How much would a nice hotel room cost you in a really cool part of Manhattan? At least $350 a night. A grotty room maybe for $250. Can you get any hotel room in the Plateau (the most Bohemian part of Montreal)? The quick answer is no.

But if you use AirBNB – you can get a really nice place for maybe $100 in Manhattan and $70 in Montreal. As with eBay you also get the advantage of a trust mediator.

Here is the core idea – AirBNB and other sites like it – there are 3 that have just got major funding – are run along the lines of eBay. You have a flat or house or even a room in your place. You use the aggregating power of the mediator to position your place and to control the trust issues. You are a traveller. You are exposed to the content which is highly personal – with a number of trust issues dealt with by rating and how the money works. In essence good behaviour on both sides is good business. Both sides are rated.

The barrier for travellers is to get over the idea that Hotels are it. Once you do, you may never go back and the hotels – as with newspapers and Craigslist cannot compete. For they have fixed costs like a newspaper that they cannot reduce.

Who wins? Well you do. My wife intends to stay in Montreal with my daughter in the fall to help my daughter in law who will have new baby. We have found a 3 bedroom flat 100 yards away for $75 a night. More than ideal. The renter can now get a return on her place that was impossible before.

Once again the Personal Brand will trump the corporate brand – for we can truly trust a person.

Of course, as with newspapers, the best brands will be ok – But what about all those budget hotels or those mid level hotels? Armageddon I think. Others agree and have valued Airbnb at 1 billion dollars

The process of the Innovator’s Dilemma will now take place.

This is truly a game changer for all involved. Who would ever have thought?

Many look forward to the day when technology will enable their organization to become a real 2.0 place that draws on the full energy and knowledge of all who work there. Don’t hold your breath! There is a process that is in the way that all ignore. But it is the central implementation barrier.

Many years ago after the post war election that brought in the Labour Government in England, a new Labour MP was in a bar at the house of Commons with Nye Bevan, a very experienced Labour MP and Minister. The newbie noticed that several Labour Members were drinking with several Tories and both were having a good time. Shocked, he said “The’re fraternizing with the enemy!”. Bevan smiled and said, ‘The’re not the enemy. The’re the Opposition. You sit next to the enemy.”

We all go on and on in organizational life about the “competition”. But we all know really that the real enemy are those bastards in the other department or division.

Let’s get straight here. Here is the fractal. The sole purpose institutions is to get bigger and to accrue more financial resources in its direct control. The sole purpose of its subsidiary departments and divisions is to do the same. To imagine any other purpose is to be recklessly naive. Institutions do not exist to serve any external purpose. They exist to look after their own interests. The same is true for their parts.

All is reduced to money. So the only game in town is the budget.

At the centre of all job grading for executives, is the budget. The man with the biggest budget (I use the term man deliberately) gets the most points and is the King of the game. All executives know this. It matters not that the work that you do may have a bigger impact, budget trumps all.

Hence the silos. Hence the fact that every organization in the world will tell you that communications is their biggest challenge. They will tell you how they hope for more cooperation. But the truth is that because all are locked in a life and death struggle to get more from the budget, cooperation is impossible. For the foolish and naive executive to play the game any differently, I plead guilty here, means only that you lose and so do your people.

So to share resources is to dilute your budget. To reduce waste is to dilute your budget. To be more effective is to dilute your budget. To be more innovative is to dilute your budget. See!

True innovation becomes impossible too. Why? Because of the ROI issue. You are the ex big winner of the Trucks Division at say GM. You have a huge budget and you still are making out like a bandit back in the day. The discussion at the board is like this. Bright Board Member “Surely we all agree that soon gas prices will rise and our truck line will be vulnerable?” Senior Board Member “Yes but look at the ROI we have on this our largest investment. If we start to shift into smaller vehicles, our ROI will go down. We will not be able to bear the drop in ROI (under his breath – you idiot)”

Why did companies like BP or Shell not make the shift into renewables? Lots of talk. But when push came to shove all this was window dressing. Why? Because they cannot make the returns in the new that they make in a mature business like oil. It’s all about the budget lock in effect. The big shuts out the small, so the new cannot grow in a mature organization. If by any chance it does, the big will do its best to close it down. The Innovator’s Dilemma! The people at the top are not stupid – they are locked in by the budget.

