Evolving Web

Contemplation on January 20th, 2009

This morning I stood alone in my office and watched Barack Obama be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States.  When Aretha Franklin sang, I cried. And basically I didn’t fully stop until just now and if you come poke me I’ll probably start again.

And when one’s a 43 year old Nebraskan, one has to ask … why am I crying? 

So I started listing reasons in my head, and I couldn’t stop. 

It was like an emotion million-layer torte. Layer after layer after layer.  Meaning upon meaning upon meaning.

For 8 years, I was involved with the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt – a project much bigger than me.  But when working on it, you could feel the importance of it.  The level of trust placed on us to memorialize, to publicize.  To respect.  To not forget.  Was (and is for those who) overwhelming.

I never saw anything more successful than the Quilt.  It is awe inspiring, it is personally inspiring.

Can it be that, to even a limited extent, we can now feel that inspirations as Americans, as human beings?  That we can feel the trust and faith we place in each other – and be energized by that faith?

This morning I cried for the people who didn’t get to see today.  My friend Corey Smith, my Great Aunt Billie Benson, my mentor Francis Edward Elliot, and Washington State Senator Cal Anderson.  All from very different backgrounds, but all who would have been unified in the events of today.

President Obama said today:

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control — and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart — not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

What would Jim, the social media and management consultant see in this?  A call for an end to org-chart based trickle-down economic theory that rewards the hoarding / consolidation of resources, information, and power.  The introduction of concepts like reach and the power of networks to balance distribution.  The increase in opportunity inherent in a truly innovative and collaborative capitalist system.

Are we savvy enough to answer this call?

 

And because I am eternally silly:  here’s the inauguration in Lego (minus the other 2 million people on the mall):

Technorati Tags: barack obama,obama inauguration,politics,presidency,management,social media,corey smith,francis edward elliot,billie benson,cal anderson

Blogged at Modus Cooperandi in Seattle, WA

Organizational Entropy and Information Abuse

My friend Jay Fienberg left a comment at the end of my Intellectual In-Breeding post that raised this point:

I think this is an interesting idea, but either overstated or in need of more exploration:

"Information is, by its very nature, subversive. Information tells you the right thing to do."

I think one could just as easily assert that "information is, by its very nature, oppressive. Information tells you the wrong thing to do."

As a conjecture: when has anyone every done the wrong thing without doing so based on some information? – Jay Fienberg (Jay’s Site)

I read this in the car, parked outside Top Pot Doughnuts in Seattle and laughed. It’s an awesome observation.

Cuts Like a Knife

I would argue that information in this context is an object.  A social object. Subversive, Oppressive, Liberating, Enlightening. 

And like a knife, it can slice a tomato or your throat.

When organizations lose shared purpose and principles – their sense of community – they are already in process of decay and dissolution, even though they may linger with outward appearance of success for some time.  -- Dee Hock, Founder of Visa in Birth of the Chaordic Age

The game of a new organization is to be noticed. To be noticed, you want to be the best.  Quality is job 1.  This is an expansive mode.

The game of an old organization is to continue to exist.  This is a protective or entropic mode – the focus is now inward.

What Mr. Hock is noting in this quote is that when an organization switches from an expansive mode, it enters an entropic mode. Maybe this is inevitable – that’s for further debate.

When you combine these two observations, the questions become: How do organizations in an entropic state abuse information?   And, perhaps, is information abuse itself a signal that an organization has entered an entropic state?  Can we use it as a diagnostic tool?

The entropic organization is readily recognizable by the dysfunction in how it exchanges information.  So, the last question, I’d give a yes.  The middle question I would give a probably – it’s certainly an indicator that you need to do an entropy check. 

The first question would take volumes.  Rules, policies, even outright fabrication in some cases.  Worldcom, Morgan Stanley, and the Bush White House can all provide ample examples of half-truths and lies being released in the form of information and information that has bowed to the whims of control.

But It Feels so Right

Why do organizations do this?  What is it about entropy that causes this type of bending of information?  Why do people feel that obfuscation and withholding information is useful?

We return to Dee’s Quote.  “When organizations lose shared purpose and principles – their sense of community – they are already in process of decay…”. 

Decay is pervasive.

Systemic.

Now the darkness only stays the night-time
In the morning it will fade away
Daylight is good at arriving at the right time
Its not always going to be this grey
All things must pass
All things must pass away
-- George Harrison, All Things Must Pass

Decay and rebirth are life itself.  Why are our institutions expected to be immutable?

Change requires acceptance. People leading large companies are already scared of tomorrow. Every day they fear someone will build something better, do something smarter, create something less expensive.

