Nice and tidy. On stop shopping to get inside of your head/wallet.
Who to blame? No one. It’s inevitable. Government regulators could scarcely keep up, even if they will and budgets existed. If Google and Microsoft don’t do it someone else will. Mark Cuban thinks those alternatives could well be the local broadband providers, and he’s right … but only for a time. Once the total online ad monopoly kicks in, it will be a digital Standard Oil on steroids with no Sherman Antitrust Act.
Is Google the white knight and Microsoft the evil empire? Nope. Just like in any good vs evil saga (Star Wars?) both sides need each other desperately. For the better that Google does in making ad-based online applications and services work acceptably, the easier it is for Microsoft to inject that model into its current stable of software, and present it as … services.
And the more successful (could they be any more successful?) that Microsoft is at providing PC applications and services locally, online or both, the easier it is for Google to make its SaaS alternatives look good enough. These two massively and globally influential companies will ratchet each other up to the level of the modern-day ballpark. It’s not either-or, it’s both Microsoft and Google propelling the shifts in the market to ad-based everything online, including your business applications, including your high school yearbook.
We are all just going along for the ride. For many of us, we think we get the functional services cheaply because the ads pay for the “software plus services.” But when was the last time you saw the price of admission tickets to a ball game fall as they hoisted yet another billboard up over left field?
It won’t be ad-based revenue or subscription. No, it will be ad-based revenue and subscription. Has to be. We have no choice.
by Jerry Bowles
July 26, 2007 at 10:59 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, SAP, Social Media Summit
It’s a cold day in hell pretty rare when a large company invites bloggers to sit in on (and actively participate in) a real working marketing strategy session but SAP, the once reclusive software giant that has embraced social media in a huge way, did just that Tuesday by inviting Jeff Nolan, Jason Wood and myself to join the SAP Social Media Summit in downtown Manhattan.
The meeting was convened by Steve Mann, head of SAP’s Total Customer Experience, Competitive Marketing and Services Marketing functions, who looked amazingly alert for a man who recently became the father of triplets. The goal was to come up with a strategy to build on the success of SAP’s Blogger Relations program, run by Mike Prosceno, which has garnered all kinds of positive support in the enterprise software corners of the blogosphere and for the SAP Developer Network (SDN) and Business Process Expert (BPX) communities, headed by Mark Yolton.
The SDN has doubled in size over the past year to 850,000 members and become a popular community for global geeks who get points (and maybe even a free t-shirt or luggage tag) for participating in forums, answering technical questions, and blogging. The site now has 2,800 active contributors, draws 5,000 forum posts a day, and the average time between post/question to first response is 20 minutes. The BPX community, which had 10,000 early adopters, has now passed 150,000 members.
Although SAP’s social media efforts are among the most advanced I’ve seen among enterprises, they are still young and much of the day-long discussion focused on such basic questions as how far the next phase of social media development within the company should go and how fast, when to look for senior level executive sponsorship, and what existing internal and external initiatives might be best candidates for “socialization.”
I wasn’t able to attend day two but at the end of the first day a consensus seemed to be building toward trying not to make rules that might discourage innovation, accelerating the social media adoption process by trying several test projects to see what works best, and deferring the pursuit of top level “sponsorship” until the program matures a bit more. Having spent a number of years working in big company communications, I found all these ideas to be extremely sensible.
My meager contribution to the proceedings was to suggest that because social media can’t be controlled or directed through traditonal marketing and public relations methods, there will almost certainly come a time when something unexpected happens and the program will need “air cover” from a top executive who has been willing to adopt it as his or her own. Most midlevel large company grassroots initiatives I know about are not there yet, but at the “keep informed, but don’t make responsible for” stage.
I also stressed the importance of living the values that embracing social media implies, which are such rare corporate habits as transparency, honesty, accessibility, and trust. The blogosphere is unforgiving of perceived hypocrascy and reputations can be damaged by social media as quickly as they can be bolstered if there is a gap between what corporations say and what they do.
