Will newspapers all die? Maybe not. I am sure that, in some form, some Newspapers will live on. But for most of us – the Newspaper as a “Paper” for the masses is already dead. Will Paper Books die? Maybe not – I treasure my new Picture Book of my son’s wedding. There are few text filled books I will always treasure. But as a mass market object, books are already dead for many people as the sales of eBooks and Readers show.
The mass market distribution systems that supported newspapers and books will die soon as a result. For traditional papers and books only have to shrink by 15 – 25% to make the economic burden of running the presses and the system too much. Once these systems have gone they will be gone for ever. New systems are emerging.
I can already design and set my new book and have it printed and sent back to me – a market of one!
This is a new system quite separate from the old book distribution and publishing system. New “newspapers” such as Politico and Huffington are here. Some old ones such as the Guardian are moving to the new space. Twitter and Facebook fill in more news for me. My new “news paper” will be edited largely by me for me!
The same process is now going to affect TV. Most of the old infrastructure will die. New structure will emerge quickly. Some old structure will hybridize. The power will shift from them to me!
I have just enjoyed an Apple TV for a week with Netflix. Now watching content via the web is easy. But the big attraction is not just that getting content online is easy. What I had not known about was how powerful the impact would be of how my habits of watching affects how Netflix adjusts its offering to me. In only a week, it has used its algorithm to begin to offer me content that I might never have noticed that I will almost certainly enjoy. What it is doing is “meaning making” of the almost infinite pool of content that is out there. This has put me in charge – I am now my own programmer. I am my own network CEO. I choose the time and I choose the content knowing that I will enjoy it. I also lose all the rubbish and all the ads.
I am constructing my own TV Network! This is the revolution that extends way beyond the web access issues. The web enables this personal customization for TV as wit will for books and news.
I am happy to pay a subscription for this. I don’t demand that this be free because it is great value for me. I will never go back to appointment TV – no matter who puts it on – a network, a cable company or public TV.
My bet is that within a year, the death of Appointment TV will be sure and a new system will be visible. Look at how TechCrunch see this right now!
Google unveiled its Google TV platform less than 3 weeks ago. You can’t ignore Google. Hey, they just built a car that drives itself. But Thursday, in a battle that will likely become more frequent between old media and new, ABC, CBS and NBC blocked their programs fromGoogle TV. MTV, Fox and HBO are still available, but that could change. Still, one TechCrunch post declared “I’ve seen the future and it begins on my sofa with Google TV.”
Steve Jobs bragged this week that Apple has already sold 250,000 new Apple TVs. The first Apple TV shipped in 2007. It had its fans but didn’t take off like the iPod or iPhone. The second generation of Apple TV’s launched just last month. MG Siegler really likes the device, but admitted it’s not yet the killer device in the living room. To get there, he said, would require tv network subscription packages.
“Watch Instantly” is booming at Netflix. A shocking statistic came out this week. 20% of Internet traffic during peak times in the U.S. is coming from Netflix.
For more on Netflix’s plans, see Sarah Lacy’s interview with CEO Reed Hastings.
Hulu Plus will be coming to the Roku box in the fall.
For some, the Roku box may be the first step towards eliminating cable.
Boxee announced the new Boxee Box will ship next month, both if you pre-ordered fromAmazon or want to buy one in stores.
Flurryreported Apple’s iOS Apps are responsible for the recent downward trend in TV ratings. The actual cause may be a bit broader.
A TechCrunch post Friday suggested the future of TV is HTML5.
At the moment much power remains with the old powers. Netflix and Google are enduring tough negotiations with the producers of content. But why wouldn’t they take up this mantle of being the producer? Why can’t they do an HBO? Certainly today if I was a maker of documentary who cannot get space on conventional TV, I would approach Netflix and Google. Just as cable supplanted the networks, so those who provide access via the web will supplant cable and networks.
So what then for Public TV and the local Public TV stations?
If you are a producer it seems straightforward to me – you too have to approach those who shape access to the web – or add a service to the web yourself!
But that leaves the local TV stations on the beach! It does but like a local book shop, the audience is going somewhere else for the mass content.
I think that an answer is to build the “Local Cloud” – Host the new Forum or Agora or Market. Be the host of the new/old marketplace for sharing through video.
