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March 30 DigitalCore is your tool for sharing....So as we enter the digital age we face an economic recession. Are these two events linked? Yes! They are linked because the analogue systems are coming to an end and the new digital networks are not fully up and running. Strangely the recession could prove a good thing for people in transition from the old system to the new networks. How so? Well in the new networks the key to success is one's willingness to share or to be inclusive - in the old analogue system the key to success was one's willingness to be exclusive. The digital age is coming fast in some areas and glacially slow in others. The speed of transformation is geared to how fast you are sloughing off your analogue systems. How fast you can shift from analogue systems to digital networks? If you work in people-based systems do you work in a silo or are you part of a crowd-sourcing network. If you work in an analogue silo then you find it hard to share. If you are part of a crowd-sourcing network then you know it is imperative that you share. So in a digital network you have to share to be efficient and effective. But if you go about sharing everything you have then you are quickly overwhelmed by the feedback loops you create. Everyone will share back with you. Pretty soon you have an abundance of sharing and you can not cope - it could be enough to drive you back into an analogue silo. Well help is here - your DigitalCore is a tool to enable you to focus on what, how, and when to share. Your DigitalCore is tool to help you focus on your three key digital networks in three very different ways. First your big picture network where you share with everyone. Here your core need is to develop themes - these can change as often as you like but while they are in place they will enable you to filter your engagement. Second your new possibilities network where you share with a select group of innovators. Here your core need is to develop working prototypes. These are your launch and learn vehicles - quickly you either see what you are doing as a deadend or you see opportunities to network with this select group to produce some desirable outcomes. Third you have your networked equivalent of a walled off silo. Here you are purpose-driven and work very closely with a small group on a restricted network. The sharing is here is about work tasks and progress not big ideas or themes. Bring all three activities together is a simple matter of facilitation and filtering and that is what you design and build your DigitalCore to do for you. My DigitalCore may be very much the same as yours but what we do with our digital tool may well be very different. DigitalCore is a filter....DigitalCore is my notion of a simple organising tool for our times. As we move beyond the people-based systems to information-based networks we need to invent and innovate our traditional notions of organisation. Networks are real-time organisations that thrive on use. Twitter is a good example of what we are heading for within our organisations as it provides a constant conversation. Conversations are the lifeblood of web-based networks because they sustain clusters, clans, and tribes (read earlier posts for my thinking about why/how these entities form and why/how they might be important). (More on this later...) March 27 You can not manage your social network, full stop... Facilitation is a core talent for organisation. As we all move from an analogue to a digital world the art of facilitation will replace the art of management. Why so? The art of management is about control - it is about who takes responsibility or who is accountable for what. In an analogue world the control mechanisms were designed and built for people-based processes. These processes are sequential - they run in series and so they are organised into convenient silos. These silos are controlled by a range of mechanism ranging from legal authority over people to the influence of an organised culture. The biggest challenge for most managers was whether to centralise or a decentralise their control mechanism. If they centralised then they organised their people processes into functional units. If they decentralised then they organised their people processes into areal units. Either way their management challenge was how best to control the output of their people-based processes. Of course you know all this and you live with it, for better or worse, every day. But like it or not part, large or small only you know really, is about to change in ways that mean the art of management is defunct. Problem is we still have so many managers around that they are going to use their particular skills, tools, mindsets, etc whether they are appropriate or not. Believe me when I tell they are not appropriate when you are dealing with a digital networked economy! Today we have an emergent social network formed by digital tools like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc that are being treated as if they were analogue silos of people. These silos are called 'communities' and are being managed. Guess what? They are not communities and they can not be managed. They are digital clusters of information that need to be facilitated if they are to survive and prosper. March 26 DigitalCore is coming to you....Business is all about revenue models. Yeah I know many say it is all about customers, brands, trust, talent, etc. But you and I know that if you do not understand your own revenue model then you do not understand what business you are in. Indeed, you know better than me that most business people can not clearly and unequivocally tell you just what business they are in. They can tell you about customers, relationships with past customers, stories of recent or past success with customers but not what business they are in. When they tell you we run a restaurant and that it is not doing as well as last year they start in about customers. But they do not tell you that the 'business they are in is entertainment' and that industry is down because people are no spending as freely in these tough economic times. So here is the rub - in these tough times much of what business use to sell is being given to consumers free. Yes in this digital age much of what we use to pay for is free and also freely available. The music industry knows about this change - every moment of every day consumers are downloading music to their digital device without paying a fee. So much is free within this industry that you as a consumer of free goods have a new problem. What do you actually want to have on your digital device. When you had to pay for your songs you had a price or budget limit