Why delegation has its dangers and a higher level of collaboration is the future of organizations
Showing posts with label ideas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ideas. Show all posts
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Friday, August 16, 2013
The context of context
Social is about context. About context beeing king and about technology being a context enhancing engine (from an individual point of view) as well as a context leveraging engine (from a business point of view). And therefore, at first sight, about a need or an opportunity for people and institutions alike to master context and act in real time.
Only, after thinking about it, social is not solely about context: by changing the depth of our personal context, technological (and social) evolution is making the changing nature of responsibility and decision making visible.
Context has context and context needs to be managed, which is why Responsible Context Management might just become an imperative management practice in the next few years.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Why "Tweet" and "Like" are primitive social actions
Social technologies are not mature. They are a primitive multi-layered bunch of technologies, that are clumsily integrating with each other, while also integrating with and changing our individual and collective thinking and communication habits and skills. They will probably change the very nature of what it means to communicate. And someday, we will forget that they are a technology altogether ...
Thursday, January 24, 2013
The year we kill social business
Social Business (or #socbizz in Twitter) has reached buzzword status. If you want to live by the ambitions that were behind it, you probably need to kill it.
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Visibility will kill management
The main issue with social technology in the corporate context is visibility. These technologies will show anyone anything, and that is terribly annoying to management, that has made a living on control and information brokerage.
And therefore management needs to evolve ... but not in the direction most managers fear. Really, we need more managers, not less. We need stronger skilled managers, able both to manage content and context, people and process, internal and external.
Because visibility does not come with talent. It's only visibility. And the capability for insight, that would allow any employee to act on this new-found access to most information / knowledge / people / issues is definitely not a given. On the contrary, it is talent that will be long in the making for most people, notwithstanding what the tenants of "generation flux" may say.
Social technologies should have us working on increasing the number of managers, I mean of people entrusted with the responsibility of achieving the company's mission.
Obviously, as Dominique Turcq hinted at in a recent post, it should also have leaders thinking on this mission and on the corporation as an institution. But that is another story.
And therefore management needs to evolve ... but not in the direction most managers fear. Really, we need more managers, not less. We need stronger skilled managers, able both to manage content and context, people and process, internal and external.
Because visibility does not come with talent. It's only visibility. And the capability for insight, that would allow any employee to act on this new-found access to most information / knowledge / people / issues is definitely not a given. On the contrary, it is talent that will be long in the making for most people, notwithstanding what the tenants of "generation flux" may say.
Social technologies should have us working on increasing the number of managers, I mean of people entrusted with the responsibility of achieving the company's mission.
Obviously, as Dominique Turcq hinted at in a recent post, it should also have leaders thinking on this mission and on the corporation as an institution. But that is another story.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Managers beware : Is there a Corporate Jasmine Revolution lurking out there?
Something is at work deep down our corporations, that pushes employees to resist and opose the ideas of those managers that wouldn't change or accept the new social reality.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Towards an app-powered culture
Beyond Enterprise 2.0 and Social Business, there's the dream of something resembling corporate democracy - apps could help get you there. If, that is, you have the right kind of leadership.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Social business in 2012 : the threats from within
I have been going through some of the predictions for the 2012 Social Business Year (for instance, here, here). It is clear from these and other predictions that the potential of Social Business to transform our corporations has been widely covered, so I thought I would concentrate on the two or three threats that I see lurking over social business delivering all its promises
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
OccupyWallStreet and the social/business revolution
Ten days ago, as I had the opportunity to share some time with people at Liberty Square and assist to one GA, I was inspired by some conversations that defended the following general idea; "we are not here to be violent, we are here to collaborate, to participate in building something different. If the guys leading our banks and financial institutions do not want to participate, fine, we'll change them". As well as by these ideas, I was also struck by the collaborative, participative, shouted model, that has been developed in the GAs. Coming out of the Web2.0Expo, and participating to all these conversations about social media, I found the real life aspect of OccupyWallStreet amazing (videos). And I also found their professionalism, so to speak, very impressive, whether it is in the websites that have been developed and that show quite a mastery of social technologies or the "Direct Democracy & Facilitation Trainings" that are being developed by OccupyTogether.
In Europe, Occupy Wall Street is not getting the attention it deserves. Elsewhere, there has been some analysis of this movement, most of what I have read, by the way, pointing at its shortcomings (here is some perspective by James Marshall Crotty).
From my perspective, this movement is new in the level of internal and external collaboration it shows, and it obviously links to the Jasmine Revolution and the ones that followed. My perspective is that its success or failure will not rest with the protesters ability to make a long stand; this stand needs to be taken into account by leaders, giving way to change in mindsets, and eventually to a transformation of leadership. A leader: someone that leads ... Today, the where and the how are just not clear enough
Occupy Wall Street is a major business, social and political reinvention opportunity. Why is that ? 1. The economy is not providing the kind of prosperity people aspire to and seem ready to build. There is opportunity for a new kind of leadership. 2. The social or web2.0 technologies now deploying across the economy bring with them a mindset that allows fresh economic and business thinking and therefore the achievement of that new prosperity. There is an opportunity for this new leadership to reach its goals.
Optimistic view? Let me explain.
1. The economy, it can be argued, at least in the Western world, seems poised to grow slowly, at best, in the next two to five years. Jobs have been lost, and if you follow W Brian Arthur in this McKinsey Quaterly article, they will not come back. There might be some assets in savings, yes, but where there are savings (like in Europe), it seems that people are not willing to spend what's needed to generate growth.
As for businesses, most of them are unable to provide the products or services that would spur a new surge in growth. That's understandable, at least in the BtoC arena: consumers, hard hit by the debt tornado, do not have a real need for the stuff that's available. I would argue they are waiting for what could be called a new prosperity: improved public services, health care, education, environmental savvy products, people-development activities, ...
Where are the leaders ? How are they responding to these aspirations ? It really surprises me that few business leaders, so far, have started answering the yarn for a new kind of prosperity by offering new services, new products that are in line with what people are voicing (yes, there are real demands, appart from "let the bankers go"). Offering jobs and offering value.
In one of the conversations at the Web2.0Expo, moderated by Cindy Gallop, we stressed how leaders were, in short, lost and frightened. Lost for lack of understanding of what is happening (and you have to admit it is a complex movement, that can only be understood as arising from a perfect storm made of social aspirations, technological progress, democracy progress, ...). Frightened at letting other people take the lead, whether it is for selfish reasons (those exist) or from very legitimate reasons (as a leader, it is difficult to let go when you are not sure that your are making the right decision).
And yet, opportunities are waiting for leaders to discover them. Let me underline some of them that I know well :
All those, and many others, are opportunities for growth ! Demand is there, whether it is explicit or not. Financing is definitely there, just waiting for a real opportunity. Talent is there ! There are real expectations for meaning, for a sense of self-esteem that would come from the work we do, that could become something more than just "what I do for a living".
Leaders should take these opportunities. It would help navigate and going out of the coming recession; it would engage talent. It would allow them to gain legitimacy and honor in the eyes of society.
