21st Century Organization

21st Century Organizations @ Business of Community Networking: IBM, Avon, CondoDomain, AMA Boston & the National Collegiate Scouting Association

When Victoria Axelrod and I started writing about 21st Century Organizations here 3 years ago examples of enterprises not leveraging their people networks for success abounded but good models were less obvious.  The joy of the Business of Community Networking conference, in which we just participated, was access to terrific case examples. Here are some enterprises to watch:

IBM-Given the many times we've written about IBM's capacity to leverage knowledge deep within the organization (through JAMS) and from outside to inform their strategy (for example to rethink patent management p95 ), it was no surprize hearing Mark Bonchek, Chief Strategist Soundbridge, describing his company's work creating and supporting IBM's CIO Executive Advisory Council.  From the disciplined approach to engaging external stakeholders as advisors to the metrics being tracked and stories of customers becoming brand advocates, IBM understands creating value through  people interacting. 

AVON- Kristen Mitchell, Marketing Manager, AVON Online, provided inspiration and practical ideas from her use of social networking platforms to empower Avon representatives, extend their businesses and grow sales on and offline. Clearly Avon is prepared to experiment and evolve to operate in today's connected world.

Condo Domain-  Hearing Erica Farthing, Director of Social Media describe using blogs, video, Twitter, to extend this startup's brand and engage customers reminded me of Stowe Boyd's 2006 meme: "the individual is the new group". Erica does not hesitate to use her individual enthusiasm for her company and work to help build the business. Nor it appears do happy customers who appear in video interviews. The subsequent discussion raised the management issues around having employee identities so visible but clearly CondoDomain benefits from Erica's social media outreach. Read CondoDomain's story through their press coverage.

American Marketing Association, Boston- President Myles Bristowe captured attention describing his organization's evolved use of a Ning Network to grow membership and serve members.  AMA Boston's disciplined networking, including defined roles and responsibilities in the social network built on research into the "economics of contribution", is inspirational.

National Collegiate Scouting Association- Brian Davidson, Director of Social Media, opened eyes and possibilities describing use of an array of public social netorking platforms to promote NCSA. Hearing about sales happening as a result of outreach and respectful conversations in Twitter leaves no doubt about it's growing importance and potential for doing business and serving customers directly.

Clearly the "Business of Community Networking" is evolving but success from the array of initiatives presented points to the importance of not dallying in experimenting with the new ways to connect with customers and members the latest generation of social networking tools provide.

For more BOCN nuggets read the Twitter stream from #bocn and @just_kate's excellent summary blog post here.  And if you represented a model 21st Century Organization at #BOCN, putting people networks to work to grow your business, and I've overlooked you, please alert me. 

~ Jenny Ambrozek

FOWA Miami: Where are the Women Application Developers?

At TheAppGap I've blogged about the FOWA Miami technical highlights and speakers sending buzz through the auditorium. This post shares the unexpected conference moment that focused attention on the cultural issues around technology development and adoption.
 
Speaker Kristina Halvorson abbreviated her presentation about the importance of content in application development to bring conference head, Ryan Carson and Chris Messina to the stage for a discussion about the under representation of women at FOWA (within both the audience and as speakers.) 

FOWA attendee Obie Fernandez’s conference write up reports "11 women out of 800 people registered" and these discussion highlights:

"Challenges for organizers
· Fewer women applicants
· Fewer women on circuit
· Fewer "high-profile" women speakers   

                                             Photo Courtesy Alex Designs         

The potential speaker's challenge:
· Lack of role models
· Lack of support and resources
· The girl/boy thing. In classrooms, a boy will raise his hand whether or not he knows the answer.                    

Girl will only raise hand if she knows the answer. (Basically it takes hubris to be a presenter.)
· Perceived "white boys" club."

A limited presence by women at FOWA is not new.  Chris Messina first raised the issue in a 2006 blog post. And interestingly, as blogger Agorum reports:

"The main reason I want to mention that speech is the huge amount of criticism I've heard about it, which is something that I unfortunately expected and proves the point of the male-centric attitude that still exists in tech."

More power to Ryan Carson for allowing a center stage discussion about the lack of women at FOWA. Subsequently I’ve heard from colleagues that such lack of diversity impacts other technology focused conferences too, especially SXSW.

Bottom line:  the search is on for leading women Web application developers to speak at FOWA. Send Twitters to @ryancarson tagged  #tweetspeak. 

Clara Shih, Faceforce developer whose “Facebook Era” book publishes in March comes to my mind as a potential FOWA presenter, as does Kaliya Young Hamlin, who nudges the evolution of Open Identity. Given Kaliya’s focus on promoting openness she has already shared her lessons about being a speaker so others can learn from them here.

Please take a moment to share your observations about women in technology, impact on organizations, and women developers' lack of presence at conferences. What are the implications and your suggestions for addressing?

~ Jenny Ambrozek

change.gov

It comes as no surprise that President Elect Obama had a new website change.gov up within 24 hours of election in order to communicate directly with the populace - us, given the brilliant use of open technology used during the campaign.

CNN reported on 10/11, almost a year to the day of Obama's announcement at Google last year, that he would appoint a CTO with cabinet level position. That 2007 platform is spelled out here at VentureBeat, a Silicon Valley blog.

The pressure is on now for those in government and in business who do not yet get it that going digital democratizes information. Power has shifted in more ways than one. "E pluribus unum" has a new meaning - Who would think E also stands for electronic.

~ Victoria G. Axelrod

Have We Reached a Collaboration Tipping Point?

