2.0 Another View – A way to deal with the biggest threats to your enterprise
by Rob Paterson
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?