The good news is, almost all assets and skills needed to reach goals that were not imaginable yesterday are there to be used. Or read Carlota Perez, if you do not trust me.
2. I mentioned in my last post that social technology was ready to help in changing the world. Technology is important, but most important still is the new mindset that is deploying with it. Just as it took some years for most business leaders to understand the benefits of mass production, it might take some years for this new mindset to reach a tipping point.
This is where I think some work needs to be done by those today operating in the social business / E2.0 / Web2.0 / ... arena. I have been reading these past few months how social technologies were going to help in improving existing processes by "social enabling them". And, behold, we found the ROI that we had been looking for so long ! Right and true. But that is certainly not enough and it is terribly short-sighted !
If used within the current optimization mindset, these technologies will help business at the expense of the individual and therefore society. It is important to remember that corporations are still widely viewed as vehicles for value creation through efficiency. Innovation, in most of them, is just appearing as an alternative for this value creation.
Efficiency is tightly linked, in an established management mindset, to a taylorist view of the world. Do more with less. And, believe me, social technologies have the potential to push us (managers, employees, leaders) where we do not want to go. To the point where every activity in our life can be linked to our work activity, to the point where there is always something else for me to do. CRM ? Not good enough, now we can link salespeople every single minute of the day, so they can "leverage" the "collective intelligence" to make yet another sale ... even though this "collective intelligence member" might be having dinner with her kids ! This probably rings a bell, right ? What I say for sales departments stands true for any other dimension of the corporation, if social technologies are used within existing processes, mindsets, organizations.
It is my belief, that we need to push for corporate transformation. And therefore, yes, as I said in my introduction "the social or web2.0 technologies now deploying across the economy bring with them a mindset that allows fresh economic and business thinking and therefore the achievement of that new prosperity. There is an opportunity for this new leadership to reach its goals. " There is an opportunity for growth ! But, and it is a huge but, it will need thinking twice about growth and the value growth creates, probably going in the direction pointed by Michael Porter or Umair Haque. And once some ideas about value evolve, there is a need to think about how to share the value that is created, probably using existing models such as Wikipedia, the open web, or so many others. Then, we just might need to reinvent strategy, so that the environment, society, people at large, are not considered as externalities. That thinking made strategy much too easy. It's time to grow up.
From my perspective, this movement is new in the level of internal and external collaboration it shows, and it obviously links to the Jasmine Revolution and the ones that followed. My perspective is that its success or failure will not rest with the protesters ability to make a long stand; this stand needs to be taken into account by leaders, giving way to change in mindsets, and eventually to a transformation of leadership. A leader: someone that leads ... Today, the where and the how are just not clear enough
Occupy Wall Street is a major business, social and political reinvention opportunity. Why is that ? 1. The economy is not providing the kind of prosperity people aspire to and seem ready to build. There is opportunity for a new kind of leadership. 2. The social or web2.0 technologies now deploying across the economy bring with them a mindset that allows fresh economic and business thinking and therefore the achievement of that new prosperity. There is an opportunity for this new leadership to reach its goals.
Optimistic view? Let me explain.
1. The economy, it can be argued, at least in the Western world, seems poised to grow slowly, at best, in the next two to five years. Jobs have been lost, and if you follow W Brian Arthur in this McKinsey Quaterly article, they will not come back. There might be some assets in savings, yes, but where there are savings (like in Europe), it seems that people are not willing to spend what's needed to generate growth.
As for businesses, most of them are unable to provide the products or services that would spur a new surge in growth. That's understandable, at least in the BtoC arena: consumers, hard hit by the debt tornado, do not have a real need for the stuff that's available. I would argue they are waiting for what could be called a new prosperity: improved public services, health care, education, environmental savvy products, people-development activities, ...
Where are the leaders ? How are they responding to these aspirations ? It really surprises me that few business leaders, so far, have started answering the yarn for a new kind of prosperity by offering new services, new products that are in line with what people are voicing (yes, there are real demands, appart from "let the bankers go"). Offering jobs and offering value.
In one of the conversations at the Web2.0Expo, moderated by Cindy Gallop, we stressed how leaders were, in short, lost and frightened. Lost for lack of understanding of what is happening (and you have to admit it is a complex movement, that can only be understood as arising from a perfect storm made of social aspirations, technological progress, democracy progress, ...). Frightened at letting other people take the lead, whether it is for selfish reasons (those exist) or from very legitimate reasons (as a leader, it is difficult to let go when you are not sure that your are making the right decision).
And yet, opportunities are waiting for leaders to discover them. Let me underline some of them that I know well :
- There is a need to transform transportation, to cope with a growing complexity of cities and a threatening environmental risk.
- There is a a need to transform insurance, to take into account new risks coming from the new fabrics of society (anyone said subprimes ?). The same could be said about banking.
- There is a need to make government and public services more agile, so that they provide real value in real time.
- There is a huge need to rethink education, and transform it, leveraging the assets of existing systems but also using new ways and technologies.
- ...
All those, and many others, are opportunities for growth ! Demand is there, whether it is explicit or not. Financing is definitely there, just waiting for a real opportunity. Talent is there ! There are real expectations for meaning, for a sense of self-esteem that would come from the work we do, that could become something more than just "what I do for a living".
Leaders should take these opportunities. It would help navigate and going out of the coming recession; it would engage talent. It would allow them to gain legitimacy and honor in the eyes of society.
The good news is, almost all assets and skills needed to reach goals that were not imaginable yesterday are there to be used. Or read Carlota Perez, if you do not trust me.
2. I mentioned in my last post that social technology was ready to help in changing the world. Technology is important, but most important still is the new mindset that is deploying with it. Just as it took some years for most business leaders to understand the benefits of mass production, it might take some years for this new mindset to reach a tipping point.
This is where I think some work needs to be done by those today operating in the social business / E2.0 / Web2.0 / ... arena. I have been reading these past few months how social technologies were going to help in improving existing processes by "social enabling them". And, behold, we found the ROI that we had been looking for so long ! Right and true. But that is certainly not enough and it is terribly short-sighted !
If used within the current optimization mindset, these technologies will help business at the expense of the individual and therefore society. It is important to remember that corporations are still widely viewed as vehicles for value creation through efficiency. Innovation, in most of them, is just appearing as an alternative for this value creation.
Efficiency is tightly linked, in an established management mindset, to a taylorist view of the world. Do more with less. And, believe me, social technologies have the potential to push us (managers, employees, leaders) where we do not want to go. To the point where every activity in our life can be linked to our work activity, to the point where there is always something else for me to do. CRM ? Not good enough, now we can link salespeople every single minute of the day, so they can "leverage" the "collective intelligence" to make yet another sale ... even though this "collective intelligence member" might be having dinner with her kids ! This probably rings a bell, right ? What I say for sales departments stands true for any other dimension of the corporation, if social technologies are used within existing processes, mindsets, organizations.
