Faster Future: Possibilities now and beyond: connection

Showing posts with label connection. Show all posts

Friday, August 14, 2020

Please share this with someone I don't know who may not like it

Every connection is valuable. But some connections are more valuable than others.

Network theorists have long known the way we connect is rarely random. We cluster. At its worst that means echo-chamber and group think. We follow, read, work with only the people we agree with. And our world becomes smaller as a result.

When you want to tackle the hard problems you need more variance in approaches, ways of thinking, life experience, cultural norms, belief systems, neural diversity as much as gender, age and ethnicity.

Network Theory tells us one extra node on our network has the potential to double the number of connections. But not if it simply reinforces your cluster. To repeat what you are doing, repeat the kind of connections you have. To change - and grow - what you are doing, seek difference.

Problems don't get much harder than the ones facing us today - economically, socially, environmentally, politically. Now is not a time to seek people like you.

Each new connection with someone outside your clusters opens your door to a new cluster.

This is true of problem solving, business development, team and organisational design.

So please share this with someone I don't know who may not like it.

Thanks.

Photo by Matthieu Joannon on Unsplash

Monday, April 18, 2011

What makes you share?

I’ve been wondering about the etymology of ‘Conversation’. The ‘con’ bit has been worrying me.

It’s been nagging at me ever since some social media auditing I was involved with (many moons ago) revealed that an online news article with positive sentiment attached (the Holy Grail for many a PR) more often than not triggered a deluge of negative sentiment in the comment stream.

This came up for me again recently when speaking with journalists at The Guardian about influence (which, for the record, I argue must always be thought of in-context and as emerging from relevance.)

It’s almost as if to generate the greatest volume of positive sentiment you should duplicitously create content which argues the contrary position to that which you want people to take (and more fundamentally, express that they take). (Image courtesy Toban Black)

Turns out the ‘Con’ part of conversation isn’t the part I should be concerned about (ahem) more the ‘versa’ bit – which is from the Latin versus and does hint at the argumentative nature of much of our dialogue.

The flip of this is that much conversation is much more of the social grooming part of our behaviour. We agree on the niceness of the weather, that policemen are looking younger and other such trivialities. By agreeing, we reveal how alike we are, bring loose ties a little closer, prepare the ground for doing stuff together should the need arise.

By taking contrary positions we are also sharing our identity – expressing where we are in conflict and through this discovering others who are in accord with us.

Now, whether or not taking a contrary position or agreeing with fellow humans is the most effective way of generating positive or negative sentiment is of marginal interest to me. Learn too much about this and seek to gain from it and I doubt you’ll end up feeling particularly clean.

What encourages others to express what they think – one way or the other? Now that does matter.

It matters because the only way we can find others who care about the same things we do is through one or other party expressing that concern. Until you share your thoughts they have no value to you or your network. They contribute nothing to making your life better or the world a better place.

But the simple act of sharing what you care about can make change. When you share you allow others to access your thoughts and to discover you. And bringing people together around things that matter to them is what changes our world.

So what drives you to share? What would make you share more?

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Reflections on my first 20,000 tweets

I just clocked up my 20,000th tweet. A moment perhaps to pause and reflect on what's going on here.

According to twitter I've been tweeting since June 20, 2007 but I'm pretty sure I didn't get serious with it until maybe six months later.

In any event, in the same period I have blogged 763 times. That is, for every blog post since I signed up for twitter, I have tweeted 26.2 times.

I tweet so much that Twournal (which turns your tweets into a book) can't cope. All it'll handle is the last 3200 - which I now make available for download should you so desire.

I suspect the same limitations are imposed on the word cloud I generated of my tweets. But then I guess twitter is all about real time, so what the hey?

The rate of decline in my blog posting is huge. In Jun-Dec 2007 AT (After Twitter) I posted 152 blog posts. 2008 saw a roughly similar rate/month (348 for the year). But in 2009 I posted just 159 times. And this year to this point just 104.

This is partially because Twitter has replaced one of blogging's functions for me; microblogging. In those days of 300-plus posts a year some of the posts would have been a throwaway comment and a link to something I found interesting. Now I do that on Twitter - and I can do that anywhere anytime - something which wasn't available to me on blogger.com back in the day (though now is through some useful iPhone apps).

