by Rob Paterson
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?
by Jon Husband
September 10, 2009 at 1:00 pm · Filed under
Collaboration, Connected Enterprise, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Social Computing, Organizational Design, Social Computing, User Revolution, Wisdom of Crowds
McKinsey, a leading organizational consulting firm, has just released its most recent study regarding the usage of Web 2.0.
From a read of the announcement, it appears that collectively we are still on the path towards social computing becoming a fixture in the knowledge-based workplace … hardly a surprise.
I (and many others) have said here, and elsewhere, that the ubiquitous presence of the Web, the growing ease-of-use of tools and services, and the growing understanding of productivity in a networked era, are leading inexorably to a fundamental re-think of the way(s) knowledge work is carried out and the type(s) of organizational culture necessary to support that productivity.
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Across all categories, the use of Web 2.0 technologies by employees for internal purposes has increased from 53% in 2007 to 65% of respondents in 2009.
The largest components of growth have come from using Web 2.0 to develop new products / services internally, to manage internal knowledge and to reinforce the company culture via tools such as internal social networking applications.
The companies who have embedded these tools in their day-to-day activities and processes have seen the largest impact by improving communication across silos to reduce duplicate work and leverage experts in other areas.
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The report notes that enterprise use of Web 2.0 technologies to connect and interact with business partners and suppliers has slowed down or stagnated … again, not much of a surprise given the often transactional nature of those relationships and the fact that electronic connections between those parties have existed in one form or another for quite some time now.
The final statement of this most recent McKinsey report offers, in my opinion, some clear writing on a big wall … “expertise in the use of Web 2.0 technologies is becoming a required skill for all enterprises.”
When will your organization adopt, or grow its capabilities and culture with respect to, collaboration platforms and Enterprise 2.0 expertise and dynamics ?
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The momentum we see in the growth of Web 2.0 technologies implies we will see higher penetration in 2010 for using these technologies for employees to collaborate and to facilitate interactions with customers.
To drive increased usage for managing interactions with suppliers and partners, companies will need to find ways use these technologies to augment the formal relationships between business entities and not substitute formal interactions with more ad hoc ones.
Nonetheless, it is clear that expertise in the use of Web 2.0 technologies is becoming a required skill for all enterprises.
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by Jon Husband
September 3, 2009 at 11:40 am · Filed under
Collaboration, Enterprise Social Computing, Measurement, Network Effect, Social Computing
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Further to my post a couple of months back about the ROII (Return on Investment in Interaction), I noticed AppGap blog colleague Patti Anklam’s guest post on Dave Snowden’s Cognitive Edge blog wherein she riffs of a blog post titled "Enterprise 2.0 – Skip the Pilot".
Notwithstanding Michael Idinipulos’ claim to be committing heresy, in the past I have read any number of E2.0 pundits’ suggestions that value will be realized more quickly and more steadily when social computing is introduced to an organzation as "the way things get done around here" when it comes to dealing with and responding the need to beuild useful knowedge from information flows … rather than in small controlled pilots.
Michael adds his voice to that chorus.
Patti picks up on that point and adds to it the notion that the ROII may come from harvesting the output from increased numbers of people, increased numbers of interactions and increased diversity (of perspectives). These metrics are not as hard as past metrics used to measure work and effectiveness, but given that a number of well-known voices have coalesced around the same observable network dynamics, we can expect that they will come to be reference points regarding the effectiveness of adopting E2.0 tools and services.
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Piloting Social Media
A good blog by Michael Indinopulis, "Enterprise 2.0: Skip the Pilot" introduces a nice complex notion. His actual premise is that piloting (the sense that we pilot collaboration software, something I’ve done quite a bit of) is based on using small control groups. We introduce the software carefully, exposing it to only a few people, learn from them what the strengths and weaknesses are, work up required training, make the change management plan, and so on.
But social media is different from traditional software. As he says, "Traditional IT enables transactions; Enterprise 2.0 enables interactions." And interaction is fundamentally different from transactions, which are bounded and constrained. We can’t understand the power of interactions until there are many of them, going out in multiple directions, increasing exponentially.
And there is no value to any individual until there are sufficient interactions bouncing around out there. The solution, therefore, to a moribund social media pilot is not to shut it down and reconsider, but to "Make it bigger. Open it up. Invite more people. Tell them to invite even more people. That’s the only way you’re going to find out the real behavior and the real value."