It is my belief, that we need to push for corporate transformation. And therefore, yes, as I said in my introduction "the social or web2.0 technologies now deploying across the economy bring with them a mindset that allows fresh economic and business thinking and therefore the achievement of that new prosperity. There is an opportunity for this new leadership to reach its goals. " There is an opportunity for growth ! But, and it is a huge but, it will need thinking twice about growth and the value growth creates, probably going in the direction pointed by Michael Porter or Umair Haque. And once some ideas about value evolve, there is a need to think about how to share the value that is created, probably using existing models such as Wikipedia, the open web, or so many others. Then, we just might need to reinvent strategy, so that the environment, society, people at large, are not considered as externalities. That thinking made strategy much too easy. It's time to grow up.
Friday, October 14, 2011
About W2e : the technology to change the world ?
The Web2.0Expo is a wrap. And as I start to look back on the speakers, start-ups and attendees I met, it strikes me that, for all the great announcements, innovations and ideas, technology is taking back-stage.
Do not get me wrong: technology was impressive all along, but the real focus was on using it to change the world.
Changing corporations
The IBM survey of CMOs and Melissa Parrish from Forrester pointed out that corporations are not ready for these new social technologies. CMOs (and leaders at large, it would seem) are yet to develop their awareness of the changes that have taken place and understand what the new technological (and social) environment, and mainly social technologies and data imply for their corporation. And let me be specific : what it implies for their organization, for their value chains and for their strategies.
That view, though, is only the higher, hierarchy-focused view. Because in listening to the speakers and practicioners, you get the notion that social technology is mainstream now as are the practices to adopt it and make the most of it. It was interesting to hear Peter Kim present what he calls social media mythbusters :
- Consumers in control ? No ! Consumers are not in control, you, as a company, set the stage for their experience of your company’s services, and you should take responsibility for it. This idea of responsibility kept coming back during the conference. I loved the way in which Siobhann Quinn closed her speach about the five Laws of Engagement: "with those laws come responsibility, do not cheat on us, try to make us better people, better consumers, better contributors".
- Social Media as obvious ? No ! Social media is not straightforward, you do need a strategy and even an advanced social media architecture as Joshua Ross defended. Seen from my prospective as a practitioner, indeed there is such a thing as a social media architecture, and I would argue that each corporation needs to design its own , adapted social media architecture. Indeed, your social media architecture won’t reach its potential if you haven't developed you own internal Collaborative Way. And you should know that, in developing your collaborative way and then building your social media architecture, the focus should not be on conceiving a great system but on engaging your managers and your employees to iteratively build it with you. Or, in the way Phin Barnes elegantly puts it, you need to design your organization for design
Face your responsibility, develop your collaborative way and your social media architecture ... but also, of course, learn and keep learning about each platform inner workings. There were great presentations about Facebook from Michael Lazerow and Ruben Quinones, and about Google+ from Adria Richards. It was even more interesting to listen about other platforms such as YouTube or Blip.tv from Dina Kaplan and their potential impact on internal communications.
Last of these speakers about the impact of social technologies and evolving mindsets on the corporations, Christina Gagner gave an overview of where the regulation is going. Self-regulation was the key word, as regulators are still playing catch-up and not necessarely from the most adapted viewpoint. Europe, a regulatory leader, would have some lessons for America.
Summary about the corporations then: the technology, the strategy, the managerial practices that are needed by our corporations have already been developed. The race is on to adopt them, and, believe me, no one will talk about a mere nice to have new social media.
Changing the Economy & Society
Social technology is also making its way towards changing society. One of the showcased start-ups, Fresh.oc.ra.cy, aims at helping Newyorkers learn to eat again ! So it’s technology, yes, but used to diminish waste, to save time, and to learn old and forgotten key social and family traditions like the family dinner.
Great presentation also from Nora Abousteit about how technology can change fashion and community, but also, most interestingly, about how all the achievements in technology should bring us reconsider the educational power of making.
Shelley Bernstein talked about how technology helped her engage the Brooklyn Museum visitors, and, as a result, collectively transform their experience of the Museum.
It was Carlota Perez that helped us make sense of these social ventures. We are in the fifth industrial revolution (after the first one, the second with the steam engine, the third with heavy industry and the fourth with mass production) and we are entering the deployment phase of this information revolution. Today, "what's good for IT is good for the world, and what's good for the world is good for IT". A very interesting perspective on why leaders are lost as they look on the existing conditions with their common sense (read what Duncan Watts has to say about the myth of common sense) and a call to action for all those that, as the examples above show, having understood technology are out and using it to change the world.
Changing democracy ?
But my ah-ha moment came during the Start-up showcase, when the founders of ElectNext introduced me to their beta version. ElectNext later became one of the two choices of the Expo for most interesting start-ups. How these choices were made says a lot about the organizers own sense of responsibility. It was not about winners and loosers, it was about starting the most meaningful conversations. And their two choices were start-ups that are transformational to society and to democracy.
But let me come back to ElectNext: using basic social technology and business model (online dating) to improve the voting experience. When I think about it, is it not a great way to educate voters, that usually have no time to delve into how the candidates voted (and not only what they have to say) and most often rely on their common sense when participating to political choices ?
I have been arguing these past few years that social technologies were an opportunity for corporations to reinvent their social value, their role in society. Would you not say that mastering these three dimensions are key milestones on a roadmap to renewed leadership ?
Thursday, October 6, 2011
What leadership programs will not achieve - thoughts about Steve Jobs
I was trying to put together a few ideas about the future of training and leadership in this connected world, when I learned about the death of Steve Jobs. So I thought I would pay a tribute to someone that co-created and built a company I started understanding and admire only ten years ago.
Even though I started working with a Mac, I was really converted to using Apple products by Claude, one of my good friends and partners. Convincing me would take time as I was all about building Talent Club into a software company at that time, and managing costs (I thought) was key. So Claude did convince me on the "cost" side - yes, Apple products are really cheaper than you would know, but you need to understand some things like value in a different way. Following, he started a slow (maybe painful for him) process of giving me some insights into Apple ways. And his main lesson, that I have made mine in my consulting activity today was : "Well, if that's what you need, why don't you just do it ?". Apple products are built so that you can easily do everything that they promise - no more, no less.
There are two other things I remember about learning the Apple ways. First, the importance of being true to its own principles. If I understand correctly, most of the success of Apple today rests on it having built a community of developpers on this very foundation (software development principles in this case, but you could argue the same about design principles and industrial principles).
Second, the ability that Apple has (or Steve Jobs had) of inventing the product you could not even dream about but, deep inside, unconsciously, you were ready for. It is how I translate my experience each time I discover a new product or a new evolution : I would certainly not have thought about it, but I was actually waiting for it to push my own professional practice further. I have really had these experiences each time I change my Mac or upgrade OSX.
All will be said about Steve Jobs these days, by people who knew him, so I had better stop here. I would just add that the the impact of people like Steve Jobs would not be predicted nor made possible by any educational, leadership or management program. And that is a very humbling thought for someone who has tried understanding how improving individual and collective ways of working can help advance our corporations
I've had the intuition for a long way that leadership practices we so carefully develop are only a way for corporations to face the shortage of truly exceptional people.