Blogging remains very important to me for a number of reasons:

1. Blogs are the least silo'd of all the social media: Anyone can find one of my blog posts. Yes with google now indexing tweets that is becoming more possible for twitter, but the 'real time results' window of opportunity for discovery is small. Anyone can discover my blog posts any time and from any where. This increases my ability to connect.
2. Blogs have longevity. What I post here remains until either I delete it or blogger.com goes pop. My tweets are gone before you can say "where's my first tweet"? Most tweet recall and compilation services appear only to be able to index the last 3200 tweets you post. Pah - a drop in my trivial ocean!
3. Blogs are your personal url - a home to store and share everything you care about. Neither twitter (with its light weight architecture) or Facebook (with it's silo'd approach) can match them for that. Doc Searls said it best: "Blogs are the single best representation of the sovereign self".
4. Blogs offer more depth and exploration: Most things can be said in just a few words (hence twitter) but not all. Exploration of ideas obviously benefit from interaction but ideas also need a chance to breathe, to wander, to digress. Blogs are good at this.

Tweeting offers something new. We tweet 'the trivial' - the snarky, the wisecrack. Twitter (and trailing along behind Facebook status updates) lowers the technical barrier to publishing what we think - and in its mobile guise particularly - where and when we think it.

For example there are tens of thousands of tweets in the UK every week in which people tell us they are having a drink. I never once wrote a blog post to say I'm having a beer - I've certainly tweeted that I have.

This creates a new value in aggregation - we express our metadata much more readily, systems, brands and orgs can learn from this about what we want, what we don't like, when we want it and where. And all without positing a single question. Market research without the waters muddies by point of view.

People have always said this stuff to their nearest friends 'in the real world'. Now they publish it for all their friends - and for the world to learn from. It's giving orgs the ability to wikifix by gathering realtime expressed metadata that was never available before.

And I'm part of that - moaning about train delays here, download speeds there, reporting on service good and bad - as it is happening to me.

But that's not my motivation for tweeting - at a rate of almost 16 a day - as I'm sure it's not yours.

Neither is it a desire to gain an audience - just as that's not my motivation in blogging.

What motivates me is the desire to connect with people who care about the same stuff I do.

The trivia is there for two key reasons: First to create that connection with someone else having an 'I know what you mean' moment - or someone who has a solution or a step towards it.
Second, it functions as our rather more sophisticated equivalent of picking the nits out of the next monkey's fur - we maintain our social connectedness through small talk - the weather, the pleasure in a cup of coffee, last night's game or even - to my shame - the X Factor.

Small talk is a very very human thing to do. Twitter is a very very human medium. To succeed in it as business or individual you have to take a very very human approach.

Monday, November 29, 2010

We have to get over fame before we learn to connect

If you aren't a regular follower of Marketing Week (the UK mag for the Marketing industry) you may have missed my latest leader - published at the end of last week.
I wouldn't want to miss out on the opportunity of making connections - which are frankly more likely here than on the fame-hunting pages of MW so, the column is repeated below...

Does social media satisfy an urge for fame left as a hangover of the broadcast age? An urge we must get over before we achieve connection?

The use of the term social media has done many marketers a dis-service. Actually, it's led them up a garden path to a place where the trees don't quite bear the fruit they may have hoped for.

There are two reasons.
First: including the word 'media' made us believe this was all about communication. It is. But only as a means to an end.
The second: the hangover of our mass communication era concepts of fame.

The latter assumes people are broadcasting in social networks (etc). Those who believe that will point to the idea that when we use (eg) Twitter we are shouting out into the ether in order to acquire an audience.

And that would be the case if this was a broadcast model - an example of one to many.

But it isn't.

It's many to many. When we tweet (or express metadata - stuff about ourselves, our lives, our issues and concerns) we are not seeking an audience, we are seeking connections.

It's an important distinction.

I'm not saying that there aren't plenty of people seeking their little bit of fame through the use of the tools of social media. There are.

What I am saying is that they misunderstand the true value of a network over a broadcast model - that a network brings you connections.
And it's time we all got over that fame thing.

Unless we do, marketers will continue to make the mistake of seeking to gather audience when what they actually want - and need - is connection.

A recent example? I received an email from someone in the industry begging me to 'like' one of his clients facebook pages. If it acquired a certain (big) number of likes then the client would give a (big) cheque to Children In Need. Each like (should the target be reached) would have cost the client £2.50. That's a reasonable cost per acquisition I suppose - If you think audience has value.

The reality is if I 'like' your page only because I want to help a third party (in this case Children In Need) or for any other reason than genuine shared purpose/belief, then my eyes and ears are closed to you.

£2.50 down the drain.

A community without connection is just an audience with its eyes and ears shut.

Connection discovers and brings together people who care about the same things and gives the opportunity to do something about them together.

Connection means we join together to make things - products, services, co-created campaigns.

Social Media is more about connection and less about communication than is too often assumed. Letting go of our old world concepts of fame and audience reveals the real ROI of the web: A place for making with others - not taking from or broadcasting through.