Faster Future: Possibilities now and beyond: jobsworth

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Wednesday, June 15, 2011

The risk of reliance on real time

I noticed , via the gift of twitter, that JP Rangaswami has been busy nailing it again – this time on the subject of hierarchy.
He was clearly speaking at some event or other – and illuminating the world with his thinking as he so often does (for I knew of his thinking from the tweets being sent from an admiring audience).
Thing is, what he was talking about was what he was shaping and had substantially published on his blog back in January.

Nutshell: Hierarchies are required when the cost of co-ordination is high; in the age of the web they are much lower so we need them much less. Read his original post in full (I recommend it and many other of his posts).

In a pre Twitter age I’d have read JP’s blog post the day it was published. As my flow of information sped up, so I missed it. That’s the risk of reliance on real time. (image courtesy Col_Adamson)
Blogs stand on the asynchronous side of connecting us. We do well to remember that organisations that fit the network best enable both synchronous (together, at the same time) communications alongside asynchronous (not at the same time).
Which re-emphasises the point I made earlier this week: Messages are meant to connect us, not to persuade us.
Connection has value to us both at the moment of need (real time) and at the point of discovery (there awaiting our moment of need).
For example; if I have a fault with my car and I can connect with 5 car mechanics right now, one of them may be able to answer my query. But if they and the 2000 other members of a forum have recorded their answers for later discovery that may offer a wider range of niche answers to niche concerns.
If everyone is connected all the time then real-time wins. But unless and until, then we also need asynchronous.

This perhaps illustrates another fine point – made again in a blog post, by Hugh MacLeod (Gaping Void) that

“Blogging hasn’t changed, you have. What’s happening on the Internet isn’t important; What’s important is that the world knows how you intend to change it. Right here. Right now.”

The point is that a tweet has much less opportunity to become a social object – a thing around which a community of purpose – folk who care about something enough to do something about it – can gravitate.
A blog post – at least one with purpose - stands as its own social object; a thing around which conversation happens; the aggregator of folk who care; the maker of change.
Tweets (and Facebook too) serve very well to point at these social objects – to spread the messages that can connect us. But it is rare that they are the social object itself.
I say rare – not impossible. We have all seen examples: We Love the NHS springs to mind.
However, if nothing else, my miss of JP’s blogpost combined with Hugh’s call to action will do one thing for me; I aim to rebalance my time spent blogging vs time spent tweeting and see what that does for my ability to connect.

By the way this is the 1002nd post on this blog. If I'd been paying more attention we'd have all had a party two posts ago...

Monday, May 16, 2011

Twitter, relationships and the Dunbar number

An interesting conversation emerged on Twitter last night. It hasn't ended yet I suspect, but I wanted to capture a snapshot of it to share.
The conversation is all about twitter and other technologies and how these may or may not enable us to push up the Dunbar number. Those involved include the 5th Beatle of the Cluetrain JP Rangaswami (Jobsworth). author of Herd, Mark Earls (Herdmeister), uber blogger and techy Kevin Marks, Tech journalist (at the Guardian) Jack Schofield, musician, blogger and coder Jack Stow, knitting nomad @Carocat - and a bit of me.
It's one of twitter's weaknesses that valuable conversations can be difficult both to follow and to archive when multiple parties are involved - yet this is exactly when it is of it's greatest value: bringing people together around things they all care about: An adhoc fuzzy-edged community of purpose rather than a silo of friends.
Here's the snapshot. Go follow any of the folk involved to join in.

Friday, March 19, 2010

How to build a business for the networked world

Former accidental economist turned accidental technologist JP Rangaswami was at his engaging best when he gave a keynote at the first European Social Business Summit in London yesterday.

JP - on twitter as Jobsworth and blogging as Confused Of Calcutta - is a big brain behind clever stuff at BT.

Yesterday he turned his attention to what it takes to be a business in the networked world.

Economists will know that the purpose of a company is to reduce transaction costs.

Starting from that view point, JP outlined three key elements that must be designed into a business from the word go to succeed in the networked economy.

There is much resonance with the platform thinking approach I advocate:

In a nutshell, organisations should use their resources to discover and bring together people who care about solving the same issues they do and support them in resolving those issues (reducing the transaction costs for all).

This platform approach means the company (the org) doesn't end at the edge of your premises, or at the firewall... and certainly not at those listed on the payroll. It's the Ninety10 way

JP's three tips for building a business for the networked world were these:

1. Design for sharing;

2. Design for scale through participation,

3. Design to take advantage of the synchronicity/asynchronicity the web enables.

Design for sharing: JP gave a neat example of how the ability to benefit from the value creation of sharing has to be part of the structure of the organisation: Food. (image courtesy Photo Mind)

He noted how in India he could always bring a few extra people home for dinner with him. It was never an issue. In England it is much harder to be as spontaneous because our food is structured differently. You may have four steaks ready at home to feed four people. If another three turn up, sharing becomes awkward.

Indian food is more granular, easier to redistribute. It is structured for sharing.

And it's this kind of thinking you have to embed in the structure of the networked org.

People aren't for doing stuff to, they are for doing stuff with
Design for scale through participation: The likes of wikipedia, facebook, twitter have hundreds of employees - millions of willing participants. They were designed from the off as a participatory business. If no one outside participates, they fail. Those outside aren't seen as people to do stuff to, they are seen as people to do stuff with. They are essential and integral.
To pick up on JP's food metaphor - think about a pic-nic. A pic-nic is a meal in which everyone attending contributes something. That can scale from 2 to a million or more.

Design for the Synchronous/Asynchronous:
JP says: "Things that were previously synchronous, like voice communications, can now be asynchronous, and things that were previously asynchronous [like knowing people, status, location or current work] can be synchronous."
In the industrial era people and resources had to be brought together not only physically, but also temporally, to create an outcome. In the networked world this is no longer the case. People all around the world, and at all different times, can contribute. Design this into the structure of your org.

I'm hoping that I've captured the key elements of JP's points here. And I'm sure that if I haven't he will be willing to clarify and/or expand. (UPDATE - JP has added to this in a comment below; with reference to reducing the transaction cost of information for an organisation through search - and the value of social search).

His approach gives an interesting check list for those of us building businesses, or attempting to make existing ones better adapted to the networked world.

And there isn't anyone in any business or organisation anywhere who shouldn't include themselves in that number.

After all, as JP put it: "Trying to create an industrial era firm in a network age is plain blind stupidity."

Monday, December 07, 2009

Hamsters, information and the internet of things

I've been meaning to (find this and) post this ever since I saw JP Rangaswami speak at the London 140chars conference at the 02 on November 17.
JP was the reason I came back to the O2 for the afternoon session (I chaired a panel at Monitoring Social Media in the middle of the day).
He chose to spend 10 minutes talking about what it means that twitter is not a news service but an information service. And about traffic lights, the internet of things - and his family hamster.

Enjoy. And if you do, find JP as @jobsworth on twitter.

Thanks to Delymyth for shooting and sharing on Viddler.