Emergent behavior and unintended consequences in social systems

October 26, 2009 at 7:45 pm · Filed under Enterprise 2.0

One of the defining characteristics of Enterprise 2.0 implementation efforts according to Andy McAfee, among others, is the presence of emergent behaviors in the organization as participants interact with and adapt to new technology functions and features. The notion of ‘emergent behavior’ is pretty well established in the study of complex systems. Yet it still seems to trouble many executives, particularly those with strong project management and operations backgrounds.

I was pondering this over the weekend and I think I’ve found a way to explain it in a more satisfying way.

Emergent behaviors are unintended consequences that make you happy.

We are social animals that have evolved to operate optimally in small groups (check out Dunbar’s number). As social systems get larger, they exceed our capacity to make accurate inferences and predictions. Complex organizations and political entities represent design solutions that compensate for these limits and allow us to take on tasks and efforts beyond the grasp of small groups. Technology adds to the complexity and increases the capacity of the system at the expense of making the system still more difficult to predict.

‘Unintended consequences’ is a consulting term for ‘oops.’ It’s a belated admission that it’s difficult to predict all the ways in which a system will react to its environment. A typical response is to work more diligently to lock things down, usually by squeezing out opportunities for human judgment and adaptability. This leads to the TSA and zero-tolerance policies that suspend six-year olds.

A better response is to stop treating people like interchangeable components in a machine and start designing with an eye toward integrating human limits and human creativity into our systems. Assume that the new system will produce unexpected results. Focus your design effort more on swinging the balance toward pleasant surprises and less on eliminating surprises altogether.

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Mr. CIO, Tear Down This Wall

October 15, 2009 at 4:21 pm · Filed under Enterprise 2.0

As relayed by Boston-based CTO John Moore, IDC has released some not-so-encouraging statistics on social media adoption. Namely, that 54% of all US CIOs prohibit social networking sites at work, and even more disturbing, this represents a 20% jump in the first half of 2009.

“CIOs are erecting walls around the business, not opening up,” Moore concludes.

The implementations that are out there may be more simplistic in their usage than we like — for example, IDC finds that 70% of users of social networking sites use the sites “to look at pictures only.”  I’m not quite sure what it means to be simply looking at pictures, or what pictures they’re looking at (head shots, graphs?), but it doesn’t sound like very sophisticated or advanced usage.

The IDC findings fly right in the face of other surveys highlighted in this blogspace, such as the recent McKinsey findings, which paint more positive scenarios about social media adoption.

Did IDC interview companies hiding under rocks, perhaps some backwater operations that are still wrestling with the PC invasion? Perhaps — though I have a very good friend who is an IDC analyst, and I know he selects his samples and works his data very carefully. And the 20% increase IDC reported in social media prohibitions is something that would jump out of any sample.

I sense that a clampdown by management and corporate legal departments is at work here. And this is coming from two directions:

1) As noted a couple of months back, a Deloitte study uncovered great concern about damages to corporate brand as a result of unfettered social media usage by employees.

2) In addition — here’s where legal sticks its claws in — there are growing liability and legal concerns about statements being made via blogs, wikis, and other forms of social media communication. E-mail communications are already ensnared in the legal system; social media communications are sure to follow.

But legal and branding concerns shouldn’t be a show-stopper. Here’s how to help organizations keep their eyes on the social media prize:

Recognize the expanding business value of social media, and build that into your corporate strategy. In doing so, social media evolves from informal grassroots movement into methodologies baked into the corporate culture.

Watch what the competition is doing. Companies are getting out oin front of their markets by engaging with customers and partners.

Let common-sense communications guidelines prevail. As with email — and any and all corporate communications for that matter — social media  communications should not be mean-spirited, defamatory, or invoke gutter-speak. Apply the same rules — and training, if necessary — for inter-office communication to the out-of-the-office communications through social media networks.

Don’t let fear or nervousness cause managers to throw out something that is providing such an important competitive edge as social media.

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Proctor and Gamble’s ‘technopologist’: social networks enrich my job

October 8, 2009 at 11:59 am · Filed under Enterprise 2.0

Even executives with the world’s largest corporations can learn a lot by engaging in social networks.

Vince Thompson, a smart commentator who interviews smart people, recently spoke with Dave Knox, corporate marketing brand manager for Digital Business Strategy at P&G.  P&G is way ahead of the curve with social media implementations, and Knox explains how it has enriched and empowered him (and thus P&G) in his own job.

Knox brands himself as a “technopologist, which he defines as a hybrid of marketer, technologist, and social anthropologist. “You might not be a ‘coder,’ but you know your way around the language and culture of tech.  You understand things like API and Open Source or why Facebook Connect working with Open ID is a big deal. .. you can then look at that technology and understand the impact it will have on society and culture.”