At the high end of the ladder, it's all about believing in yourself (“You know, I’ve got a plan that could rescue Apple. I can’t say any more than that it’s the perfect product and the perfect strategy for Apple. But nobody there will listen to me.”) and showing strong character (“My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better.”) - quotes from Macstories
Even though I started working with a Mac, I was really converted to using Apple products by Claude, one of my good friends and partners. Convincing me would take time as I was all about building Talent Club into a software company at that time, and managing costs (I thought) was key. So Claude did convince me on the "cost" side - yes, Apple products are really cheaper than you would know, but you need to understand some things like value in a different way. Following, he started a slow (maybe painful for him) process of giving me some insights into Apple ways. And his main lesson, that I have made mine in my consulting activity today was : "Well, if that's what you need, why don't you just do it ?". Apple products are built so that you can easily do everything that they promise - no more, no less.
There are two other things I remember about learning the Apple ways. First, the importance of being true to its own principles. If I understand correctly, most of the success of Apple today rests on it having built a community of developpers on this very foundation (software development principles in this case, but you could argue the same about design principles and industrial principles).
Second, the ability that Apple has (or Steve Jobs had) of inventing the product you could not even dream about but, deep inside, unconsciously, you were ready for. It is how I translate my experience each time I discover a new product or a new evolution : I would certainly not have thought about it, but I was actually waiting for it to push my own professional practice further. I have really had these experiences each time I change my Mac or upgrade OSX.
All will be said about Steve Jobs these days, by people who knew him, so I had better stop here. I would just add that the the impact of people like Steve Jobs would not be predicted nor made possible by any educational, leadership or management program. And that is a very humbling thought for someone who has tried understanding how improving individual and collective ways of working can help advance our corporations
I've had the intuition for a long way that leadership practices we so carefully develop are only a way for corporations to face the shortage of truly exceptional people.
At the high end of the ladder, it's all about believing in yourself (“You know, I’ve got a plan that could rescue Apple. I can’t say any more than that it’s the perfect product and the perfect strategy for Apple. But nobody there will listen to me.”) and showing strong character (“My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better.”) - quotes from Macstories
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Against Facebook SOS - the danger with analogies
The number of conversations around social operating systems has been increasing lately. Ben Elowitz even argues that Facebook has "boldly annexed the web" and become the central social operating (SOS) system of the social web (here).
I have written myself about social and corporate operating systems (here and here), and I am quite worried about what I see appearing. There are three reasons why I am worried:
I have written myself about social and corporate operating systems (here and here), and I am quite worried about what I see appearing. There are three reasons why I am worried:
- To begin with, analogies are useful as explanation tools, but they carry with them an empoverishment of meaning. That implies responsibility from anyone using an analogy;
- Secondly, considering Facebook (or any other social platform, for that matter) as a SOS demands that you ask some tough questions about resources, applications, hardware, users and, most importantly, ownership and meaning;
- And finally, there is the corporate wave of social technology adoption. One of its impacts is the generalisation of "generally accepted social usages" (GASU) within corporate firewalls. A corporation may master these GASU without any need for deep reinvention. The corporate OS is just an OS, such as the SOS is just an SOS. It will certainly give corporations unheard of power. The question about meaning and intent again needs to be asked.
What can you do when given acces to a powerful OS ? So many wonderful things and the more powerful the OS, the more astounding your achievements. But there are no intrinsic ethics in achievement. And therefore the key issue is responsibility, both corporate and personal. In this post, I will concentrate on the social sphere and will write about corporate OS in a future post.
What does the OS provide its users with ?
- Easy access to ressources - in this case, ressources are Facebook algorythms and our own personal data - welcome Timeline !
- The possibility to build applications that accelerate the leverage of these ressources,
- The potential to achieve the user's goals (personal or profesional) faster and deeper.
Now, who are the users ? Obviously, ourselves, anyone who has a Facebook account and plans to use it to make Facebook friends, share information with friends and family, keep track of relatives whereabouts, and engage in new social interactions. Keep in mind the potential of the system to develop new social interactions as an effect of developers creativity ...
There are other users : organizations, and today these are mainly marketing, media and PR companies as well as the members of Facebook business ecosystem.
Who is the owner of this system ? Facebook. What is Facebook ? A joint-stock, limited liability corporation. What is its goal ? To make a profit from serving its clients. Who are its clients ? Well, Facebook clients are the second category of users : Marketers. PR firms. New media ventures. Application developers.
These firms will pay Facebook for the right to use our data to better serve us. Us, the final beneficiaries of the whole system. This is just a business relationship, governed by the principles that have brought us where we are in terms of wealth, but also in terms of risks. And, given the sheer size of Facebook, and the amazing and growing speed with which the whole business ecosystem operates, it is key to loudly ask the tough question : where is the regulation that ensures that no entrepreneur turns to the dark side ? That no firm uses data patterns and intrusive technology to steer our consumption habits, play with ingrained fears or wants, in short, make a profit out of an unbalanced relationship ?
We are entering a whole new social dimension, and we come from a time when corporations (or the capitalist system, you might say) has been able to transform almost all human activities into economic activities. Lack of farsighted regulation has got us into financial trouble these days. I would argue this is nothing compared with the potential for trouble now building in front of us.
Facebook is a social utility, or at least it goes by that denomination. There are other utilities : transportation companies, water companies, ... They manage some of our key natural or urban ressources. Facebook manages part of what will become one of our key ressources in the future, the data and the knowledge that results from our interactions.
I do not question Facebook ethics nor its right to pursue its own corporate objectives. But i think it trades in a ressource which will prove key in building the future of our relationships, of the products and services we develop and consume, of the collective knowledge and intelligence we produce.
Its potential for profit being what it is, this is too important a business field to be left to the "invisible hand" to govern.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Why firms should stop adopting social technologies
I was reading a piece of counterintuitive writing on the Forrester blog, when it struck me : corporations should really stop adopting social technologies or even embarking on a path towards E2.0. Wait, isn't this my job after all, helping my clients move in that direction ? In fact, it really isn't.
When I try to understand what's behind the groundswell of social technologies, three facts come to mind : deep IT & business education of entrepreneurs; availability of funding (and advice); existing web (or internet) ecosystem. Same three facts, by the way, that could help in describing Google culture (I know google culture is much more complex than just three facts ...).
I think that to reach the level of value creation existing in the social web (which is possible) corporations need to disrupt themselves. Why ? Because bringing deep IT and business education to all, making funding available for projects depending on executives flair (and not tired CAPEX measures) and opening up their intranet spaces to all, is disruptive. Because long IT projects (taking six months to choose a CSN !), existing ROI mindsets and static performance measures will not let a corporation really change.
As a leader, you should not adopt social technologies to change your corporation but think instead about why social technologies flourished in the web, in the first place. These technologies are helping unlock human potential in a way that has never been seen before. THAT is a real, worth fighting for goal for your corporation, and not, obviously, just making the number of conversations grow.
