Archive for 2.0 Business Model
by Rob Paterson
March 11, 2010 at 3:31 pm · Filed under
2.0 Business Model, 2.0 Design Thinking, Adoption
We are all “selling”. At the heart of us all we would at least like others to see what we see. True power is being truly heard. This may be selling a product. Or it may be changing the world of food or school – whatever. True power is when you and your idea finds dominance.
Until recently, we had to use immense resources to pull this off. After all this was what marketing and politics was all about – getting hold of vast sums of money to push out our POV.
Only the big could play – until now.
Please excuse the diagram – but I know of no other way of showing this right now. This comes from some work I am doing with a client who has a service that is of interest to researchers. We built this model of the “Field” of a University as it pertains to how we might influence the Profs.
Simply put, if you want to have a lot of Profs use your service, you have to start not with the Formal University and least of all with the most tenacious gatekeeper IT. You are best to find the Big Man on Campus – the most influential Prof with the Lab that all look up to. If she likes what you have, she can find her own money to buy it. Being a “star” she does not need the university as lesser Profs might. If she buys and uses and likes it, then the lesser stars join. The laws of Adoption come into play.
Not only does the BMOC influence her colleagues in her university but because she is a true star, she carries weight in other universities. She may also have formal links in that she may be collaborating with another Lab or Labs. She is a vector for “infection”.
If you have a service that can also serve the small, then you can increase your power by finding the Rising Star. This junior prof has no money. He is new but brilliant. He too wishes to rise to be a dominant player in the field. If you can have a close to free version of your service, he can use this to rise. Then all the rest have to follow as well.
It is better if you then can find local allies. In every system you will have the cops and you will have the social workers. The cops are usually IT or HR in organizations. The nice people in Universities are the Libraries. They are usually genuinely interested in learning and in serving and tend not to be tied to any Right Way. My bet is that every field has these brakes or accelerators.
Finally, to get the big boost, it is likely that you will find regulators or agencies who may find that your service serves them too. With their support, you can tip the system.
I don’t think that this model is confined to Universities. I think that it is Fractal.
I think that all fields have the same deep structure and so are open to this type of approach. In every field there is a dominance hierarchy. There is an external boundary. The job in every field is to get to the centre and to hold the dominant role. This is true in music, in art, math, banking in everything.
There are Stars at the centre, there are gatekeepers, there are Rising Stars, there are infection vectors, there are sponsors, there are pitfalls. All fields have this kind of structure. If we said that the university model was classical piano – it would be the same. If we said it was war doctrine, it would be the same. Hey it is the same for Social Media.
So why is this helpful to you? Because this approach is a true game changer. You don’t have to have vast resources to capture the interest of a field. You do have to have something that is authentically good. But if you have this, then we can use this model to move up the adoption curve with few resources. In fact once you get momentum, the system will do nearly all the work for you.
If I am correct, then this model is a simple map of any field and so enables anyone who wishes to rise or influence any field, to plot a strategy.
This then brings us back to my first post. If this is the map, then we also know how best to harness our social power to have the best journey.
Do we know enough now for you to have the optimal team set up in the optimal way to have the power to get influence on the field that matters to you?
I think we do – but what about you?
by Rob Paterson
March 11, 2010 at 2:00 pm · Filed under
2.0 Business Model, 2.0 Design Thinking, Chaord, Organizational Design, Robin Dunbar
Many of us are starting to see that there is math that underpins human community – The Dunbar Number and related math that defines the hierarchies of trust are gaining credence as being “real“.
I think that they should be: for surely all else in Nature that is about relationships has math? Light, Gravity, Water and Heat etc. So why would there not be Math that supports how Human Relationships work?
I was re-reading my favourite text the other day – Christopher Alexander’s Pattern Language – and I was stunned, but not surprised, to learn that not only do we humans have a gradient of Trust governed by math but that there are limits in the physical space as well beyond which, we fall out of community. Naturally these limits are hardly known, least of all by architects and maybe hardly at all by any of us who wish to design a physical space that promotes a healthy human community.