Social media is significantly changing the role of marketing, Knox says. The convergence of technology, marketing and social interaction is becoming more important every day, “but at the same time, it is a new skill set for many marketers to learn.” Only 10 years ago, the marketing toolkit for a brand manager was limited to four choices (TV, print, out of home and radio).  “But today, new technology is emerging every day, offering new ways to serve and engage people more effectively.  At work we aim to use these new digital tools to continue to be a leader and innovator in marketing and digital business.”

While Knox is immersed within one of the world’s largest companies, he finds that social media is a valuable tool for bringing in outside points of view as well.

“When working for a big corporation, you have an amazing amount of resources at your fingertips.  And you are surrounded by incredibly smart people,” he points out.  “But most of these people have a similar background to you and are trained to approach problems in the same way.  My blog [hardknoxlife.com] has helped me by giving me access to people with different backgrounds and views on the business world.  It is a way to connect with these people outside of my day to day work and really get a set of different viewpoints on what is going on with marketing.”

Knox says by staying active in social media through his blog and Twitter, he has been able to do his job better. “My external network has emerged as my business filter, allowing me to sort through the noise and keep on top of what is really important.  While it might save time in the short-term to slow down in social media, I think it would hurt me in the long term in terms of personal growth and knowledge.”

Knox sees three major changes on the horizon for marketing:

• Mobile technologies: “I don’t think we have even started to scratch the service on that one.”
• Consumer co-creation/crowdsourcing: “A real change is under foot when a couple of guys in Muncie, Indiana can produce a TV spot for Doritos that is rated tops in the Super Bowl.”
• Smarter advertising: ” For the past 50 years, marketers were able to interrupt entertainment (ie TV shows) with advertising.  But in a world where consumers don’t have to put up with the interruption any longer, brands are going to have to start thinking different about content and entertainment.”

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E2.0: Unleashing the Potential

September 16, 2009 at 4:43 pm · Filed under 2.0 Design Thinking, David Weinberger, Emergent, Enterprise 2.0, Innovator's Dilemma

“technology…processes by which an organization transforms labor capital, materials, and information into products and services of greater value.”
Clayton Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma

Technology?

The term “technology” is as misused as the word “diet”. Anything you eat makes up your diet. You can’t go on a diet, you’re already on one. You can, however, go on a “restricted diet” or a “reduction diet”. The key modifiers are often dropped.

Andrew McAfee purports that Enterprise 2.0 is “not not about the technology.” Using the Christensen definition noted above, this is true. But is Andy missing a modifier? His writings seem to focus on “digital technology”, which can indeed enable Enterprise 2.0. And yet, many of these technologies have been available for over a decade. How significant then are these technologies and where’s the issue?

Digital technologies labeled Enterprise 2.0, will not provide 2.0 results if implemented with 1.0 thinking.

2.0 Thinking: Embrace Dichotomy

How is 2.0 thinking different? It relies on a shift away from many commonly held beliefs. It is not an abandonment of such beliefs, but requires that they be suspended to move to a more flexible, adaptive middle. It requires the ability to embrace dichotomy, to simultaneously consider opposing concepts to find new possibilities (see “The Opposable Mind” by Roger Martin, Rotman School of Business and “The Innovation Paradox” by Richard Farson and Ralph Keyes).

Digital technologies are, well, fundamentally digital. They operate off of algorithms and binary code. As such, they provide approximations of reality. But knowledge work is not inherently defined by processes. Forcing knowledge work into processes defined by algorithms and binary code introduces ‘rounding errors’. The more algorithms and binary code you string together into a single solution, the more error you introduce.

The promise of object-oriented theory was to create reusable pieces of code. This was a fallacy. The true potential was not in the code itself, but in reusable functions – algorithms of process (the real essence of SOA).

Consider the following continuum:

Based on observations from Roger Martin, the adaptive middle requires a move away from (not an abandonment of) binary code. The entire continuum is relevant — optimal flexibility synthesizes all of these. Where the dynamic middle falls, depends on the context of the problem or opportunity at hand. Consider the left side Art and the right side Science. Synthesized, they lead to the optimal: context-relevant design.

One discipline that relies on the synthesis of art and science is architecture. While digital architecture might be considered both art and science, Enterprise 2.0 requires a form of Enterprise Architecture akin to, but not equal to the Zachman Framework (frameworks, the conceptual equivalent to technology platforms). No one individual can or should defend the various perspectives needed to shape such an architecture.

Structure Minimized, Not Eliminated

Fundamental to Enterprise 2.0 is simplicity. The most simplistic form in nature is that which emerges, governed by the laws of complexity – the middle between chaos and order (basic premises of complexity science, including feedback loops are assumed and not detailed here).