When I try to understand what's behind the groundswell of social technologies, three facts come to mind : deep IT & business education of entrepreneurs; availability of funding (and advice); existing web (or internet) ecosystem. Same three facts, by the way, that could help in describing Google culture (I know google culture is much more complex than just three facts ...).
I think that to reach the level of value creation existing in the social web (which is possible) corporations need to disrupt themselves. Why ? Because bringing deep IT and business education to all, making funding available for projects depending on executives flair (and not tired CAPEX measures) and opening up their intranet spaces to all, is disruptive. Because long IT projects (taking six months to choose a CSN !), existing ROI mindsets and static performance measures will not let a corporation really change.
As a leader, you should not adopt social technologies to change your corporation but think instead about why social technologies flourished in the web, in the first place. These technologies are helping unlock human potential in a way that has never been seen before. THAT is a real, worth fighting for goal for your corporation, and not, obviously, just making the number of conversations grow.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Beyond "enterprise 2.0": age of the builders
I finished my former post worrying about the corporation as a bot ... Was I ahead of mysef ? As Google Wave keeps me thinking about changes to come, and this time not in society, but within the corporation, I contend that change will outpace most corporations that do not put collaboration platforms at the center of their strategy. Because, in so doing, corporations might be evolving into something different from what we are used to.
Those that do will be entering the age of the builders, and for them profit must become a second priority.
Changing ways of working : entering the "I have to automate it" era
And what is Google Wave if not the first premium-priced corporate collaboration platform available ?
It’s easy to assume that the impact of collaboration platforms like Google Wave will first be felt in our ways of working, that these platforms will replace email. That will be good, because, in corporations, mail is a poor IM tool, but a huge collaboration platform (think about MS Outlook). Bankers and consultants have been using email like IM for years and this has now become a general trend. In our mails, we add files and links, and sometimes invite people to collaborate with us using versioning applications. But, as everyone knows, that is not what it was intended for in the first place.
This first change then, could be welcomed. We would go from fighting misplaced usage of email to adopting a convenient tool for a company gone realtime. I am not saying this will be adopted easily, but it should not be very difficult.
When a platform like Google Wave is adopted, the difficult thing will be to adapt to bots, to make them more friendly, and then to develop new ones, adapted to real needs. At that point, people are going to start discovering that many of the tasks or activities they do could be better delt with through a bot. If the corporation is clever enough to have a pool of wave developpers at hand, anyone could feel like a software product manager ...
As a matter of fact, we already have bots all around us, we just did not know they were bots until someone (Google) called them by their names. But those old bots were cumbersome and difficult to develop and maintain. In the new corporate platform, bots will be created all over. Because, the objective of the platforms is to give everyone the skills (and the programming power) to build bots. We thought platforms were just for developers ... for them to make cool apps for most social networking sites ... wait until corporations widely understand what's at stake if you want to see real change !
This evolution will probably take some more time. We will be changing our current ways of working and also our understanding of what work is. We will be slowly entering a new era, the «I have to automate it era».
In this «I have to automate it era», we’ll go from solving problems to designing systems that solve problems. And, thinking about it, that is just what every successful entrepreuneur does. Designing a system (business model) to solve a problem or meet a demand. Absolutly. Create the right platform, and you’ll have a perfectly automated corporation. A corporation where entrepreuneurship is the dominant culture.
It seems to me that English (or Chinese) are going to be replaced as the must know language. Tomorrow, we need to learn to talk to the machine. Technology skills will be basic skills for the future blue-collar or white-collar worker.
Workers : from users, to contributors, to builders.
Let’s now deepen into what happens to these blue and white collar workers, as it is them that will suffer the changes in their ways of working.
If we go back in time some years (say, 1970) everybody was a user. People had to learn how to use machines, and then typing machines, and then Wang, and then a word-processor, and then Microsoft Office, and then ... Microsoft Office again, and again once more ... and so on.
That, of course, is still going on.
But slowly, in some enterprises, Enterprise 2.0 is gaining speed. In these workplaces, people are still users, but they need to get ready to continuously master new usages. Not learn them once or twice. Continuously change usages. If they succeed, the next challenge is to become contributors. In a world where reputation is a pillar for influence and where influence is a key professional asset, being a contributor to the collective knowledge of the corporation is key to professional development. Blogs, microblogs, internal wikipedias, folksonomies, we have all kind of systems to contribute through.
Mastering the usages, though, and the systems, is not enough. As the number of contributors grow, corporations are going to find ways to identify and select the best contributions - actually, HR systems have always done that (or tried). They will now look for different contributors, and selection will probably be collective, not individual, but it should keep happening anyway.
Now let’s think forward. Project some years ahead. When these corporate collaboration platforms are widely spread, we are going to become builders. We will be users and contributors but we will need to become builders of the future corporation: identify a problem; find a solution; build a bot. That’s it, builders of the intelligent corporation.
Of the deep mind.
This "I have to automate it" era is going to last for some years ...
And eventually, having entrepreuneurs increasingly quickly solve most issues that arise will push us to the new era. Because, once there are bots all over, we’ll be in the «what do I do next era». Not convinced ? Look at this short video from SalesForce. I love the part when the bot decides whether or not to call a human assistant ... And more seriously, we already are experiencing this: how about this assumption, "people loose their jobs quicker than before because what they have to bring takes less and less time to produce value". Projects are done quicker; corporations are built quicker; success is almost built over night. Have you checked lately how old Google is ? Right.
Training is the answer today to people obsolescence. Not enough. Because not everyone can be trained at the same pace, and training is still an industrial process, based on a mechanical view of the corporation. Adoption of collaboration platforms should also lead towards changing our mindset as organisation and value are concerned.
Organization and value : making profit a second priority.
Let’s consider the user - contributor - builder evolution. Of course, at any given moment in time, there are users, contributors or builders in any corporation. What is interesting is how the majority shifts from one category to the other. And how this impacts how value is created.
Users build value by executing tasks and activities through systems that are conceived in advance. Value produced by users can be easily evaluated, as it is expected by the system. The best example is the assembly line.
Today, most corporations have become automated. Anything that could be conceived in advanced and automated has been automated : and these machines include assembly lines, obviously, but also the ERPs, CRMs, BIs, and most other business softwares. Office work has had its MS Office automation too ...
The issue with this approach is that conceiving in advance is less and less efficient. The economy has gained speed. The systems do not deliver the value they should for very long. Not do the users ...
Contributors build value differently. They are helping the corporation built another key system : if we assume the IT network was built for users, now we needed the knowledge network for contributors. And, of course, not a Knowledge Management network. Who ever said knowledge had to be managed ? Anyway, once they can collaborate and use the existing knowledge network (think of an internal, business focused web 2.0 environment), they can start reacting to fast appearing issues. Something common these days ...
Just an observation. Contributors trust each other. They feel responsible for what they do. And dollar compensation is just one of the rewards they expect. Far from a user perspective, don’t you think ?
