The concept of “willfull blindness” explains a range of societal disasters, from the GFC to the glass ceiling … and the effects are amplified by power. This post speaks to the necessity for asking unpleasant and awkward questions, especially when we feel least like doing so.

"No crisis improves with age" … despite that, companies are still deluding themselves that they can control the message in times of trouble. Increasingly the public can tell the story way faster than the PR crew can craft a careful message - how do you deal with that? More truth, less spin …

An article interesting on two levels: it raises some questions about pre-IPO financial advice and post-IPO audit deals; and it also raises some interesting questions about how we account in the real world for financial transactions played out in a virtual world. One for the accounting wonks out there …

While we may have outgrown the need for dead-tree newspapers, we will continue to value the practice of journalism (even if we don't call it that in the future). Jeff Jarvis explores some possibilities for the future of journalism …

A fairly deep look at (and great synthesis of) models of business competition tied together as an explanation of how organisational warfare is conducted, and why business can be complex.

So, you thought Moneyball was a movie about baseball? Wrong … it's a morality tale about YOUR business, and how outdated business models are killing you, and all you can do is sack the people who tell you that. Will you be playing in your industry's equivalent of the World Series, or will your season end prematurely? Start listening to the folk who are telling you things you don't like to hear, because they don't fit your current models … pioneer or dinosaur?

A gentle reminder that having a Facebook page doesn't make you a social business - tactics bereft of a strategic framework will amount to very little. Creating (or transforming into) a social business often requires a cultural shift, and this needs more than ticks on a checklist of social tools.

It seems we have to get to within a hair's breadth of catastrophe before we realise there's a problem. Haque describes our current devolution as institutional failure, and leaves us on an uncharacteristically pessimistic note …

Another look at innovation and creativity; with some slightly off-centre ideas about how we can improve our chances of solving the “wicked” problems facing us. Major points: re-invent education to put it back in touch with the needs of this century, rather than the 19th; find a different type of capitalism to reward the productive economy; and rethinking government's role in assisting innovation.

Interesting article about how everyone of us can be creative - it's a skill rather than a gift. What may be “gifts” are the techniques of creativity, but they're not exclusive to any of us; they can be developed.

A tongue-in-cheek approach to a serious topic: we continue to avoid the difficult tasks in management in favour of “cheque-book” improvements that don't require an uncomfortable culture change. Problem is, people are starting to see through the facade …

Douglas Rushkoff suggests that, as has been happening for centuries, technology is doing away with jobs as we know them. While the current idea seems to be to let the people who lose jobs suffer, Rushkoff posits that it is time for a rethink of whether or not the idea of working for someone else still makes sense. It is after all, a relatively recent phenomenon …

Is “social business” necessary for collaboration? No - ALL business is collaborative. But three simple “social” principles can make collaboration in your business BETTER. Simple in principle, that is … execution is the trick. You'll see what I mean when you read the post!

A look at the problems managers get themselves into when they concentrate on inputs (hours worked, “busyness”) rather than outputs (actual results); and when they try and attribute team results to individuals … most performance reviews completely ignore that individual achievements in a business context are extremely rare - most, if not all, results are a collective effort.

So who owns what on the Internet? Doc Searls looks at why we need to think now about what sort of “ownership” we want for the Internet, before corporations turn it into a shopping strip, and we lose the freedoms that make the Internet valuable. SOPA, PIPA and ACTA are just the tip of the iceberg …

My piece on connect.me, a site which tackles the thorny issue of trust on the internet. If you know someone, or something about them, you can vouch for them on that topic. Over time, and multiple vouches, a reputation can be made evident, and trust can be built. My point is that trust is one of three things that needs to be in place before we see the missing 90% of the internet's potential. The other two? Read on …

Note to big media: don't fight demand; address it. A pragmatic approach to piracy illustrated by men's bathroom habits …

Somewhere between “complete strangers” and “have worked closely together for years” is a sweet spot for collaborative innovation; where the overhead of building relationships is done, and the team hasn't settled into groupthink yet.

Written around Valentine's Day, this is neither romantic or un-businesslike, but a continuation of Umair's ideas about living a better life, and creating a better economy as we do.

One of Google's un-heralded map applications may be one of its most useful, and becomes more so as more data is made open by transport operators and municipalities. Never used it? Maybe you're driving too much :)

A balanced discussion on the privacy cost: public benefit trade-offs we make (wittingly or not) with the increase in data collected and aggregated. The data domain under discussion is one (health care) where both privacy concerns and public benefit are magnified … some interesting points made about personal control over data, too.

and the reason is the explosion of data: “Big data can get us to business at the speed of thought … But the reality is that most companies do business at the speed of the weekly meeting.”
Companies in all industries are finding that software and the data it manages are becoming core to their business, rather than a back-office prop.

