The Social Organization

It's Good to Feel Like a Kid

 On this particularly grim Friday after a long week of financial anxiety and the cascading effect that it has on almost everything else from how we feel about politics to our own security and future, I just want to talk about having fun.

Last night I got a special treat.  1 - My husband and I donated to a really worthy cause this summer - the Pan-Mass Challenge - and that felt really good since it was a way to proactively combat the disease that took my father and  2 - In return, the Red Sox donated special tickets to us which meant we got to take two friends and watch the start of the game from the infield, sit in the Green Monster for three innings, and then watch the rest of the game from really good seats. 

Having grown up in Boston, the legend of the Red Sox and Fenway looms really large so this was a once-in-a-lifetime event that just tickled us to death.  It made us all feel like we were six again and going to our first game. The toys are different - the boys had their fancy cameras - but the feeling was the same.  We got to spend time on the field before the game, three innings hanging around in the Green Monster peering through slats to watch the game...and at after all that the Red Sox won on a beautiful fall evening at Fenway. 

It was a great reminder of how to savor the moment, enjoy friends, and set aside the worries of the day.  We could all use a little more of that these days.

And I have to add a special note regarding the Red Sox community relations team.  Last night our host, Kate, was great and made sure we got the best experience possible. Earlier in the year we also had a problem with tickets and the Red Sox staff went out of their way to help us get the tickets we thought we had purchased through the website. It was an example of great customer relations in a situation where the Red Sox really don't *need* to spend the extra time and money to go out of their way.  And that is a community relations lesson we should all take to heart.

The Wisdom of the Crowd or Mob Rule?

I was perusing through my corner of the blogosphere today and ran across Chris Brogan's new project, Dad-o-matic.  It's a cool multi-author blog covering mens' perspective on raising kids.  I don't have kids but I love the concept and some of the perspectives.  I came to a particularly hard stop on Guy Kawasaki's "The Top Ten Lessons My Dad Taught Me". Rule number 3 was "Don't Follow the Crowd" and went on to say:

"Don’t follow the crowd. Initially, I thought that he was saying that most people were stupid–and I agreed with him. But I now realize that he was telling me not to follow the crowd because the crowd “mentality” can make smart people do dumb things. This is why I don’t believe in the “wisdom of the crowd” to this day."

Now, in social media, following the 'wisdom of the crowd' is a very popular concept but while there are aspects of that thinking which I agree with, I've never gotten on the bandwagon in quite the same way as some others. Guy's post articulated for me why.  Crowds can do great things but crowds can be really dumb too. What's the difference?

I think it all boils down to leadership.  Crowds that are inspired to do great things - WWII, Habitat for Humanity, and the Tienanmen Square protests are all examples of how crowds of people can do amazing things.  But we only need to look toward Rawanda and other examples to see how crowds can also take humans to new lows. So then it really becomes important who the crowd is listening to and taking guadiance from - President Kennedy inspired a whole generation of Americans to make choices that made America better and stronger as a nation.

Crowds without leadership and inspiration are not necessarily better or worse than individuals.  But a crowd can become both more than the sum of its parts and less than its lowest common denominator depending on how it is inspired. WE can definitely be smarter than ME (one of Mzinga's favorite lines) but...not without some good leadership.

Access & Control of Information

The recent announcement of Google Chrome scared the bejesus out of me - and I was already pretty wary of Google.  Yes, they provide amazing services, many for free or in exchange of fairly innocuous advertising. And maybe I am a bit paranoid. However, my politics and liberal arts education consistently reinforced for me - both in subtle and direct ways - that those in control of a society's information are essentially in control of the society.  And my question is, do we really want Google controlling our society? Knowing that they are a profit-driven organization motivated primarily by increasing their revenues not by doing what's best for society at large?

While Google started out 'Doing no evil' they then quickly went public and it's no longer really in their control how much subtle evil they do while pursuing 'shareholder value'. I don't believe that anyone at Google is explicitly trying to figure out how to manipulate people with all the data they collect about what our society collectively seeks, what we look at, how long we spend looking at it, and what we do next. However all that data they collect feeds their 'relevancy' algorithm, pointing people toward content that they can make more money off of and understanding relationships between concepts that may otherwise seem completely unrelated. Google can probably tell us more about ourselves than we could articulate.

Imagine situations like searching for 'hope' and getting more returns related to Barak Obama than for religious organizations...or searching for 'maverick' and getting links for John McCain [neither of this happens BTW, just an example].  Those relationships between keywords that we use to seek and the answers that get returned, subtly changes our perceptions every time we see them.  Added up, it changes how we think. Changing how we think can change how we act.  Could be good....could be exceedingly scary. Like the railroads controlled physical access to the West in the 19th century, Google controls access to information in the 21st century. The implications are concerning.

In a similar way, information bottlenecks in organizations should worry executives.  Information bottlenecks often control information and how it is presented.  This can obfuscate the reality of the situation on the ground...and that is a huge risk to an organization. Looking at the recent Wall St. meltdown makes me wonder whether these huge banks really knew exactly how exposed they were to the health of any one of their partners. Different groups within the same banks were borrowing and lending huge sums of money from the same partner, making many of the large financial institutions completely interdependent. 

What's the solution?
- Getting rid of individuals who hoard and do not openly share information, particularly at the managerial level.
- Accessing more of the conversations going on at every level of the organization...and ensuring that no one is punished for actively discussing issues and concerns.

Fun and work are not mutually exclusive

 I have a pet peeve having to do with stock photos on the pages of many enterprise software company websites (including our own - see our solutions page).  Why?  Because I don't know these people...or anyone that looks like them for that matter.  They are a little too perfect...a little too smiley without actually laughing...I don't work with those people and frankly, they don't look like a lot of fun either.

This picture from Flickr is more like the people I work with - and like the people with whom I want to work.  A bit less than perfect, a bit quirky...but very creative and talented.  Which gets me to my point.  Who was the person who decided that work shouldn't be fun and that we should all be widgets doing a very narrowly specified job?  Was it IBM/Big Blue and their blue suit/white shirt diktat?   And why did we collectively accept that?  People are much more creative and talented than any job description and if we don't let people explore, reach out, and participate in new ways everyone loses.  We lose people's passion and commitment but we also lose a great deal of their productivity.  And yes, that includes having a lot of fun.  People learn best by playing games - it allows us to abstract out a problem and solve it in a different context. By doing so, we often learn how to solve a problem in its original context.  In my last job, an engineer (who is also a great friend) attached a dancing hampster to our payment gateway. He put it right on top of our multual cube wall and people could pay 25 cents to turn it on...annoying as hell because I was the poor sucker who had to either listen to three verses of hamster singing or pay another 25 cents to turn it off.  But so funny...so inventive...and such a good example of how flexible our product was and everyone in the company knew about it (it probably helped that it was a really amusing way to annoy me!).

How does this relate to my general theme of enterprise social media?  Because enterprise social media should allow individuals to express themselves - with all their quirky, interesting, creative...and sometimes weird...ideas. It lets us connect to each other, it lets us display all our talents...and hopefully it allows us to make work fun. Why not?  And if you want to see who I really work with go to www.mzinga.com - Barry, Aaron, and Mike are incredibly talented AND a lot of fun.