Evolving Web

Personal Kanban at the World Bank: Modus Cooperandi Info Pak 1

Personal Kanban at the World Bank - Small Team Rapid Development

View more documents from ourfounder.

This is the first in a series of Modus Cooperandi's Info Paks. They are downloadable, and work like a narrative whitepaper. Think of them like graphic novels for business.

In Info Pak One: Personal Kanban at the World Bank, we discuss the experience we had leading a rapid development project at the World Bank, specifically, how visual controls work with small groups, and why they are preferable to traditional team management. 

This Info Pak is best read by clicking the “Full” button above. It’s also designed to be downloaded to distribute to others. Over the next few weeks, we will post more Info Paks on Personal Kanban. Please feel free to comment and let us know what you think.

Have My People Tweet Your People

“You don’t give your Twitter duties to an intern” – Morgan Johnston from Jet Blue at #140TC

 

Business is lazy.  If business doesn’t understand something, it quickly assigns it, outsources it or otherwise gets it off the to-do list.  At the Twitter Conference #140TC in Mountain View this wee, Morgan Johnston talked about how important it was to have someone in the company with authority interacting on social media.

He had several stories about directly helping customers because Morgan had full penetration into the organization.  To the extent that he held the door open on a plane for two extra minutes so a family running from one delayed flight (on another airline) to that flight could make it.  The family had a member who was tweeting his pain while they ran.

Outsourcing your social media activities to an intern or a consultant means you stand a pretty good chance of working with someone who may well know how to use Twitter, but knows nothing about your business.  Don’t get me wrong, I know some people who are free lance community managers, have more than one client and do a great job.  But these people make it a priority to know their client’s business and ensure that they can quickly get to people capable of acting on a customer request.

If you must outsource your social media interaction, make sure that the person you are hiring cares, that you take the time to train them in whatever they need, and that you give them access to resources.

If you can’t do this, then don’t outsource.  Do it in-house – which you probably should be doing anyway.

Technorati Tags: social media,twitter,social media outsourcing,outsourcing,lazy,jet blue,morgan johnston

Privacy in a Post TMI World

Lisa Hickey has a nice piece today about the bit of our private lives that we are discussing publicly.  The crux of the matter is trust and expectations.  Lisa says:

Anyone who has been on Twitter for a while has seen this phenomena: Spouses, children, boyfriends, girlfriends will say to someone who Twitters a lot: “You’re not going to put that on Twitter, are you?”

Yes, it’s funny. A sign of the times. My kids say it to me all the time. But here’s the thing: there’s a trust issue going on here.

There’s an interplay here.  I trust you with information that I’d rather not be distributed via Facebook.  To the point now that we have FriendDA which was originally created, such that it is, to let friends talk about business ideas, but is now routinely employed as a statement of “Don’t put this on Twitter.”

FriendDAs usually aren’t printed out, people are tending to say, “So I’m invoking FriendDA here….”  The counterpart nods, and the conversation continues.

So, socially, we are creating new conventions to plainly demark where privacy begins and ends.  Whereas privacy was previously assumed, it is now transparency that is assumed.  Information we’d like to keep close now comes with a wrapper.

Photo by Hamed Masoumi

Technorati Tags: Lisa Hickey,Facebook,Social Media,FriendDA,Hamed Masoumi,transparency,privacy

Open Faced Book

Facebook takes your information and hoards it.  Facebook lets you connect with your friends, but not really great ways to manage them.  Facebook lets you join groups and then makes it hard to ever find them.  Facebook is rather annoying that way.

Today David Recordon said in O’Reilly Radar that he thinks the doors shall fly open and Facebook will join the ranks for the enlightened.

Stranger things have happened.

I am not nay-saying here.

I see David’s logic as quite solid.

But who says business is logical?

Facebook is a company with an energetic, driven staff that firmly believes in the company and its mission.  But what if they believe they have to choose between the company and its mission. 

What if a faction at Facebook sees openness as a threat to the organization?

I guarantee you, these are the conversations happening in Facebook’s Palo Alto glass block right now.  How much openness is too much?  How does Facebook retain its identity if they can be an non-credited information source for other applications?

I have answers to these questions and you might too. But what answers are being put forth from the Facebook corporate culture?  That is what will drive its openness.

