c.Figallo

Archive for September, 2008

In a crisis, people feel the need to communicate to find clarity about risk and what they should be doing to protect themselves. I’m sure most businesses, their employees and their customers are feeling this convergence of crisis today with the stock market making record drops and the one plan for fending off financial Armageddon being rejected by Congress. For people in my skill space, we know that the online communications channels are glowing white hot.

I tried, but couldn’t get in to CSPAN.org this morning (it said, “Server is too busy”) as the House was voting on the economic bailout. Other news and finance sites were slow to load as the masses sought up-to-the-second status on the voting.

I do have some skin in this game and it stings to see the Dow down 778. But I’m not totally convinced that this bailout proposal is really the answer we need over the long run. It’s a compromise bill with an uncertain outcome, and being a transfer of money, we all know that corruption always seems to find a way. Best case, according to economists, we’re just taking the first steps down what will be a long road to recovery. I tend to think it’s a first step on a one-way journey to change in how we live and do business in the world.

For now, anyway – with the upcoming election, the continuing wars, the looming threat of climate change, rising costs of everything and the economy acting like the Titanic just after impact – the civic environment of the social Web is on fire. I wonder if the business side of social networks are equally hot.

Businesses are also subject to the effects of climate change and economic conditions. They must deal not only with their internal finances – securing credit, reducing operating costs, dropping share prices – but with the realities of a marketplace that is going into lockdown mode. Consumers are holding on to their cash and may do so for a long time. So how are these businesses maintaining their collective sanity? Are they opening internal conversations to greater levels than ever before? Are they engaging with reluctant and worried customers? Are they innovating feverishly to adapt to a future way different from their pre-2008 strategies projected?

For their sake – and for the sakes of all the people who work for them – I hope they are making the best possible use of the Social web – one of the most valuable assets we have in these times.

Over on Web Guild (no relationship to Guildsmiths), Daya Baren wrote yesterday about a Gartner, Inc. finding that, “Many social software projects fail because IT managers wrongly believe that successful communities form spontaneously after social software tools are installed…”

If you build it, they won’t necessarily come.

This knowledge has a long history, as does the understanding that the IT department is not the best place to initiate, design and lead the implementation of social media within an organization. Certainly, IT has a valuable and – still, for many technologies – essential role in the installation and management of software and connectivity. But social platforms are more dependent on participation and community creativity than on the design judgment of technical systems specialists.

If you build it wrong, they may come, get frustrated, leave, and never come back.

Reading this article (which goes on to provide some spot-on Gartner observations about how successful communities come to be), prompted me to recall what was probably the most expensive case of IT trying to lead an online social initiative that I’ve been associated with.

My client was, at the time and still is today, one of the world’s most powerful technology companies. They felt well-versed and state-of-the-art in all of the basic web practices except one – customer community. I was contracted to lead them to their first one. My role was defined as being on the business side, with a stark partition between me and my team and the technical side.

I’d recommended a community discussion platform with which I was quite familiar. My client hired another consulting firm to search for the best platform; they ended up choosing the same one. So, along with my recommendations that they “just leave it the way it came in the box,” that software interface was handed over the the technical team for – what I assumed – was a cosmetics job. They would wrap the discussion interface in company branding to make it match the rest of the redesigned web site.

Long after the supposed deadline, the new UI was unveiled and I was shocked – SHOCKED, I tell you – to find that several of the most essential features had simply been removed from the community platform. Things like navigation buttons, user customization options, tools that allowed users to get different views of the activity and flow of discussion. Meanwhile, the strategic marketing department to which I was reporting seemed to not notice that anything was missing.

IT at the table, but not at the head of the table

Long story, short, I called a meeting to warn of the certain negative reception that would result if the alpha was launched with the disabled UI. A representative from the technical side was then added to the team on the business side – to take direction from the business team – and the UI was returned to the shop for restoration of the original features.

My engagement ended soon after that, but my client company went on to adopt online community and other social practices at an accelerating rate, first externally and then internally. They learned that the successful knowledge sharing community grows out of the needs of its members, not out of the preferences of its system technicians.

With the proliferation of free and public domain social tools on the Web, there’s plenty of natural selection going on. Thousands of users will try out a tool, see if it fits their needs, then decide to keep it, drop it, or wait to see if its makers improve it. There’s no penalty for trying out these tools, if you’ve got a little time to devote to it. For many web-connected offices, the tools that make the cut may be introduced to serve social business purposes without even the awareness of IT. When workers discover that they can improve their own productivity through use of social media, it’s hard to go back to IT-limiting technologies.