JP Rangaswami's Supernova 2007 presentation was my highlight. I listened to the software initiatives he described, including BT's partnership with open source wiki provider TiddlyWiki. I wondered how did JP talk an estabished telecom company into these innovative initiatives, and how will these steps translate into British pounds?

A year on BT is a proud sponsor of a television special series, "Collaboration", hosted by Donny Deutsch on CNBC.   I don't know what audience BT is targeting (given the 8pm U.S. ET Sunday time slot), but you can find video excerpts on the CNBC site revealing the interesting array of presenters the program taps. 

Sunday night's episode titled "Profiting from Collaboration" included:

i. Ted Leonsis, (who lead AOL's Greenhouse program that created the Motley Fool and IVillage brands) talking about his long tail independent film venture, SnagFilms.  

ii. NetFlix CEO, Reed Hastings, addressing questions about NetFlix high stake, million dollar challenge, to enhance their movie recommendation algorithm, Cinematch. NetFlix is engaging outside talent in it's search for a 10% performance improvement. Hastings indicated some 25,000 people have joined the chase. Competition leaders are listed on the Leader Board.  The current leader shows a 9.44% improvement.

It seems everywhere I look there is a story promoting the value of collaboration. Via Twitter Andrew McAfee mentioned the November 2008 HBR article "John Chambers Sees the Future" that comes with a video explaining his "collaborative business model".  The Fall MIT Sloan Review offers "An Inside View of IBM's 'Innovation Jam'".  Ziff Davis is promoting through Baseline, CIO Insight and eWeek it's "Enterprise 2008 Collaboration Survey" that finds "collaboration tools.. are among the most important technologies for 2008".

Does the BT sponsored "Collaboration" program on CNBC indicate a tipping point from awareness to adoption of collaboration as business performance essential in a global world?

No doubt, from a technology adoption perspective, collaboration tools are everywhere from enterprise wide platforms (Lotus, Sharepoint and JIVE) through grassroots use of wikis and blogs. Individually employees are connecting beyond enterprise walls on consumer social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter.  But is the collaboration the technologies enable creating maximal value for the enterprises that are paying the bills?

I cannot help but raise the question, surrounded as we are by a global financial crisis that represents a massive failure in collaboration. While technology enabled global trading in credit default swaps, responsibility for the failures lies with humans and management. Stories abound of the problems from lack of AIG headquarters oversight of the UK trading unit that wrote risky instruments against the corporate balance sheet, to Greenspan’s choosing belief in open market models that had served him well for 40 years over carefully prepared advice from regulatory authorities about the risks involved. 

No doubt collaboration technologies have arrived. However, as the financial crisis unfortunately makes abundantly clear, effective use demands thoughtful participation by all individuals in organizations and clear headed leadership to maximize the potential. 

~ Jenny Ambrozek

netWORK Beings

“Younger people have grown up with computers and networks in a way that older people haven't,” says Nicholas Brealey whose Future Files: The 5 Trends That Will Shape the Next 50 Years by Richard Watson comes out in November. “The younger generation built Web 2.0,” he says.

Future Files is cited amongst a review in Publishers Weekly of  numerous new management books where a few remarkable themes stand out: 

- the title of the review The Individual Man: Business Management for a new generation can only spark - are you kidding me?? but there are still some gems,

- instantaneous anticipation of respect (some 6 million new businesses were started last  year,

- young leaders are customizing their companies to fit their lifestyles and values (certainly the case with Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos)

- leader as a whole person rather than a set of skills or techniques

- young people see themselves as more than a cog in a machine

- sense of individuality, high needs and expectations

- action for managers to “go green"

Other than the Future Files there did not seem to be many books carving out new management or organizational models for a networked world as I would have expected given the enormous social media shifts impacting business.  Put it under the rubric of Enterprise 2.0 which also happens to be a conference where colleague Jenny Ambrozek and I will be leading a discussion on Open netWORKING Organizations - Co-generating Business Value.

But in a stunning triumph of an article by Nicholas Carr, Is Google Making Us Stoopid? in the July/ August issue of The Atlantic Monthly I think I see the answers. The relentless march of technology to improve organizational effectiveness and efficency is not new. Any student of business knows of Frederick Taylor and his principles of Scientific Management As Carr describes:

Taylor's system is still very much with us: It remains the ethic of industrial manufacturing. And now, thanks to the growing power that computer engineers and software coders wield over our intellectual lives, Taylor's ethic is beginning to govern the realm of the mind as well. The Internet is a machine designed for the efficient and automated collection, transmission, and manipulation of information, and its  legions of programmers are intent on finding the "one best method" -the perfect algorithm- to carry out every mental movement of what we have come to describe as "knowledge work."

We are still being Taylorized.

It was the opening of Carr's article characterizing his own awareness though of how his  thinking, patience for reading and writing has changed AW (after web) compared to BW (before web) which struck a chord.  Here is the netWORK being, the generation who's reading, surfing, interacting, expectations and instantaneous anticipation of respect is shaped by the technology.

He points to research which confirms some of these observations that Internet usage affects cognition. Quotes Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist and author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain that we become "mere decoders of information."

There is much to this article and it may rank right up there with Bill Joy's famous Why the Future Doesn't Need Us but I think there is a wake up call for those of us consulting to organizations on the intersection of technology and human performance.  We need to remember that workplaces need to be a balance of social and technological systems. Taylor has actually been given a bad wrap for years in that he was actually trying to make work more satisfying for the worker by optimizing efficiency. 

In our Enterprise 2.0 session we refer to the socio-tech balance as relevant today as Tavistock 50 years ago "If a technical system is created at the expense of a social system, the results obtained will be sub-optimal."  Looking forward to the next iteration of netWORK beings.

~ Victoria G. Axelrod