by Rob Paterson
October 1, 2009 at 8:58 am · Filed under
Culture, Emergence, Social Media, Social Networking
Beyond disrupting organizations and value as we know it, what is going to be the deep result of the use of Social Media? Many of us see it as at least making organizations more effective – faster, more informed etc. But I wonder. My growing feeling is that the widespread use of Social Media might soon enable us to gain the benefit of “Emergence”.
What you might ask is “Emergence”. Here is an example of how each of us as humans acquire the scale free use of language:
Let me explain – I have a one year old grand daughter now so I am re living all of this. At around 9 -12 months, the child starts to make sounds – it is training the muscles. At about 12 – 18 months, it starts to use single words – Dada is usually first – so unfair but easier to say than Mama. It starts to use simple connectors such as “It” “a” “. 18 months – 24, the child adds a few direct verbs and qualifiers such as “more”. Then, as if by magic Emergence!. The child starts speaking in whole sentences – the full acquisition of the structure of language has been achieved. In some cases children are all but silent until this point and one day they can speak full sentences.
How does this happen? The child needs a few simple but essential environmental factors to be in place. I will come to these at the end of this post becuase they are directly related to what may be needed to have Social Media offer us this opportunity for Emergence as well.
One more example.
An oak tree produces many acorns. Only a very small number grow to become a tree. All the potential of the tree is inside this tiny thing. To have Emergence so that it can become a tree, there has to be a number of environmental factors that offer the acorn, the best shot at reaching this potential. You can imagine with me as to what some of these might be. Not get eaten by a squirrel – falling far enough away from the parent or being dropped by a squirrel – the right soil/moisture – not being eaten by a deer – not being mowed by me etc. If enough of the factors are in place, then the acorn will become a tree.
Now here is a vital insight, once it gets to a certain size, it gets very robust and only man cutting it down with a saw or a big fire will prevent it from growing further and living a long time. It is vulnerable only for a relatively short time at the front end.
There is more. An acorn has more potential than a tree alone.
Under the right environmental circumstances, one tree will lead to another until there is a small wood. With a small wood in place, more Emergence! The wood bursts into a complex forest that not only has more trees but a huge supporting other ecosystem that itself depends on and supports the oak first. Such a forest is tremendously complex and long lasting and offers all its normal inhabitants the optimal environment for more scale and less risk.
So Emergence leads to more complexity and to more resiliency. The resiliency is the reinforcement of the environmental factors that support the inhabitants of the system in reaching their full potential.
I am not clear about the ideal factors for Oak Trees. But the ideal factors for allowing children to reach their full potential are now known. My bet is that what works for infants works for all people. If we can be clear about what these few factors are, then we can see how Social Media might be used by us to go way beyond where are are right now.
An irony is that this little boy’s name is Acorn.
The link will take you to the research that has captured what Acorn and all of us need as human babies to set off on the pathway to our full potential or not. For if we don’t get the key factors we stall – stall for life.
Here are the key factors for our optimal development in simple form – as I list them, think of how your work place lines up or not to them. For this is what we all need all the time to be at our best as primates and humans.
- Culture is the most important environmental factor - The family culture has to offer the child a mix of clear boundaries of what is not allowed and yet also the child must be allowed a lot of room to explore inside these boundaries. It is Boundaries and Freedom. The child must be listened to and must have “conversations” with her parents. Very authoritarian parenting – all orders and all rules and all about the use of power over – is a huge shut down. All permissive – you choose baby is very unsafe and also leads to trouble in development.
- Emergence is all about Patterns connecting to scale free – so how many words a child years by 2 is the last factor - Kids whose development cannot be stopped have heard up to 50 million words by 2. Kids who will never develop fully will only have heard 10 million by the same age. They can never catch up
What we do know about Emergence is that it is Fractal. The key factors that support “Growth” do not change for scale. And also, that the chances of the key factors being in place, rise when there is a critical mass. An Oak forest offers the best shot for all who rely on its factors versus an acorn, a squirrel, a hawk, a truffle and a pig on their own.
When I saw the first slide in this post the other day – a light bulb went off for me. If this is how we acquire language and the optimal path for our own growth as a human, then the power of these connections inside the right social container could lead to something really special. The Netflix Prize story got me even more excited – for this showed how groups of people being connected had a major result as a consequence of the properties of Emergence.
If I am right, then we surely stand on the edge of a great awakening? Something like this happened 60,000 years ago, when humans acquired complex language itself. What might this mean for us? I can’t know. But we do know what happened 60,000 years ago. Human development exploded as did our ability to manipulate our world. Until then we were simply one of the species.
Now I fear that our reductive mindset based I think on our reliance on engineering rather than on Growth as the main process for getting more is putting us at risk as a species. Our only chance I think is to work with nature. If we as humans can find the best social container, we may have a chance.
So what container and how might social software help?
In the next post, I will get more specific about how we might translate these factors and Social Software into ideas about what the opportunity is. In the 3rd post in the series, I will share with you some brilliant supporting work that reveals how we might make better connections between us as a very diverse population. How we might solve the challenge of how to connect the geeks to the bureaucrats and to the business people – all of who have a very different world view.
Part 2 follows here
by Joe McKendrick
September 9, 2009 at 3:11 pm · Filed under
Facebook, Social Networking, Twitter, YouTube
My colleague over at Insurance Networking, Pat Speer, has just published an account of a major health insurance company that is employing social networking to communicate with its members/customers.