I’ve seen and experienced many of the benefits of social media in the context of business. I’ve worked for clients who appreciated the improvements these tools and practices have delivered in communications, customer service and overall satisfaction in the workplace. The evidence for the effectiveness of social networking, blogging and realtime messaging is out there and irrefutable. Those companies that ignore or deny this only stand to fall behind those that are taking action to leverage the advantages of the social net.

And yet – as the outcome of this survey by Avenade indicate – more than half of the respondents “said senior executives and IT staff resist adoption out of fear it will sap worker productivity. Sixty percent believe management does not understand the potential social media offers employees and customers.” This in spite of the admission by more than half of the executive respondents that the use of social media is bound to infiltrate their companies through employees, without the leadership or involvement by them or their IT departments.

Perhaps many of these reticent executives would be more open to lower-commitment implementations of proven social media tools and practices that could demonstrate to them the potential value of wider scale adoption. Of course, some adjustments in corporate culture may be required, but if the alternative is being left in the dust by less fearful and more adaptive competitors, it makes little business sense to not be more curious and willing to experiment.

The Republicans have become experts at lying. Bush has lied to the public for 8 years. He was elected to two terms. His approval ratings are in the ditch, but that doesn’t seem to be affecting McCain’s prospects as he claims to be running against the Republican old guard while also feeding whatever it is that middle and lower class Republican voters find beneficial to them about the patriotic, fear-of-strangers, love of guns, condemnation of abortion mentality of the right wing.

I don’t think the lies are so much the problem as it is this mentality – this fear-driven attitude – that Repub strategists have become so adept at evoking.

As a non-self-destructive liberal, I’m set on voting for Obama-Biden in November. I’m willing to settle for the compromises they’re presenting for whatever political reasons rather than continue to allow Republicans to trash this country and – to the shrinking extent that America influences what other nations do – the planet.

Whatever decency and honor John McCain may have held in my regard – and I’ll admit, that’s mostly due to John Stewart’s ability to touch McCain’s jive-ass ex-Navy personality – I have nothing but contempt for the bastard since the absurd choice of a charm school rookie as his running mate.

Given the global warming situation, the very fate of the planet is put at risk by the prospect of Sarah Palin inheriting the White House. Even had he chosen a qualified VP partner, the Repubs stand to continue to drive this country toward disaster on all fronts – economy, energy, education, diplomacy and perhaps most importantly for the unity of this nation, the survival of a strong and attainable middle class.

But I have to hand it to the Rovians behind the Republican strategy: they started with a poor hand and, through an audacious, off-the-wall bet, they’ve gained the advantage in this race. Of course, they’ve had to outright lie through their teeth in full view of the public to do it. And the Democratic strategy team has had to adjust. Now they are responding promptly, calling the Repubs on their lies, with even the mainstream media supporting them. But I doubt that it’s enough.

Countering lies with the truth won’t be sufficient to derail the wave of enthusiasm that’s risen up around media queen Sarah Palin. Maybe the debates will expose her or show her to be incompetent, but George Bush looked absolutely lame and overmatched in the first two debates with Kerry, yet he still won the election. I’m beginning to believe that, like a genius chess player, the Rovians have found a way to bring a big chunk of undecideds to their side, while the Dems are forced into defensive mode rather than spend their energy and media time winning over their own chunk.

There’s still time for a counter surge, but I have to wonder why the Dems don’t have their own version of Karl Rove among all those braniac, Ivy League poli-sci laureates. I mean, c’mon!

This is hardly unexpected, nor is it “news” in the sense that it’s a new phenomenon, but an article in the Washington Post provides a good profile of what the meteoric growth of Facebook has spawned – abuse of access and the inevitable repressive crackdown by Facebook authorities.

As with every participative site that has grown a massive user base on the Web – and, for that matter, with the Web and email overall – the prospect of access to so many eyeballs attracts not only the legitimate advertising forces, looking for ways to get their piece of users’ attention, but also the renegade forces who game the system to “rob” user attention by whatever means possible.

Once such abuse begins to impact user loyalty – hounding users into abandoning the platform or community in reaction to spam or threats to their privacy – business priorities force management to take action by tracking down the attention bandits or at least identifying the telltales of their practice, and then denying them access to the system. This almost inevitably leads to some innocent people being punished or restricted by the dragnet, which is the topic of the WaPo article.

Because of the rise in spamming attacks, including several incidents last week, Facebook has tightened its security systems and is deactivating accounts for behavior that seems at all suspicious, said Brandee Barker, the company’s director of corporate communications.