So what does this mean?

• No executive who wants to climb will change the job grading system – who wants to be accountable for impact when a much simpler task of getting more budget is the alternative
• All the talk of innovation attacks the power holders of the mature parts that have the largest budgets – so rest assured it’s all bullshit
• All the talk of cooperation attacks the power holders ……
• All the talk of customer service being #1 attacks the main power holders….
• All the talk of beating the competition attacks the main power holders….

So what do big organizations do then to keep power if they don’t in fact do any of the things that we are all taught at school that we are meant to do and that is the public discourse inside the organizations?

They seek to get bigger. Size matters. And when they are really big, such as banks that are too big to fail, they use budget to rig the larger playing field.

So the main work of very large organizations for profit and non profit, is to influence their  field. So for schools, it’s not about the kids, it’s about the teachers. In health it is not about our health it is about big pharma. In defense it is not about our men and women in harms way, it is about big defense.

It is the same game all the way up – it is “Turtles” all the way up.

• In your department, you game the system to get and to keep more budget – your adversary is the other department in the division
• In your division…
• In your SBU…
• In your organization…
• In your sector….

So, where are we? I think that we are living a lie.

We thought that jobs were good and that our organizations were designed to compete. I certainly thought that and I was a SVP HR for a very large bank.

But we can now look behind the green curtain and see the reality. We have seen that the purpose of a job is to deskill people. We can see that all the core business process that business school teaches us to pay attention to, are subsidiary to the budget.

What this means is that nearly all the ideas that are baked into HR help make organizations grow into unresponsive dinosaurs. You get GM as a result.

So can GM be reformed? Or must we look at a new model?

Next post

“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.

One thing I know is true- real innovation – the disruptive idea that declares independence from the old system – can only happen at the edge.

So this spring when I got a call from Howard Blumenthal CEO of MiND, in Philadelphia, my instincts told me that this was a very very important call.

No TV operation is more unique than MiND (or, properly, MiND: Media Independence).

MiND is not a PBS affiliate. It broadcasts a stream of 5-minute programs, many made by MiND’s staff producers, some made by members of the public who attend MiND’s production Boot Camps. MiND is both on air and on the web. The staff have their own voice in a way that I have never seen anywhere before in media or ANY other place of work. It was not only a novel TV operation – it was a novel organization. It was what a 2.0 organization would be like- inside and outside. As an independent community licensee, MiND makes the most of its freedom–and engages everyone who walks through the door.

So I booked my flight and flew down to see Howard and his team.

So what did I find? How to make TV, the Gutenberg of our time.

You don’t believe me? Please invest 5 minutes in this film.

Did you get it? I found it compelling. A beautifully crafted story. Here is a heartfelt comment on IMDB. Made by a real pro – right? No – made by a regular citizen, Leontyne Anglin, whose passion is the topic but who had never made a film before.

The impact of Gutenberg’s technology in the 1500’s was to give people a voice. If video and TV are the main means of communication today, then the “New TV” must give people a voice. This is surely more than uploading to YouTube or adding comments to a web video. Merely pointing and shooting does not make you a filmmaker. When you have the ability to tell a story well – then you need a place where your early work reaches an audience with an already-established relationship with a trusted brand.

This is what happens at MiND. Day-in and day-out. It’s the reason why the system was built. And it’s working.

The key to MiND is found in its willingness to help the public learn how to be real video storytellers. MiND’s core members have joined a tribe of filmmakers with something to say. MiND’s eagerness to provide every storyteller access to its Trusted Space makes all the difference—MiND is a branded space that adds real depth and texture to the word “public” in the term “public television.”

How does MiND do this?

First of all, MiND employs a production staff drawn from the public and not from the priesthood. It has attracted such a staff by its culture and by its remarkable intern-and-volunteer system. While many stations regard interns as more trouble than they are worth, MiND has transformed coping with, and training, more than 200 interns into common practice. As such, the keen are fed into the system and the cream rise to the top. Nearly a third of MiND’s current staff members started as either volunteers or interns.

Secondly, MiND has built a transformational training system modeled on and called ‘Boot Camp.’ It is transformational in that a citizen comes in with all sorts of wild expectations about television and media; after six hours of intensive training, she is on the path to making a real MiND program that will go on the air and become part of MiND’s extensive internet library of 5-minute programs. In time, she becomes an enabled storyteller.