Possibly the most balanced, nuanced, and comprehensive look at the structure of Enterprise2.0/Social Business I've seen in quite a while. Key point - it won't work too well if you haven't got Enterprise 0 and 1 working as well.

My post on social media adoption and commitment … (I warned you)

We all hate them, but that's probably because we're doing them wrong. Here's some good ideas about effective meetings. The one I liked most? Make ALL attendees optional, and if nobody shows up, maybe they're right.

The questioning of billions of dollars on useless security theatre in out airports is going mainstream ... the problem is overblown, the "solution" is expensive, and ineffective to boot.
What works? Locking the cockpit door, matching luggage to passengers, passengers who will fight back. Best place to invest? Good old-fashioned intelligence and police work …

It's become popular to start writing off the software dinosaurs - this is another recent crack at it, suggesting that Oracle will be done away with by a new generation of users and cloud/SaaS.
It's a story that's been told before, but the conviction is increasing …

So what happens to monolithic ERP software in the age of service-based offerings? According to this guy (who has a vested interest, it should be said), they die …

What's behind SOPA/PIPA is a small group of large businesses whose business model is disappearing. Like Kodak, they are trying to ignore the future. Like Kodak, they may find that it is an exercise in futility and the road to failure …

This is not only pretty much how I work these days, it's also the future for more and more of us. As conventional “careers” disappear into organisational restructures, those who can will trend towards the “distributed” working style.

When you get there, give me a call - there's a few of you I'd be happy to work with again :)

A slightly technical article about how Facebook is trying to kill the internet …

… or any other economy for that matter. So outsourcing makes you profitable - what happens when somebody else does everything for your business? What reason do you have for it existing?

This is one of the insidious results of a fascination with economic profit to the exclusion of other types of value, and also of only using percentage-type measures.

Making your customers' lives better will keep you in business longer and better than just chasing internally-focussed profit measure.

Know any good software developers? Invest in them. Whether you realise it or not, your company is a software company, regardless of what you are making as a product. And those tme developers you have?: “In most non-software companies, developers have so far accepted a sort of second-class-citizen status despite their increasing scarcity and increasingly critical roles. That is about to change.” Developers - the new kingmakers …

The “right” business model for newspapers has been the subject of some angst over the last couple of years - Clay SHirky has another look at the differences between the traditional paywall and the more-recently adopted “threshold charging”, and the potential effect on the business.

We are all playing games, but are they “finite” or “infinite” games that we want to play? Do we feel that boundaries and winning are important, or continuity and collaboration? Do we exercise power over others, or develop strength with them?

How to handle a rising population? Urbanise … National Geographic on the benefits of big cities

A reasoned view of the dangers inherent in SOPA and PROTECT-IP which also points out the irony of the USA taking censorship on the internet further than the repressive regimes it has criticised in the past

Under the heading of “nothing new under the sun” - Luther's use of social media, technology and networked publics was the cornerstone of the reformation

It's what some have termed “security theatre” - the fact that by far the most effective weapon that terrorists have used to date is our own governments …

Creative businesses often find that who leads to effective innovation and collaboration is not found at the top of the organisation structure. Network analysis of how communication actually happens in the business can unearth your creative “leaders” regardless of their official position.

Shades of “be the change you want to see” and “to change the world, change yourself” … the way the world is comes from the accumulation of small, individual decisions we make every day. Improving the world will come from improving THOSE decisions.

A collection of stories illustrating that failure is not something we should avoid in fear, but relish as an opportunity to learn. My favourite? “Failure doesn't suck” from the inventor of the Dyson vacuum cleaner …

This data gives the lie to a number of furphies: that our economy is struggling, that labour needs to get cheaper for growth and profit, that this is the "worst government in Australian history" …
It also goes some way to explaining why the “Occupy” movements didn't get so much traction here. It also gives a hint that if we follow too closely in the US' footsteps to austerity and neo-conservatism that won't always be the case. Signs already exist that the gap between richest and poorest Australians is widening.

I'm not entirely sure why so many policy-makers don't want to accept the probability that unemployment or (for those still employed) a desire to repay a decade-long debt binge is going to affect their desire to consume …

Just when you were thinking that #OccupyWallStreet was a conspiracy theory gone viral, comes a mathematical study of ownership networks among the world's largest transnational corporations. Conclusion? 147 companies own ~32% of global revenue …

An interesting potential role for banks to play - they already have secure data transmission networks in place, and have a trusted place in our lives. In reality, these days "digital assets" that AREN'T money look pretty much the same to a TCP/IP network - most of our money is moved around as bits rather than coins anyway.

