Archive for the ‘Power to the people’ Category
Markets are conversations… so what? Part II
Your agile self
The word ‘agility’ is being bandied about a lot lately. Agile development processes are the norm in tech companies now – favoured over the old school linear (waterfall) method, for obvious reasons, like more rapid development and alignment with customer need.
It stands to reason we can no longer risk the time and money wrapped up in locking ourselves in a room, devising and developing, then unleashing on the world in the hope they like what we’re group-thunk. Instead we iterate, evolve, collaborate, release little and often and pursue a path of perpetual beta.
The thing is, agility doesn’t just apply to product development and business process. Agility applies to life as an individual too.
Consider agility in terms of education… locking yourself away in scheduled lessons for fifteen years, only to be unleashed on the world with a bunch of largely irrelevant skills and skewed expectations; versus learning little and often, applying it, veering in a direction that’s a better fit, tweaking, collaborating and remaining in a mindstate of perpetual beta / lifelong learning.
The insecurity experienced by those who’ve debted up to the nines on the pathway to release in the real world, without means of first validating demand by listening and iterating to suit, is causing a nationwide upsurge in lost souls.
Get something – product / self – out there now. Don’t wait for perfection or completion – there’s no such thing. There’s only assumption. And we all know what that’s the mother of.
Google education
It was interesting today that I overheard a young sales exec who’s just starting to learn the ropes talking with her boss. Having shown a keenness to gain more proficiency in sales, I listened as she asked whether she could do a sales course.
Intuitively, the product of a successful linear education sees the step before ‘doing’ as ‘being taught’.
She asked for my advice on courses. I said, ‘if you want to learn something, Google it. Then do it.’
That’s it.
The thing is, more new information will be generated worldwide this year than in the previous 5,000 years. Right now the amount of new technical information is doubling every two years. This means half of what students learn in their first year will be outdated by their third.
Now more than ever it’s important not to use linear education as a magic (and perpetually disappointing, of course) crutch to prop you up when you’re faced with doing. Infinite sources of learning are instantly available to anyone with an internet connection. Free tools of discovery are everyday.
The journey of discovery off your own bat is as valuable and unexpectedly revealing as the output you desired when you started searching.
Never underestimate the effectiveness of a Google education. The ability to learn what you should listen to versus the abundance of crap you should cast aside is the new recital.
No straight lines of possibility?
Alan Moore’s recent post is worth a read:
In his article for The Observer – Tony Judt writes,
Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For 30 years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose. We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth.
The materialistic and selfish quality of contemporary life is not inherent in the human condition. Much of what appears “natural” today dates from the 1980s: the obsession with wealth creation, the cult of privatisation and the private sector, the growing disparities of rich and poor. And above all the rhetoric which accompanies these: uncritical admiration for unfettered markets, disdain for the public sector, the delusion of endless growth.
Indeed, this is a point of view that I share (here) and (here) and (here), in fact I have written a book about it (video) – Judt’s article goes onto examine the role of the state in the context its enthrallment with all things market driven. And yet we are told whoever comes into power in the UK slash and burn of core pubic sector services is inevitable. And of course this will be done in a manner redolent of the industrial age.
Yet – a networked approach to solving problems can help re-frame our world vision – providing new solutions to once seemingly age old and intractable problems.
Brookside, postboxes & SaaS development
Loads of illuminating analogies have emerged in conversations with Andrew Missingham, but today there’s one in particular that popped up…
You may remember when the soap Brookside launched on Channel 4. The storylines were based around folk living in a close of houses. They had some trouble at the outset however, in that script writers realised they hadn’t created enough ‘stock devices’ – places where people could meet that would fuel the dramatic unfolding of events. Their answer was to put a postbox on the street, so residents would accidentally meet.
Given that the ability to innovate relies on diverse skillsets and knowledge banks coming together, this analogy is more relevant than ever. New knowledge uncovered by researchers, for example, needs to be matched with entrepreneurs who can interpret and understand the opportunities, then commercialise… in turn with the help of skilled troops, whether designers, developers, craftsmen etc.
Barriers to entering this innovation ecosystem are lower than ever – and the very reason for the existence of Scramblr is to lower them even further.
The question I’m asking myself today, is ‘What are our postboxes?’
Humanity 2.0 on slideshare homepage
Nice one slideshare!
“Hey ResonanceBlog!
Your presentation Complexity & Humanity 2.0 has been selected amongst the ‘Top Presentations of the Day’ on the SlideShare homepage.
Our editorial team would like to thank you for this awesome presentation, that has been chosen from amongst the thousands that are uploaded to SlideShare everday.
Congratulations! Have a Great Day!
- The SlideShare team
p.s. Why not blog/twitter this and let the world know about the masterpiece you have created?”
