Social-Business on Philip Sheldrake

The hi:project, social business and Flat Army

Tue, 27 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

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.

McVeillance, coveillance, and socioveillance in the context of social business

Tue, 21 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Fancy a coffee? Social business and your non-solicitation terms

Mon, 12 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The recent antitrust lawsuit against Apple, Google, Adobe and Intel for collusion in hiring practices demonstrates a lack of respect for the respective organisations’ employees. Fundamentally, how dare one’s employer collude with another in ways that may limit one’s career progression!

Having been an employer carrying the not insubstantial costs of hiring I know how difficult it is to watch someone in whom you have invested considerable time, money and energy walk out the door, but I think my memory serves me well when I say we encouraged the team to celebrate such departures. If anything, our alumni network grew +1 each time.

Enterprise social networks and assimilation – resistance is futile

Wed, 16 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Enterprise social networking is perfectly suited for the so-called onboarding process.

I say so-called because no dictionary I have lists the word, which is sort of at odds with the fact that they do list the rather unlovely deplane. But I digress. I heard this same claim from Jive , SAP (Jam) and IBM (Connections) at a Eurocloud event last week courtesy of Alan and David @agile_elephant .

It seems academics prefer the phrase organizational socialization, defined as :

a learning and adjustment process that enables an individual to assume an organizational role that fits both organizational and individual needs. It is a dynamic process that occurs when an individual assumes a new or changing role within an organization.

I’ve been onboarded. Into the Mars way back in the day. Mars prides itself on high performance enabled by a strong culture, and boy were my colleagues keen that I got that culture.

The presentations last week (rather than my time at Mars, promise) prompted me to look up the Wikipedia entry for the Borg , the reason for which will become obvious by reading this if you’re unfamiliar with the species:

Organization and personal reputation – from first principles to distributed autonomy

Fri, 04 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I’m no etymologist but it seems the verb organize appeared in the 15th Century a few decades before the noun organization . Sometimes we forget that the organization, in terms of the institution or firm, is merely a means to an end, and putting legal entities to one side for the moment, an organization is simply a group of people organized around a common purpose.

Reminding ourselves of such first principles is useful when considering how we might create and nurture new forms of organization and how we might improve the current dominant ones.

Jumping forward over 500 years, let’s get bang up to date on so-called social business, aka Enterprise 2.0 , aka Responsive Organization , aka Future of Work . The question that concludes Attenzi - a social business story exemplifies the new vista:

Do you help all the individuals associated with your organization (employees, customers, partners, suppliers, shareholders, etc.) build worthwhile relationships with each other and others, coalescing by need and desire, knowledge and capability and shared values, to create shared value?

The verb coalesce conveys the facility to combine, and so the facility to recombine, and re-recombine. The coalescence remains for just as long as shared value is created, and created faster than a new combination might afford. Such process appeals to free marketers for whom efficiency and utilisation are front of mind – after all why should resources be tied up in one combination when they can add greater value faster deployed in another? And there’s equal appeal to those on the left of the political spectrum who champion self-management and occupational autonomy.

Relationships

Sometimes I define social business as relationships at scale , and not just in the CRM 1.0 way:

Good business is about cooperative and interdependent relationships, always has been, yet the humanity was lost when organizations scaled way up during the 20th Century. We want to make those relationships more human again, but the answer can’t be to scale it all back down. We have to scale something else up.

"Our goal is to become a social business but how do we get the revolution started?"

Tue, 25 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

During a deep and meaningful conversation recently, my interlocutor declared:

Our goal is to become a social business but how do we get the revolution started?

This post addresses two problems integral to this statement.

A means not an end

Social business is a fairly fuzzy concept at the best of times. Some consider it synonymous with terms such as Enterprise 2.0, Agile Business, Responsive Organization, and Future Work, whereas others more deeply invested in any one may argue the differences. For the record, I describe social business by way of the following challenge:

Do you help all the individuals associated with your organization (employees, customers, partners, suppliers, shareholders, etc.) build worthwhile relationships with each other and others, coalescing by need and desire, knowledge and capability and shared values, to create shared value?

Shared values

Some pundits prefer to talk about shared purpose rather than shared values, and I think this may well be akin to Stowe Boyd differentiating between collaboration and cooperation with shared purpose relating to collaboration and shared values relating to cooperation. In his words :

Stowe Boyd's manifesto and The People's Front

Thu, 02 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Stowe Boyd recently published “A Manifesto For A Third Way Of Work” (although the title will change ). The manifesto forms the basis of the book Stowe plans to write throughout 2014, crystallizing the perspectives and insight he has forged and assembled over the years. And if you’ve read Attenzi – a social business story then you’ll know Stowe and I think alike on many matters.

