The Social Organization

What Women Know and How it Drives Profitability

Forget about what women want - women may want a lot of things that have nothing to do with running a business (oh that cute pink handbag!). But let's discuss what women tend (and I say tend because nothing is absolute when discussing gender roles) to know and you can start to see why businesses with more women in senior leadership positions are more profitable and innovative.

In my experience, here's how what women know translates into business performance:

• Women know high risk comes with high potential upsides and high potential downsides. We tend not to get overly excited about what could be and focus on what can be today. That focus means we we more likely translate current market needs into solutions that will pay off today but we may not be as likely to go for the long shot ventures.

• Women know relationships and know that the more open and transparent we are, the closer the relationships are that we can foster. This allows us to form really persistent relationships with employees, partners, and customers - and not through the use of money and rewards - which is more profitable and less vulnerable. See Diane Hessan's excellent example of Return on Openness.

• Women know how valuable communication is - at all levels. That means a lot of us are chatty (it's been proven) but it also means the people around us are never left in doubt of what is going on. That means there is less distrust and gives others the chance to bring up any issues they see.

• Women know how to navigate emotional conflict better and interestingly have an easier time discussing deep rooted differences of opinion between colleagues in a more collegial fashion. This allows for conflict resolution before things escalate into business problems.

• Women know how to identify subtle social queues and can identify whether or not someone is being open with us - whether we choose to acknowledge that or not. This allows women to more accurately assess relationships with customers and others.

• Women know that telling people what to do is not the most effective way to lead. Showing by example and using Socratic methods of mentoring often facilitates the response we desire without the negative side affects of the other party feeling controlled.

• Women know complexity. We can never focus on just work, or just money, or just family. It is always about the best decision for everyone rather than the best decision for any one constituent. This gives us a balanced perspective of a business and keeps us from maximizing revenue in the short term if it damages relationships in the long term - thus preserving sustainability and long term profits.

This is not to say that women are better and that this is true for all women (or that men don't have these qualities) but bringing women into leadership positions will bring a diversity of approach, a different perspective, and some much needed skills to the board room. In a business environment where transparency and relationships are becoming core principals of business how can you afford not to bring more of those skills into your business?

From a personal perspective *not* having more of those qualities in companies is what has driven me to start my own. I don't want to work in an environment that doesn't understand balance, is driven to 'win' at all costs, and only values relationships while they result in revenue. It's not what I am about and the more senior I get, the more aligning my values with the businesses I associate with matter to me. Is that a zero sum rule? Of course not - women don't tend to view things that way and I certainly don't.

What do you think? Is this too generalized? Do you think this is a sexist perspective? Does it reflect the women leaders that you know?

Don't know the woman in the picture? That's Indra Nooyi wife of a former boss of mine (who was quite a smart cookie himself) and CEO of Pepsi - great to see!

Respect, Acceptance, & Patience

I've been thinking a lot lately about the difference between groups, communities, and mobs as well as our collective ability to respect each other - accepting each other for where we are instead of where we would all like to be. I don't quite know the answer but it has something to do with being organized - not necessarily in a hierarchical way. The other thing about communities is that they tend to be managed - again not necessarily by one person or in a direct way but they are definitely mediated. Lastly, people in groups and communities respect each other whereas people in mobs do not.

Respect is a complicated thing - and it is not really the same thing as doing what someone tells you to. Many people follow orders from superiors without respecting them at all - that is power dynamics, not respect. Respect interestingly often means we have more room to disagree and that we can be confrontational in a non-threatening way. True respect allows for honesty - with things that are both pleasant and things that may not be. Respect means taking someone at face value and trying to understand differences rather than judge them.