Technorati Tags: facebook,walled gardens,community,david recordon

Blogged at Modus Cooperandi in Seattle, WA

Photo by Avlxyz creative commons 2.0 by-sa

Immediacy in all Things – Social Media Principle #8

This post is eighth in a series of my Social Media Principles.  The base post is 10 Social Media Principles.

“There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Principle #8. Immediacy in all things – Strike while the iron is hot.  Eat when the food is fresh.

 

We’ve discussed in previous principles how information wants to be free, information should be findable and searchable and that people want to be good community members.

Have you ever been on a mission?

We consider ourselves on a mission when we have clear goals, we have an idea of how to satisfy those goals, and we are somewhat excited about achieving them.  A mission differs from a task by our emotional investment.

Previous chapters have also discussed how people’s emotional investment in an activity or organization relies heavily on transparency and the availability of information.

Delays are insults to missions.

Any delay in a mission belies the importance of the mission.  Delays say to the missionary: your important task is far less important to me than it is to you. This is invalidating and demotivating.

Immediacy therefore becomes crucial to maintaining motivation. 

If people within an organization remain motivated, they work faster, they are more creative, and frankly, they give a damn.  Demotivated team members simply do not perform as well.

When devising rules around information provision and flow in an organization, principle #8 should be kept in mind at all times.  How important is this information when compared to slowing down the company?  Is it more important to hide this information than to allow people the opportunity to use it for inspiration? 

Note that here immediacy doesn’t necessarily mean speed – it means respect.

Technorati Tags: 10 social media principles,social media,information policy,collaboration

Photo via Morguefile and Shelly Kiser

Written at Modus Cooperandi in Seattle, WA

Context is Fluid – Social Media Principle #7

This post is seventh in a series of my Social Media Principles.  The base post is 10 Social Media Principles.

Principle #7 - Context is Fluid – How you view an object today will be different tomorrow.  Don’t destroy tomorrow’s value.

 

In my humble opinion, most of the business failures we’ve seen in the tech sector are due to an utter disregard for this principle.

Context is fluid. The tech you are in love with that your company is building is certainly cool.  In fact, it’s cooler than you think.

The Peril of Focus

I have seen several sites, applications and ideas become stifled because they limit their own market.  A singular focus to specific use cases has been lauded as good management. 

The reasons for this are legendary: Focusing on specific use cases avoids scope creep.  Focusing on specific use cases increases predictability and ensures a logical development cycle.

The problem here isn’t necessarily the use cases themselves, it’s the focus on a specific static context or set of contexts.

To be sure, everyone needs a plan.  Your trip home needs a route.  But you should have the flexibility to re-evaluate that route based on context. 

If your route included what used to be this bridge, would you be taking it now?

No.  Context has changed.

Your product’s context changes all the time.  People find new uses for it.  People eliminate old uses for it.  Your intended use may bore the hell out of people, but they might find another use that works great for them and could still make you rich.

Despite this, business often limits its own products’ contexts. 

How Context Works

In my 2007 post on the Seven Contexts of Human Understanding, I discuss how context radically changes based on perspective.   Geographic, political, organizational, team, personal, religious, time, etc.  Each perspective changes the context of what you might encounter. 

And context changes based on the situation, and quickly.  A baseball player at bat does very different things with 2 strikes against him than he does with none.

(See the seven contexts post for more on the workings of context.)

The Warning from Principle #7

When we create a product – any product – and narrowly define its use, we practically limit its use.  No, every product shouldn’t be able to do every thing.  But when creating your design, ask yourself “Are my assumptions limiting this product’s potential?”

Social media has been great for taking an idea devised for one purpose and re-purposing it.  Social media and Web 2.0 has also been great for building in repurposing.  The API is now mandatory – no API and you are dead.

Why?  Because everyone knows they have their own context and they don’t want to wait for you to enable it.

So, no API or a self-limiting feature set is a rocket sled ride to liquidation sale.

Technorati Tags: context,social media principles,10 social media principles,social media

Blogged at the Modus Cooperandi offices in Seattle, WA

Karma is Real – Social Media Principle #6

This post is fifth in a series of my Social Media Principles.  The base post is 10 Social Media Principles.

#6: Karma is real – You give more, you get more.