Alexander brings up this topic in the section on Small Public Squares (Pattern 61). He asks why so many public squares are dead space?
Here is the Space Magic Number #1 – 70.
- We cannot make out another face much over 70 feet away
- We cannot hear another person properly over 70 feet away
Any space that exceeds this – Piazza San Marco and Trafalgar are exceptions because they are a nexus in a large city and get filled to the right density – feels un social.
So here is Space Magic Number #2 – 300
- Any space with more than 300 square feet per person will feel “deserted”
- So a space with a diameter of 100 feet needs 33 people in it to feel ok
- So a space with a diameter of 35 feet needs only 4
- A space with 60 feet needs only 12
- It’s hard to get 33 or more people into a public space at any one time – it is much easier to get 4
I wonder – do these numbers then tie into what we know about group satisfaction – (Chris Allen)
My bet is that there must be a link between these two sets of numbers.
Forming the best groups in the best spaces will surely have an impact on the power of these groups. This then raises another question. Might getting the group size and the group space optimized have an impact on group power?
Do these numbers have any connection with Adoption?
Might knowing more about ideal groups and ideal spaces address the question that we all have – How can I optimize my power in the world?
Our model until now has been to use money as a substitute for social power.
Are we close now to seeing the Social Power Model? I think so.
In my follow up post to this, I will share a Fractal Model of how we have found social adoption to work in a university setting. If this is Fractal, then the social design we see in a University should match all fields of social groupings.
We may be getting close.
by Rob Paterson
February 8, 2010 at 3:53 pm · Filed under
2.0 Business Model, 2.0 Design Thinking
Jon and I hope to reveal to you why it is so hard to get performance from a conventional organization today? Why do they find change so hard? Why is cooperation all but impossible? Why are people so unhappy?
Why is HR and all it stands for in the way?
The simple answer is that the simple idea of a “Job” – really a new idea since 1905 and the advent of the Ford Motor Company – no longer works but all the rules insist that it does. HR is all about the Job.
But the Job is going away – even without my polemic. It is dying quietly. Maybe we could hurry it along?
Organizations are being de-capitalized and networked.
After I left CIBC, most of the operational aspects of the bank’s HR department were outsourced. The same for IT. Much of the data processing had preceded that and now lives in a utility coop with some other banks and IBM I believe.
Today large chunks of any large organization that would have been inside are now supplied as services from the outside. The monolith is looking more like an eco system than a machine.
Back in the day, 1994, there were part time employees but they were somehow seen as an exception. Most were in junior roles. They were landless serfs. The lowest of the low and there are even more of these roles now.
But now at the high end and at the skill end this is changing. No longer landless serfs, the new contrator is the Knight for hire – The White Company of our time.
Today, especially in smaller firms, many key roles are played by long term outsiders. I am involved in such a start up today where all the key roles such as accounting, HR, legal etc will be rented from people that will be working under a retainer. These will not just be “consultants” but high level people who will have long term relationships. I play this role with several clients already. This enables, smaller firms to have national or global capability at a price that they can afford.
There are Men at Arms for hire as well. People with important skills that everyone needs
All over North America, networks of book keepers are emerging. The ones that I know of have a roster of about 6 -12 clients each and back each other up. Such an arrangement is ideal for both sides. The firm gets consistency and security while not paying for full time staff – the book keeper has the security of having say 10 clients and with that she can lose some or break up with those that she does not like,
If the Contractor CFO is the Knight for Hire, these are the “Men at Arms”. I use these terms because I think what we are seeing has happened before.
In the middle ages, the main occupation was war. But there was a revolution in the 15th century. Until then your birth determined your rank in the hierarchy. It mattered not much if you were any good, if you were born a noble or a knight (JOB) you were that. But after the Black Death, people were scarce. If you were a king, you wanted to have an army that was good. You paid for real skill and not for position. War became a profession where real accomplishment and the ability to attract good people to you became the new norm.