I was watching the Amazing Race the other night and they were in India - many of the contestants were horrified or upset by the poverty and trash they saw while racing through. I actually found that response a little patronizing because while it may not be our expectation of life, people in India seem to manage just fine. And it is not to say that there is not a lot of improvements that can be made - there is indeed way too much poverty in India - and elsewhere. However, even if you took the poverty away there would still be cows meandering around through traffic (they are sacred after all - you can't just tell them what to do!), traffic would still be chaotic (that's just how they roll), and there would be a lot of people. I actually found the cows quite funny while I was there - one had parallel parked itself in the middle of downtown New Delhi. But the reaction of one of the Amazing Race participants was to condemn how poorly the animals were treated because they were wandering about somewhat aimlessly instead of non-judgmentally wondering why. His intentions were right - to care - but he jumped to a conclusion without really understanding the situation.

Last night I went to Social Media Club Boston where the topic was Change Dot Gov and how government was using new social tools and communications methods.  I was a bit surprised how critical people were of government and media because there are a lot of efforts to move more information, data, and access online. Is it perfect? Hell no but who among us is a perfect citizen and ultimately the government is a reflection of what we collectively make it so we have no one to criticize but ourselves. Additionally, government needs to serve everyone and there is a large percentage of everyone that is not hyper-connected - or digitally connected at all for that matter. I am also amazed how people view journalism and that it should absolutely be free. We have certainly gotten used to it being free and I am not naive enough to believe the majority of newspapers can start charging but being an informed citizen is a cornerstone to making democracy work - and isn't that valuable enough to support? And goodness knows there is a lot of information that needs to be curated these days. How we do that needs to be figured out - but I believe that it is vitally important to do so.

A large part of being part of a healthy community is reserving judgment, working to understand each other, giving each other the benefit of the doubt, accepting each other as we are, and then trying to work together on the things we can agree on.  That was hard enough as a society when things worked at a slower pace but now that people are overwhelmed with information and things move at lightning speed it is so, so easy to judge quickly. I don't know quite how to solve the problem but one thing that was incredibly useful to me was living abroad as a teenager with a family pretty different from my own. I was surrounded by people who were different and that isolation forced me to understand them rather than thinking that they should understand me. It's useful to experience being in a situation where you are entirely different from everyone else - whether it is politically different, culturally different, technologically different. Try it some time - and don't take your iPhone/Blackberry/etc. with you. It may not be the most comfortable experience but it will make you a better cultural 'listener' and we could use more people like that in the world.

Real Genius: How Much Showing Up Matters

I typically spend Sunday morning reading the paper, catching up on things, and generally feeding my brain quietly.  Today, I ran across two things that seemingly have nothing in common but in the end, had the same lesson.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The first was the the last installment of an overview of Ted Kennedy done by The Boston Globe. Now, the Kennedys are the Kennedys but in Massachusetts there is a unique place in our hearts for Ted. He is almost the definition of patriarch and is an example of the big, brash Irish man with a huge heart that can be found in communities all over Massachusetts. He's been with us for a long time - my whole life. The lesson of his life is one of persistance and slow progress in the face of overwhelming heartache. He kept learning from the challenges and kept standing up after he stumbled. And he showed all of us that if you keep doing that and you learn something by every experience, you develop into greatness. Whether you like his politics are not, he is worthy of admiration.

Image by jurvetson via Flickr

The second thing I watched this morning was Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk. She was talking about creativity and how it often is associated with mental anguish for creative people. She thinks there is too much pressure because as a society we believe that the individual is the sole source of creativity and inspiration.  Elizabeth thinks we should think more like the ancient Greeks and Romans who believe we were inspired by genius rather than being a genius - meaning that the work we do is partly the result of our work and partly the result of something other (call it a fairy, a God, a muse). What this means is that we do not need to feel 100% responsible if the output of our work is extrondinary or not - it is not ours to control.  I really like this message and I don't think it applies just to the creative types amonst us - because anyone who is trying to change the world (even if just a small part of it) has this same issue. And I believe that there is too much complexity in how products become successful or whether our projects do what we intend them too to either take all the credit when they are wildly successful or to take all the blame when they do not work out. Success is always based on the reaction of others. All we can do is to keep doing our work - sometimes it will work out, sometimes it won't.