[Update 20th March 2014: the title changed to A Manifesto For A New Way of Work .]

Here are the major theses, and I have identified with an asterisk the four I have chosen to argue below.

_____

Dissensus (versus Consensus)

— active and directed dissent is a better way to counter the cognitive biases of groups and individuals, and to sidestep groupthink; essential to increased innovation and creativity truly driving business

Cooperative (versus Collaborative)

— sidesteps the politics and collectivism of consensus-based decision-making, and shifts to looser, laissez-faire cooperative work patterns

Creativity (versus Tradition)

— new solutions to problems are needed, and traditional approaches may not only be broken but dangerous

Autonomy (versus Heteronomy)

— paradoxically, as we come into a time when we acknowledge that we are more connected to each other than ever before, a great degree of autonomy will become the norm; old demands to subordinate all personal interests to those of the collective will be displaced by a personal re-engagement in our own work and a commitment to a deeper work culture that transcends any one company’s corporate culture

Why I self-published this time

Mon, 30 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Having gone down the traditional publishing route with The Business of Influence (Wiley, 2011), I decided for a number of reasons to try a different route in 2013 with Attenzi – a social business story . Most of those reasons boil down to one simple fact, the publishing industry isn’t yet embracing social business principles. In fact, it’s perhaps a prime example of an industry continuously trying to manipulate the application of 21st Century technologies to maintain the 20th Century status quo.

Social business in 2014 and your last ever New Year's resolution

Tue, 17 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve all done it.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a professional data driven content marketer, or some poor soul who’s been told to conjure up the December post for the company blog, the temptation to write that post about the looming New Year is, well, too tempting.

If you’re looking for real link fodder, best include a call to action and sell the idea that something may be learned and put into valuable action before Santa boots up Google Maps, post title bait such as:

"Social business is dead!" ... "Whatever!"

Mon, 11 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Published as a guest post on briansolis.com , Friday 8th November 2013, in response to Chris Heuer’s post “Social Business is Dead! Long Live What’s Next! ”

As he finished a game of Cut The Rope on his iPhone, my young godson asked what my phone was like when I was his age. I broke it down for him. I was in my twenties before someone offered to take north of ten thousand dollars for a basic digital camera, and not much less for a GPS device. And I got my first basic mobile phone (I explained that means just making phone calls and sending text messages) as I approached thirty.

A few days later, as she dispatched her umpteenth snapchat of the morning, my niece asked me why I obviously enjoy what I do for a living. Imagine a whole lifetime, I replied, during which the only innovation was a tweak to the angle of the plow shear.

Scientists and engineers have been good to us. We’ve come to expect serious technological innovation with the regularity of the seasons. So, just like Chris Heuer, I’m more than ready for corresponding organizational change.

Now.

As in right now!

Having reflected briefly on the vast progression of the Internet and the web, computing, mobile infrastructure and social media services – as if you needed a reminder – let’s look at what’s changed at the typical organization during this time, my adult lifetime. Or more pertinently what hasn’t.

3M ThinkTANK conference – getting down to social business

Fri, 27 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

[Edited 7th October to embed the event video and move the slidestack to the end.] http://youtu.be/UkhXr4u9 _J4 I’ve been hosted by 3M today in Minneapolis St. Paul, and what great hosts too… a fantastic team and an incredible company heritage to boot. I could have spent a whole day exploring the Innovation Center, which is so well done I’m sure it brings out the geek in just about everyone.

Gregory Gerik is 3M’s transformation social media leader, and he led the design and delivery of the 3M ThinkTANK conference today. Kicked off beautifully with a keynote by Brian Solis , we’ve been provoked, informed and entertained by:

Attenzi, in association with Social Media Today

Sun, 15 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The first edition of Attenzi - a social business story was published May 2013. And I’m delighted that today sees the publication of the second edition in association with Social Media Today .

Joining the original foreword by Microsoft Yammer co-founder and CTO, Adam Pisoni, is a new foreword by Social Media Today founder and CEO, Robin Carey. The book also has a new front cover and an additional chapter.

What, exactly, is social business?

Tue, 09 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I’m kicking off #SCRM13 in London this morning. SCRM stands for social customer relationship management, and my role today is to get some energy into the room and, hopefully, encourage delegates to look up from simply slapping “social” onto business as normal.

Unfortunately, that’s precisely what many have been charged with doing. Those with appropriate powers of persuasion will effect organizational change I’m sure, but more to the point I feel that more chief executives need to attend Luke ’s conferences, a sentiment I’m sure he’d endorse.