The centre of the problem is the whole idea of a job. I think it is a relic of the early industrial past ad has no place in the world we live in. It is bad for us as people and it is bad for organizations. It is all about the infantilism of the work place.
Strong words! OK lets look at the Job and what it means and then at the alternative.
- The Employee has a “Job”. This is an artifact that has skill boundaries and skill demands. Recruitment is an impersonal process based on the idea that the job has defined tick boxes and we are all ciphers. “Must have 4 years experience as a ********* Plus an education *******” Few interviews or jobs demand any behavioural attributes. It is seen as bad form to hire people you know. So you can be a psychopath and that is OK because the skills on the table are instrumental. Nor does a job imply what performance is. Somehow the work continues as defined for ever??? The employee is also assumed to be a child who needs to be supervised. The reason is that the outcome of what she does is never on the table. She is assumed to need training, for she could never get skills herself. Her #1 real job is pleasing her boss. The #1 career path is to get into management, for that is where the money is. The #1 aim is to have the largest budget for that drives the biggest pay check. None of any of this has much to do with the work at hand or the goals of the organization. The #1 process is the budget! This is why cooperation and collaboration are no no’s. The only route is up or out or burn out. It is every man for himself. There is no friendship in the executive ranks. The competition are people you understand and who know what you face. Your colleagues are the real foe. Sound familiar?
- So let’s look at the evolving alternative. The contractor has a “Gig” or a long term role to play. Central to the appointment is that there is an output, an impact and a result required. The real interview issue is, can you show that you can and have done this? Not only does the contractor have to prove that, but smart employers will find out what it is like to work with that person. Behavior is central. The hiring issue is reputation not resume. Not only should this person have skills but also a network. Much of what a contractor brings are others who can help in some way. If the contractor has a longer term connection it is because she can still add value to the ever changing work. The contractor gets more money by being more competent in fields that are of value. He stays as long as he is needed. He gets new work as a result of the good work he has done before. He looks after his own training. Most of his skill development comes from doing hard and new work not from taking courses.He needs next to no supervision, he is after all hired because he is competent. The focus is on the work. His security is his field and his good name. Having more than one employer is better than only having one. He tends to own his own tools that tend to be better than his employers! He is no threat to his employer and can often become close. His best allies are his colleagues in his field. As teams they do better. They help each other. They routinely collaborate.
In looking at these two views of how work is done we see the heart of the HR and OD issue today.
Let’s explore this dissonance over the next few weeks. For we have two systems that are in the same space.
The whole social software field is behind the latter. The adoption issues are all related to the OD metaphor.
If we can see the role that our conventional thinking plays in harming the real needs of the organization and of the people in it, we might make some progress.
by Paula Thornton
February 1, 2010 at 2:56 pm · Filed under
2.0 Business Model, 2.0 Design Thinking, Change, Emergence
As I began writing this, I started to wonder if an alternate title for this should be, “Stop Looking for ‘Done’”.
These reflections are a direct result of a challenge from renowned-for-his-email-shunning-antics, Luis Suarez (@elsua). But oddly, there was already a lot of reflecting and projecting of this topic. There are fundamental computing principles and possibilities introduced to the industry over 40 years ago that are currently being revisited for relevance (thx @roundtrip and others), and have been the inspiration for some of the best E2.0 solutions. All of which caused me to recently reflect (apologies to Doug for misspelling Engelbart):
We’ve been at this stuff for a long time, and yet while lots of ‘new’ stuff has come and gone, those of us who’ve been around the block for most of this, wonder if we’ve really accomplished all that much as we continue to circle the block over and over again. At least a group of students from BYU have found ways to make going in circles productive, a byproduct of having fun.
