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 ...

Facebook and the Commons

Should we think about Facebook business model or insist on it becoming ... a public utility ?

Unleadership

If we are serious and ambitious in our drive to transform our organizations into next generation social enterprises (or social businesses), we need to unlearn most of what we think we knew about leadership, and focus our R&D efforts on next generation leadership.

Leveraging social technologies for talent management

HR should adopt social technologies to reinvent itself. Only in so doing can it reinvent talent management and build it into a strategic capability

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:

• 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 it mean for Facebook or any other to be a social OS ?

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.  

Going Foursquare! Gamification of talent management

This is a post I first intended as a Hack for the Management Innovation eXchange

Origins of Talent Management ... stil valid ?

Talent Management Systems have been developed in classic, hierarchical organizations. They are most often based on heavy frameworks (competency framework, performance framework, key positions framework, ...) that have proved their value in slow-changing organizations (themselves buried in slow-changing environments).

 

These systems are great options to develop leaders and managers supposed to fill the shoes of their elders, and continue with the same type of leadership and management models. Such systems have been extremely efficient in industrial-age corporations such as General Electric, Danaher, Valeo, ...

 

These systems have two important shortcomings : they are selective and static. Simply put, they lead to choose between two leaders or managers and they certainly do not foster innovation (innovative skills, behaviours, gems - see this hack).

 

In an ever accelerating organizational evolution and a deeply socialized world (through social technologies), these systems represent a major hindrance for organization evolution. They often result in HR teams having to work "around the system". They also result in dissenters and alternative talents leaving the organization.

From practices to a "Talent Locator & Accelerator"

The talent locator and accelerator is built following three phases : analysis of existing social networks that have a proximity with the corporation; defintion of a dynamic system (the talent locator and accelerator); new system adoption driving 

 

HR teams should analyze the recognition & engagement systems in social networks, that are specific to each social network focus (professional, conversational, friending, ...). Such systems have been able, at the same time, to engage an ever increasing number of members while being able to make each individual stand out in regard of her/his particular abilities, friends, opinions, postings, ...

 

This analysis will help HR teams define new recognition systems in terms of :

• What needs to be recognized (basis for engagement) : is it participation, contribution, belonging, raw talent, innovative talent, particular abilities, exceptional performance, ... ?
• How to identify / measure the items that need to be recognized ? If, say, participation or contribution can be measured in terms of quantity and quality, measuring an innovative skill is almost impossible. In this particular case (and similar ones), HR teams will need to innovate themselves and devise new means for identifying particular abilities or innovative talent. For instance, a marketing expert that gets an unusual high number of "likes" (or its corporate equivalent) has probably a new idea or a particular ability. HR teams should be able to poll the "fans or followers" (or their corporate equivalent) of the marketing expert and identify the new talent or ability;
• Who will be responsible for recognition : leaders & managers ? peers ? the whole organization through a specific social intellegence tool ? a given community members ? Working on measurement and responsibility for recognition is probably a huge opportunity for impact of HR on strategy development
• When (if ever) is formal evaluation needed ?
• What type of reward will be tied to a particular type of recognition : financial ? reputation ? influence ? professional development ? social engagement ?
• How will recognition translate into the existing corporate social network ? Badges, recomendations, other symbols ?

Adoption of such a system should start where new social technologies and usage is high, but also in parts of the organization that are in dire need of innovation. Adoption of such a system is not a simple, unidirectional project. It is a continuous feed-back loop, in which new dimensions are added to the recognition system as new business, functions, geographies adopt the system.

 

In the end, recognition of talent, abilities, performance, participation, must become a solid part of the corporate culture and of individual activity

 

The Deep Brain and the Quick Brain

Foundations for social network strategy in a connected world

I have spent the past two years leading internal collaboration-based change management programs. Slowly, the conversations are developing, pushing us to the next issue: how to leverage the internal conversations to find a right voice for the corporation in the social web ?

This is not an easy question, and it does not solely revolve around marketing or PR, because, beyond general conversations (that are not always very well considered), what is just begining to happen within the companies I help is new capability development. And I still do not see that happening in the wider social web, at least not to the same level, unless there is a well identified corporation behind (open innovation, for instance).

In the past few days, a post by Brian Solis (the Micro Disruption Theory and the Social Effect) and a tweet by Ross Dawson (using twitter to build the global brain) inspired me to finish organizing my thoughts.

I understand that a global brain is indeed under construction, that I will call the Quick Brain. To participate meaningfully and profitably in this quick brain, corporations must strive to become Deep Brains and then learn to master a new voice. In this world, strategy would revolve around Engaging, Deepening and Twitting (or socializing).


The Quick Brain

The sheer size of online links, searches and conversations has helped rise many voices that wonder whether we are still able to think by ourselves in this environment (see Is Google Making Us Stupid, by Nicholas Carr). My own thought has been that yes, by linking, conversing, searching, we at least loose some of the time we previously had for deep thinking.

And yet, I for one spend a huge amount of time in this new game, and I would say that the share of global attention being devoted to the web is growing fast. The new skills that I am developing (quick reading, tool switching, quick writing, fast thinking process switch, ...) are key to participating in the conversation. But what exactly am I doing, what am I accomplishing in this web ?

The description that Brian Solis makes of Contextual Networks was very helpful in making me understand that role. As I see it, when I participate in a conversation or just forward some information that was interesting or helpful (RT or liking), I am part of an ephemere contextual network, in which I am bound by topic and time to other people. This network is based on existing connexions (friends, contacts, links, followers, depending on the social platform), yet different from those connexions, and it serves a specific purpuse (forwarding a piece of information and increasing resonance).

