Feb 20, 2011 | Alliance management, Collaboration, Social Media
Things have changed, the tools of web 2.0 make collaboration, at least theoretically, really easy, so why it is so hard to get done?
Outside the web, where Wikipedia, Linux, Ideo and a few others have rewritten the rules, and boomed as a result, the output from new collaboration tools appears far more limited. Most businesses I deal with are struggling with co-ordinating a video conference, and that is about the end of the tools that they are using.
In a fundamental way, they need to consider the architecture of their collaborative efforts. What works for a co-located team, even if it has a few “fly-ins” will not work for a truly distributed team, or one that is working on a complex development, even when co-located. It seems a few rusted on practices need to be revisited:
- Responsibility for the outcome should be clear, along with budgets and timelines. It is the group that holds responsibility collectively, not individuals, and individual performance is measured by their contribution to the groups achievement of the outcome.
- The “how to” get the job done is left to the team.
- The team should be able to co-opt and manage outside skills as necessary to get the job done with relative freedom.
Feb 16, 2011 | Collaboration, Social Media
Forming and directing groups has become pretty easy with the advent of email, mobile phones and photography, face book, and other forms of mobile, instant technology applications.
This reality is simply that the new tools have removed the transaction costs that previously existed that prevented simple, cheap and spontaneous communication of one to many.
It is inconceivable that the spontaneous riots that occurred in 2005 in Cronulla would have happened without the coordinating tools of mobile text and established networks of connected and like-minded individuals. Everybody was surprised at the speed, size, and emotion of the mobs that formed, and then the emotion expended, the groups dissipated just as quickly.
The recent QLD floods have seen social media play a pivotal role in the communication of the events as they happened, directing the official response to the points of most need, and creating the networks that resulted in thousands having the information necessary to offer and deliver their assistance with the clean-up as it progresses.
These tools have become integral to the way we behave in a decade, an astonishingly quick behavior adaptation that goes to the heart of they way all our institutions need to be managed to engage effectively with their stakeholders.
Feb 15, 2011 | Change, Collaboration, Innovation, Social Media
Finding professionals to develop stuff for you is getting easier by the day. A whole range of services are evolving to meet short term needs, by matching the booming IT capabilities in emerging nations prepared to work for what in a developed economy is peanuts, to the needs of individual projects.
In addition, on line services like surveys can be done quickly, and simply to test hypotheses before significant expenditure is committed.
Agility does not equal poor planning, so long as it is in the context of an overall objective to be achieved, rather it reflects a humility necessary to recognise you do not have all the answers, and a willingness to adapt simply reflects the reality of complicated, fragmented, and rapidly changing circumstances combined with the edge of the envelope moving at increasing speed.
Feb 14, 2011 | Collaboration, Social Media
Access to information, rather than being for abstract analysis, is a call to action which in the past has been to the individual, but now can be across huge numbers who have no connection apart from the cause.
As the analysis of the dynamics of the changes occurring in Egypt emerges, it will be fascinating to watch the extent to which the analysis of the power of social tools as argued by Clay Shirky in “Here comes Everybody” are confirmed.
Shirky’s book, published 4 or 5 years ago does a great job of putting words around what we now see every day, people who do not know each other organising with the assistance of social tools. This can be as simple as two people meeting for the first time, using a phone to identify each other in a crowded café, to something more co-ordinated like the student protests at the behavior of HSBC , to the hundreds of thousands that gathered in Cairo’s main square demanding change.
Others who hold power by exercising autocratic control must be watching the revolution in Egypt, and carefully considering their Swiss bank accounts.
Feb 6, 2011 | Branding, Marketing, Social Media
Advertising has a new coat, “adverfanning” as in advertising to attract “fans” for your social site, who are then the target of directed or “Permission Marketing“, a term coined by Seth Godin over a decade ago.
Adverfanning has been growing exponentially with the growth of social media, it is the foundation of the business model, but the cost/impact has been increasing as click through rates decrease. According to a report by analytics firm Webtrends, it now costs $1.07/fan, as reported in this WSJ article, which is getting close to TV cost/impact in some time slots.
The business of advertising has not changed, but the tools have. The old ones, TV, radio and magazines have fragmented enormously with choice, and new ones have emerged from the social media, but the objectives are unchanged.
Gain attention
Generate engagement
Motivate trial
Build repeat sales
Encourage brand evangelism.
Feb 2, 2011 | Customers, Marketing, Social Media
Yes, another alphabetically numerated generation for us to get our heads around, the F of “Facebook” generation.
These kids, born in the mid eighties, have grown up connected. To them, Facebook is more than a tool, it is a part of their social fabric, fundamental to the way they see the world, act, communicate and engage with their environment.
Their “behavorial DNA” is different to their parents, often even to their older siblings, and they way that plays out as these F generation people make it into the executive suite will be fascinating, challenging, and inevitably speed up the pace of change, already too hectic for many.