Trying to honor Luis’ specific challenge to me “I sense designing a new Web will have direct implications for every business and for every society we are part of”. Adding to that challenge a 20-year horizon, I have to consider the evidence that it’s taken us 40 years to achieve much of what Engelbart described and the 2.0 realm is just beginning to address some of the subtle intentions.
I’m taking a step up on my soap box to insist that we need more designing and less decorating. I am so sick of ‘innovation’ being used as the false god of the deathmarch to profits: increasing sales by creating yet another ‘new’ product that everyone “just has to buy’, even though they already have one.
I’ve been using a particular word processing program for 25 years and was recounting last night that I can hardly use the latest version — key familiar functions are lost-in-action among the unfamiliar. Something as fundamental as word processing has the potential for what sort of negative impact on our overall productivity?
Look, if we were talking about soap (consumables) that would be one thing — I finish a bar of soap, it’s gone, I have to buy a new one to replace it. Software is NOT a consumable (well, unless you consider the flip of the equation — how much it consumes in its path with each new version, taking up more and more memory and raw storage in its aftermath — but that’s a soap box of another color).
We’re really bad at design because we don’t architect well. If we did, we could leave the infrastructure alone (except as needed), and keep updating the fixtures and decor — but not for purposes of ‘fashion’ (although occasionally relevant), but for ‘function’.
We’re really bad at leveraging existing resources and seem to want to design for 5 years out, when it’s been proven over and over again, that when the 5 years come, what we thought was relevant isn’t any more. We need to design for NOW, and just do that really, really well, as simply as possible.
The problem is that there seems to be some confusion over “as simply as possible”. While insisting that it’s an architectural challenge, I’m beginning to think it’s due to a different set of P’s: power, pride and pomposity. I’ve experienced/witnessed countless situations where a design was going down a meaningful path, it has been derailed by someone wielding one of these to insert their own individual mark. It’s kinda like the annoying male cat who keeps insisting on marking his territory — only in places where it doesn’t make sense, like, inside your house.
The greatest reality that the 2.0 era has embraced is that there’s no such thing as ‘done’. The only ‘done’ in life is ‘dead’ (and that’s just a phase/state transition). We need to get little things done better and stop chasing more things.
We erroneously think we need to move faster or change tracks. In reality there are so many tracks crossing ours that we should be heeding the well-known adage, learned as a child: stop, look, listen. We think we can’t stop — and then a tsunami comes or a market collapses, and stops it all for us. We chase around ‘outside the box’ and get nowhere relevant or important in the grand scheme of things — we waste all sorts of real human lives and potential in the meantime when we could be using what’s already in the box (like a merry-go-round) to solve world hunger and make a real difference in people’s lives.
The connectedness of 2.0 tools that now allow for continuous ‘now’ conversations landed this relevant thought from Alan Watts (thx @rickladd):
If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.
We need to add “no” to our vocabulary. You want a mind-bender for the day? Go consider why it is so significant that toddlers all seem to naturally have a ‘no’ phase that they go through. We’re there.
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by Jon Husband
December 8, 2009 at 12:51 pm · Filed under
2.0 Business Model, 2.0 Design Thinking, Collaboration, Connected Enterprise, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Social Computing, Innovation, Jevon MacDonald, Measurement, Organizational Design, Social Computing
Ever since hearing of "Social Business Design" – a term associated with the Dachis Group’s positioning as a blue-chip expertise-and-experience based consulting firm focusing on helping enterprises operate more effectively in an interconnected business environment, I have been struggling to clarify for myself what is meant by the term ’socially calibrated’ as used in the Group’s tag line.
"Social business design helps companies reinvent themselves into dynamic, socially calibrated organizations that gain constant value from their ecosystem of connections"
Please do not get me wrong … when I say I am struggling, I am not seeking to criticize. I think the firm is on the right track, and I think parsing the syntax and vocabulary we are all bringing to this new party is an important exercise … mission-critical, in fact.