but now you need a filter. Guess what? You are suddenly in need of a service for which you might be willing to pay a small or even a large fee. You need a digital filter that shows you only what you really want to hear by the way of music before you start downloading from the web. This is where DigitalCore (my term for a digital organiser) comes in for you. The DigitalCore that is coming to you is a filter that you willingly pay a fee for because you are swamped with free and freely available digital offerings. DigitalCore is an organiser that enables you to get the best from a network of offerings in music, videos, banking, travel, etc. One is coming to you - hopefully soon! March 25 Web 3.0 brings us a mobile digital economy - maybe?Web 3.0 is here see http://ow.ly/1kIZ We have been waiting for it for a decade or more. Twitter will come alive on this new platform. Facebook can become relevant and remarkable in surprising new ways. LinkedIn has work to do if it is to catch up with these developments. Brands will die - overnight. Customer-provider relationships will be re-invented - overnight. New digital revenue models will emerge - overnight. Innovation in real time over your iphone - overnight. New web-based communities forming into micro economic networks - overnight. My repeated observation here is that these new global economic networks will form three communities - what I call clusters (these are not innovative), clans (these are early adopters and are innovative), and tribes (these are the long-tail and are not innovative). LinkedIn appeals to tribes not clans. Twitter appeals to clusters not clans. Who will capture the clans? Perhaps it will be a reformatted Facebook or as I hope a whole new organisational entity. March 23 Meeting face-to-face gets a new meaning....You probably laugh, as I do, when you read a traditional print journalist trying to explain Twitter. Most of what they have to say is negative because they just do not get it. First they focus on the trivial. Second they miss report the big picture. Third they are not even wrong in what they say so they are hard to criticize. I had one of those, oh yeah that is truly hilarious, moments recently while reading about Twitter in my local paper. So what is Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Ning, etc positively about for you both today and tomorrow. Simply put each of them is about providing you with a much more efficient and effective organisation of all your information via your conversations online. The importance and the impact of this new organisation to you is that you can now have much shorter yet much more meaningful face-to-face meetings. Why is this so? Let us suppose your current face-to-face meetings have become less and less meaningful over recent years. They have become this way for you because they were more and more about information sharing and less and less about people's interactions. You met people and shared information but you did not share insights into each others' world or life. You have become robotic at meetings because you have learned to focus on the information not the people. You have learned to be there, like all the other robots, to sort through the information being shared. The good news is that today you can use your various digital networks to share information in ways that 'free' you up to be yourself at your next face-to-face meeting. If you run into some robots there you can defuse them by offering to share all the information you and your digital networks have on the web. Allow them to 'chill out' for a few moments and then you can all interact as human beings once again. That is what social networking has brought you. You have more free or human time coming to you too so watch this space. Meanwhile, happy face-to-face meeting times to you and yours. March 20 DigitalCore.....Most C21st global business models have a DigitalCore - it is a simple connector. It is your connector. It is programmable. It contextual. It is individual. Thus each connector is slightly different yet still does the same things. It provides access to content, product, service, or people. Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace are all digital connectors. If you use them regularly they can quickly become your DigitalCore. Twitter provides you with instant connections to networks of people, content, and services. People tweet you. Content is linked to some of those tweets. Services like Guy Kawasaki's Alltop which provides you with an aggregation of news items - somewhat like a digital magazine - is accessible on Twitter. In similar ways both Facebook and MySpace connect you to people, content, and services too. 2009 is a year for renewal and redesign as the world sorts through the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. This could be the perfect time to design, prototype, and build your DigitalCore. March 19 Is your best asset buried in clutter?What business are you in? What is your best asset for doing well in that business? How is business? What business is Google in? Advertising. What is Google's best asset for doing well in that business? Search results linked to advertisements for relevant or related goods and services. How is business? Booming. Are you able to answer those three questions as quickly and as easily as Google can? If not why not? Most businesses are confused about what business they are in. Most business people hedge their bets by providing a lot of ancillary products or services. Most businesses end up with their best asset being buried in clutter. What business is Wal-Mart in? Box store retailing. What is Wal-Mart's best asset for doing well in that business? Consistently low prices. How is business? Booming. March 18 Compete with your revenue model....In business today you can be competitors even though you do not belong to the same industry, provide similar services, nor have comparable products. Where you compete directly is with your revenue model. Google is a good example of being a competitor for lots of businesses that know little or nothing about search engines. They could be newspapers, magazines, TV stations, etc but they find they are competing with Google's revenue model. Google makes its money from advertising as do many other businesses that would never see themselves as being remotely connected to business run from the Googleplex at Mountain View California. Newspapers are dead or dying around the
world at present because they do not have a revenue model that can
compete with online content providers. The old revenue model of
classfied advertising is no longer able to compete with the scale and