One of my early lessons about increasing knowledge flow in organizations was the answer to the question, "How do you stimulate knowledge flow in a network?" Possibilities:
Increase the number of people
Increase the number of interactions
Increase the diversity
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by Joe McKendrick
September 2, 2009 at 5:33 pm · Filed under
2.0 Design Thinking, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Social Computing, User Revolution
McKinsey has just published the results of a survey of nearly 1,700 executives from around the world which paints a highly positive picture of the business returns being seen from Web 2.0 deployments.
Close to seven out of ten respondents (69%) report that their companies “have gained measurable business benefits [italics mine], including more innovative products and services, more effective marketing, better access to knowledge, lower cost of doing business, and higher revenues.”
This is probably the most significant set of survey findings I have seen yet that document actual benefits being seen from Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 deployments. There has been quite a stir in the blogosphere lately about the lack of actual results being seen from these new methodologies (check out Dennis Howlett’s latest post on the topic, along with my colleague Paula Thornton’s observations).
What kinds of benefits, exactly, does McKinsey see coming out of Web 2.0 sites? In the survey, half of respondents report that Web 2.0 technologies have fostered in-company interactions across geographic borders, 45 percent cite interactions across functions, and 39 percent across business units.
The measurable benefits cited span both knowledge management and simple cost-cutting:
Increasing speed of access to knowledge 68%
Reducing communication costs 54%
Increasing effectiveness of marketing 52%
Increasing speed of access to internal experts 43%
Increasing customer satisfaction 43%
Decreasing travel costs 40%
Increasing employee satisfaction 35%
With the growing availability of services over the network, you can see how there will be increased velocity of knowledge and improved communications. It would be interesting to see how employee satisfaction, cited by more than a third, is measured.
Interestingly, the highest-rated Web 2.0 technologies/services in terms of business benefits delivery among companies are video sharing and blogging.
The top-rated technologies in terms of internal use include the following:
Video sharing 48%
Blogs 47%
RSS 42%
Social networking 42%
For external use, such as connecting with partners and suppliers, the following technologies delivered the most benefits:
Blogs 51%
Video sharing 50%
Social networking 49%
RSS 45%
The more the technologies are used, the more benefits seen, the survey also shows. As McKinsey puts it:
“Web 2.0 delivers benefits by multiplying the opportunities for collaboration and by allowing knowledge to spread more effectively…. Among respondents who report seeing benefits within their companies, many cite blogs, RSS, and social networks as important means of exchanging knowledge. These networks often help companies coalesce affinity groups internally. Finally, respondents report using Web videos more frequently since the previous survey; technology improvements have made videos easier to produce and disseminate within organizations.”
McKinsey also observes that more than half of the companies in the survey plan to increase their investments in Web 2.0 technologies, while another quarter don’t expect their level of spending to change. The study also suggests that the turbulent economy may have increased interest in Web 2.0 technologies.
Of course, there are still about a third of respondents that absolutely have not yet seen any business benefits from Web 2.0. What is not clear is whether employees at these companies are using Web 2.0 under the radar, and thus progress cannot yet be measured.
by Jon Husband
August 13, 2009 at 1:02 am · Filed under
Adoption, Connected Enterprise, Enterprise Social Computing, Innovation, Organizational Design, Social Computing, Web 2.0, Wisdom of Crowds
About three months ago Beth Kanter wrote about the Crowdsourcing of Vision at the Smithsonian Museum. In a comment I suggested that crowdsourcing for visioning purposes was reminiscent of the use of OD (organizational development) principles and methods often found in large-scale organizational or system change initiatives.
Beth asked me to elaborate. This blog post is my response.
Let’s look at why and where crowdsourcing can be useful when organizations (private, public or not-for-profit) are facing important new or emerging issues.
Crowdsourcing – Collective Wisdom and Collective Intelligence
When considering crowdsourcing in the above context as a method for obtaining pertinent information and perspective from relatively large numbers of people, it is useful to differentiate between it and collective intelligence, a related concept.
Collective intelligence refers to the outcomes generated by pooling knowledge from diverse groups, using it to research and debate and then refining the resulting understanding into useful and actionable information.
Crowdsourcing collective wisdom refers to the aggregation of anonymously produced data from groups of independent, diverse and decentralized people (crowds). The information gathered is typically summarized into a collective judgment or perspective – the “wisdom” expressed by the crowd.
Crowdsourcing as a technique for gathering useful information stems from the concepts outlined in The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowiecki. With a nod to the definitions above, the practice of crowdsourcing can be useful for tapping into the attitudes, opinions and beliefs of the “crowd” represented by an organization’s employees, customers and other stakeholders.