Here’s what I find on the Dachis Group’s web site that addresses ’social calibration’:
Hivemind
A primary social calibration
As social tools and functionality are adopted more widely, it becomes less important for businesses to use traditional methods to force collaboration in the workplace, e.g. panoptic cubicle arrangements. Employees are entering the workforce socially engaged and used to collaborating. The social business hivemind is a new kind of corporate culture whereby all participants move together towards common goals. Physicists refer to this as “synchronous lateral excitation.”
Distributed governance
The social business hivemind makes decisions and receives continuous reinforcement through business interactions: a social inclination resides within a company’s culture and tempers planning, decision-making, and work output. Employees approach work with a social and collaborative mindset; customers expect participation and engagement; suppliers anticipate optimized and efficient process towards common goals.
Measurement and cultivation
Hivemindedness can be measured by assessing levels of collective awareness, engagement, and participation. Measurement here focuses on subjective perceptions – analytics can include surveys, interviews, text analysis, and so on. The goal is always to gain insight into constituents’ attitudes towards the value they get from participating versus the potential for trust issues and conflicts that they perceive. Once perceptions are measured, they can be constantly cultivated and remeasured to move the dial.
The explanations on the site continue, explaining the importance of Dynamic Signals and Metafiltering, and culminate in analyzing the various elements of a connected enterprise-customer-employee ecosystem for meaning, and thus the co-creation of economic value for all parties in the ecosystem.
I like this. I think that it’s becoming clear to many that we are into a world of increased and dynamic complexity, and that we need design principles and implementable practices that are based on the constant presence of flows of information and feedback loops within connected eco-systems of purpose and value.
This new environent has been building in scope, reach and intensity for years now. I think that the Dachis Group has thought this through quite well. But … I am still wondering about ’social calibration’.
As I read the site’s explanation of the Dachis Group approach, it brought to mind the "sense-making" approach that is being promoted and taught by Dave Snowden’s Cognitive Edge Network, and other leading-edge thinkers and practitioners (and I have opined previously on the similarities to socio-technical systems theory and leading-edge OD (organizational development) principles and practices).
It was about three weeks ago that I started noodling on this. Back then I made a few notes to myself regarding what I thought ’social calibration’ might mean. Here are those notes:
Social Calibration ?
I think it means that you look at the social ‘architecture’ of an enterprise, including its markets, customers and employees and how they interact with the organization’s business processes.
I think it means that (initially) based on observation and some knowledge of current patterns of behaviour in networks of people operating ‘on purpose’, you experiment with and implement
- new work designs
- hyperlinked productivity platforms for exchange and collaboration
- the aggregation and use of collective intelligence using tagging, enterprise search and other collaborative processes.
Before this, however, you set baselines or thresholds of organizational performance and productivity from which to measure forward performance,
And then you work at understanding what works, why it works and in what conditions it works really well or may not work.
From there you clarify where changes need to be made in leadership style, management practices, work design and organizational structure(s), internal and external communications and engagement, and performance measurement and support.
With an initial framework in place for watching and ‘nudging’ the ecosystem, you begin to show and publicize in realistic ways why these ways of working are important for both future organizational success and personal work satisfaction and enrichment.
How’s that for consultant-speak ?
I think that’s what I inferred, off the cuff, from the term ’socially calibrated’.
.
Please bear in mind that the above points were just rough notes I made to myself before I went looking at the Group’s web site.
I am left with my struggles with the term ’social calibration’, which I do not doubt the Dachis Group has chosen carefully and wisely.
I think my struggle is with the question of "calibrate against what?", given that there are no real models of success against which to calibrate (which in my opinion is a large part of the ongoing frustration with the difficulty of calculating the ROI of implementing social computing in organizations).
Anyway … I don’t have any real answers to my questions, other than I think that if you compare my notes to the Dachis Group’s more complete explanation (on their web site) there are parallels and the general direction of thinking is aligned.
That said, I am sure we are all going to learn a lot about what works and what does not work in the coming decade.
..
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