reach of online advertising. March 16 What is a digital warrior?Richard Lipscombe is a Digital Warrior who uses a fast-track process for shaping Customer Demand. His unique process has three key elements - Clear, Hold, and Build. Clear out old ideologies and revenue models to form a new framework for action. Hold new ideas in a stable new business model then use prototypes to break test them. Build new revenue models to match the new demand system we experience in the flat world of the internet.  Organise in 2009Organise your information for real-time access and action. Digital technologies present you with new capabilities for instant action. In 2009 the emphasis is on speed and accuracy when you act. To ensure you are fast in your action and reaction times you need the appropriate level of detailed information - not more not less. You live in a bubble of information - much of it is useless. Your bubble connects with other bubbles with equally useless information floating around within them. Which bubble to access and when is a key consideration for you 24/7 in 2009. If you are randomly connected to all the bubbles you were in 2008 then these strange times of slow growth, risk aversion, and inept actions with infect you and may even paralyze you. Are you connected to too many information bubbles? Can you access just the right amounts of information from each of your own and other's bubbles at just the right time to make clean, quick, and risk appropriate decisions? What do you have to do today to start organising your information bubble and those that connect with you so that you are able take full advantage of the digital technologies you own or will purchase in 2009? March 13 Organise and focus in 2009....Want to know the secrets to future success in 2009? Well there are two. 1) Organise information more deliberately and carefully than you ever thought you needed to do. 2) Focus on the people you "need" or more generally "the needs" of people. If you can do these two things - even moderately well - you will succeed in 2009 and beyond. Those two secrets sound simple and commonsense - in fact, they are but they are also counter-intuitive. Because they are counter-intuitive they are much more difficult to apply to your work & family life than you might expect. Why? C20th analogue management taught me & you to 1) organise people deliberately and carefully and 2) focus on the information you "need" and more generally to be selective about the information you gather, collate, or aggregate. March 07 Digital clusters, clans, and tribes....You know what is changing and you know what is staying the same in your life. Your challenge is to line up those two events in ways that you works best for you. You might like to start with what stays the same. Can I suggest you look at your world as three inter-related communities that form the core for all your activities. First there are clusters - informal gathering from picnics to concerts. Second there are clans - semi-formal gatherings from classrooms to collaborative teams at work. Third there are tribes - formal gatherings from workplace to family entities. If you take a closer look at each of these communities you will notice that there are core ideas, frameworks, values, etc that do not or have not changed substantially over your lifetime. If you compile a list of these facets of your life you will know where and how you are anchored to your modes of thinking, your habits, and your ways of being in your world. You are now perfectly placed to assess the 'real impact' of digital age technologies on your work and home life. Digital technologies are now available to help you reshape your clusters, clans, and tribes. These technologies offer you new ways to organise your world. First there are what I call 'digital clusters'. Digtial clusters can be organised swiftly and simply on Twitter. For example, you might stay in touch and thus form your unique (but temporary) 'digital cluster' at a rock concert in Central Park when 100,000 people have turned up. You can be in touch with the 150 of those people who you know and share their experience of this special event. Second there are 'digital clans'. For example, you can join Facebook and form clans where you explore different aspects of your life and times - you share and collaborate on this site with your community of friends. Clans are informal networks that hang together around an ideas, a shared passion, experiment , or inquiry. Third there are 'digital tribes'. For example, you can form a tribe on MySpace that is very specific in its musical or video clip tastes - these tribes have a common or shared purpose and are focused on that purpose to the exclusion of other social interactions that help sustain your clusters or clans. Your digital tribes are the anchor to your work, family, and playtime lives. March 05 The more things change the more they stay the same....So you have decided to respond to the current economic crisis with an aggressive change program. Fine. The starting point for you is to recognise that you have decided to keep most things the same. Oh no! I hear you saying that is not true we are pursuing a sea change. We are determined to change the culture of the place. Well therein lies the rub. You have a culture - the way things are done around here - which you are going to attempt to change, oh alright, which you are determined to change. At this point I should simply say 'good luck with that'. But while I am thinking that way there is more to say. I could tell you stories about change programs and projects I have led or been part of and the great successes we had. I could tell you about some of pitfalls ahead if you seriously attempt culture change. But all I will tell you is this - the more things change the more they stay the same. Why? The answer is simple. When you decide to change something - like a corporate culture - you have a future state in mind. Indeed you have two future states in mind - the most desirable and the most feasible. Those who set off for the most desirable future state are usually the most ambitious. They take on many aspects of the current state and try to change them. This becomes a complex project and so it takes much, much, longer than ever expected. Meanwhile the current culture with all its faults and flaws limps on. Eventually these ambitious projects are terminated or folded back into the existing state with much more modest goals. So the more things change the more they stay the same. Those with modest aims and feasible changes to make to the current state begin with the assumption that the basics will stay the same. They make incremental changes only and thus the feasible future state is an extension of what exists not a dramatic change at all. March 04 What is going to stay the same?Can