Emergence is strangled by order and dissipates in chaos. It requires “Small Pieces Loosely Joined”. In his book by the same name, David Weinberger lays out a “unified theory of the web”. Enterprise 2.0 embraces a unified theory of work, celebrating the most adaptive resource a company has: its people.

Enterprise 2.0 unleashes the potential of corporate resources by shifting control. While management does not go away, it is not an activity in the hands of a few.

Gary Hamel suggests, “Management is out of date. Like the combustion engine, it’s a technology that has largely stopped evolving…” Management is not a group of people with a title, it’s “the capacity to marshal resources, lay out plans, program work, and spur effort” and “is central to the accomplishment of human purpose.”

Fluid Structure: Think Lava Lamp

There’s no ‘big bang’ theory. Emergence does not evolve from nothing – it requires structure. Endless possibilities of form emerge from the elements and constraints of a lava lamp. Break the container and the possibilities of the elements end.

Where does structure come from? It depends – this, the ultimate design answer. The right answer comes from the context of the business.

There are no checklists for creating an Enterprise 2.0-enabled environment. The business is already operating. The challenge is akin to repurposing a Boeing 777 into a 787 Dreamliner mid-flight, except there is no ‘finished’ design, but there is a starting architecture (heuristics). Most progress is tested/validated in-flight.

The term “repurposing” should not be taken lightly. Tremendous potential exists for leveraging what’s already in place: “Thus the task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen, but to think what nobody yet has thought about that which everybody sees” Arthur Schopenhauer. One form of this is the mashup, but there are many other ways to leverage existing resources by using pieces of existing designs and solutions or modifying them with new functional or UI patterns.

While digital technologies contribute to the structure, they are only seeds. At the lowest level construct, Blog technology is not different than a Wiki: both provide functions to create and display content in a specific format. The main distinctions in Blogs and Wikis are the functions and formats they provide. But the same is true for all other common desktop applications. A Blog or a Wiki is no more inherently social than email.

Indeed, Blogs and Wikis are common to desktop applications in one very negative way: they can create more silos of information faster. This is the antithesis of the flexibility required by Enterprise 2.0. There must be a guiding architecture for Enterprise 2.0 success, one that separates the UI from the functions, the format from the content and data. A digital technology that earns an E2.0-relevant label, will be built around or support such an architecture, one that understands and leverages the fundamentals of fluid structure.

Architectures rely on operating assumptions: an HVAC system must be kept in good repair to maintain comfortable temperatures for building occupants. Enterprise 2.0 requires some form of facilities maintenance. The evolving details of the care and feeding of the environment can be embodied in a Governance Model, not to be confused with highly regulated models often used for restraint. The E2.0 version is more heuristic than algorithmic, but includes a blend of recommendations and process. It may define formal and informal roles. It simply reflects agreements.

No Beginning, No End

There is no prescribed starting point for Enterprise 2.0, but there is one capability that emergence fundamentally depends on: the ability for people to find each other by things that define relevance – work, topics, skills, affiliations, trust. As well, people must have ready access to relevant ‘raw materials’ for their work. Shorten the distance to finding relevant resources.

To be truly emergent, Enterprise 2.0 must be seamlessly integrated with knowledge work. It cannot be an appendage; it should not require adoption.

Enterprise 2.0 is inherently social. It is not about managing knowledge but is about rendering knowledge. It is enabled by, but is not achieved by installing a digital technology. It unleashes the potential of humans not with workflow, but by flowing work and thought on persistent conversations.

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2.0 Another View – A way to deal with the biggest threats to your enterprise

September 16, 2009 at 12:35 pm · Filed under 2.0 Business Model, 2.0 Design Thinking, Bryant Park Project, Business Model, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Social Computing, NPR, PBS, Platforms, Public Media, Public Radio, Public TV, Relationships

I was talking yesterday to a CIO of a major financial services firm. He and his colleagues have been wracking their brains over how a 2.0 view would make a difference. Of course a lot of their discussion revolved around technology and the social aspects both in the organization and outside it.

I bet that many organizations are also having the same internal conversations and being as frustrated as he is.

Looking at where the death threats are is a more productive area of discussion.

For public media Death lurks here – We have to have a much wider based and much larger public that thinks that we are not merely important but VITAL to them. If we don’t we wont make it.

“Wider based” means that we have to break out of our current demographic – of on TV being over 50, mainly white middle class and well educated – on radio of being over 40 and the same.

The challenge of doing this has been the restrictions of our “Air”. We have only 24 hours and one place on the dial.

So to change programming enough to bring in a very different demographic is to piss off the existing foundation with no real chance of adding the new. Example, the CBC have quite good show on the Native Canadian world – my bet is that most of the traditional audience switch off immediately and that First Nation’s people are not going to be tempted to become enthusiastic listeners of the CBC based on one program. This type of programming is lose lose. For NPR it was a new hip morning show called Bryant Park. What station in its right mind will drop Morning Edition for a new entrant aimed away from its main audience?