My take away for this morning is this. Keep showing up to the dance. It's not a new message but worth remebmering (and part of the point of the book Outliers if you want more). Whether I eventually - if ever - do something that deeply changes the lives of others is not really up to me...but it won't happen if I don't continue my work. It's a bit of a relief, no?

Radical Transparency: Where the Rubber Hits the Road

We talk a lot about transparency in the social media world and about how social media will make conversations and decisions more transparent and all of that is true.  However, there is a limit to how far that transparency will go without exposing power dynamics.  The only way I know to really uncover power dynamics in organizations is to expose the money trails.  That is ultimately where the rubber hits the road.

I've been on a couple of boards and management teams and it's funny - there is always the lesser and greater members of the team.  This is never explicitly stated but some people can act with impunity and others cannot.  Want to bet which is which?  In the end, it is all about the money.

So - here is a radical idea - expose the compensation for everyone in the organization (salaries, benefits, and ownership stakes) and make them reflect a logical scheme based on job function, responsibilities, percentage of revenue/profits, positive/negative peer reviews, etc. - expose both the methodology for compensation and the actual amount.  Make it crystal clear how you allocate expenses - that will tell everyone very explicitly what the organization values. Do the same for customers - they are going to talk to each other anyway - standardize and simplify your pricing scheme. And then stick with it. Your values should be your values, right?

I know - the whole idea makes you squirm, doesn't it?  We don't really like talking about money much as a society despite all the greed that is going around. I read something recently (I think by Francine McKenna or Dennis Howlett) that accounting is really the exercise about setting our priorities and ensuring that we are acting on and accounting for those priorities.  So why should that be so secret? Are we afraid that we may not be worth what we are paid? Are we ashamed because we really are greedy and somehow we know it is not equitable? Are we squandering our money on pet employees or projects?

Yeah, I don't think we are really ready. So let us stop talking about 'radical' transparency and keep it at just increased transparency.

 

Why Socializing Organizations Matters to Me

I ran across the following interview of Seth Godin by Loic Lemeur (on Luis Suarez's Blog) - it's about tribes and passions and a great interview (especially if you are wondering why Seth Godin doesn't Twitter):



The message is one that I have been working to internalize and articulate for myself for a while.  What is it that I am so passionate about that I must do? And the answer is wrapped up in social media and social organizations.

Fundamentally I am a problem solver who wants to make the world better for others. Why? Because I love seeing the potential of a person or a product released to bloom - it is exciting and thrilling and rewarding. I think people are so full of potential to do amazing things but so much of that potential is locked by lack of information or lack of access or lack of hope and confidence. I think a lot of that locked up potential is due to the structures of our society - how we organize and run our organizations - from schools, to governments, to businesses.

You may ask why I care - it all sounds a bit Pollyanna, even to me. Fundamentally I care because I was raised to care more about others and the world than myself. It's as simple and as complex as that - my parents were both ministers and their core message was about hope and personal choices between the better angels of our nature and the lesser.

So here is the problem that I see and want to help solve: Big rigid hierarchies do more to lock up people's potential than to unleash it. 

I understand why business scale and efficiency drove the evolution of large corporations (and also created our educational system) and I think that was important but I think the zeitgeist has changed.  Society has moved on and now that we've figured out how to make cheap goods we want more...and we also realize we've lost something intangible by producing and consuming mass market goods. We are looking for meaning.  We are looking for meaning in what we do and we are looking for meaning in what we purchase. And the economic meltdown is just reinforcing that need.

The search for meaning is a high-grade worry as my grandmother liked to say - we, as a society, have the basics covered.  For the most part, we doen't need to worry about food and shelter. But once we look for meaning, we see that the world is not equitable and that we have a lot of excess and that the excess is causing some unintended consequences. So some meaning comes from trying to figure out how to use our excess to solve some of the world's huge problems. Some meaning also comes from more insular goals like creating a more meaningful environment for our families.