Collaboration and democracy
Disappearing up your digital ass
Dirty meaning factories
People live, then they die. Get over it. We all die and life is short. This is the fundamental fact of life that causes us to seek meaning… to crave it (so as not to feel pointless – hence religion… and brands).
Marketers sussed this out. Roll on the brand campaigns that attach meaning to things they want us to buy… mass marketing and broadcasting (human standardisation). So we buy stuff. It differs according to our environment (e.g. I’m a London business dude so I really can’t possibly be a non-failing happy person without a flash car, expensive new boots and a crazy-priced flat). We buy loads of stuff. Our impact bias, influenced by the marketing bombardment (though not as much as they’d like to think!) causes us to overestimate how happy the stuff will make us. Conversely, the same bias causes us to overestimate how crappy we’ll feel if we take a risk and it all goes wrong. Hmmm.
Imagine accepting your lifespan and making the most of it. What’s the most useful thing I can do in my short window of opportunity, that’ll make me the most fulfilled? What would contribute most to the overall progress of the human race? What would be of most value to others? Do I care? Do I just want to pursue pleasure and to hell with the rest of them?
Whatever we decide to do, hopefully it isn’t on auto-pilot, with fear-clipped wings and hangups about stupid shit like the credit crunch, piracy, predetermined life-paths and hierarchies.
Big lumpy clumpy balls of crap
Leading on from the previous post about the coolness of chaos…
Have you ever had to deal with a big lumpy piece of complex old software that was written years ago, then updated countless times, new bits added on, a new guy adding another bit, bolt-ons, sticking plasters and fixes… until it’s a big slow cumbersome piece of crap nobody can change or work with?
That’s pretty much industry as it stands – and other big systems for that matter (e.g. government, education). Since the industrial revolution, we’ve built up this massive ball of crap. Now nobody can do a damn thing with it.
The most obvious example that’s hurting right now is the whole free thing. We can listen to music for free. We can watch TV shows for free. We can read books for free. This of course screws record companies, publishers, broadcasters… oh yeah, and then there’s the whole fact that we don’t pay a blind bit of notice to advertising. The big massive balls of crap are stuffed because they’re prisoners within their own structures – too slow, too fat, too inflexible. They’re waiting to die, with their fingers in their ears, screaming ‘lah lah lah!’ as nimble network-based businesses spring up under the radar, taking over the world at lightning pace.
At the end of the day, all a business traditionally does is ensure people get paid. That’s it, when you think about it. Traditionally the big boys get paid much more than the little boys, but it’s just a bunch of individuals getting paid.
Now, think about the overhead in a big-lump-of-crap business. Big shiny offices, management structures, HR departments, blah blah blah. Think about MARKETING BUDGETS… zillions and squillions… to make sure you sell LOADS to make sure you can pay the overheads and pay the individuals (staff, bosses, shareholders etc). So we pay more to make more to sell more to pay more.
And it ain’t just the hippies who know sustainability is an issue. We need to stop producing so much crap. Reuse, reduce, recycle and all that jazz. Yet still we need to make people want more so they buy more so we sell more to pay individuals.
What if we scrapped all the crap?
What if there were no management structures?
What if there were no multi-million advertising / marketing budgets?
What if there were more or less no overheads?
Answer? We wouldn’t need to sell as much, so we wouldn’t MAKE as much. Sweet! It isn’t rocket science.
And could we do business without these business-as-usual / this-is-business stuff that costs so much? Hell yeah. It’s already happening. It’s soooo easy to change from ground level, as a bunch of individuals, with no management, a pinch of leadership and a sprinkling of magic dust – in comparison to attempting change from the ‘top’. It’s no surprise that people feel pretty darn good when they’re an individual within a collective, creating profit through good growth, without all the psychologically, environmentally (and every other ‘ally’) damaging self-fulfilling prophecies inherent in business as we know it.
I mean, we all know we went a bit crazy over the past few years (decades). We all got a bit carried away. It’s like full on raving in the 80s/90s (or whatever equivalent!). Bloody hell what a blast. Dance your face off – time of your life. But after a few years everybody starts to feel like crap, go nuts and realise it’s no fun any more and life’s better when you feel good. The individuals-formerly-known-as-consumers are just started to ease off the uppers. They’ve been turning your brain cells to mush and it’s much nicer to be wide awake.
So what now? Sit back and wait until the chaos period is over and this network-based commerce phase kicks in and emerges as the new status quo?
Err… that would be pretty boring.
Instead you could join a tribe. Or you could start one. Soon it’ll pay way more than your job (if that’s what you care about)… and really when you get into the swing of the new way you won’t give a toss.
Take it a leap beyond ‘markets are conversations’ into the realms of DOING, not planning. ACTION IS THE NEW FORECASTING.
Copyright ResonanceBlog 2009
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