you tell me what is going to stay the same in your industry over the next 5 to 10 years? If you can answer with a strong "Yes" then you are well placed in this time of digital renewal. If you know what represents 'use value' for your customers now then you can renew their access and connection to that value through digital systems. If you are the first in your industry to do this then you win! If you are able to deliver 'use value' quicker and cheaper than you did yesterday then you win! If you listen and act on feedback faster than anyone else then you win! If you have a passive revenue model attached to the delivery of your key 'use value' products or services that only clicks in when your user chooses then you win! Change or renewal? [you get to choose]....Recession all around you. Change is your new mantra and yet you are still uncomfortable. So you try harder to change. You immerse yourself in other people's ideas, perceptions, stories, and models for change. Still you feel disquiet within yourself. Again you become more focused and determined to change - you want to become part of the change projects, programs, and efforts that you see all around you. This recession can be overcome - you believe that to be true and so you try harder to change something each day in the hope that you are contributing to something meaningful. But still you feel inadequate. You feel the fear of failure. You feel the pressure of bad news that you digest everyday. You feel disconnected from the conversation of change - where is the real change taking place? What does it look like? Who is driving it? Renewal all around you. Everything is being renewed in your life. You are part of a movement to renew the basics of your life and livelihood. Old ideas of economy, politics, technology, organisation, etc are being sloughed off. New ideas about your place, work, life, community ties, etc are beginning to emerge anew. These are prototypes. They are rough. Often they are hard to explain. They are based on different platforms to those you relied upon as recently as last year. They are unformed, free flowing, and yet strangely not unstable. They are dynamic, full of energy, and full of expectation of new experiences and an awakening within you to new possibilities for yourself, family, and community. You feel part of a new conversation about life on this planet. You feel part of the new growth and expansion that is the natural course of events after a crisis. Change or renewal - right now you get to choose.... March 03 Liked or respected?[Repeat of earlier post here due to constant demand for it] Are YOU liked or respected at work? I urge you to take a moment to think about this simple question. First write down which one you would prefer. Second write down, honestly, the answers that your ten or twenty closest colleagues would give – include peers, sub-ordinates, and bosses. Third make an assessment on balance of how you stack up. Remember there is no right answer here there is only the answer that your habits and behaviours evoke. So you discover you are more respected than liked and you are not happy about that outcome. Problem is if you are well respected and you work in a hierarchy then you probably do not want to change that perception of yourself or of your authority. In hierarchical regimes it is far far better to be respected than liked. This is why certain people, especially females, hit a glass ceiling. “Yeah everyone really likes her but she has yet to win their respect” is what you might hear in the board room while discussing future appointments to senior management roles. In a hierarchy you need to become “a well respected leader”. Forgot all the “well meaning advice” you have read on leadership and management – it is not like that at the coalface. Within hierarchies the most respected leaders are not team players - they are egotists who cast a big shadow over their workplace. Sometimes they are simply feared, sometimes they are respected for their determination, sometimes they are merely respected for their position, sometimes they are respected for the 'hard decisions' they have taken but rarely are they liked. Solution is if you want to be liked then join a flat organisation. Join a networked organisation. Join a digital revenue stream. Join a community of workers and consumers who cooperate to form a C21st workplace. Being liked or likeable is YOUR key asset in this new world of business. What would Google do to fix the Googleplex?.... one answer....[Google would stop being a traditional organisation and become a digital network. Google would focus on the strength of the links between its people not the management of projects. Google would open up the Googleplex to the public - it would invite the public into its free canteens to ensure they have an open forum for discussion of search (eg what Twitter is doing for 'real time search', what Facebook Question is doing for facilitated search or survey, what Ning is doing for networked search, etc).] What Google would do to fix the Googleplex is simple - it would open this concrete jungle to the public, it would network key R&D projects on search around the globe, it would become more a social network than a traditional organisation, and it would look for new revenue models to support its future moves into the development of 'real time' search capabilities. Well that is what I think Google would do.... What do you think Google would do to make the Googleplex a more Googlie workspace? March 02 What would Google do about the Googleplex?Google has been a great success - no doubt about it. I love what it has brought me and I love the price tag. I love the fact that Googlers get it - the web and its "use value" to the mob. I love that Google Health Care is tackling the issues of patient records and supporting a free-flow of healthcare information to users and practitioners alike. I love the ethics of Googlers. I love the intellect of Marisa Mayer and the research Googlers. BUT, here is the rub, I hate the Googleplex and its moribund C20th management team. Jeff Jarvis has the perfect question for you and me to pose to Google's management team about the limits of their organisational model and the Googleplex. Jeff's quetion is the title of his new book "what would Google do?" and that is my question for Eric Schmidt. What would Google do about the Googleplex? [Those who are regulars to this blog know my answer. Google would network the Googleplex. I know they have done that to some extent but more can be done. All that should remain at the Googleplex should be those who run their revenue models - there is even a good arguement for networking them too!] |
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