It is possible therefore to say that the accelerating linking of people in the web is similar to the development of a new kind of infrastructure, let’s call it the human infrastructure. Its objective is to accelerate the transmission of information from one person to another, using existing links and search engines, but also those contextual networks defined by Brian Solis. The web has hypertext links for individual usage. The human infrastructure has contextual networks that it uses to, yes, think (in want of a better word to call this process).

I could then say that, when I tweet, blog, comment, RT or contribute, I am an individual component of this Quick Brain.

Why do I call this brain the Quick Brain ? Because it seems to me that its primary purpose is to accelerate the rythm of information/knowledge sharing, thus provoking insights, inspiration, learnings, ... in the members that are touched by that sharing. And it also seems to me that, in order to think deeply and organize my thoughts, I need to disconnect (or at least, partially disconnect). This brain goes fast, and it inspires or surprises or helps learn. It does more than sharing but does it think ?

To answer that question I would say that deep thinking rests with individuals and organized groups or communities. In that sense, it is clear that companies, much like individuals, are supposed to think. Or at least think deeper than the quick brain.


The Deep Brain.

I make a difference between corporations operating and corporations thinking. Corporations need to be good at operating their business models and also at advancing ideas and concepts, and later use them either to develop services (R&D) or to solve client problems. Increasingly, it’s their ability to continuously advance ideas and solve problems, and transform new ideas and solutions into lean operations, that makes a difference.

The knowledge economy is not a new concept and corporations are used to developing ideas and solutions. What is then different with the arrival in corporations of social computing, E2.0 or, as I like to call it, improved and people-centered collaboration (I have already said that we are entering a time of People-Centered Organizations)?

The main difference is the soft infrastructure that the companies are developing. Yesterday, and contrary to what happens in the Quick Brain, there was a Knowledge Infrastructure in most companies, but not yet a Human Infrastructure. Companies were (most still are) knowledge-centered. With the arrival of social networks and other social computing tools, the corporations have an opportunity to recenter themselves around people or talent.

I would say the Deep Brain is the new, people-centered, corporate working environment that leverages both the strengths of the organization and of the social networks. Like the Quick Brain, the Deep Brain has in speed a fundamental asset, and yet it strongly differs from the Quick Brain:

• People (employees) have the ability to create their contextual networks depending on their interest or they can participate in existing contextual networks. Still, many of these contextual networks are long-lived (existing functions or departements), and they maintain strong ties with a number of employees; the attention spams are wider, and people concentrate on a limited number of topics because they have a result to reach;
• The number of topics itself is limited, and most of them concentrate around the professional field of the organization;
• People (employees) have developed strong common ways of working. Not only do they share a common knowledge, they are also able to work together very efficiently (today, this is what we call a corporate culture);
• Most important, to my mind, employees do not engage in conversations or contextual networks only based on their personal interest or attention; they engage in these contextual networks based on their professional responsibility and interest.

When I started thinking about the difference between the Quick Brain and the Deep Brain, I was thinking that there would be a difference in tools: twitter would more useful in the quick brain and blog in the deep brain. Actually, I think now that the important thing is usage, that very often comes after tools. It is how people in a corporation use these tools in consistent ways that will make much of the efficiency of their deep collective thinking.


Engaging, deepening, connecting

How then to leverage your Deep Brain to make a difference in the social web ? That is what I plan to work on for the next months. But I would give a number of insights:

• It is more important to engage your people than to train them;
• Only based on a special kind of motivation is there a chance for collective deep thinking;
• That ability for collective deep thinking will probably be a key skill, and it will be a part of your employees personal reputation, therefore making a strong impact on your corporate reputation.

Your people will be ready to connect, based on skill and reputation.


How do you think this distinction between deep brain and quick brain is helpful for a social network strategy design ?

Return on talent

Lowell Bryan has argued here that companies should concentrate on return on talent (profit per employee) and use return on capital as a sanity check. It is good to see we are getting there !

I think Lowell Bryan is right to concentrate on financials, as they drive decisions in most cases. And I am more than happy to see efforts in the direction of making talent the driver of wealth creation. I am just worried about the implications of concentrating on profit per employee. You will not get a higher profit per employee only by shedding "C-workers" (even if this mechanically does the job). Employees are not just employees, they form the social body of a corporation and as such it is difficult to account for them on an individual basis, without taking into account interactions.

An employee with a low "profit ratio" can be a relationships nexus allowing other coworkers to accelerate their own performance.

We need a new mindset to really approach talent financials, probably the one that goes with the "networked economy".

And we definitely need to think about the relation between talent and the assets they create for a company.

Are French politics an example of mass collaboration ?

Rather interestingly, Segolène Royal launched a massive "collective" writing of her "Pacte Presidentiel". This was built around a website, "Desirs d'Avenir", in which I have seen interesting and high quality discussions and "wikis". This was complemented by real life meetings all around France. Both streams of events resulted in a small team analyzing and trying to reach conclusions to actually write the candidate's "Pacte Présidentiel".

As someone that has been trying to help organizations develop internal network and communities, I was not optimistic about the impact of this methodology. So ambitious ! It seemed too quick to work and producing a real document felt to me like manipulating people.

And yet, the candidate made it to the next round. As always, it is not so much the contents as the social network created around a person, an idea or a group that is important. Even in politics.

If she goes all the way to the presidency, how will she continue with her "community-oriented" policy-making ? Will she push it and break barriers in this brave new world or fall back and risk being seen as only another talented politician ?

In any case, we have not heard the last of "mass policy making"