There is not yet a really well functioning local cloud yet for video. This is a huge hole, waiting to be filled. Look at all those who are learning to use video. They are driving to HQ video. Look at the new screens that offer up a much better experience.
Take a look at your new 1080p HD TV screen. You know what the best-looking source is for that? Your new 1080p camcorder. That’s because all the TV stations, and all the cable and satellite services, compress their video, often to the point where grass fields look plaid and detail is just wiggly lines. Camcorders compress video too, but not as much.
My point here is that more and more individuals and small groups are going to be in better and better positions to produce their own video, and won’t be satisfied seeing it compressed to ugliness on YouTube. They’ll want to produce their own movies, their own documentaries, their own creative work, outside the industrial system that YouTube comprises.
If they want to mash this video up, edit it, do CGI, do the kind of rendering that serious video requires, they won’t have the means at home. And it’s often too hard to do it out in some remote cloud provided by the likes of Amazon (which doesn’t even provide that yet — at least not exactly). They’ll need low-latency fat connections to back-end servers and rendering farms.
Thus we have a big opportunity for KETC and other public TV institutions, to ally with local telco and cable companies, which in most cases have the space, the conditioned power, and the direct connections to the Net’s backbone.
How much time before the Tipping Point? My feeling is 2-3 years tops. In 2-3 years time all your best audience will have made the shift to the web. This may be 30- 40% of the total. There will still be a conventional audience but it cannot pay the bills. Just as when a newspaper or a book publisher loses its best readers, it cannot pay its bills either.
The pace is change is accelerating as each new phase builds on the previous one and adds new platform power to the web. Coming right on the heels of all of this – a new web based system of education and then right after that a new web based health system. All based on the same idea – of putting you in the driver’s seat!
The question that kicks off this short four-minute video:
.
Is Social Media a Fad ? Or the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution ?
.
.
Thanks to Euan Semple for surfacing this recently-updated (current statistics) view of the spread and penetration of social media into our daily human activities.
It’s not hard to imagine similar patterns to the growth of social computing and informal, socially-driven learning for the average organization 5 or 10 years down the road.
As some FASTForward readers may know, I’ve worked with organizations on human resources, organizational/work design and organizational effectiveness issues for most of the past two-and-a-half decades.
I’ve also been reasonably deeply involved for the past decade with the evolution of the Web and networks and how they impact knowledge work, work design, collaboration, knowledge management, and individual, group and organizational learning.
I wrote this short burst of one-pagers a few years ago in an attempt to be succinct but pithy about the range of changes we all are or will be experiencing as the interconnected environment in which we carry out work contiues to spread and penetrate the inner workings of organizations. I’ve changed a few words here and there to reflect that we’re now in 2010.
I’d love to know what you think, and what I’ve missed or need to change.
.
1. Customers, employees and other stakeholders are all interconnected, and have access to most, if not all the information that everyone else has
This fact has large implications for any organization. It means that you can’t hide – anywhere.
Michael Schrage of MIT puts it very succinctly:
“Networks make organizational culture and politics explicit”
It’s essential, in this interconnected age of instant accessibility to information and knowledge, that as a leader and manager you are aware of the potent force that is contained in networks of connected information and people.
The implications are clear.
People have to understand and believe in what an organization is doing, why the organization is doing what it does, and how it’s doing it.
The messages from leaders have to be clear and believable, and the culture that carries out the organization’s mandate and mission has to be flexible, responsive and open.
Fear and cynicism, being driven to perform – as opposed to being invited to contribute your best – can’t carry the day.
2. The organization chart usually reflects power and politics in the organization … more often than not, customers and employees find work-arounds to create the experiences that delight
Most organization charts reflect an organizational design that is intended to deliver a strategy developed by a small group of people sitting on the top of an organization
Evaluating and ordering jobs in terms of their size and importance is often used to implement the organizational design
Most methods of job evaluation use factors, logic and language that were developed in the 1950’s and 1960’s – perfect for the Industrial Age, less than perfect for the interconnected Information Age.
Often, reporting relationships and chains-of-command get in the way.
Why do you think the Dilbert comic strip has been so successful for so long ?
Probably because people know that lots of time, energy and effort is expended keeping bosses happy – usually at the expense of customers.
Many managers aspired to, and spent the last twenty years, learning how to become “bosses”. Do you know what prison guards are called by the inmates ?