Leontyne went to a MiND Boot Camp. She was a doubter – MiND’s promise seemed too good to be true. But Leontyne and two others at the Boot Camp took up the challenge. They developed an idea, checked back with MiND to make sure they were on the right track, and made a terrific MiND program.

As a result, Leontyne is a new person–and now, one of MiND’s most vocal advocates. On her own terms, she has become video- and story- literate. She possesses new power in the most powerful medium of our age.

She is not an anomaly.

Here is a short documentary film made by another MiND intern. It’s broadcast quality in every way – a strong story line and intricate editing combine old and new footage. The person who made this film has become an accomplished filmmaker–and is now a teacher at a small college in New England.

MiND is creating a core of accomplished story/film makers who can help their community as storytellers. In time, with MiND’s support, Philly (and in time, other cities that may carry a local version of MiND as their own service) can develop a cadre of the new, media-literate creative workers engaged in the betterment of their home, their neighborhood, their city. It does not take much to imagine what they could do.

The incentive that MiND offers its “students” and interns is that not only will they gain the skills that they will need for our time, but that the work will be showcased on TV and the web–by a Trusted Brand.

All artists want their work to have an audience. TV is 1.0 but it offers a reward like no other. “Hey Mom my work is on TV!” So MiND is expanding its reach to other markets. It is building a national alliance in most of the key markets of the US – details here. The bigger the audience, the greater the impact.

So what next?

It is no secret that all the public stations in Pennsylvania are under pressure because their Governor plans to cut all state funding. MiND’s low cost approach makes it especially vulnerable–just completing its first year, MiND has focused on operational efficiency, programming and community; MiND’s first revenue programs are just beginning, and are insufficient to cover a 40% cut in the total budget. MiND will not stop–but it will slow down as resources disappear.

This is the reason for my post today–to encourage the public television community to consider what MiND has done in its first year, and how its ideas might be used to reinvigorate a tired system. MiND is not the full answer but it contains most of the DNA for the full answer and so I felt compelled to tell its story now.

What can we all learn from this?

Set up a new organization to do this – The station culture is key. MiND is a 2.0 Culture. Here is how it sees itself. These are not simply words on a page. With 30 plus years in the field of culture – I observed first hand that this is no bull – what they say is how they are. So you cannot change all your station culture to be like this. I also know that to be true. So what can you do? Clay Christenson is clear – set up a separate organization to house this aspect of the new - your transformational organization. I know of several stations that are thinking along these lines. You cannot make this shift inside the old–but you can make the shift if the new is allowed to grow alongside the old.

The Goal Is Self Reliance – The goal is to transform your community to be self-reliant – to do that you have to be able to tell the collective story of how people are bringing about change in your community. To do that you need to develop real storytellers by teaching them how to tell stories– and you have to imbue their stories with the added value of your brand. Create a “school” for the new literacy. Bring in the people as interns and volunteers. Bring in the young. Use your digital channels and the web as the “channel.” Or, let MiND show you how; they are willing and capable guides. And, please, don’t get caught up in the validity of five-minute programs–not before watching MiND or considering the sheer number of unique five-minute programs that can be produced in a year.

Gain strength and power by connecting. Connect to the institutions organizations in your community who need this kind of help – use your storytellers to give them a voice. How might non-profits be involved? How about schools (K-12 and higher education)? What if everyone really did have a voice–and what if that voice defined the future of public media? Imagine connecting with other stations across America and the world–perhaps create a national network with MiND at the core – and jointly build MiND as an initiative that engages people at the local, regional, national, even global level. It’s clear that MiND was built with precisely that strategy at its core. Increase the power of the collective story by comparing what’s happening in Philadelphia with what’s happening in Chicago or Denver, and ultimately, with Mumbai or Warsaw.

MiND benefits from a wonderful gift–it is one of the few truly independent agents within public media–in fact, the company’s official name is (you guessed it) Independence Media. From that independence has grown true innovation. Make no mistake–this is not a play by a tiny public TV station operating at the edge of reality. Instead, it is likely the center of a new solar system with increasingly powerful gravitational pull.