“Accounts may have been deactivated not necessarily because of their activity, but because of the precautious we’ve taken,” she said. Users who have been disabled will be reinstated on the site by e-mailing the company if they prove they’ve done nothing wrong, she said. “Because of recent security incidents, we’ve been overly cautious. We are working as quickly as we possibly can” to reinstate legitimate users.

Facebook’s model is based on unlimited expansion of the user base and of the “applications” that draw users into networking and communicating with friends and associates. Naturally, people with something to sell will want to piggyback on this expansion to develop markets of mass attention for their benefit – or – for those more interested in gaming the system for gaming’s sake – just to see how much mischief they can cause.

Attention is a precious thing; it pays even where there’s no money attached to it. Some people work toward a fair exchange for attention; some people are satisfied to rip it off. In mega-communities like Facebook, the social dynamic is more like New York City than Mayberry RFD. If your venture depends on attracting the attention of millions it, you can bet that success will lead you to the kind of social tragedy where innocent members must be sacrificed.

It wasn’t a year ago when I was blogging at Climatefrog – the precursor to pResilience – about sea level rise and how it might affect Marin County where I live. I found it difficult to detect any risk assessment activities relating to the impacts of SLR on this county with its 55-miles of tidal coastline, and that was bothering me, given the scientific evidence available in September 2007.

Now, just a year later, after scientists have reported accelerating melt-off of Greenland’s glacial ice, I’m gratified to find that our city council, right here in little ol’ Mill Valley, is holding a public forum titled “Preparing for Climate Change and Sea Level Rise,” attended by the mayor, our local county supervisor, a senior county planner, and Mill Valley’s Sustainability Director.

I should add here that since last year, most of the predictions of the rate of sea level rise seem to have moderated from the extremely scary projections of 20 feet or more. Yes, such a rise is still eventually possible – under the worst-case scenario that global temperatures will soar (due to the amplifying feedbacks of methane releases from thawing permafrost and warming ocean bottoms), resulting in much faster melting. But responsible scientists tell us that such a worst case would take centuries to become reality. See this RealClimate post for a sanity check on SLR for the coming century.

The latest report, published in Science magazine based upon research about the Greenland ice cap warns that the melting could very well accelerate through the 21st Century, resulting in sea level rise rate of “almost 1 metre per century.”This is considerably higher than the IPCC report projected (10cm at most by 2100).

Of course, the researchers cautiously admit that they’re limited to making educated guesses about this.

Climate scientists are uncertain how susceptible ice sheets are to global warming, largely because they have never witnessed one disappear, so researchers led by Anders Carlson at the University of Wisconsin-Madison decided to look back to the end of the last ice age for clues.

I suspect that our town forum on the subject will reach the conclusion that yes, we are vulnerable, but that things won’t get really serious for a few decades. I’ll be attending, to see how they address the prospect of stronger storm surges combined with even a slight rise in our high tides putting most of our sea level sewage treatment plans out of commission. Not to mention our main highway and probably several hundred residential housing units built, romantically, at just barely above high tide level.

I look at interaction on the Net from the human angle more than from the technical one. I see the effectiveness of digital social tools in terms of how well they support relationships among people. And, as a business manager, I try to gauge how effectively those relationships are formed and maintained to achieve goals.

One of the aspects of organizational life I aim to improve for clients is sustainability – identifying the practices that will best help them adapt to the myriad changes that are impacting them now and will impact them in the future. To me, one of the cornerstones of sustainability has to be the relationships between the people who make up a networked organization. Knowledge surfaces, grows and is maintained through those relationships. And though relationships depend, for the most part, on the individuals involved, the organization plays a vital role in supporting them through the decisions it makes regarding communications media and the policies and practices attached to them.

Out of curiosity I googled “sustainable relationships” and found two contrasting hits in the top four. First came a short essay at Earth Witness, which described the relationship that the author recommends we all develop with natural places in our world. Such a relationship, he writes, must be direct, face-to-face, and nurtured over time.

The second notable find was from the web site of Halliburton, describing the accountability that the huge multinational multi-business company must demonstrate to ” employees, clients, suppliers, citizens and governments in every community and country where we operate.”

Talk about your extreme ends of the continuum! And yet, both statements are valid, describing elements that most organizations must consider in their efforts to build sustainable working communities that will carry them to success through challenging times.

Relationships are created organically, face-to-face and over time as people find their affinity groups; but they also come into being mechanically, as organizations hire employees, seek partners, suppliers, clients and customers, and relate to different levels of government. At that mechanical level, it helps if the organization – through its mission, hiring and HR practices – intentionally builds a culture that will help it make decisions that support sustainable institutional relationships with these external entities.

Part of my work is initiating and facilitating conversations that clarify the relationships that my clients must sustain, both internal and client-facing.