Where does social software and social organizations come in? It allows us to express our interests, our skills, our passions and connect to others that are motivated by the same things. That connectedness encourages us to pursue those interests and passions because we have found others who care (even if those who we interact with in person on a daily basis don't). That encouragement and connectedness gives us access to opportunities to *do* something about our passions. And now that we have our 'tribe' and the opportunity to work on things we care about.... our human potential has expanded. And those things that we care deeply about when coupled with the opportunity to do something about it creates a big boost to productivity (which is why executives should be paying close attention).

What are the results I am looking for?

• More people who wake up and are energized about the work they do
• Happier people
• A huge productivity boost in areas that we collectively care about (they likely will not be what I think they should be so if you disagree with what matters to me, that's OK!)
• Companies that start to care more about the social externalities of their business
• Companies that solve both practical needs but also do something that matters to their consumers
• Solutions to the world's unequal distribution of food and information

Is that too grand? I don't know but I see a world of opportunity out there sitting in cubes, watching TV, and doing repetitive tasks. It is alike a pool of inert molicules waiting for a catalyst.  I think the catalyst is social software.

Update: Aaron Strout was kind enough to including me in his #45in45 series...and as a great interviewer, he got me to articulate this things in an even better way here.  But read the rest of the series - it's awesome!

The Implications of the Information Economy

Amazon, eBay, Google, Craigslist, Yahoo and others have successfully ushered in the information age. This has been universally acknowledged as a miraculous and valuable thing.  It is transforming the economy in ways not seen since the industrial revolution but doing so much more rapidly. In 2008 we saw the negative results of this upheaval and they were not pretty.  There has been and will continue to be a lot of collateral damage.

What's going on? My view is that we haven't been thinking about the human implications of high speed information access and transparency.

What happens when mortgages can be requested and received within minutes?  Borrowers can purchase property impulsively.  That is not a good thing because it obscures the gravity of the decision and doesn't enforce time to think about options and the implications of a buying decision.  Result: a lot of people taking mortgages and home equity loans because they could without really thinking about how they would manage the purchase over the long term.

What happens when people can buy and sell stock online without having to speak with anyone?  People trade on rumors, panic, and impulses.  The speed at which bad news translates into financial implications has increased significantly.  Result: People don't take time to consider all the factors, there is no filter between an impulse and a transaction, and the network effect of people sharing information causes enormous volatility in stocks.

What happens with a company's strategy for customer acquisition has been advertising based (not product or relationship based)?  As we've seen with Chrysler & GM, customers who now have a high degree of transparency regarding product quality but no loyalty or relationship with the company have abandoned those brands.  While a generalization, Japanese manufactures have been focused on value - great products at reasonable rates and the European manufacturers have been focused on relationships - great products supported by car clubs, gear, events, etc - both groups have performed better than domestic car companies because they do not rely as heavily on advertising and price incentives.

The information economy has changed the way people behave - particularly in the consumer world:

- More product and service transparency is making it vital for companies to think hard about the quality of both their products and services and ensure that the experience is consistent across the customer lifecycle.  Most companies today hand off their customers from marketing to sales to delivery to support and the experience for the customer is often quite different depending on where they are in the process.  This is less and less acceptable to customers that can now 'see' the entire process through the eyes of another customer.

- People can now act immediately on information.  This is good and bad - for companies with discrete products, selling things through search advertising has been a huge boost. Independent niche product companies can survive like never before - and customers can find just about anything they need or want. For complex products and services however, customers can make purchases without thinking through the implications of their actions. Most companies are not set up to help customers much in this regard but, as we've seen in the mortgage market, it would have been smart to educate its customers better and then stick withthem supportively through the life of their loan. However because companies too were after short term gains (which had big financial gains through the stock market), they were not incented to slow down the process. That may be where regulation must step in.