You guessed it – Boss
3. People interconnected by the Internet and software have ways of speaking to each other – and so they do that – all day long
People communicate. That’s what people do.
They share jokes, they send around interesting e-mails and web sites, they help each other get things done.
The nature of work in the Information Age has changed – dramatically. And it’s likely that the nature of work will keep changing.
If you want to see what work might look like – watch developments in the usability and usefulness of blogs and wikis. Watch younger people as they bring the gaming mentality into the workplace and watch how they communicate using cell phones, e-mail, and IM and the (eventual) derivatives of podcasting.
Watch, too, for developments in telepresence.
Employees are people, too. They communicate just like all the other real people, in Social Networks. They’re the ones communicating with your customers and shareholders.
It’s essential for an organization’s success, and the personal success of each and every one of those employees, that they feel proud of what they communicate. They want to be engaged in positive ways in making a meaningful contribution – to the customers, to themselves and to their fellow employees.
Thousands of articles have talked about how command-and-control dynamics are less than effective in the new set of interconnected conditions found in the workplaces of the Information Age.
Remember how you felt (or feel today) when commanded by a parent or other authority figure?
All too often, going to work in today’s organizations feels like re-living the adult version of that experience.
Not all organizations are like this – but fewer and fewer of tomorrow’s organizations will be able to function effectively if command-and-control remains the dominant dynamic.
Coaching has become an important response to changing this dynamic. Coaches help leaders and managers listen better, respect other people more authentically, and become more effective at striking a balance between:
Clarity and Decisiveness … and … Flexibility and Openness
As change swirls and complexity keeps on growing, champion-channel-coordinate helps good ideas and effective responses come to the surface, be examined thoroughly, and get implemented.
Effective leaders and managers know how to (or learn how to) champion, channel and coordinate.
Bosses are different than leaders and managers – as both a conceptual construct and in the lived experience found in our relationship with them.
5. Conversations are where information is shared, knowledge is created and are the basis for getting the right things done
Human beings have been having conversations since time began. That’s how we’ve figured out all of the things we’ve invented and how we govern ourselves. It’s how we’ve gotten to how we are now.
In the Industrial Age, reporting relationships, and the assumption that the dog on the top of the heap knew more than all the other dogs, were the formalized structure for conversation. It doesn’t work very well this way, anymore.
The only way to deal with ongoing change is to create and sustain effective conversations – with your customers, with and amongst employees and with everyone else.
Sharing information, and creating new knowledge, in order to respond to ongoing change, is the only way that will work from here on out.
The structure, tools and culture of organizations will have to honor this fact.
There’s no other way it’s going to work.
6. Trust, Transparency and Authenticity are the glue that holds it all together
People want to trust, they want to believe – even in the face of large amounts of evidence that the system is being manipulated in the favor of a select few
In North America, we’re still trying to shake off the disbelief about the blatant dishonesty and fraud demonstrated by some corporate (and governmental) leaders. We actively do not want to believe things may be as corrupt as they seem … institutionalized dishonesty and deceit.
We don’t want to believe that these attitudes and behavior might be more widespread than is apparent, yet somehow we have a feeling that the common corporate culture rewards and supports this possibility.
Many people – checking their 401K’s or stock portfolios, or looking back at the job(s) they’ve lost – feel at best disrespected and at worst enraged that they have been taken advantage of.
The interconnectedness of the Web has created a means for people to challenge blind authority, and to push back. If their trust is abused, many will use this to establish their own authority or fight back
Let’s understand one thing … when people who have been abused decide to get organized and push back, they become a potent force.
Interconnectedness is a potent force for creating transparency and demanding trust, and many are just now learning how to use it more effectively.
7. The Workplace of the Future will be more diverse – in terms of demographics, values, gender, race and language
In the midst of all the interconnectedness and sharing of information, the composition and shape of the workplace will keep changing.
North America and Western Europe are landscapes of a changing population – different waves of immigration keep coming, and each new generation brings fresh change to the workplace. The workplace of the near future will be a sea of people from a wide range of countries, cultures and languages – and they will all be interconnected.
The range of diversity brings with an equally wide range of beliefs, values and reasons for working.