I was much amused to find that Doug Haslam’s mention of An Bui’s remix of the 10 Principles focused specifically on this principle.  He says:

Not that this was An Bui’s intent for the blog, but I have trouble imagining saying “Karma is Real” when trying to ask the Big Boss for more social media budget.

Well, it certainly was our intent and I welcome the conversation.  I personally have found most upper management (Big Bosses) prefer arguments that are both in and out of the box.  Concepts like this rupture the box from the inside.

Reap What You Sow

If Doug is worried about non-western religion, he can use Reap what you Sow

Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.- Galatians 6:7 

or perhaps B.B. King

I do everything you tell me to
You won't do anything baby but try to make me blue
Baby, you ought to treat me right
Oh baby, you're gonna reap just what you sow
-- B.B. King, Treat Me Right

or Emerson

"You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Trust me, the invocations are inexhaustible.  Karma is not a concept owned by any culture or religion.

As a word, Karma simply means “action”.  As a concept, it is tied to the laws of cause and effect.  If we give more, we get more.  If we act well, we are treated well.  If we are snarky, we get some snark back.

This concept upsets some people as being all hand-holding kumbaya-like. So, let’s examine how and why it is important for business and where it comes into play in social media.

Court of Public Opinion

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently. – Warren Buffet

What other people think matters.  And it should.

The Brand

In business, people are judging your brand, your product quality, and your actions.  People are taking their money, their energy, and investing it in your product.  Your reputation is important.

Prior to now, business reputation could often be made through advertising and public relations slight-of-hand.  But the world is becoming more and more transparent and, simultaneously, elephant-like.  It sees more and forgets less.

Once trust is destroyed it is very hard to build back.  No one is rushing to give Bernard Madhoff more money.

An Bui’s post focused on this concept.

The Culture

Internal to a business, Karma is a major driving force as well.  For example, who is hired, promoted, and ultimately successful for your company is entirely a product of karma.

But whose Karma and what Karma?

Ideally, it would be bottom-up karma – a meritocracy of the best and brightest working their way up through the system and creating the best and healthiest company imaginable.

Why are you laughing?

You are laughing because we all know it doesn’t work this way.  Promotions are all-too-often the result of backstabbing, Peter Principling, incompetence reshuffling, ulterior motivating, politicking, etc.  Sometimes it’s due to corporate or union momentum – that inexorable force that promotes people simply due to longevity.

You are laughing because it’s inconceivable that we could create a business that would be healthy enough to actually reward and promote appropriately.

(This is why Buckingham’s first book is called First Break All The Rules. The current rule set doesn’t allow for bottom-up Karma).

Top-Down Karma

An organization most often derives its culture from management.  As we discussed with the mythical company Amalgamated Suckup (Jim’s version, An’s version), as companies become less introspective, they rely more on policy to govern the business.

Policies become a crutch.

Policies generally require stuff and most often that stuff comes in the form of information rigidity.  The right form at the right time – no exceptions.

As the form trumps function, people lose enthusiasm and stop working for the success of the company and more for the success of the policies.  “How the game is played". 

Karma being satisfied here is not from the bottom – or from the individual.  The karma being satisfied here is from the institution.

Now, follow the dots.

If a bottom-up meritocratic approach gives you the best and the brightest – what does a top-down bureaucratic approach give you?  It gives you people skilled at satisfying your bureaucracy and navigating your politics.

Karma in Social Media

 

"Realize that everything connects to everything else."
- Leonardo DaVinci

Now, unless my history is inaccurate, DaVinci didn’t have a Powerbook.  (though he probably sketched one)

Karma is certainly not an invention of social media.  But social media highlights how people react when healthy social reinforcement is in place.

Karma in social media is everywhere.  Whether explicitly stated, as in this screenshot from Plurk, or more implicit, understanding the notion of Karma is what makes a good social network.

First we have the notion of a “friend”. The liberal definition of Friend in social media upsets a lot of people.  (Some people like to be outraged, it makes them feel important).

But, as used in social media, friends are people you have contact with.  The term friend is … friendly. Networks form.

People in these networks do things.

To the left here we have my Yelp statistics. I’ve given this company 140 reviews, gone to a bunch of their events, and I’ve amassed about 100 friends.

Why?  Why would I spend my time adding to the intellectual property of this company?

The reason is entirely Karma based.