This is a protest from the Middle Ages; neo-feudalism rather than neo-liberalism. Is this what happens when our short-term investment horizons encourage business to look beyond "healthy" sustainable profits, and insist on them producing increasingly-growing profits? I think we're well past "enough" now …

An image from the NY Times with a sobering visualisation of the disparity in the division of spoils from improving productivity … and we STILL want to squeeze wages? Just how evil are we? 

It's a longer piece, but an interesting discussion about attention blindness, and how you can use groups to avoid/minimise it. If everyone focusses on the one thing, you miss a lot of other stuff, but if everyone takes a different piece of the jigsaw, and then assembles it, a fuller picture emerges.<br />
There's also some interesting thinking about assessment that plays out in corporate performance management …

The other recent post that highlights the personal nature of enterprise2.0 … for adoption, people have to find a solution to their problem(s), and this doesn't usually happen according to a project timeline, but one person at a time on a serendipitous scale

One of a couple of posts recently seen that go to the heart of a problem with the idea of "social business" or Enterprise2.0: in the end, social networking/media in the enterprise is only effective if people voluntarily adopt. The implication of that, often forgotten, is that some won't. We have to be realistic, therefore, about what is possible … this post also demonstrates that adoption can only be maximised if we make the "social" part of every body's "business".

It may sound like the dream job, but the outgoing CIO of the United States found many of the same problems that are familiar to the corporates (albeit with a few extra zeroes appended) - projects over budget and schedule, poorly executed, and old technology. Maybe we shouldn't feel so bad …

Loyalty programs don't really build loyalty in your customers - they're a bribe or incentive to get them to so something they might not otherwise. The "new" buzzword, gamification, is also a pretty shallow substitute for a product and/or service that kicks ass. If you really want customer loyalty, make their lives better in some meaningful way …

[Video] The "Getting Things Done" guy, David Allen, talking about creating clear space for your brain to do creative things. "Getting things done" isn't about getting things done - it's about making space in your head for more important things.  

Increasingly, strategy and planning are moving out of the executive suite into a broader milieu for shaping directions. Why? "the world is just too complex, change comes too fast, and the challenges we face are too immense (and interconnected), for an insular clique of executives to chart the course of an organization from a blank sheet of paper and sheer brilliance" … is that the case in your business? What will you do about it?

An interesting viewpoint on the difference between collaboration (typified as an outcome of "collectives" - groups with a single purpose) and cooperation (an outcome of "connectives" - a less-formal grouping of people with individual but related purposes), and the potential interplay between the two.

Some good ideas about how to "get lucky" … along the theme of preparation intersecting with opportunity, and a few things you can do to assist that

"What gets measured gets done" - but you need to beware of unintended behaviours driven by poorly-thought-through metrics. And another caveat: managing by numbers only is a bit like painting by numbers: for amateurs and pre-schoolers.

And who gets bored quickest? Your smartest people. How do you stop them getting bored? Give them interesting tasks. What if I have no interesting tasks? Prepare for a slow and tedious extinction …

A cautionary look at the dangers of outsourcing, particularly as it moves up the value chain from "grunt" work to "thinking work" - once you outsource your thinking, and your unique capabilities, you have no business. And as the interview points out, it's broader than a single organisation - it means countries lose the infrastructure and network of suppliers in an industry, so the outsourcing becomes a continuing death spiral.

An alternative take on leadership - maybe it's the first FOLLOWER that is important, not the idiot dancing :) 

Leadership doesn't necessarily mean having a leader: "On teams that function well, every member of the team leads.  Each person takes responsibility for helping the team move forward." <br />
Rather than trying to discover leaders, we should be developing leadership …

Michael Porter suggesting that there is a way to build economic value that provides societal value as well - it's just that we might have to think outside of out-dated business models to achieve it: "The purpose of the corporation must be redefined as creating shared value, not just profit per se. This will drive the next wave of innovation and productivity growth in the global economy. It will also reshape capitalism and its relationship to society. Perhaps most important of all, learning how to create shared value is our best chance to legitimize business again. "

Kotter makes the valid point that hierarchies are optimised for repetition, stability and efficiency. Which means they don't change or adapt well. He explores the possibility of a simultaneous network structure to handle change … an idea that strikes me as unlikely in practice. What I CAN see happening is a continuous flux between network (for periods of change or instability) morphing into hierarchy, and then back again through the cycle. What I PREFER to see is network structures for operation, and hierarchy for administration - suit the structure to the purpose.