We will not get through the turbulence of our times by relying on the status quo in any part of our lives. So I do my bit to tell the story of Howard and his band of sisters and brothers at MiND.

Bless them all. And for my American friends, about to celebrate their annual holiday, do consider the value, opportunity and responsibilities associated with independence.

The Dominos “YouTube Adventure” last week  – when a couple made a disgusting video of what they did in making a Dominos Sub – is I think a “Rubicon” moment.  Not just for Dominos, who had already put their toe into the river of Social Media but for every enterprise. (Excellent revue here  by Frederic Lardinois from Read Write Web on what happened + Stats + Dominos response + an analysis)

All your customers, voters, members, suppliers – the public are now linked. Newsworthy events that are good and bad will spread like wildfire. Look at the “Good” event of Susan Boyle – as of this date 20 million views in less than a week!

The Rubicon is that – whether you like it or not – the public are now linked so well, that anything said about you will now spread everywhere and very quickly. This linkage, and hence the speed and immediacy of the spread, can only get wider and faster. Maybe, in a few months, events that affect you will spread instantly to everyone. What will spread the fastest of course will be the bad things.

So the new reality is that it is what others say that will matter not what you say. So your reputation – your brand – the trust you have – is now not longer easily or directly controlled by you.

You have to be swimming in this river to have any chance of protecting your name.

As with Dominos – using the new social media tools is not enough. You will have to understand and become a master of how to live and do well in thus new world.

Compared to many today, Dominos were somewhat ready. But even then – I think because they had only installed the tools but not the culture – they were awkward. They were late in catching their problem. Late in a their response. Stilted in their response – they did not understand that a scripted response is not going to help much.

They were still operating the new tools with the old culture.

They gave their CEO a script. He read from the prompter and did not make emotional contact with the audience. But Dominos still did well compared maybe to you! For do you even have the tools?

But of course it is not just about the tools. The issue is that you can no longer control. So their new plan is of course the old plan – “let’s control the store”. Their key response is to ban video cameras from their stores! This means a ban on cell phones really and how practical can that be?

The only effective response will be to get into the river with everyone else and get really good at how to behave in this new river. It will be to become so engaged that the conversation can be affected or shaped. You have to be a trusted part of the conversation to do this. You cannot just barge in.

Dominos and you will have to unlearn and put away all of what made old PR work. For all of PR up to now has used “Message” – a tightly controlled and scripted response where the text is key. Now you have to use “Presence” – an emotional message where the authenticity of the humanity of the “speaker” carries the point. Volts versus Amps.

This River will soon operate at the speed of light. To protect your name, you have to be a major presence in the river now. You have to merge with the river so that your nervous system is acutely attuned to the slightest hint of trouble. The leverage is Trust. Only a trusted player in the river will have any chance of settling down the ripples.

To have the Trust, you need to be known. To be known, you have to be a person and not an institution.The people that represent you in this river have to be free people who can be trusted. They have to have won the trust of the river. If trouble occurs, they have to respond immediately without a script. They have to be empathic and not controlled.

This role is foreign to institutions who are all about control. The answer are not the tools but the culture.

The error is to see your participation in Social Media as having the right Tools. “We use Twitter!” is a meaningless statement. Hey you can give me all the tools I would need to fix a car and I still will not be able to fix a car. Worse you can give me an airplane to fly and I will crash every time. The people who work for you in this field have to be the real deal. You would not hire a CFO who did not know her stuff?

Why simply tell your existing PR folks who know nothing about this – in fact who hate it – to take over? All of how PR, Research and Marketing has been done until now will have to be unlearned. Traditional PR, Research and Marketing folks will feel very uncomfortable and will do what all prior paradigm leaders do when confronted with the real future. They will undermine and fight it. They have to. For this is their nemesis.

The context for this decision is that the old world is dying. Here is how Coke is responding:

ATLANTA: Coca-Cola has created a new office of digital communications and social media within its public affairs and communications department. Clyde Tuggle, SVP of corporate affairs and productivity at Coke, noted “mass media is declining in importance,” when introducing the new department in a memo to staff, which the beverage manufacturer shared with PRWeek.