This emerging mix will bring new dynamics of relationship into the workplace – both online and offline
Learning to listen, respect and champion-and-channel will be an essential competency for success.
8. New, integrated and sophisticated technologies are being developed and implemented – and the knowledge workers of tomorrow will be more interconnected than ever
Web 2.0 has found its way to the workplace – it’s an infrastructure that’s decentralized and more open … and therefore more complex in terms of human dynamics … than that which came before.
Remember Napster ? The workplace versions exist and may be coming soon to a workplace near you. Indeed, the wider conversation about blogs and the workplace is only growing, and acquiring useful examples.
Many forms of “smartware” are also on the runway, getting ready to take off. New tools are absolutely essential to deal with the overload of information that already exists – and grows more daunting with each passing week. This “smartware” will find its way into the workplace.
Smartware will either “dumb things down” (entering information, and the system does the rest), or “smarten things up” (helping people collaborate and create new knowledge).
Many of these tools will add capability and functionality to the continuing need for effective collaboration – and so will make collaboration more and more possible.
More technology-supported collaboration will in turn increase the need for effective leadership and coaching – champion-and-channel will become more necessary than ever. The game will get sharper again.
Adapting to the new tools will require new forms of social interaction in the workplace. As change keeps coming, and work activities become more interdependent, the required adaptation will become more social and cultural in nature.
9. We’re All In This Together
The interconnected Information Age is showing us that we’re all linked together – and that the whole system matters. Systems thinking is not new .. but the spread of networks makes it effects, impacts and challenges more visible and more immediate.
This applies to organizations, to networks of customers, suppliers, employees and communities, to our societies and to the planet.
New language for this principle is popping up everywhere – knowledge networks, intranets, communities of practice, systems thinking, swarming, social software, social networks, tipping points.
Awareness is the key. Maintain an “open focus”.
Being aware of yourself, others and the effects of your actions and ways of being in relation to others is a fundamental requirement in these conditions.
10. There’s No Going Back to “Normal” – Permanent Whitewater is the New Normal
It’s almost trite to say this – the only constant is change.
However…over the past 15 years or so, there have been enormous amounts of energy spent resisting change – waiting and hoping for things to go back to “normal”.
It won’t happen. It’s useful to acknowledge and accept this, and get started … at learning how to learn, and equipping yourself for constant adaptability.
It’s a good – but not the only – way forward.
At the same time, you won’t survive by trying to make yourself into a chameleon. You can’t be all things to all people.
Connecting to your self – your values, your ways to build and acquire knowledge, and understand and use your intuition – is in my opinion the only way to go.
We all worry about getting or losing a job. When we meet people, they ask us what we do and we give them a job description. When we apply for jobs, we get all fussed about the “skills” we need. When we have a job, we have to be managed and so have bosses. Politicians all talk about getting more jobs. School is all about getting jobs.
But the “Job” as we know it is a 19th century idea. In America very few people as a percentage of the population had job before 1905.
Here is a core idea, especially as we all fuss about skills etc. The whole purpose of a Job is to DESKILL people. What do I mean?
This picture is the key. Before Henry Ford, making a car was an artisanal activity. Really skilled people created each car. With the production line, tools and algorithms were used to enable the owner to use unskilled people. Yes each person could get good at assembly but that is like saying that because I am good at putting Ikea furniture together that I am a cabinet maker. The men who made the Stanley Steamer could make anything. They had the metal working and engineering skills to be artisans.
This process of DESKILLING has taken place in all parts of ur lives.
Today we can all offer our friends and family an excellent meal. Many of us are Foodies. But in reality, most people today cannot cook. They can assemble but not cook. They have no deeper skills.
Yes it takes a certain amount of skill to do this. Chances are if the tractor breaks, it has to go to the shop. But think of the skill behind this!
The plowing is only a fraction of the skill. Farmers in the day knew what was really going on. Today agribusiness is no different from a production line. It’s all external process and algorithms. It’s Ikea.
It’s the same with white collar work. Sales people are all scripted. All core processes are scripted. There is no room to think or create outside the very narrow range allowed in the Chicken Box each of us live in. We are all working at Highland Park.
So all the skill aspects of the “job” are in effect about knowing how to follow Ikea instructions. They are “assembly” and obedience skills.
What is not wanted are people who really are engineers, or farmers or cooks. The assembly line has no room for thinking outside the proscribed process.