Value built by contributors is more difficult to evaluate, as it is not assumed in advance. You can always price a car and from that derive worker compensation. But now, how do you do that when you are selling, say, service, that comes from the collective contribution of a 1000 people firm ? Are you compensating based on position ? Not so easy, when positions are all but dissapearing in the new, knowledge network based corporation.
What about builders ? We have builders all over in our corporations : leaders, researchers, managers, ... But they are still in the minority side of the company. That’s why there is a chasm today (at least in France) between people above and people below a very difficult to define line.
When collaboration platforms are adopted, more and more people will be considered as builders, because building will be expeced of them. By building bots, corporations will be automating knowledge activities and problem solving. Many of the «tasks» that people do in a knowledge-network based corporation might disappear.
Consider what happens when the majority changes. When users become a minority in the corporation, and afterwards, when contributors become a minority ...
Users are left with a difficult choice : become a contributor or go be a user to any other, lesser, corporation; similarly, contributors are left with the choice to become builders or go contribute some-place else. Even builders, once they have put all they had in a bot, will have to learn to build bots for something different or go build solutions to other, lesser corporations.
Productivity gains are here to stay, it seems. It might be that being an entrepreneur will become a real option for more and more people ...
For corporations, value then (at least, financial value), will come from productivity. When everyone is a bot (I mean, when every problem or issue is solved by a bot), more value is produced with less people. How many workers does Facebook have ? Or an investment bank ? There are already companies, I believe, were builders are the majority ...
Or maybe not most value will come from productivity ... maybe, as some companies already do, people development will become the central process of the corporation. Because, in this age of the builders, if every copany concentrates on productivity and does not invest in people development (meaning long term human capital investment), what happens to global demand ? Is it not based on worker compensation, somehow ?
With all the changes we are living through, there is one thing that has not changed : leadership. It is high time it did. In the time of the builders, they will need to become builders themselves. Forget about delivering quarterly earnings to shareholders and begin concentrating on what the corporation is becoming. Think about value, about values, about the social impact of the corporation.
Corporations are not bots. They are machines from hell. Whatever is expected of them, they do. Today, leaders expect quaterly earnings from corporations, at whatever cost. It will be good to challenge this short term vision.
At this point, one thing is clear to me: leaders are needed to define what the corporation needs to become. Otherwise, the disparity in household income that we consider high today, will have just been the beginning of a sad story.
I started this two-post series thinking around Blade Runner. A sure thing: for corporations, waves will not be lost «like tears in rain».
Those that do will be entering the age of the builders, and for them profit must become a second priority.
Changing ways of working : entering the "I have to automate it" era
And what is Google Wave if not the first premium-priced corporate collaboration platform available ?
It’s easy to assume that the impact of collaboration platforms like Google Wave will first be felt in our ways of working, that these platforms will replace email. That will be good, because, in corporations, mail is a poor IM tool, but a huge collaboration platform (think about MS Outlook). Bankers and consultants have been using email like IM for years and this has now become a general trend. In our mails, we add files and links, and sometimes invite people to collaborate with us using versioning applications. But, as everyone knows, that is not what it was intended for in the first place.
This first change then, could be welcomed. We would go from fighting misplaced usage of email to adopting a convenient tool for a company gone realtime. I am not saying this will be adopted easily, but it should not be very difficult.
When a platform like Google Wave is adopted, the difficult thing will be to adapt to bots, to make them more friendly, and then to develop new ones, adapted to real needs. At that point, people are going to start discovering that many of the tasks or activities they do could be better delt with through a bot. If the corporation is clever enough to have a pool of wave developpers at hand, anyone could feel like a software product manager ...
As a matter of fact, we already have bots all around us, we just did not know they were bots until someone (Google) called them by their names. But those old bots were cumbersome and difficult to develop and maintain. In the new corporate platform, bots will be created all over. Because, the objective of the platforms is to give everyone the skills (and the programming power) to build bots. We thought platforms were just for developers ... for them to make cool apps for most social networking sites ... wait until corporations widely understand what's at stake if you want to see real change !
This evolution will probably take some more time. We will be changing our current ways of working and also our understanding of what work is. We will be slowly entering a new era, the «I have to automate it era».
In this «I have to automate it era», we’ll go from solving problems to designing systems that solve problems. And, thinking about it, that is just what every successful entrepreuneur does. Designing a system (business model) to solve a problem or meet a demand. Absolutly. Create the right platform, and you’ll have a perfectly automated corporation. A corporation where entrepreuneurship is the dominant culture.
It seems to me that English (or Chinese) are going to be replaced as the must know language. Tomorrow, we need to learn to talk to the machine. Technology skills will be basic skills for the future blue-collar or white-collar worker.
Workers : from users, to contributors, to builders.
Let’s now deepen into what happens to these blue and white collar workers, as it is them that will suffer the changes in their ways of working.
If we go back in time some years (say, 1970) everybody was a user. People had to learn how to use machines, and then typing machines, and then Wang, and then a word-processor, and then Microsoft Office, and then ... Microsoft Office again, and again once more ... and so on.
That, of course, is still going on.
But slowly, in some enterprises, Enterprise 2.0 is gaining speed. In these workplaces, people are still users, but they need to get ready to continuously master new usages. Not learn them once or twice. Continuously change usages. If they succeed, the next challenge is to become contributors. In a world where reputation is a pillar for influence and where influence is a key professional asset, being a contributor to the collective knowledge of the corporation is key to professional development. Blogs, microblogs, internal wikipedias, folksonomies, we have all kind of systems to contribute through.
Mastering the usages, though, and the systems, is not enough. As the number of contributors grow, corporations are going to find ways to identify and select the best contributions - actually, HR systems have always done that (or tried). They will now look for different contributors, and selection will probably be collective, not individual, but it should keep happening anyway.
Now let’s think forward. Project some years ahead. When these corporate collaboration platforms are widely spread, we are going to become builders. We will be users and contributors but we will need to become builders of the future corporation: identify a problem; find a solution; build a bot. That’s it, builders of the intelligent corporation.
Of the deep mind.
This "I have to automate it" era is going to last for some years ...
And eventually, having entrepreuneurs increasingly quickly solve most issues that arise will push us to the new era. Because, once there are bots all over, we’ll be in the «what do I do next era». Not convinced ? Look at this short video from SalesForce. I love the part when the bot decides whether or not to call a human assistant ... And more seriously, we already are experiencing this: how about this assumption, "people loose their jobs quicker than before because what they have to bring takes less and less time to produce value". Projects are done quicker; corporations are built quicker; success is almost built over night. Have you checked lately how old Google is ? Right.
Training is the answer today to people obsolescence. Not enough. Because not everyone can be trained at the same pace, and training is still an industrial process, based on a mechanical view of the corporation. Adoption of collaboration platforms should also lead towards changing our mindset as organisation and value are concerned.
Organization and value : making profit a second priority.
Let’s consider the user - contributor - builder evolution. Of course, at any given moment in time, there are users, contributors or builders in any corporation. What is interesting is how the majority shifts from one category to the other. And how this impacts how value is created.