“Our future success depends on our continued ability to connect people to our brands and our Company all around the world, one person at a time,” Tuggle wrote. “Our new office of digital communications and social media will help us become even more comfortable and effective in these new spaces.”

The new unit will work in collaboration with global interactive marketing, IT, and consumer affairs, as well as legal and strategic security.

Adam Brown, digital communications director, and Anne Carelli, digital communications manager, will have oversight of corporate digital and social media communications efforts. Both Brown and Carelli will continue ongoing training programs, such as “Training Byte” online videos, in addition to “more robust” programs through its new PAC Institute.

The ideas in the new world that will have to be learned anew include these:

• Listen before you Speak – The New Tools allow you to hear the slightest tremor. Last week I Tweeted that I had done my taxes and that I had used QuickTax. Within minutes QuickTax had responded with a thank you. A week earlier I Tweeted that I had had a problem with accessing Ning. Within minutes a customer service person from Ning contacted me and worked over the weekend to solve my problem. If you cannot do this – you are not in the game. In future, most of your research will operate in real time without you having to ask any questions. Your new job will be to listen minute by minute and to have tools and people that can make sense of the stream. Not only to make sense of what you hear but also to shape the stream. QuickTax is responding to every mention good or bad. An early and a personal response, can settle a problem that could become a crisis. Such a strategy dramatically reduces your costs in research and brand management. Such a strategy dramatically increases your effectiveness and reduces your risks. More for less.

• Participate not Pontificate – To be heard, you have to participate. To speak, you have to lose your corporate voice. You have to lose the official tone of voice. You have to regain a human voice. This can only be done if you allow your social media staff to be themselves. They cannot be the highly controlled drones that are the standard in the corporate or bureaucratic world – many people in your organization will not be able to lose this voice. They even use it at home. Simply training old staff will not be enough. For how can you have trained people in the Shetl to be Americans?  You have to live in the New World to become a citizen. To have the new voice is to be a native of the new culture that is the very opposite of the norms of the old country. As with immigrants, it will be the kids who will get it first and they will train the others. But the Bubbies will never get it. This aspect of having the new strategy work or not is the most challenging part of all of this. In the end it means, that the old culture has to die too. Maybe in the interim, you set your unit up apart from the rest and have it report to the CEO for protection. Clayton Christenson has a lot to say about this problem. For to respond to this new reality demands that you disrupt your culture. The most difficult of all acts for a leader.

• Importance – Life or Death: This is not an add on or a side show as Newspapers found – This is all about whether you are going to live or die – As the Coke folks say but more gently than I – Mass Media is dying. So then is the entire Mass Media approach to PR and Broadcast – the God-like Voice and Moses with the Text of God from on high does not work. So how important is your reputation? How important is your business or enterprise? Adopting this new way is one of the most important decisions you will make. So also having the RIGHT PEOPLE to do this for you is the second decision you will make after deciding to cross the River. Ideally you have to have them report to the CEO. Ideally the CEO needs to become immersed as well. If I can do this, aged 59 and having spent most of my working life in institutions. Then so can you. The only issue is will. Do you have the will as a CEO to move into the future?

Caesar made the call by crossing the Rubicon to end the Republic and to begin the Empire. He had the will to stake it all. There was then no going back.

Actually it is society that has crossed the Rubicon. The new interactive and participative world is now here.

Will you cross too? This is a life or death decision for you. It’s also a winning choice. Many will not be able to make this choice. Their own culture will be too powerful. If you can, you have the advantage. The earlier you move, the better you will get at this.

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Public Radio and TV leaders and staff know that they have to innovate their way into the future. They can see clearly what is happening to newspapers and music. They know that they have to end up with a web-centred, person-centred, participation-full, community-building, low-cost alternative.

I don’t think the destination is in doubt or even unclear now. The challenge is surely now how to get “there” from “here”?

The old reality of “Here” is that we have an existing business that pays all the bills right now. That we have an existing audience that likes things as they are! That we have an existing staff that knows what it knows and is frightened about the new and what it may mean to them. That we have an existing board that doesn’t know much about anything. That we don’t have a lot of money and that we have a lot of fixed expenses.

“There” is not a bit different from “Here”.  Getting to “There” is a Ptolemaic revolution. “There” cannot be built upon “Here” because “There” has to disrupt “Here” to live. Getting from Here to There has to involves a “Disruption”. It is of course the essence of the Innovator’s Dilemma.