Handling repeatable processes is now table stakes - if you're a sizeable company and  can't handle the bulk of your business value transactions "automatically" with a standard (probably automated) process, you won't stay in business for long. <br />
Where the differentiation comes is in handling exceptions to the "standard" process. These shouldn't be seen as problems - they are often an opportunity to really put yourself ahead of competitors in the eyes of the customer … so it's worth thinking about how to accommodate exceptions better.

Something of a sensationalist title perhaps, but it makes the point that getting your message out via third-parties (while still useful in some distribution channels) is diluting your company's story … and increasingly consumers want to hear it "from the horse's mouth".

This post is nearly five years old … have we learnt anything yet? The object of terrorism is causing fear, and our governments and press do a better job of it than most terrorists. Yes, it's a risk … but it's a tiny portion of the risk we face every day, so let's get a reasonable perspective on it.

Dan Pink on MIX [video] putting up the idea that "empowerment" is just an insidious and more subtle form of control, given that more often than not, the smart worker has the power already. "Autonomy" is not only more human, but is more efficient, since it goes "with the grain" so involves less friction. 

In this TEDGlobal talk [video] from Edinburgh July 2011, the intermediary role the Internet plays between people and their governments is explored, with some warning that we as yet haven't had the Internet's "Magna Carta" moment, and we don't yet run the Internet with the "consent of the networked". We're missing the political mechanisms that would ensure that governments and technology work for the benefit of the public on the web.

Since 1965, US companies have suffered a steady, 75% decline in return on assets. Since 1970, returns to workers in jobs, and in a share of productivity gains, have similarly declined. Coincidence? I suspect not …

A video conversation with John Hagel about the future of companies and workforce. Takeaways: <br />
- after decades of making our supply chains efficient via reduction of supply partnerships, deeper trust-based relationships with possibly many more partners will lead to greater agility and specialisation. <br />
- large companies are still necessary where there are large infrastructure requirements, but many small companies will be able to flexibly scale via loosely-coupled partnerships brokered over the internet<br />
- the next decade will see increasing pressure on companies that maintain an industrial-age business model that emphasises efficiency over effectiveness and agility

What happens when senior management becomes more and more abstracted from the busness' product(s). In the end people deal with the things they are most comfortable with, and ultimately MBAs deal with finances and organisational structures … not the product; so the product suffers. When that happens, all the case studies in the world can't help you. Who is more interested in products? Engineers … 

While it's aimed at designers, this presentation should make us all think if we do "knowledge work" - as Berkun's first point says: "We're all designers".

Another post from Stowe Boyd where he suggests that the shape of business will not change, but disappear - become more liquid, less defined in form. He suggests the end of the business process - and I agree when it comes to human work in the organisation. Processes will still exist, but if it's repeatable, it will be automated. Humans looking after the exceptions will do so better without the process, but with a network.

Unknown citizens and accidental criminals - how digital rights and copyright protection can work against humanity; and the part that influential lobby groups for narrow and biased interests play in that.

Useful overview of the value of enterprise architecture, and the iterative nature of its application to business (a point often overlooked by consultants who want to "boil the ocean" with some methodology). Talks up TOGAF, which is more a method of creating a framework than a framework that can be applied out of the box to your business - but becoming a useful frame of reference for practitioners as it leaves its IT roots further behind.

As an introvert myself, I couldn't go past this :)  … 'nuff said! 

"We live in democracies, but work in dictatorships" … a simple statement of the issue of HOW we work (particularly in Western economies) - the structures and practices of business are thousands of years old, and aren't necessarily a good fit anymore. his contributes to an estimated 75% of workers (number is from the US, I believe) being disaffected and disengaged from their efforts. Do we REALLY think that 3/4 of the workforce under-performing against their own will is the best way of organising our companies?

Every now and then, it's good to be able to give bouquets to a bank, rather than brickbats. Kudos to Westpac (in New Zealand - how about Aus!?) for doing something a little out of the ordinary - making it easy for customers to impulse SAVE, rather than impulse BUY … just hit the big red button.

There's a lot of noise around social networks about "reach" and "influence", as players like Klout and Peerindex attempt to translate numbers of followers/friends and the depth and breadth of conversation (and some other black magic) to try and estimate how much social currency you might be able to wield. Of course (as Google continually struggles with) any system of algorithmic ranking will get gamed, and (more subtly) just observing something changes what is observed …