This is why when so many people lose their jobs, they are lost. They are lost because they have no real skills. Anyone can put an Ikea desk together which is why your job can be outsourced or replaced with a machine. Your only chance is to find another “assembly” line that still needs what you can do.
Today that will never happen.
This too is why the Manager is a dying breed too. Managers are in reality factory assembly line foremen who job it is to meet the quota and the rules of the process. Theirs is not the job to think of new ways of doing things. Their job is to keep it all moving and the sheep from straying. But with fewer sheep, who needs the manager?
Again the biggest farce of all are all the managerial skills that are in demand. All those managers that are truly innovative get asked to leave. What is demanded is to be able to keep control.
The skill that managers need to rise, is not to have results, but to be expert politicians. Anyone who has been an outstanding manager who has constantly delivered results knows that this means little compared with others who climb over them.
This system was OK when it really was Highland Park. Then all of this was in the open and accepted as such. People also got paid well. Now all of this is obscured behind a touchy feely facade. On the surface we are all one big happy family. We need your ideas. Innovation is what it is all about. We are all going to cooperate. We are all leaders. This will be bottom up.
And worst of all, it doesn’t work anymore. Highland Park revolutionized how things were done in the world. This process worked very well for a long time. But it doesn’t work for any one now, not even the owners.
Later in the series I will talk about leaving the idea of the job behind. Of what true skills mean and how they protect us. Of how to look for work instead of a job.
Bu in my next piece I will talk about the central business process for the traditional organization. The process that any executive has to master. The key to success for you if you wish to climb what is left of the greasy pole. The main barrier against all forms of cooperation and why 2.0 will fail in most organizations. The Budget!
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):
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.
Join us for the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2011 Oct 3-6, Anaheim CA
With over 240 sessions, SPC11 will provide you with the training, insight, and networking you need to develop, deploy, govern and get the most from SharePoint. You’ll also hear from Microsoft Engineers, Product Managers, MCMs and MVPs who will discuss topics such as cloud services, best practices and real world project insights. To see a preview of the sessions we will be presenting at SPC11, click here.
To register, click here.
RECENT EVENT
Christian Finn Keynotes 2011 Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston
Microsoft's Director of SharePoint Product Management Christian Finn, an Enterprise 2.0 keynote speaker, talks about SharePoint, the future of enterprise collaboration and the value of community.
To read more, visit, CMS Wire
Or view the video of the keynote below:
SharePoint 2010 SocialFest
A group of seven startups recently joined us at SharePoint 2010 SocialFest, an event hosted by the Emerging Business Team at the Microsoft Silicon Valley Campus.
The format: a week-long session focused on extending the SharePoint platform using their unique and innovative applications in the emerging social business space. In addition to intensive development time, the teams heard from various developer experts, SharePoint engineering, SharePoint product management and a panel of nventure investors.
The FASTforward blog periodically hosts webcasts - to hear a recent conversation with Denise Warren, general manager of NYTimes.com, and Alan Webber, author of "Rules of Thumb" and co-founder of Fast Company. The topic: how today's newspaper and magazine publishing companies are innovating to stay relevant (and profitable) click here.For the latest interview with Marty St.George, the CMO at jetBlue, click here
FASTforward 09: Video Interviews
Be sure not to miss our interview series with several dozen attendees of FASTforward'09, including all the contributors to this blog, as well as Clay Shirky, Charlene Li, and many other notable thinkers and doers. The interviews are tagged and can be accessed by topic.
Check out the first of a series of guides to the 2.0 world from the contributors of the FASTforward Blog. This and future FASTforward Blog guides aim to deepen understanding about topics we think critical to the future of the enterprise and how people and organizations communicate, collaborate, innovate, and more.
In this guide, Robert Paterson weaves together the many posts that have been written on the FASTforward blog about Twitter, the groundbreaking application that has attracted millions of users and is changing the way they provide, gather, and share information and insights.
This site is a companion blog to the FASTforward conference and summit series and is sponsored by FAST, A Microsoft Subsidiary. The blog, like the conference series, aims to drive and deepen conversation about how today’s companies can use technology to place users in control of information, and is home to ongoing discussion about the user revolution and Enterprise 2.0 opportunities and challenges. More info here...
unveiled its Google TV