How do you solve the Innovators Dilemma?  The really big idea that Torey has is how to solve the Innovator’s Dilemma.

He reminded me that, if you work inside your traditional organization, it will allow you only to effect incremental change. He reminded me that if you put the new into the old, the old will have to kill it. He reminded me that, if the new is disruptive, you have to put it out of reach of the old and you have to give it the optimal environment to grow in. He reminded me that when it is strong enough you can allow the new to “Inform” the old. What Church will accept its own reformation?

Torey’s ideas of how best to solve the Innovator’s dilemma are what I would like to focus on today. You can find the details of what Torey is doing and why in a link to the Current here.  You can find the link to the site here. 

In this interview, I want to share with you Torey’s views on how to handle disruptive innovation. How do we get to the New Reality from the Old Reality? How do we get from Here to There? What may be the most innovative aspect of Vocalo may not be what it is for itself but for how it has been structured as part of the larger Chicago Public Radio so that it can be truly innovative and survive!

As Torey tells me Vocalo is truly the opposite of a typical station. Imagine this inside your station!!!!!!!

Vocalo is a pure Web 2.0 play. It is as fire is to water as far as the 1.0 world goes. All the content comes in without filtering or direction from the public. None of it is structured.

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At the heart of Vocalo is an invitation. We are invited to come into the Vocalo world and to use our voice and our talent. There are no strings.  “At first the only things that went up were people looking for outlets. Producers etc. Now it’s much more grass roots – personal diaries etc. We also help people get better at audio. We offer out some Olypmus recorders – you fill it and send it back to us.”

Vocalo has 15 producers who in a human way, not a digg algorithm, sift the content for goodies and for exceptional people. They are the tastemakers. Who are these people?

“Once we opened the requirement beyond years of experience in radio – you would be amazed at the quality of people out there who can curate and find great content.”

The best of the best makes it onto air – this is the reward for the content producers.

“We don’t just lift the content – we in effect run a school. We act as producers. We help in editing. We help shape the story etc. We have a human and direct contact with our community.

I asked then what was the reward for the content providers.

“People are still excited when they make it onto mass media – many may hate Fox news but if they were asked to go on it – they would. We give people and the community the opportunity to get their voice out. Getting them on air is a very important reward – it helps them build reputation. Such a reward drives a new kind of quality – an authentic voice with something true to say.”

So why I asked did he choose to put this new world onto a station that showed no sign that it was part of the formal system of public radio?

“Vocalo is the innovation frequency. Many of the people we wanted to see if we could attract do not like Public radio as it is. They did not like its stuffy voice. They find the content irrelevant to their lives. They don’t listen even to radio.”

“So we took this additional frequency and made it into the opposite of traditional public radio. Vocalo is a website that has a radio part to it. Not a radio system that has a website. We shifted the polarity. We also shifted the polarity in our relationship with the audience. We invited them in rather than pushed stuff out to them. We shifted the polarity of marketing. We allowed the space to grow naturally rather than made a big deal out of it and pushing it. We shifted the editing polarity – we knew that people did not want to be edited. We allowed unfettered space on the web.”

I asked Torey then how he saw the link between the web and radio.

“The Internet is designed to allow users to create a community based on commonality—to find and interact with people who are like us.  But real, geographic community isn’t like that—it’s a collection of people who are more likely to be different than the same.  Radio, as a mass medium, needs to serve that real community of differences. So, between the media—internet and radio–the editing process enables both to co-exist. At Vocalo.org we start with the unfettered communities of the web and then we layer a selective juxtaposing process onto this that allows for a scope of voices and views on air that better reflects the real community we serve.”

So what then about the link to Public radio? What about the Brand?

“There is no sign on Vocalo that this is part of Public Radio. The fear inside the traditional organization about jeopordising the brand has been dealt with by not linking the two. We don’t link them at all. Now many know that we are linked but we are not putting either at risk from the other. We also have a different location that enables us to offer the staff of both some isolation and hence freedom.”

” I think that the old can safely look at the new and we can learn safely from it. If the new builds a large and a new world, we will have a complimentary system that includes both.”

Ah I wondered, like a parent and a child!