I gave them 140 reviews, these reviews were good enough to get them to make me an “elite” member. This means I rose through the meritocracy to get special perks.  (Hosted dinners, etc.)

You will also see that people vote on each review.  It can be useful, funny and / or cool.  This is done by readers.  Any reader.

Compliments are from fellow Yelpers who can leave a compliment under any of 9 categories.

Good behavior on Yelp can be noted by anyone at any time and in many different ways. 

Social media has shown us repeatedly that sites that provide ample rewards for good behavior see more good behavior.  Those that penalize bad behavior see people leave and go to other sites.

What Goes Around Comes Around

The principle here is a principle: Karma is real.  As businesses plan projects, cultural changes, and their relationships internal & external, the fact that in a networked world people can quickly judge and mete rewards or punishments must be a guiding force. 

The community will judge your company based on your actions.  It’s that simple and it’s that complicated.

Or Perhaps Bob Dylan says it better:

You may be a preacher with your spiritual pride,
You may be a city councilman taking bribes on the side,
You may be workin' in a barbershop, you may know how to cut hair,
You may be somebody's mistress, may be somebody's heir

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.

-- Bob Dylan, Gotta Serve Somebody

UPDATE:  Here is a good, concise application of this principle by Hutch Carpenter correlating tweets to followers.

Image and Captions for the Image of the “bloke from Poland” courtesy of Donald H. Taylor. 

Technorati Tags: Doug Haslam,An bui,Bob Dylan,Ralph Waldo Emerson,management,10 social media principles,rewards,karma,karma is real,Donald Taylor,Plurk,Leonardo DaVinci,Marcus Buckingham,kumbaya,warren buffet

Written at my vacation house, in Ocean Shores, WA.

Rules Beget Rules – Social Media Principle #5

This post is fifth in a series of my Social Media Principles.  The base post is 10 Social Media Principles.

“Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

5. Rules beget rules – The more rules you have, the more rules you make.

Rules and law are reactions to disturbances in society. In being reactions, they tend to be created in the heat of the moment and within a psychological framework driven by some specific event.  This limits the applicability of rules and laws.  Exceptions soon ensue.

We make more rules and laws to cover the exceptions.

Then there are exceptions to the exceptions.

And we make more rules.

Soon, we are drowning in the overhead of administering rules with cascading exception sets.  We get loopholes, we get workarounds, we get special permissions (which require new special rules).  So, rules create waste.

As waste is created, people buck against rules. They stop acting because they don’t want to encounter the overhead.  When they stop acting, they stop producing.

Social Media shows us that projects with limited but clear rules foster creativity and that game theory is a better arbiter of human interaction.  The question is, can you build games that have rule sets flexible enough to allow creativity, and stringent yet predictable enough to allow healthy gaming?

“The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.”

George Bernard Shaw

Sites like Digg and Twitter, have shown that, left unchecked, people can game the system for personal benefit and to the detriment of the community. However, when the games are anticipated and thoughtfully moderated (and as much as possible by the community), then you can build games that have rewards for the main constituencies:

• The community – those supplying the material (content / labor / product)
• The organization – that which takes that material and redistributes it for profit or societal benefit
• The users – those that use the material

The main point of the game … to remove the distinction from the community and the organization as much as possible.  The more they are the same, the better material you get and the more game theory drives the organization.  The greater the separation between organization, the greater the need for rules.  And the more rules …

Update: An Bui has posted her take on Rules Beget Rules, her’s is very different, check it out.

Technorati Tags: Peter Kim,Nicky Cakes,Twitter,Digg,George Bernard Shaw,game theory,gaming,community,rules,law,freedom,Franklin D. Roosevelt,FDR,10 social media principles

Blogged at My House AGAIN due to endless snow in Seattle, WA

Mumbai, The BBC, and Why Immediacy Isn’t All That

The Mumbai Terrorist event has clearly shown us that we have moved to a culture of immediate news consumption.  We thought we were there with CNN, but Twitter and other tools have shown that the immediacy was no longer in the viewing – it’s now in the data collection.

All major news services were monitoring Twitter during Mumbai.  They were taking advantage of a new information source, just like the rest of us.  Some of this worked well, some did not.

And now we have the retrospective.  How did that work? 

Steve Herrmann at the BBC has a post discussing the soul-searching The BBC is now doing after Mumbai. 

