Tupperware Parties are social networking royalty so it is no surprise to me that Microsoft 7 soft launches around the globe have come to the party.  See http://www.theage.com.au/digital-life/pcs/tupperware-tactics-to-push-new-windows-7-20090923-g1gv.html

Organising social networks is a practical challenge.  Most people who attempt it do so with the tools they have on their workplace bench.  Thus they try to create organisations where none can flourish - the best example is the fashion of creating 'online communities'. 

Communities flourish because the members have a shared purpose, set of values, or experiences.  Appointing a Director/Manager of Communities to better organise these members is now a common practice.  However the role of these managers of communities is never entirely clear.  They are suppose to control these entities but how they intend to do that and why they would want to do that is not apparent, at least to me.  I tried to perform this function in the early 1990s and I found that my efforts were totally counter-productive.  Sure the technologies have moved a long way since BUT importantly the wants and needs of people have not.

I have concluded that social networks are best left to their own devices because they are indeed self-organising entities.  If these entities impact on you, your business, or your communal activities then you should seek constant feedback from them.  Tap into both the negative and positive feedback you can access about you and your concerns from them.  Change your behaviour.  Monitor the feedback.  Change your behaviour.  Monitor the feedback.  After a few iterations of this simple feedback loop, you will realise that the patterns of feedback you are getting is changing and it may well be changing in ways that flatter you.  You will also recognise that you are not in control of these social networks at this point and neither are you organising them but you are organising your activities to better fit the communities you are monitoring.  In turn, the patterns of behaviours from those communities are now changing to better fit your wants and needs.

Speed.  Wireless 4G is all about speed.  Speed of data transmission. Speed of mobile processors.  Speed of machine to machine transfers.  Speed of diagnosis in health care.  Speed of global connections between individual users. What you get with 4G is 5 times the speed of 3G (current smart phones).

Speed.  The biggest change in your world over the next 5 years will be the speed data is processed, transfered, and packaged for you.  You might have an all-in-one wireless mobile device.  You might have a series of specialist mobile devices - camera, phone, navigator, computer, etc.  Either way you will become the target of the C21st digital revolution.

Economic bubbles are fueled by consumers' wants.  Wants are unlimited.  Wants get inflated quickly in bubble economies because people like to mimic others.  Wants are unaccountable.  Wants are never satiated.

Economic recessions are grounded by consumers' needs.  Needs are limited.  Needs get deflated quickly when easy money disappears.  Needs are fully accountable.  Needs are often satiated.

The digital revolution is with us but it is not going very well.  The problem is the people (you and me) who have to embrace it do not really understand it.  Sure we (you and me again) all understand our digital gadgets but we do not comprehend the digital frontier before us for one simple reason - we are analogue people.

Analogue people are prone to serial thinking and sequential actions.  Translate that into mundane life in a digital network and you discover you are too slow with your thinking and too procedural with your actions.

If you are like me, and have a passion for organisation, then this is an exciting time.  The future of organisation is being developed now.  What the C21st organisation will turn out to be is not clear.  I suspect it will end up being  more a collaborative network than the type of organisation we are use to dealing with today but I do not know what will evolve. 

The C21st challenge comes from digital technologies and the resultant new economy.  So I have been thinking about the core elements that could really change today's organisations.  I came up with four things we can all do.

1) Be frugal.  Remove waste.  Focus on cost reductions.

2) Be simple.  Find simple new ways to do what you do.  Focus on cost avoidance measures.

3) Be reliable.  Eliminate rework and improve productivity. Focus on detail.

4) Become durable. Improve on your successes.  Focus on your strengths. 

My Facebook, virtual, friend Seth Godin is good at posing questions that resonate with normal folk.  I am not surprised therefore that Seth has done it again with his perceptive query about the buy-out of Zappos.  I wanted to share it with you.....

"When you buy Zappos, what do you buy?

Do you "belong" to a Twitter community?  How many followers do you have?  How many of them do you actively follow?  How many of them are "real world" friends?  What is the real benefit to you of belonging to a Twitter community?

In answer to the last question I maintain that it is the scale and the global reach of my Twitter community that is the real benefit to me.  I have around 400 hundred followers. Of course this does not impress anyone but me. Why? Well in the time it has taken me to amass 400 followers - one of my followers has gone from 4,000 to 50,000 followers.  In this time she has delivered 11.000 odd Tweets.  She is a real estate marketer and so Twitter helps her build her client base. Nevertheless, it is the scale and the global reach of her Twitter community that is the real benefit of her Twitter community.  She has relationships with people around the world and thus she has a potentially lucrative referral marketing system going.

BUT if you are not in real estate marketing then more and more followers might not be an advantage.  Rather the scale and reach of your community might be more valuable if it is tailored more predictably to your current and future interests.  Under this scenario I prune my followers daily.  I want less not more.  I want those that fit with my current interests - all those who use key word sorting to find me and then attach to me in the hope that I will follow them back are noise in my Twitter community.  Rather I am looking to find people who are weird like me, who are doing right now what I am doing or want/need to be doing soon, who are open and available online to share their experiences.  When I look at the 400 followers I have now in this light then there are a few who are invaluable.  These people are providing me with information about organisations, ideas, theories, practices, business change, etc. that is not available in libraries.  They are at the cutting edge of what you and I are going to be reading about in newspapers, magazines, and books in the future. 