The information economy has created a better informed but often impulsive consumer and it has created a networked information effect that ripples quickly through society allowing small pieces of information to set off a disproportionately large reaction - some positive and some negative. Like never before we can also act on information immediately creating economic whiplash.

This happens on a person level as well - information overload has increased dramatically so much so that I spend more time absorbing and less time thinking/processing than I used to.  My goal for 2009? Working on my filters and behaviors so that the balance of information intake and work output changes.  I may even try a few 'unplug the internet' and 'turning off the computer' days...we'll see.

How do you see information access affecting you or your business?  It is a net gain for you or a troubling challenge?

Women & Leadership Cont.

Dennis Howlett, an enterprise software expert, blogger at ZDNet and my favorite contrarian Brit, was kind enough to consider me worthy of inclusion in his recent post on 'Women and Leadership'. It was an interesting request of his - he wanted me to react to a recent McKinsey Quarterly piece titled Centered Leadership - and it got me thinking quite a bit.  I read the Centered Leadership article but really didn't relate to the perspective. It identified five dimensions that make women in business successful:

• Meaning
• Managing Energy
• Positive Framing
• Connecting
• Engaging

This all sounded a bit like a visit to a zen spa with lots of therapeutic self-awareness sessions.  I don't mean to completely pan it but who doesn't need to find meaning in their work?  And who doesn't need to manage their energy levels? To me, it wasn't exactly helpful and so what I gave Dennis was my own list of top 10 things to remind yourself of as a women. However, like the other women Dennis interviewed I am not entirely comfortable making generalizations across gender lines. I do believe that there are more men with certain traits then women and vise versa but it's not a clear line.

After I submitted my list to Dennis I had a really interesting conversation with my brother about this - he is a executive at a large company in Germany and had an interesting European angle.  His perspective was that highly successful people in the business world are those that take on more responsibility and accountability than suggested by their role and position and that people are promoted only after they exhibit the skills needed for the promotion.  In short, highly successful people don't stay in their box or play by the explicit rules.  He went on to say that women in Europe particularly had a difficult time stepping up and taking on more than what was explicitly expected of them.

This was an a-ha moment for me.  I was completely incorrigible as a kid and my parents often came down hard on me for not being polite enough....not so dissimilar to the way many other parents deal with their girls.  For me, it didn't really take..but I suspect most women were better behaved than I was as a child.  I always had too many ideas and got too excited about things to really be very polite.  As an adult I hope I've become an acceptably polite individual...but I still get an idea and run with it.  And maybe that is the real take away for women who want to succeed.  Do more than is asked of you. Take on projects you are not really responsible for. Figure out how to get projects done regardless of how the explicit process should work. Ask for forgiveness instead of asking for permission. And don't feel bad about it.

So...back to the bumper sticker: Good Girls Don't Make History

Mzinga's Product Team is Growing...Looking for a Few Fun People

Know anyone with a lot of energy and talent who wants to join Mzinga's product team and help keep the boat afloat?  And, yes, it means that special person would get to work with people like me (@rhappe), @dwilkinsnh, @DJDiva5, @jstorerj, @astrout, and @Alexa - aren't you excited already? 

But, wait...there's more!

Looking for:  an individual with energy, enthusiasm, a strong work ethic, sense of humor, analytic skills, creativity, maturity, competitive spirit & social skills

To: design product interfaces and workflows, brainstorm, herd cats, wrangle tigers, and be a product champion

Who knows something about: Software, design, social media, and business

And can: design user interfaces and workflows, diagram information flows, design graphical elements, communicate clearly and compellingly, negotiate, and write product specs

OR

Can: Understand user needs and their environments, diagram information flows, translate workflows into logical product specs, communicate clearly and compellingly, and negotiate with some degree of finesse

Extra credit for being passionate and a tad quirky... because we are too!

Interested? Drop a note here, find us on Twitter...get us interested and we may just ask for your resume!