Immediacy Has a Price

The software development adage:

“You can have your software fast, good, or cheap – pick two.”

fits well here.  Replace “software” with “news” and we’re rolling.  (at least for the moment).  For years we’ve have good and cheap.  Face it, we’ve always received our news for pennies since the advent of the printing press.

Immediacy has a price – and it isn’t the “cheap” option.  We have fast and cheap now. 

With Mumbai we have an excellent example of a dispersed, confused, stressful situation.  People of good faith were tweeting and re-tweeting objects of news based on their faith in the network.  Most of this information was good, some of it was garbage.

People were looking for answers. Sensational garbage can easily rise to the top because it’s often confirming our worst fears or bolstering our deepest hopes.

Acquisition Isn’t the Only Transaction Cost

News as a product runs on information.  It is true that immediate communication gives news organizations faster and cheaper information.  However, while the cost of acquisition is certainly a major component to news – verification is the other.

Reputation engines may well serve the verification need in the future.  A source can be deemed “credible” based on their reputation scores.  But this certainly isn’t infallible. 

If I have a very high score and am walking down a street in Phuket and suddenly a huge crowd runs down the street screaming “Tsunami!”  I’m going to run and likely tweet “I am in Phuket and running from a Tsunami!”

My source was a crowd of people with no discernable credibility rating other than their panic. 

In an uncertain time, you get uncertain information.

BBC is Introspective

The BBC is doing well to both be introspective after Mumbai and to be relatively transparent in doing so. 

Steve says:

Is it confusing to have reports from our own correspondents, along with official statements, pictures, video, accounts from other media, bloggers, emails and Twitter, all together on the same page? It's true that normally we separate them out - news stories in one place, correspondents' reports in another, Have Your Say comments and links to blogs somewhere else.

But on a major unfolding story there is a case also for simply monitoring, selecting and passing on the information we are getting as quickly as we can, on the basis that many people will want to know what we know and what we are still finding out, as soon as we can tell them.

Steve is acknowledging the transition of the mainstream media from a news source to a news aggregator and analyzer.  Some of the news comes from their highly trusted generators (reporters and informants), but others is now going to come from bloggers and tweeters and the like.  It would be self-defeating not to include these new sources.

We must also note that this is both new and frightening to an organization like the BBC.  They must simultaneously understand how to present this information effectively and deal with the major impact this has on their corporate culture.

This is not SOP.

BBC is Outward Looking

I’d also like to give quick props to Steve Herrmann and the BBC for having many links in his post that are pointed outside the BBC domain.  One of my news site pet peeves is that they have ample inward pointing links.

This small fact lets me know that Mumbai’s lessons for global reporting will have an impact.

Technorati Tags: BBC,Mumbai,Steve Herrmann,Twitter,mainstream media,journalism,microblogging,microsharing

((Cross posted from the Touchbase Blog))

Why I Plurk, Again

I’ve discussed this before, but there are inherently different social interactions that happen in different social media tools.  These are facilitated by the differences in the user interface.

Yesterday, Brian Kerr posted this little thing on Plurk (source).  Plurk’s UI allows you to post pictures that are actually visible.

What came next?  A nice little discussion that took 24 hours to mature.  The threading and alerts in Plurk made that possible.  With Twitter, the value-add of the conversation would have been lost.  Twitter is such a temporal tool, without conventions like @ or # tags, threading is impossible.

Here is the Plurk discussion:

Context is often driven by the circumstances in which the context itself is generated.  Your User Interface, like Twitter’s, may have marvelous impacts on how certain types of communication are conducted – but they do not help with all kinds of communication.

There is no Tower of Babel User Interface.

In this thread, the context starts with a pesky cat looped cartoon and ends with a discussion of non-attachment. What @mitten dubs the “kitteh paradox” after Brian defines the core issue – happiness is transitory if you are attached to a certain definition of happiness (cereal or sitting on the table). 

This contextual evolution is primarily due to the Plurk UI which allows this thread to maintain itself over the course of hours or days.  I still use Twitter every day, but I also use Plurk – simply because these fundamental UI differences yield fundamentally different types of conversations.

Technorati Tags: twitter,plurk,brian kerr,laura fisher,non-attachment,user interface,user experience,social media