Many nuances and constraints have been applied to Surowiecki’s original ideas, and examples advanced wherein the ideas work more or less effectively. Whether you agree or disagree with the concept, there’s a fundamental attraction, and empirical evidence, to its utility. A crowd made up of diverse people with as many perspectives as there are people can, when faced with a question, problem or idea, generate a coalescing of sense and thence a consensus.
Indeed, a number of processes for working with small or large groups stem from the same basic premise – organizational development, whole systems and socio-technical systems theory rest on significant input from a wide range of different actors. A crowd’s aggregated collective response to a question or challenge creates a perspective or a position. In Surowiecki’s terms this represents its collective wisdom.
Can Today’s Organizations Access The Collective Wisdom of Crowds?
The workforce and other stakeholders of any given organization is a form of crowd. An organization’s crowd is likely to be more homogenous than a general crowd, to be sure. In the context of crowdsourcing, this relative homogeneity becomes important. It provides boundaries or constraints that complexity theory tells us are useful for bringing focus to the reasons for and expected results from the crowdsourcing.
For quite a few years now there have been sustained clarion calls for the development of learning organizations, more responsive and flexible cultures and for changes to fundamental assumptions and models of effective leadership and management. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars have been spent on visioning, strategic planning, culture change initiatives, coaching and more effective internal communications.
There are competency models galore, climate and culture surveys, and a wide range of other assessment, diagnostic and developmental tools and processes aimed at “harnessing the employees’ and the organization’s potential“.
However, the structure of most organizations is still clearly hierarchical and relies on learned command-and-control leadership and management techniques. Most leaders, executives and senior managers have been steeped in industrial-era management science assumptions. Their mental models began with these fundamental assumptions during their education and their first jobs. They have reached senior decision-making and leadership levels with the help of models that preceded today’s digital hyper-linked and networked environment with its wide, deep and rapid access to large numbers of people and vast amounts of information.
It is the rare “authentic” or natural leader that possesses or grows in him-or-herself the wisdom to bring humility, purpose, values, clarity and inclusive decision-making to creating and leading a responsive, adaptable and effective organization. Jim Collins codified these rare qualities in “Level Five Leadership“, a featured article in the Harvard Business Review’s Breakthrough Leadership issue. If you want to harness collective intelligence of the organizational crowd, you must have humility and good listening skills.
From Today to Tomorrow
Enter social software .. blogs, Twitter, wikis and various widgets (like IM interfaces that help people connect, converse, swap ways of doing things and gather feedback from colleagues and customers). Using social software for purposeful activities tends to create gigantic, wide, always-coursing feedback loops that will not be stopped.
So .. in this new electronic networked environment, how can today’s leaders go about developing vision, values, and a range of other elements of strategy and tactics.
We know from pre-Web experience that there is indeed something tangible, observable and useful in the knowledge and intelligence contained in and offered up by crowds when faced with an issue. Four or five decades of organizational development and organization change theory, practice and results have shown us that.
Many of us have been paying attention to the evolution of the Web’s impact on our lives and work for some time now. We tend to believe that the adroit, open and sincere use of social software to tap into and listen to a given organization’s crowd can materially help leaders and managers evolve into people who do not rely on charisma, positional power, coercion or dishonest political manipulation. Acknowledging and seeking ways to use the crowdsourced wisdom typically requires humility, listening and servant leadership to face and embrace the responsibilty to lead and manage effectively.
An important caveat … in spite of much work by many organizations towards inclusive engagement, it only takes a little bit of perceived ambiguity, loss of perceived control, shifts in markets or constituents for control-oriented hierarchy to reassert itself very quickly.
Notwithstanding the apprehension of many of today’s more traditional or conservative leaders and managers, the possibilities of crowdsourcing useful vision and wisdom from employees, constituents and markets has been made much easier with the capabilities of today’s interconnected and interlinked Web. And, just as importantly, increasingly people want AND expect that their voices will be heard.
The job of a leader in today’s hyperlinked and transparent organizational world is to instantiate the crowd’s intelligence and / or wisdom with a clearly-stated and purposeful mission and objective, and then listen ! This is where social software and methods like crowdsourcing can shine. They can and I believe will, eventually, replace or augment even the most sophisticated culture change initiative or surveys and diagnostics.
It can help leaders and managers learn to really listen, and to respond in intelligent and mature ways to the conversations that carry the collective wisdom of an organization’s ‘crowd’.
These days (and certainly tomorrow) it’s less and less about charisma, command and control, and more and more about listening to conversations and championing, catalyzing and coordinating the collective wisdom of any given organizational crowd.
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