But, the simple fact that Jeff, Jason and I were in the room (and not asked to sign NDAs) tells me that this is a lesson that SAP’s social media leaders and innovators already understand.
by Rob Paterson
July 26, 2007 at 10:31 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
[photopress:obesityvirus.jpg,full,centered]
Here is a link to a fascinating video at the New York Times today. It shows how over time, the influence of body shape shifts what is acceptable. In effect, the more we are surrounded by people who are obese, the more acceptable it becomes. As social animals it is not only germs or ideas that we seek to share but even body types.
As I watched this excellent visualization, I could not but think of the ramifications of what I was seeing.
My point is that change is all social. Change spreads like a virus. The video shows the Tipping Point in action.
So why not use this insight in helping Public radio and TV make the changes that it needs? Today Jake Shapiro released his report on how well Stations in Public Radio are doing at adopting social media. Jake is polite. But a careful read tells us that we in public radio are really struggling. In spite of knowing that finding out how to use this well is a matter of life and death, we are holding back. I think that the power of the “This is how have always done it virus” is keeping the old system in place.
At KETC we have found that our summer interns have been a huge help. For them all of this is second nature. It has been sweet to see them speaking up in meetings – they have been so patient with us. It is thrilling for me to see them to see them teaching the old dogs new tricks.
My bet is that the stations that open their doors to lots of young interns will be the ones that get infected with the confidence and the norms of social media.
[photopress:kpftyoungnpr.jpg,full,alignleft]
The intellectual work about adoption has been done. Now the time has come to bring back a host of young into the stations. Deja Vu all over again folks.
by Jevon MacDonald
July 24, 2007 at 8:12 am · Filed under
2.0 Design Thinking, Enterprise 2.0
This is a post I originally wrote in 2003. I am reposting it here because I think it is just as relevant today as it was back then — Jevon
The Heart of the Problem
Autistic children are not naturally able to understand, or develop, meaningful social relationships in the way most of us are used to doing. Their relationships are often transactional, and there is not enough emotional bandwidth in their interactions for any additional emotional or social payload.
I have had a chance to see this in a different situation with a client of ours who has asked us to develop a community for an internal group of disabled people. A common point we have heard from members of this group is that, as part of being generally misunderstood by the rest of the world (which I have come to acknowledge as being mostly true), they are not able to form any sort of meaningful relationship with the people they encounter. In both cases, the subject either lacks emotional intelligence, or they are unable to accurately communicate their emotional understanding of the interaction.
Usually, an autistic child is taught how they can fake their way through social interactions. They are taught scripts for common situations, and how they must make eye contact and avoid annoying habits. Essentially, they are taught to hide themselves, while still only placing a superficial value on the transactional component of the relationship.
Does our network model suffer?
It may seem like these groups are in a precarious situation. The inability to leverage any sort of emotional intelligence is completely limiting to a healthy understanding, and use, of human relationships. The truth is, however, somewhat more difficult to swallow. We are all surrounded by colleagues, friends, family and even partners who are completely unable to guage, and invest in, the value of a relationship. The implications here are that the links in our social networks can be weakened by people (nodes) who suffer from this.
We must now not only use our own emotional intelligence, but we must measure the EI of anyone we are interacting with. This is our only defense against forming a relationship with someone who simply does not have the capacity to see any real value in the relationship, beyond it’s benefit to them.
The Natural Model
As members of a network, we must learn a few rules of the game. We must pull our own weight, we must not overestimate our load-bearing ability, do not attempt to short-circuit paths which do not exists, and more. Perhaps more importantly though, we must learn that being a member of a network involves social referencing. We must learn that our actions affect the health of the entire network, and that we must exercise due diligence in deciding to act. We learn this as babies, and now we must re-learn it in a new context. The relationships that we leverage must be ones that actually mean something to use, and that we are willing to invest in.
In his model, Steven Gustein does not teach autistic children to go by scripts, or to fake their feelings. He teaches them the real value of a relationship, and they find that they truly are able to value and love those around them.
As we enter a natural network model of doing business, we are becoming babies again in so many ways, and many will struggle with the basic difficulties of interaction that so many others in the world fight in their day-to-day lives.
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