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I help organisations work better, so how on Earth is that connected to the hi:project ? Given I dedicate not a small fraction of my time to this non-profit endeavour, I’m asked on occasion to explain how the two are related. The ‘HI’ of the hi:project stands for human interface. It’s our way of describing the technology we think should and will largely supplant the user interface, the UI. Here’s how I’ve begun to explain it of late … When we approach digital, we have a natural propensity to digitize the pre-digital; after all, that is all we know. That’s how we ended up sticking an ’e’ in front of mail for example, and went from having desktops, files and folders to, well, desktops, files and folders. Yet digital has unprecedented qualities – it just takes us a while to discover and exploit them. It’s only with the passing of decades for example that organisations can now explore alternatives to email. And filing stuff looks increasingly anachronistic with the power of near-instant search at our fingertips. In the same way, the UI is attached to the digital machine / service today because pre-digital physical machines had a physical interface. ...

I’m at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit at the British Academy in London today, courtesy of Kongress Media and Agile Elephant . In conversation with Lee Bryant , Matt Partovi , David Terrar , Damian Corbet , Céline Schillinger , Johan Lange , Janet Parkinson and Anne McCrossan , a common theme is emerging – we need such events as this, and the deep and wide potential of Enterprise 2.0, to extend beyond the inevitable echo chamber of today’s eager community. ...

I was a victim of McVeillance in June this year. I was walking around a shopping mall under systematic surveillance – CCTV everywhere – when I was accosted by security upon taking out my own camera to photograph the mall. (FYI, the mall itself was the subject of my photography and not its customers per se.) Professor Steve Mann coined the expression McVeillance after he was manhandled out of a McDonalds in Paris where he was eating with his family in 2012 for no other reason than for wearing a computer vision system. McDonalds was watching him. He was watching McDonalds. And ’they’ didn’t like it. I wasn’t ejected from the mall as I was actually undertaking a project for the mall’s owners, unbeknownst to the security personnel. I was escorted to the security office for appropriate clearance – an act which, per Mann’s definitions, officially made me a surveiller. The word surveillance originates from French, from sur- ‘over’ + veiller ‘watch’ (from Latin vigilare ‘keep watch’). It invokes an authoritative orientation where one in authority, metaphorically if not physically above, watches those below. Mann had previously coined the word sousveillance . The French for ‘below’ is sous, hence the neologism for watching the watchers. ...

In my last post on the topic of AMEC and measurement , I noted: AMEC is the Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication, not “of Media” I have taken that as the theme for my contribution to AMEC Measurement Week 2014, which kicks off Monday. Dr. Jon White is another influence who, in a recent exchange, pointed out that the problems of measurement in public relations are largely the result of the approach taken to management in public relations work. ...

The hi:project launches today. It’s a synthesis of many of the things I care about, from the original decentralizing visions for the Internet and Web, the aspiration that digital technologies can help people relate to each other better and understand each other better, and the idea that we might connect to each other without wondering who’s monitoring our every action. I believe that making all variety of organization more agile, more valuable, more useful starts by empowering all the individuals that play a role in the organization’s success. The creation of mutual value begins with acquiring self-knowledge and mutual understanding to effect mutual influence, and this is exemplified by the question that concludes Attenzi - a social business story : ...