So long as Public Radio and TV have a secure foundation on their Air – they cannot expand their audience.

Also loyalty and more important financial and voting support merely based on liking content is no longer enough. When I came to Canada in 1972, I was used to the BBC and became a fanatic PBS watcher. There was no other source of good content then. Now there is tons of great content elsewhere. The old tie to content is much weaker.

So how then can Public Media avoid DEATH? How can it expand its reach to a much wider and diverse public? How can it deepen the connection beyond the relatively weak one of content?

An answer is appearing in the work of 70 plus stations working in the 32 worst hit markets in the US where the Economy is destroying the middle and lower classes. In this project – called Facing the Mortgage Crisis – stations are working with each other to pull together/convene groups of community support into a platform that can help people cope with this the greatest crisis to hit most Americans since the 30’s.

This is where the DEATH threat can be answered and this is where Social Media and the whole 2.0 perspective is invaluable.

Here stations are helping people who do not and will NEVER watch our mainstream Air. BUT they do interact with our specialty Web Sites that are focused on this issue and hence on them. More we do a lot face to face. Sometime at the station and many times in libraries and other places of trust such as churches. More, we give the community partners a face and a voice too.

It is the 2.0 web that is at the heart of this ability to offer something meaningful to people who will not connect to our traditional content on our traditional air. Ironically, as the crisis affects all, many of the white middle class are now in the same boat. They too use our 2.0 world as a new resource. In time a common crisis, as in war, brings all together. All people share a common fear and grief. All wonder what to do and how to keep going? All worry about their kids.

I predict that something great can emerge from our web – but it is not about getting more people to watch Nova or listen to All Things Considered.

So what then was my CIO’s Death fear?

I offered up this to chew on. They are in the mutual fund business. Their funds are sold by brokers who do not work for them.

Trust in Brokers, in the market and even in the idea of getting rich by punting in the markets has been weakened. Fund managers still tout their ability to realize performance that can only be achieved by taking huge risk.

What would happen to their business if we had a 1933? After the crash in 1929, the market recovered as it is today. But like today, the market came back independent of how people lived and how the economy at the human level existed. It was a second bubble. The market crashed again and the great depression hit full force. Employment did no rebound until 1941. Stock prices and activity in the market did not return until 1954.

What if we have another 1933 in 2010? Would such a collapse end all faith in the current financial system? What is the risk of that happening – 10% – 30 % – 50% – 60%  – whatever the risk is substantive and worth planning for.

My idea of his DEATH threat was that if they did not do something to show that they could be trusted, that if we had a 1933, they would disappear as did most people like them in 1933.

So how could they become legitimately trusted? How could they hold onto to a public that had lost trust in the system? My advice was this.

Most people are fiscally illiterate. Most know nothing about household economics in the Greek sense of the basics of the human financial life cycle. People know nothing about how to save and why, borrowing, cash flow, how mortgages work, compound interest. Most know nothing about the value of and how risk works. Why you can take risks early but not late in life etc. If they did most would not be in the trouble that they are in now. Most think that it is normal and to be expected that they can get Maddof returns year after year not seeing that such returns imply impossible risk.

The entire fund business is like the food business – we have been trained to seek something that is not sustainable – double digit returns for ever and cheap food forever. Can we train people to be more real? I think not but people can train each other.

Most people now are waking up to the fact that they don’t know enough about money and how it affects their life. They are hungry to learn more. To take control over their financial lives, just as many today are using the web to take control over their health.

What if this firm was to set up a foundation to act as the Trusted Place on the web where people could teach each other all these things?

Here is where all the rules of 2.0 would come into play. The web, interactivity, social groups, partners – the whole gamut of 2.0 is here. By learning how to do this here, the old firm will also then see with new eyes what else they can do back in the mainstream.

I asked in closing what would this mean in terms of the brand and the industry if they were to do this? What if they did a really authentic job of providing the trusted space where people could help each other take back their financial power?

He could see in a heart beat that this would change the relationship – just as I am seeing signs that FTMC is changing the relationship with Public radio and TV.  At first the two worlds of the “Academy” and their traditional business would be separate. But over time there would be some kind of convergence. For who of us knows as much as we should and who of us does not have something to offer?

In time the very nature of the business would change too as will in the end mainstream TV and Radio – but this way the change would be shaped by the active participation of millions of people formerly known and “audience” or “Clients” who right now don’t even have a name.

For what is the label for a person who is part of the ecology that is the new wider enterprise?

So what do you think? Can you radically change your foundation offering without killing the golden goose? Think GM or the Newspapers – all their cash flow came from the old – but DEATH was waiting for sure. How could they have found another part of life where they could have added real value and so attached a much bigger group of people to them?

I am sure that there is an answer. Do you have one?

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