Keeping information hidden until the last possible minute is a natural reaction by people in power.  Power corrupts – but corrupt people are not evil.  They have been corrupted, often unbeknownst to themselves.  Retrospection is our teacher in this regard.

Feeling that they are protecting the company, they will hoard information.  There has been no handbook to tell them otherwise. 

The more information is withheld, the more purpose and principles are lost.  The gulf between the organization and the community widens.  And entropy escalates.

I coulda sworn we had it all worked out

Entropy is natural and inescapable. We’ve spent our entire history as human beings denying it. 

Does this mean things are hopeless?

No, it means that systems need rejuvenation and management.  Entropy should be anticipated and accounted for.

IBM has done an excellent job of reinventing itself.  Many governments have sunset dates for their ministries. And (thank you FDR) we have term limits on the US presidency.  With every new presidency, with every new reinvention of self, introspection and forward vision both happen.  Rebirth ensues.

Agile Methods and Lean Principles both dictate frequent reviews and check-ins. Information is designed to flow as freely as possible and create systems to quickly note when it is not. 

Human nature works for us and against us in this regard.  We naturally protect ourselves when under pressure – but we also naturally cooperate when goals are clear and shared.

Leadership becomes critical in open structures.  It’s not anarchy and it’s not communism. Open structures require strong leadership. Someone needs to be on-point to make sure all the members of an organization are comfortable.

This requires true leadership, not autocratic positional power.

Way beyond the shadow of a doubt

Society abhors an information vacuum.

The future requires an introspective organization.  One that won’t stand for misinformation or information being withheld.

Will it still happen?  As sure as the day is long it will.

But it will happen a lot less and be noticed more quickly.

Murphy’s Law stands.  Things going wrong isn’t the problem – it’s things festering.

(And for the record, I really can’t stand that Bryan Adams song and it’ll be stuck in my head for days now….)

UPDATE:  An Bui has posted a thoughtful extension of this conversation.

Technorati Tags: Jay Fienberg,Dee Hock,Agile,agile methodologies,lean,social media principles,social media,FDR,murphy's law,earworm

Blogged at Top Pot Doughnuts on Queen Anne in Seattle, WA – I’m free of the snow!

That Guy’s An Asshole – Two Stories of Information Hoarding

This is a companion piece to my 10 Principles of Social Media series. This post illustrates Principles 2 and 4.

For quite some time, I was an urban planner.  I worked for some agencies, but for most the time I was a consultant.  I worked with all levels of government from tiny towns to the Feds. 

While that time left me with more than enough stories to fill a book, I’ll tell two of them here:

They Hate Us

The planning director for the City sat across from me.  I said, “This major road needs to have coordinated signal timing between you and that suburb.” 

“That’ll never happen,” he said, “They hate us.  Every time we change our signal timing, they change theirs just to screw us up.”

“Hmm,” I said, “Well, it’s got to happen, I’ll go over and talk to them.”

So I go to the suburb in question. 

“This major road needs to have coordinated signal timing between you and the City.” 

“Take it up with them then!” Was the reply, “We hate them! Every time we change our signal timing, they change theirs just to screw us up.”

That Guy’s An Asshole

We were creating an event management plan for a major city.  They had a huge complex of sports stadiums all grouped together.  It was possible for nearly 200,000 people to show up during concurrent events.

We had created a system to guide people to parking and to dynamically move police, roadblocks and traffic revisions based on available parking and pedestrian movements. The system would close roads, re-route traffic, and move police around.

That required communications.

“What streets have fiber?” I asked.

“We don’t have any fiber” I was told.

I was incredulous.  “what do you mean you have no fiber?”

“No fiber, has to be wireless.”

“There’s nothing with franchise agreements or other shared use?”

“No, no fiber.”

So we created a system with all wireless tech which, at the time, was much more expensive and harder to make reliable.  It greatly added to the complexity of the system.

The day we were launching, I was walking through the City offices.  I passed by a desk and something caught my eye.  I went to the guy upon whose desk it rested.

“Is that what I think it is?”

“It’s a fiber map.”

There was fiber (lots of it) down every single street.

“Can I borrow that?”

“Sure.”

I went to the project manager and put it on his desk.

“What is this?” I asked.

“It’s a fiber map.” He said.

“You told me you had no fiber.”

“Well, we didn’t want to use fiber. That guy’s an asshole.” he said referring to the person at the City responsible for the fiber. “We don’t want to deal with him.”

What This Shows Us

Even though these are examples in government, we all have stories like this from business, from school, from families.  When we stop talking and close ourselves off, only waste will result.

Technorati Tags: 10 social media principles,social media principles,social media,urban planning,obstruction,management,government

Blogged at My House 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))

Almost Getting It

The Obama campaign has made very skilled and rather honest use of social media and the Internet in general.  That's been exciting to watch.  It's been fun to watch.  They .. almost ... get it.