For starters, Pat reports that Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Wisconsin is piloting a program which employs Twitter to “identify members who may have questions or concerns about their health benefits.” The use of Twitter enables the insurer “to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, real-time conversation, and respond to each tweet about Anthem.”
Anthem is also using its Twitter channel to help members with healthy lifestyle choices such as weight loss programs. If that isn’t enough, Pat reports that Anthem has also formed a Facebook channel and a YouTube channel to promote wellness and member interaction.
As Kate Quinn, VP of corporate marketing for Anthem, puts it: “Social media provide a great opportunity for us to engage our members, listen to them and be more responsive.”
At a time when the viability and future direction of the health insurance industry is under debate, social networking is providing a means for insurance companies to reach on on a very personal level to their customers. The perception of “big, bad, greedy insurance companies,” however rightly or wrongly earned, has been part of the discourse for years, and came about because of the sense of impersonalization that created a very high wall between the companies and their constituents. Social networking may be just the right tool to tear down this wall.
by Joe McKendrick
September 9, 2009 at 10:14 am · Filed under
Social Networking
The insurance industry, a very conservative bunch, is not known for being on the bleeding or leading edge of new business technology.
However, social networking appears to be catching on as a tool for some insurers. According to a recent report, CSC, a consulting and integration firm that services the industry, launched an online service called “WikonnecT,”
a business-to-business social networking site for the property & casualty” sector, and has been seeing impressive growth since its launch last fall.
At last report, WikonnecT now has 8,000 users from nearly 700 insurance companies interacting across more than 100 communities. The site is now being extended to its life insurance and annuity clients. Unfortunately, the community is only open to CSC clients.
So if an industry as technically conservative as insurance starts embracing social networking, you know the trend has legs. Social networking may even help take some of the “boring” aspect out of insurance products, another industry observer states.
Chad Mitchell, senior analyst with Forrester Research Inc., recently penned a report titled “Crafting an Insurance Social Media Strategy,” in which he comes right out and states that “property/casualty and life insurers market some of the most boring consumer products and brands.”
However, Mitchell adds, emerging direct brands such as Esurance and traditional agent-based insurers such as Liberty Mutual Insurance are developing their social media strategies, and trying to change brand perceptions. Here are some examples:
“Auto and life insurance customers continue to flock online to research and buy insurance. And insurance agents use social networks for training and recruiting. Insurance eBusiness executives should build a social strategy that addresses customers’ and agents’ problems, prepares for risks, and measures what matters.”
The impact on internal operations should also be interesting to watch as social networking permeates the industry. Insurance organizations are full of silos and separate departments. Boosting collaboration between claims processing and field agents, for example, could go a long way toward better expediting claims, resolving disputes, and ultimately in boosting customer satisfaction.
by Joe McKendrick
August 5, 2009 at 9:34 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, Social Media, Social Networking
In a new study released this week found that many of the most successful social media initiatives on company intranets start as underground, grassroots efforts led by front-line workers, and which later are officially sanctioned by the enterprise.
The study, published by Nielsen Norman Group, concludes that “social software technologies are exposing the holes in corporate communication and collaboration and at times filling them before the enterprise can fully grasp and control the flow.”
It’s clear the tide has turned in favor of social media in the enterprise. My colleague Bill Ives just posted details of a study conducted by Prescient Digital Media, based on 561 organizations, which finds rapid adoption of social media on the corporate intranet in the past year.
The Nielsen Norman Group study was more qualitative than quantitative, based on interviews and analyses of the experiences of 14 companies, including Agilent Technologies, Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development, IBM, Telecom New Zealand Limited and Sun Microsystems.
What’s especially notable about these companies is that they are perhaps among the tech-savviest anywhere. Yet, social media adoption still emerged from the ranks in an informal fashion — not as an enterprise initiative.
Key findings in the study include the following:
Underground efforts yield big results: “Companies are turning a blind eye to underground social software efforts until they prove their worth, after which they integrate them more thoroughly.”
Front-line employees are driving the vision: “Many senior managers still consider social tools something their teenagers use. Young workers, who do not need to be taught or convinced to use these tools, expect them in the workplace.”
The business need is the big driver: “Social software is not about the tools, it is about what the tools enable the users to do and about the business problems the tools address.”
Communities are self-policing: “When left to their own devices, communities within enterprise intranets police themselves. Workers tend to retain their professional identities, leaving little need for the organization to institute controls.”
Organizations must cede power: “As companies have been learning from using Web 2.0 technologies to communicate with their customers, they can no longer fully control their message. This is true, too, when Web 2.0 tools are used in internal communications.”
The last point, that organizations must give up control of their communications and messaging, is going to be the hardest pill to swallow. Perhaps that may help to explain why social media tends not to be “officially” sanctioned so quickly, even among the tech-savviest of the tech-savviest.
by Joe McKendrick
August 5, 2009 at 9:16 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, Social Networking
There’s no doubt that Fair Isaac Corporation, the folks that developed the FICO scores that set the standards for consumer and business creditworthiness, is in a highly information-sensitive business.
However, a social networking approach is helping to cut customer service costs, while getting information to customers in a more efficient manner. My colleague at the SmartPlanet “Business Brains” site, Heather Clancy, recently posted an account of FICO’s foray into social networking. The company’s MyFico.com site is managed by 10 volunteer moderators at any given time, to help educate consumers about topics such as how to influence their credit scores, automobile financing, and student loans. The site handles an average of 15,000 posts per month.
The ability to turn customer service over to committed volunteers is a major component of the value-add and cost savings associated with social networking, as calculated in a recent Forrester study, described here in a recent post.