Judgment and Lessons from Jury Duty

Like most American citizens, I was called to jury duty and I really enjoy the opportunity to participate in democracy.  I think it is amazing that as a society we have decided that a group of professional judges should not have the final voice on whether a suspect is guilty or innocent.  Instead we collectively trust a randomly selected group of individuals from all walks of life.  When you think about it, it is really amazing - we take the truckers, the school teachers, the convenience store employees, the naturalized citizens, the lawyers, the doctors, and the farmers and throw them in a room together to decide the fate of another individual.

The first thing we did at jury duty was listen to a senior state judge discuss our responsibilities and while I forget who the judge was, something she said struck me.  She explained that we use the system we do because we need average citizens to provide their judgment in how the law should be applied and that getting that judgment cannot be achieved any other way.

Human judgment.  What a concept. 

Then I think about how we've approach software for so many years. Algorithms...if we just have the right algorithms we can deliver the 'right' results.

But it turns out that, with information, we need judgment to make it 'living' information vs. data. We typically trust information based on our trust in the judgment of its source - whether an individual or an organization run by trusted individuals. And judgment is impossible to achieve without humans. And for years, we've accepted tools that don't incorporate the judgment of our peers, colleagues, and friends.  That is really what 'social' software is all about.

Community 2.0 Recap

Just got back from Las Vegas and the Community 2.0 conference.  It was one of my favorite types of conferences - big enough to get exposed to new people and ideas but small enough to get to know people, have great conversations, and not get totally overwhelmed.

I had a few agendas; One - to meet some people in person that I had gotten to know either in Twitterville or the Blogosphere. Two - to recruit some people who were willing to give me their community ramp stats so that I can build a model that can be used to simulate community growth based on the effort, content, etc. that is injected...but I need real data to make sure my model has the right assumptions in it.  Three - I wanted to hear more stories from companies who were in the middle of the storm.  On all fronts - I got more than I expected out of the event.

I got to meet Shel Israel who told some wonderful stories about his global neighbourhoods work with SAP. I met Jake McKee who told the Lego Mindstorm story from his perspective as the community manager. I had a great chat with Sean O'Driscoll who is having a lot of fun helping companies figure out their own community strategies.  I had a very interesting dinner with Greg Schneider and John Kembel from HiveLive - John has a product design/IDEO background and great perspective on the space. Got to have a great conversation over lunch with Dan Neely from Networked Insights.  Last night, Mike Walsh from Leverage Software, Dawn Lacallade from Dell, and Rawn Shah from IBM had a great dinner and discussion. In between all of that I talked to some community managers from WebEx, United Airlines, Zappos, Kawanis Club, RSA Conference, SAP, GlobalSpec, Wells Fargo, Verisgn, and Reed Elsevier.

Highlights for me:

• The people that are in this space right now are incredibly interesting, passionate, and fun.  Many people commented that they hope this aspect doesn't change as the market grows.
• While there is a lot of chatter, like my recent forecast confirmed, enterprise communities are happening in all kinds of organizations to address a number of different challenges.
• Perhaps the most revealing moment of the conference was when two different Microsoft people stood up, one to say how community focused his group was while another to say how not community focused her group was but how much she wanted to get there.
• Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh gave a keynote about community and values as Zappos and how that is their brand and they use it to guide all of their decisions.  For me, the vision that he is executing on is part of the reason I am so passionate about this space.  I don't believe we need to compromise and resign ourselves to corporations who treat their employees and customers like widgets with the excuse of expense or distraction.  Tony is showing that you can do the right thing (and some would call it the obvious thing) and build an incredibly successful business doing it.
• Listening to Tony Hsieh and Shel Israel reinforced something I have been thinking for a while which is that storytelling is the most effective way to transfer knowledge - regardless of the topic or context.  Stats, theories, and details are important backup but it is the stories that people remember and it is stories that inspire. 

While those are the highlights there were also many other wonderful presentations and I caught up with many friends - well worth the long flight and dry desert air (I swear I don't ever remember being so dehydrated) More post-conference content is posted at the Community 2.0 Blog