In today's skeptical and information-rich world, the key is to provide all the information up front.  To have conspicuous honestly.

Today I received the email below from the Obama campaign.  It's a good email and tells you exactly what is going on.  It describes an attack ad by the McCain campaign and the Obama camp's response.  It also provides a link to watch the Obama response ad.

It just lacks one thing:

A link to the McCain ad.

Being a responsible voter, I wanted to see what I was responding to.  The Obama campaign made me go looking for it.

Here's the McCain Ad:

Here's the Obama response:

Well, it doesn't appear to be on YouTube yet.  So here's the link.

The issue here is, why not have these two videos side by side as a mini-debate?  If McCain has a video that says something you disagree with, make a response video and provide them together.  Don't talk at us, show us the dialog.  Or a dialog at any rate.

In the end, give the voters the source material and not just your response.

Part of making American voters smarter is engaging them fully. The Obama campaign is certainly farther along with this than any preceding presidential campaign.  They just have a little further to go to get to perfect.

Technorati Tags: obama, mccain, presidental politics, social media, video, youtube

What Kills Innovation

Someone once asked me, "Sure, I get that there's a niche in the market, but is there a market in the niche?"  Eight years ago, William Rowden and I started Gray Hill Solutions to create innovative software for the transportation management sector.  In the end, we were about as successful as we could be.

So I'm going to tell this story based on my perception of this particular vertical.  I believe the lessons here translate out to all verticals.  Every vertical has blind spots, cultural issues, and built-in waste.

It seemed like Gray Hill couldn't miss.  There is an entire industry called "Intelligent Transportation Systems" (ITS), but there are very few innovations in the product lines year to year.  The industry was certainly large enough to support a niche player like Gray Hill. 

The actual technologies of ITS at the time were lagging the rest of the tech community by about five years.  That led to easy identification of high-value innovation (or at least technical application) for the industry. 

Now, the industry lags behind by about 9 years and is only slipping further and further back.  What is killing innovation in transportation?  Why aren't obviously superior solutions being installed?  Why do suppliers continue to make minor improvements on feature-poor products, rather than truly innovate?

(Click on the link below to read on...)

The Passing of Shirley Bridge

As many of you know, I spent the better part of the 1990s as the co-chair of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt chapter in Seattle.  During that time I met literally thousands of people who were touched by AIDS and an equal number who were actively doing something about it.

One person whom I met only a precious few times was Shirley Bridge.  She was a much more focused and tireless worker than I, as the link above will attest.

Shirley passed away this morning and it would mean a lot to me if you'd read a bit about her and reflect, as I am doing, on how we can all make a difference.

It would also be wonderful if you could visit Shirley's legacy fund at Building Changes and, in her honor, support HIV / AIDS Housing.

UPDATE: For online donations go to http://buildingchanges.org/support/ and use the Give Direct button to pay online with a credit card. On the form please specify that it is for Shirley's Legacy Fund.

UPDATE2: Shirley's obituary from the Seattle Times.

Thank you.

Technorati Tags: Shirley Bridge, AIDS Housing, NAMES Project, NAMES Quilt, Building Changes, AIDS Housing of Washington

Freedom Requires Leadership

When we look back on the social evolution from command and control governments to more open governments, we correlate major changes with people.  These people are leaders.  Some actively seek leadership out, others find themselves leaders by happenstance.

But, like it or not, there are leaders.

Free American society looks back on our Franklins and Hamiltons and Jeffersons and Lincolns as people who drove specific change to decentralize power.  Paradoxical?  On the face maybe.  Singular leaders arose to power for the sake of lessening the power of singular leaders.

But what we actually have here is a long term evolution toward complex and distributed society.  In that complexity we find freedom.  We find choices.  But we also find more responsibility.

Freedom distributes responsibility amongst its population. 

This is frightening. We used to rely on a central authority to set cultural norms, remove anomalous activities, and punish the offensive.  We yearn to go back to the imagined days of safety of a Happy Days aesthetic.  Full paternal control.

But in the end we are merely looking to avoid uncomfortable responsibility.

Why is it uncomfortable?  Because as responsibility is decentralized it becomes harder and harder to figure out who actually takes possession of specific activities. Who punishes free riders?  Who takes the yoke when no one else stands up?

We've lost a lot of the community aspects of our culture after enduring 50 years of suburban community alienation.  But we're slowly finding our way back.

We find our way back through leaders.  Leaders don't dictate, they are generally people who can communicate a vision and make clear what our (and their) responsibilities are.  If we don't agree with that vision, that's fine - but it's another conversation.