Users build value by executing tasks and activities through systems that are conceived in advance. Value produced by users can be easily evaluated, as it is expected by the system. The best example is the assembly line.
Today, most corporations have become automated. Anything that could be conceived in advanced and automated has been automated : and these machines include assembly lines, obviously, but also the ERPs, CRMs, BIs, and most other business softwares. Office work has had its MS Office automation too ...
The issue with this approach is that conceiving in advance is less and less efficient. The economy has gained speed. The systems do not deliver the value they should for very long. Not do the users ...
Contributors build value differently. They are helping the corporation built another key system : if we assume the IT network was built for users, now we needed the knowledge network for contributors. And, of course, not a Knowledge Management network. Who ever said knowledge had to be managed ? Anyway, once they can collaborate and use the existing knowledge network (think of an internal, business focused web 2.0 environment), they can start reacting to fast appearing issues. Something common these days ...
Just an observation. Contributors trust each other. They feel responsible for what they do. And dollar compensation is just one of the rewards they expect. Far from a user perspective, don’t you think ?
Value built by contributors is more difficult to evaluate, as it is not assumed in advance. You can always price a car and from that derive worker compensation. But now, how do you do that when you are selling, say, service, that comes from the collective contribution of a 1000 people firm ? Are you compensating based on position ? Not so easy, when positions are all but dissapearing in the new, knowledge network based corporation.
What about builders ? We have builders all over in our corporations : leaders, researchers, managers, ... But they are still in the minority side of the company. That’s why there is a chasm today (at least in France) between people above and people below a very difficult to define line.
When collaboration platforms are adopted, more and more people will be considered as builders, because building will be expeced of them. By building bots, corporations will be automating knowledge activities and problem solving. Many of the «tasks» that people do in a knowledge-network based corporation might disappear.
Consider what happens when the majority changes. When users become a minority in the corporation, and afterwards, when contributors become a minority ...
Users are left with a difficult choice : become a contributor or go be a user to any other, lesser, corporation; similarly, contributors are left with the choice to become builders or go contribute some-place else. Even builders, once they have put all they had in a bot, will have to learn to build bots for something different or go build solutions to other, lesser corporations.
Productivity gains are here to stay, it seems. It might be that being an entrepreneur will become a real option for more and more people ...
For corporations, value then (at least, financial value), will come from productivity. When everyone is a bot (I mean, when every problem or issue is solved by a bot), more value is produced with less people. How many workers does Facebook have ? Or an investment bank ? There are already companies, I believe, were builders are the majority ...
Or maybe not most value will come from productivity ... maybe, as some companies already do, people development will become the central process of the corporation. Because, in this age of the builders, if every copany concentrates on productivity and does not invest in people development (meaning long term human capital investment), what happens to global demand ? Is it not based on worker compensation, somehow ?
With all the changes we are living through, there is one thing that has not changed : leadership. It is high time it did. In the time of the builders, they will need to become builders themselves. Forget about delivering quarterly earnings to shareholders and begin concentrating on what the corporation is becoming. Think about value, about values, about the social impact of the corporation.
Corporations are not bots. They are machines from hell. Whatever is expected of them, they do. Today, leaders expect quaterly earnings from corporations, at whatever cost. It will be good to challenge this short term vision.
At this point, one thing is clear to me: leaders are needed to define what the corporation needs to become. Otherwise, the disparity in household income that we consider high today, will have just been the beginning of a sad story.
I started this two-post series thinking around Blade Runner. A sure thing: for corporations, waves will not be lost «like tears in rain».
Monday, November 23, 2009
Do Bots Dream of Electronic Corporations ?
I was watching Blade Runner when it struck me that, much like androids in that movie were dangerously close to humans, bots in Waves (Google Waves, that is) are, potentially, dangerously close to employees.
Think about it : why all the hype about Google Wave ? After all, it is just another platform, and the fact that platforms are the key component of any corporate strategy is already (widely) understood (this article, for instance). There is great technology in Google Wave, that, I agree with, but we are used to living with increasingly great technology.
No, the more I think about it the more I believe that calling bots its applications and giving them participant status in conversation is the killing idea. Thinking further, while it is a fact that Google people are masters at buzz marketing, there are, I believe, deeper reasons behind the hype:
After Guttenberg ...
Culture production in this new environment, in this Quick Brain, is becoming very different with what it used to be. Thomas Pettitt of the University of Southern Denmark (his document) has intelligently simplified the debates by stating that we are coming out of the Guttenberg Parenthesis, a long period in which culture production became individualistic because of the nature of printing press. In the web 2.0 environment, production is definitely more collective and dynamic : a blog, for instance, is not only interesting in itself, but also as part of the network built by incoming and outgoing links. As the blog evolves, so do the other blogs it is linked to. In this ecosystem, we are continuously adapting our own individual reading and learning processes.
Two or tree years ago, we used to build our paths in the blogosphere, identify our preferred bloggers and thinkers, and usually go back to them for reference. Unlike the ones presented in a book, the ideas that we found there kept evolving, because posts were updated, because its links were changed and mostly because other links had been created. Today, even our preferred thinkers and bloggers are not our only references as the realtime web accelerates connexions between ideas (see what Brian Solis has to say about contextual networks).
I would like to argue that, by providing a platform for collective thought, Google Wave goes one step further, which could prove to be a giant step.
In the first place, a wave is a dynamic conversation. I tell my clients that forum conversations are key learning objects that should be built carefully (from an individual point of view) as they will help others quickly catch up with the thought process of the conversation. To my mind, conversations are key building blocks of communities.
A wave brings another dimension to the conversation. It is at the same time horizontal and vertical. Horizontally, the conversation can linger for ages, as new people or ideas come in. Vertically, every step of the conversation can be deepened. This is something that could be done before in Q&A forums, for instance, but it somehow appears more natural in a wave.
If Twitter, for instance, is a tool for improving the Quick Brain and creating endless contextual networks, then I would say that Google Wave is a tool for building deep brains all around. It has the potential to exponentially increase the thinking power of the web. Other tools and applications had a similar potential maybe (think about social networks), but none of them gave participants to the tool the same power that I think wave participants can have. Through bots.
Yes, secondly, and more important to my mind, a wave brings in bots. The bots in itself are interesting, but not a revolution : after all, we live in a world where more tasks are executed by automated machines (mecanical or virtual) than by humans. As I said before, the point with bots is that they are given participant status in the conversation. Here is where we go back to the androids of Philip K. Dick.
Let’s push further : with basic programming skills, almost anyone can create a bot (an avatar) to add a permanent value to the conversation. That has mind-boggling implications: a person with a brillant idea that can be transformed into a bot could be participating in countless conversations. Well not him, his avatar. Or his bot. Or is actually his bot really his bot ?
Google Wave strikes me because it provides a platform for building deep brains all over, and deep brains in which humans, some day, will not be needed to keep adding value and meaning to the wave (if bot development takes on, then new bots could go back to existing waves and keep adding value to the existing conversation).