Scale and reach is a key asset within your Twitter community but it is up to you to decide what it means for you and then how you can best use it.  

What keeps you up at night?  What is most frustrating about what is bugging you?

Most of what keeps us up at night is seemingly beyond our immediate control.  But is it really?

Focus hard on what you "need" to make this issue, concern, problem, irritant, etc go away.  Got it?

Focus hard on what you know others "want".  Got it?

Trade what they "want" for what you "need".  Got it?

Still not sleeping? 

Refine what you "need".  Ask them again to clearly enunciate what it is they truly "want".

Trade what they "want" for what you "need".  Got it?

Still not sleeping? 

Then get a professional negotiator onto your team.

In a digital economy your ability to negotiate with others is a core skill.  The heartbeat of that skill lies in your ability to clearly enunciate your needs. 

Once you have a crystal clear understanding of your needs you are well placed to identify the needs of others.  Your negotiations with any significant other is then merely a process of engaging the best fit between your and their needs.

If you want some free advice on how to establish your needs then email me - lipscombe.richard@gmail.com - If I can help you I will.

Mobile phone etiquette is interesting.  I think if people are constantly taking calls in your presence then this is excellent feedback to you about your relevance and your impact on them. But can we change the rules?

Perhaps we can.  I saw this on Authors@Google. The presenter, can't remember his name, was at the lectern. A phone went off in the front row - he strolled over and requested it. He proceeded to take the call. It was hilarious. "Sorry he can't take the call right now - can I help you?" Pause. "I am blah and I am giving a talk to a group here at Google right now" Pause.... "OK I will make sure he gets the message, yeah, sure he will get back to you as soon as possible....." Pause. He walks back to the lectern with the phone in his hand and puts it down next to his notes. "I will keep it here in case she calls back"...

I guess the message here is clear.  When speaking in public be relevant and if you can be remarkable - take the call!

My contention is that Brands are dying in the digital age because they were a construct of the analogue age. Brands are about exclusion not inclusion.

Obama won the mob over because he was inclusive. He presented an ideology - big government, more not less regulation, universal public provisioning (health, education, infrastructure, etc), communities formed as 'coalitions of interest', etc. His success was grounded in the fact that he identified a movement that was already alive and well across America (he did not create it as some pundits like to claim). Obama was quick to associate himself with this movement and thus he became the symbol and the mouthpiece of what had for four years of G. W. Bush remained obtuse and unarticulated. Obama gave the movement meaning to wider population who were all an active and inclusive part of it but could not describe its origins nor its goals.

The 2009 challenge for communities, businesses, governments, the White House, etc is to remain an active and inclusive participant in some very raw conversations being conducted by their consumers.

Conversations are simple. They are easy to join. They are easy to interpret. They are easy to act upon. So there is no great mystery here. Brands are being replaced by conversations between consumers about their wants and needs. This is not a new phenomenon but rather a return to what existed before the modern manufacturing economy of 'value adding' processes made 'push marketing' a valid pursuit. Brand equity was formed when consumers were excluded - by price - from their desires, wants, and needs. Today consumers are becoming part of the production, delivery, marketing, and sales process - they are no longer excluded. Thus there is no need for a Brand other than as a naming device.

Moving from analogue to digital systems is proving problematic.  Why?  Many of the jobs needed in the analogue economy are just not needed in the digital economy.  Sure there are many new jobs being created and when this transition is completed the numbers of people employed within the new digital economy will be greater than ever. 

So what do you have to do to ensure you are part of this new vibrant economy?

The answer is simple.  Do the same as you did in the analogue economy if, and only if, what you did every minute of everyday was exactly what you got paid to do.

Thus we come to the real problem in the analogue workplace and I suspect it will be the same in the approaching digital workplace.  Most people do not know exactly what they are being paid to do.  Most people go to work and come home stressed out because they simply do not know what it is that they must do to maximise their performance.

Do you know exactly what it is that you get paid to do?  Do you know precisely what to do to maximise your performance?  Do you know good ways to get around the corporate culture and mental habits within your workplace that stop you doing what you get paid to do?

The truth is social media and social networking are the same today as they have always been. People talking to people about what they want, need, and like. The interesting thing is that digital technologies enable this to happen on a large scale instantaneously.

Whenever people talk to each other about what is relevant and remarkable about a product, service, blog, person, etc that conversation is picked up within a nanosecond by the chattering tribes, clans, and clusters on the web. They form the social fan clubs that make or break a product or service today.

Negative chatter is bad news. When a company has negative chatter it needs good feedback loops like Dell has with what Lionel Menchaca Jr does for them.

Positive chatter is good news. It provides the mavens with depth of content. The salespeople with 'use value' for their referral system. The connectors with a reason to converse with others. So the Tipping Point is quickly reached.

All of this has provided us with a new marketing system - one of influence, referral, connectivity, feedback loops, and networking scale not experienced before.

But the real challenge for marketing today is none of this - this is all obvious and simple. Ahead is a world ruled by ideology not experience - big government, nanny state regulations, carbon footprints, etc. In a world based on our experiences then marketing can thrive. We can talk about shared experiences. We can debate each other's perspectives based on our own and other's experiences. This is a wonderful world for marketers. BUT. Can we market to an ideologue?