Through the communication of a vision, leaders help a group establish its culture and help maintain it.  They give the group coherence. The group then finds it very easy to understand individual responsibility and to discourage free riders.

When we examine it, it isn't the responsibility that is uncomfortable, it's the uncertainty surrounding that responsibility. We look at society as a whole and can identify so many needs, so many unfocused responsibilities.  It's overwhelming.

Now pull this into the microcosm of a modern business.

Everyone is overworked. Everyone is at times dismayed at low-value activities they are forced to conduct. Everyone can identify several high-value activities that are not given time by their companies because of some institutional barrier.

In cases of Agile transition - where companies transition from a rigid management system to one that is more flexible and Agile - many companies choose to jump in with both feet.  They expect, most often, to make the transition in a few months - after all people like freedom, don't they?

As our recent foreign policy shows us, freedom requires social infrastructure to support it.  It requires trust.  It requires leaders.  People cannot make a transition from a rigid and authoritarian system to an open one over night.

This isn't because people are stupid.  People with clear roles in an authoritarian system don't maintain those roles in the transition to an open system. There are a lot of roles to fill in "freedom" and people don't know which one(s) they should or can choose.

In this way, responsibility is sort of like a commodity.  You possess it, you take it.  But you have to know what to do with it.  You can't just jump up and say "I'll be a doctor."  It's not like musical chairs where when the authoritarian music stops everyone runs and sits on a convenient chair of responsibility.

In business, when people are used to specs, to hierarchy, to excessive documentation - an open organization is unsettling.  Business previously was based on a chain-of-command that provided systematic ways to deal with conflict and to limit personal liability.

It had clear definitions of responsibility.  Even if they were wasteful, they were clear.

A mature Agile organization also has clear definitions of responsibility.  But getting to them is a process.  This process should be measured to not shock the culture and make sure that there are enough leaders to supply vision and help staff define their new place in the freer workplace.

The history of social evolution inevitably points to more Agile workplaces.  They are coming. They are good. They are freedom.  They are necessary.

They require thoughtful leadership.  They require a transition period.  If staff is not comfortable with the transition, it will fail.  As we've seen, Freedom without accepted leadership devolves into a desultory chaos.  Thoughtful leadership and a coherent transition are foundations for real change.

Technorati Tags: leadership, business theory, business, agile management, agile, lean, agile transition

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Social Media Solves the Rupert Holmes Paradox

The other night, a budding lawyer lamented that she needed to watch what she put on her MySpace page because future employers might see it.  A few months ago, Sue Thomas told me she was sometimes taken aback by what people would type into Twitter - entries that could damage their reputation.

I've heard this a lot: there is a fear of transparency.

Historically, communication technologies (books, radio, television) have broken down barriers.  Usually these were cultural barriers. Helping people of different groups interact, become more tolerant, and calm society.

But there are little truths about ourselves that may be damaging, may seem irrelevant that social media seems to rapidly be bringing to the forefront and dispelling as either damaging or irrelevant.

Let's take the Rupert Holmes Paradox as a case in point.

The Rupert Holmes Paradox goes something like this:

Two people meet and fall in love. They get married. Over time, they start to take each other for granted, fall into specific patterns of relating, and grow bored with each other. They have institutionalized their communication patterns which has, in effect, put the spark out.

Unbeknownst to either, these two people (this is a pre-Internet story) then start checking out the personal ads sections of the local paper. They don't know what they need, but they need more. Neither are really happy about it, but they need vital communication aren't getting in their marriage.

So one takes out an ad.  He gets a great response.  In the ad, he talks about all these great romantic notions.  His respondent shares and amplifies those notions. She's so much more interesting than his wife, and she's only been in text!

And when they meet at the pub, husband and wife are face to face. They were both more interesting and relevant than they thought.

So the Rupert Holmes Paradox is: if you use one means of communicating with someone all the time, you end up not communicating at all.

Imagine if the husband and wife were on Facebook.

--

Rupert Holmes threw a Pina Colada at you!

--

Liza Holmes left a message on your wall:

I never knew you liked Pina Coladas!  What do you think of walks in the rain?

--

This is true for many things.  People have often tended to partition their lives.  Their work persona, their home persona, their "not-in-front-of-the-kids" persona, their church persona. 

Transparency through social media is wearing these boundaries away.  Is that good or bad?  No.  It's both or neither.  It's merely an outgrowth of this new communications technology.

In a very real way, social media and social networking are breaking down not external barriers for communication - but internal ones.  And that's rather exciting to watch.

Technorati Tags: Rupert Holmes, Escpape, The Pina Colada Song, facebook, myspace, social media, social networking, marriage, communication, communication technology, gutenberg, the rupert holmes paradox