And so it is that, in this post-Guttenberg era, we go back to a dynamic, continuously evolving culture. In this cultural environment, books still provide starting points for conversations but, for that matter, so can a blog post or a tweet. And, compared to the pre-Guttenberg era, we have reached a speed level in culture production that was not conceivable before. Why ? Because today, we are not only a human society, we are also a technological society.
... and before "the singularity"
Ollivier Dyens has argued (and brilliantly in my humble opinion) in his book La Nature Inhumaine, that we have reached such a step in our technological development when we need to look at society with new eyes. Biological reality is only a vision of reality. Our key principles (what it is to be alive, human, conscious) are based on that biological reality. It is time to question them.
If you read that book, you will be prompted to change your understanding of what technology is (what is built and transforms matter or perception). For Dyens, we live in a world that is more technological than biological, if you admit that everything we have built, starting with the language, is a technology.
Assuming Dyens position, you may actually wonder whether a book was not already a bot. A participant in any conversation. After all, what it is we are doing when we quote a book (or someone) if not bringing him/her/it in the conversation ?
It seems then, Google did not invent anything. Bots were always here. We used to call them books, or songs, or paintings, or .... Just vehicles for smart ideas. And then, the Guttenberg Parenthesis was not really a parenthesis. Just the time it took us to admit books in the conversation ...
I have to admit it then. Google people are masters at buzz marketing. They just helped me understand the society we have been living in, and that we still look at through our old, romantic, pre-industrial revolution eyes. Just the same eyes many of us still use to look at our professional environment, at our good old organizations.
An, in my opinion, if there is a bot that we should worry about, it is precisely the corporation. I have little doubt that the best ones will take advantage of cheap, easy-to-install and easy-to-program platforms like Google Wave is. Why, if you think about it, why not replace maintenance-intensive FTE with easy-to-develop and maintenance-light bots ?
I’ll be writing about that in a future post.
No, the more I think about it the more I believe that calling bots its applications and giving them participant status in conversation is the killing idea. Thinking further, while it is a fact that Google people are masters at buzz marketing, there are, I believe, deeper reasons behind the hype:
- As a social platform, Google Wave is born at the crossroads of two major social evolutions, that have been dubbed «the end of the guttenberg parenthesis» and «the coming of the singularity»; analyzing bots helps better catch the meaning of these evolutions;
- As a business platform, it pushes platform strategy into daylight, and provides the first «mass market» platform for corporate revolution.
After Guttenberg ...
Culture production in this new environment, in this Quick Brain, is becoming very different with what it used to be. Thomas Pettitt of the University of Southern Denmark (his document) has intelligently simplified the debates by stating that we are coming out of the Guttenberg Parenthesis, a long period in which culture production became individualistic because of the nature of printing press. In the web 2.0 environment, production is definitely more collective and dynamic : a blog, for instance, is not only interesting in itself, but also as part of the network built by incoming and outgoing links. As the blog evolves, so do the other blogs it is linked to. In this ecosystem, we are continuously adapting our own individual reading and learning processes.
Two or tree years ago, we used to build our paths in the blogosphere, identify our preferred bloggers and thinkers, and usually go back to them for reference. Unlike the ones presented in a book, the ideas that we found there kept evolving, because posts were updated, because its links were changed and mostly because other links had been created. Today, even our preferred thinkers and bloggers are not our only references as the realtime web accelerates connexions between ideas (see what Brian Solis has to say about contextual networks).
I would like to argue that, by providing a platform for collective thought, Google Wave goes one step further, which could prove to be a giant step.
In the first place, a wave is a dynamic conversation. I tell my clients that forum conversations are key learning objects that should be built carefully (from an individual point of view) as they will help others quickly catch up with the thought process of the conversation. To my mind, conversations are key building blocks of communities.
A wave brings another dimension to the conversation. It is at the same time horizontal and vertical. Horizontally, the conversation can linger for ages, as new people or ideas come in. Vertically, every step of the conversation can be deepened. This is something that could be done before in Q&A forums, for instance, but it somehow appears more natural in a wave.
If Twitter, for instance, is a tool for improving the Quick Brain and creating endless contextual networks, then I would say that Google Wave is a tool for building deep brains all around. It has the potential to exponentially increase the thinking power of the web. Other tools and applications had a similar potential maybe (think about social networks), but none of them gave participants to the tool the same power that I think wave participants can have. Through bots.
Yes, secondly, and more important to my mind, a wave brings in bots. The bots in itself are interesting, but not a revolution : after all, we live in a world where more tasks are executed by automated machines (mecanical or virtual) than by humans. As I said before, the point with bots is that they are given participant status in the conversation. Here is where we go back to the androids of Philip K. Dick.
Let’s push further : with basic programming skills, almost anyone can create a bot (an avatar) to add a permanent value to the conversation. That has mind-boggling implications: a person with a brillant idea that can be transformed into a bot could be participating in countless conversations. Well not him, his avatar. Or his bot. Or is actually his bot really his bot ?
Google Wave strikes me because it provides a platform for building deep brains all over, and deep brains in which humans, some day, will not be needed to keep adding value and meaning to the wave (if bot development takes on, then new bots could go back to existing waves and keep adding value to the existing conversation).
And so it is that, in this post-Guttenberg era, we go back to a dynamic, continuously evolving culture. In this cultural environment, books still provide starting points for conversations but, for that matter, so can a blog post or a tweet. And, compared to the pre-Guttenberg era, we have reached a speed level in culture production that was not conceivable before. Why ? Because today, we are not only a human society, we are also a technological society.
... and before "the singularity"
Ollivier Dyens has argued (and brilliantly in my humble opinion) in his book La Nature Inhumaine, that we have reached such a step in our technological development when we need to look at society with new eyes. Biological reality is only a vision of reality. Our key principles (what it is to be alive, human, conscious) are based on that biological reality. It is time to question them.
If you read that book, you will be prompted to change your understanding of what technology is (what is built and transforms matter or perception). For Dyens, we live in a world that is more technological than biological, if you admit that everything we have built, starting with the language, is a technology.
Assuming Dyens position, you may actually wonder whether a book was not already a bot. A participant in any conversation. After all, what it is we are doing when we quote a book (or someone) if not bringing him/her/it in the conversation ?
It seems then, Google did not invent anything. Bots were always here. We used to call them books, or songs, or paintings, or .... Just vehicles for smart ideas. And then, the Guttenberg Parenthesis was not really a parenthesis. Just the time it took us to admit books in the conversation ...
I have to admit it then. Google people are masters at buzz marketing. They just helped me understand the society we have been living in, and that we still look at through our old, romantic, pre-industrial revolution eyes. Just the same eyes many of us still use to look at our professional environment, at our good old organizations.
An, in my opinion, if there is a bot that we should worry about, it is precisely the corporation. I have little doubt that the best ones will take advantage of cheap, easy-to-install and easy-to-program platforms like Google Wave is. Why, if you think about it, why not replace maintenance-intensive FTE with easy-to-develop and maintenance-light bots ?
I’ll be writing about that in a future post.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)