I’ve had a number of questions thrown at me by students in their dissertation deliberations these past weeks. I’m not going to post them all here as there is overlap as you can imagine, but this one complements nicely the Q&A with Phillip Casey (and here ) at Newcastle University. [caption id=“attachment_29777” align=“alignright” width=“150”] Silvana Paules[/caption] Silvana Paules is a post-graduate student undertaking a Masters in Strategic Management of Public Relations at the Higher School of Social Communication , Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa . (I took the main photo here on a trip to the Instituto Politécnico in 2011.) Here are the answers I offered to some of her questions, and I start with a relevant extract from Chapter 10 of The Business of Influence . The Chief Influence Officer (CInflO) The incumbent [of this role] is charged with making the art and science of influencing and being influenced a core organizational discipline – charged with executing the Influence Scorecard . They will be keen to network with peers in other organizations, to share best practice, to identify, refine and codify proven techniques, and to flag up unseen or unanticipated flaws in the processes described in this book [and others]. In my opinion, the role of Chief Influence Officer will be regarded as being on a par with the COO, as CEO-in-waiting. Ideally, the Chief Influence Officer will have a varied background covering marketing, PR, customer service, HR, product development and operations – just the kind of trajectory frequently mapped out for ‘future leader’ types. They will probably have more experience in one or more of these over others of course, but will set out as a matter of urgency to orient themselves in the areas of the organization with which they have least experience, working hard to establish a thorough and lasting rapport with functional heads and all stakeholder groups. They will excel at interpersonal communication, inspire confidence and a can-do attitude, and know instinctively when to crack resistance one-on-one and when to draft in support from the CEO. Given the not inconsiderable change management, collaboration and coordination challenges, boards will look in-house for candidates with extant strong organization-wide interpersonal relationships and a reputation for making change happen from both the hard and the soft side of things. Appropriate candidates will recognize that the task is not achievable alone, particularly without unanimous and unequivocal board support – which they will be intent on working hard to secure, if not already manifest by his or her appointment. The candidates will be highly numerate, probably having taken a statistics or research methodologies component to their university degree. They will be ‘digitally native’. They will be curious and indefatigable by nature, and able to identify and exploit opportunities as rapidly as they identify and learn from failure. They will be comfortable living simultaneously in both the extreme, unrelenting real-time, and the future two to four quarters hence. […] They will particularly relish the harsh, unflattering light thrown on previously opaque and unconnected aspects of the organization, and the boardroom accountability this allows them to enjoy and demands they live up to. ...

Phillip Casey, post-graduate student at Newcastle University, follows up our earlier Q&A with a couple more questions. Is influence harder to manage as an organisation grows in size? As before, beware the idea that influence can be managed per se. I’ll assume you’re referring to the considered design and monitoring of process, culture and operations more widely, to increase the likelihood that stakeholders are influenced and appropriate reciprocation is encouraged, in ways more conducive than otherwise to the organization achieving its goals and living up to its purpose. Complexity of the influence system does tend to increase with organization size from my observations, and possibly by definition. But I’d caveat that by asserting that such observation should demand a response in organization design terms. ...

You have been influenced when you think something you wouldn’t otherwise have thought, or do something you wouldn’t otherwise have done. In the 20th Century, the marketing department did marketing, the PR people did PR, and no job title included the word influence. To this day, no role or team or department in the typical organization incorporates the word, which is why I pivot my client workshops around the topic of influencing and being influenced – not only does it address the actual thing we’re all interested in, it helps lower ego defence and removes functional blinkers. ...

The CIPR is in the process of updating its research, measurement and evaluation guidelines (PDF) . The current edition is dated March 2011 and harks back to when I used to chair the CIPR’s measurement deliberations; the current initiative is being led by Matt McKay and Martin Turner . Here’s a short but important extract from the current guidance: Every organisation should have a mission (why we exist), values (guiding behaviour), a vision (what do we want to be), objectives (breaking down the vision) and strategy (how we intend to get there / achieve the objectives). Given that measurement isn’t just the detached collection, analysis and presentation of data but a powerful management tool in itself, a powerful way to align each employee’s day-to-day activities with the strategy, this cascade must continue robustly, transparently and visibly. People perform as they are measured, so the measures must drive strategically important behaviour. And as each marketplace is unique and as your organisation is unique, your strategy will be unique. And so, therefore, will be the suite of measures you design, deploy and manage by. ...

Having put my two penn’orth out there over the years I’m occasionally approached by students at this dissertation time of year. This week, Phillip Casey and I struck up conversation on Twitter. Phillip is a post-graduate student undertaking the MA in Media and Public Relations at Newcastle University (pictured) and his dissertation is titled Brand Image: PR in the UK non-profit healthcare sector. [caption id=“attachment_29730” align=“alignright” width=“150”] Phillip Casey[/caption] I enjoyed responding to Phillip’s questions, so, with his permission, I thought I’d make our Q&A public here. (It migrated to email in case you were wondering about a 140 character count.) Where a reference consists of just a page number, it refers to The Business of Influence: Reframing Marketing and PR for the Digital Age . 1) Is a strong brand image important for a non-profit organisation? Why? A brand used to convey ownership of livestock. Then it was an “our name’s on it” quality assurance. This century, with product quality (defined as fitness-for-purpose) increasingly a given, a brand represents a nexus of values. If our values align with a brand, then I’m part of that brand. If they don’t, I look to take my time, attention and money elsewhere. [Attenzi ] Organisations need to communicate their purpose and values in order to attract and assemble the right mix of people and resources to live up to its mission and pursue its vision. So brand, defined like this, lies at the heart of things. ...