A presentation to the Open Mobile Alliance conference on big data

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

According to its website, the Open Mobile Alliance “was formed in June 2002 by the world’s leading mobile operators, device and network suppliers, information technology companies and content and service providers. OMA delivers open specifications for creating interoperable services that work across all geographical boundaries, on any bearer network.”

The OMA met today in Dublin to discuss aspects of big data, and I was invited to present on personal data, social media and social business.

The meaning of social business

Thu, 30 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

[Also published on Microsoft’s #bizremagined website .]

I’m fascinated by innovations in the language of innovation. Is it the inclinations of the innovator or the characteristics of the innovation that suggests new words and phrases? When and why is existing lexicon deemed inadequate? Why do we embrace some expressions yet others wither and die?

A quick browse at netlingo.com turns up such beauties as advermation, mouse potato, and idea hamster. All new to me, and for all I know dead already. I had a go a few years ago with Internetome to describe the physical manifestations of the Internet of Things, and let’s just say the word hasn’t made the Oxford English. Yet.

Enter the phrase “social business”, bandied around with increasing frequency. What is it exactly?

Well perhaps this particular turn of phrase is sufficiently nascent to mean different things to different people. The candidate meanings form a spectrum to my mind, with “an organisation that uses social media” at one end (with the hashtags #socmed and #socbiz used interchangeably), and a deep, transformative opportunity at the other. Whether or not such a profound transformation ends up being labelled social business, we’ve tried hard at Euler Partners to articulate what it might mean in less ambiguous terms.

Attenzi - a social business story

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

My new ebook is out today .

I’m really excited about it because I’m excited about its topic, social business. With a foreword by Adam Pisoni, Microsoft Yammer co-founder and CTO, here’s how the book is presented.

Attenzi – a social business story shines a light on social business that goes beyond the all too typical homages to social media. It’s a relatively short and easy read intended to help readers explore what social business means for their organization, marketplace, communities and career.

What is social business?

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

[Originally written for the CIPR Friday Roundup.]

I’ve been writing Friday Roundups for five and a half years and this is my last one. The circulation has grown from eleven to nearly eleven thousand, we merged it into the CIPR three years ago, and I’m delighted it’s carrying on in their safe hands.

We have covered the full gamut of PR topics in this time, but a tag cloud of the 275 roundups would probably need to render “social media” in font size 100!

Increasingly however accomplished social media practitioners are asking a most pertinent question – now what? Well, it appears the answer to that is acquiring the name “social business”, and it’s increasingly been my focus of recent times. You might say social media are the eggs in the social business cake.

I’ve tried to design one question to both convey what social business might be exactly and to give the person attempting an answer real pause for thought in relation to their own organisation. I think I’m making progress with the following question, what do you think?…

Social business webinar with Jay Krall, Cision's Media Research Supremo

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The Cision webinar on 8th November was dedicated to social business , and I was delighted to be the guest in the hot seat. It was great to be able to chat with Jay Krall and answer questions from listeners about the impact of social web and related technologies on organizational structure, culture, process and performance measurement this decade.

I’ve known Jay since we started following each other online several years ago now, and he took part in an Influence Scorecard workshop I ran in New York in 2010. His contributions were invaluable then, and London is better off for having persuaded Jay to upsticks from Chicago. And if ever there was a guy with the most fabulous radio voice…

Social media are the eggs in the social business cake

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

A thrill of working in a fast changing market is the opportunity to innovate. A burden of working in a fast changing market is the need to bend existing language to new concepts. And of course, evoking existing language evokes existing meaning … both an advantage and disadvantage.

So, we’ve been working with social media for the past decade; as if all preceding media was anti-social. And during the past couple of years, we’ve been tasking our tongue to the topic of social business; as if business previously attracted loners.

Influence Crowd becomes Euler Partners

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

When George W. Bush was inaugurated for his second term in January 2005, no one uploaded a video to YouTube.

When Italy beat France to win the 2006 FIFA World Cup final, fans didn’t Tweet. Not once. No one in Europe mentioned it on Facebook. No one captured Fabio Grosso scoring the winner on an iPhone. No one jumped on Gmail to commiserate with French friends. No one used BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) to celebrate with Italian friends.

Social media have progressed incredibly quickly and organizations have had to grapple with the challenges and identify and pursue the opportunities.

But things began to get serious during 2009 as it became increasingly apparent that social web and related technologies could transform the way organizations go about their business beyond the domains of marketing, public relations and customer service. It might even redefine what it means to be in business. And that’s when we founded the consultancy Influence Crowd.

By September 2011, when I had the opportunity to address the executive summit at Dreamforce (the annual Salesforce.com conference), this radical landscape had been labelled with a distinct call to action – socialize the enterprise .