WikiLeaks & Transparency

As suggested in Jeff Jarvis' blog, we shouldn't kid ourselves that this is the beginning of any kind of change; we are not on a road to transparent government just because Wikileaks got hold of lots of secret political communications. I'd argue we could only be on a road to transparent government if those in power decided it suited them best and moved in that direction. This has not and will not happen because there is no universal acceptance of what 'transparency' means and therefore no clear indication of what benefit those in power would gain from increasing it.

The only reason this data has been made available is that the US government hasn't controlled it properly; a decision post 9/11 to improve data sharing across agencies has seen political communications which were originally limited in scope opened to an audience of about 2.5m US government users. As soon as that happens, a leak is inevitable. If these communications had been limited access as they used to be, a leak of this magnitude wouldn't have happened.

There's a lot of data which is still very much controlled and we'll not see for another 50 years or so. Only that which suits the current government's agenda will be released; sure, some other stuff will find its way out as it always does, but it's just as likely to force governments to tighten up controls as it is to increase transparency.

The interesting thing for me is that the technology involved to get this data was basically antiquated: CD-ROM and USB key. This is a failure of basic security rather than a master black hat hack (or white, depending on your point of view I suppose). At a time when corporates (my line of work) and governments are really worried about the security of new technology, it's the old stuff that trips them up every time.

The easiest way to get data out of an organisation quickly? I reckon it's email. Until recently, attachments over 2MB or so wouldn't reliably go through mail gateways, whereas now much bigger attachments get transmitted just fine. Perhaps the next big leak will get out that way.

The Apprentice: Choose Life

Paraphrasing Heisenberg and Lord Acton, if measuring something corrupts, then putting it front of a TV camera corrupts it absolutely. And so the Apprentice starts again; the most inaccurately named and badly conceived programme since the last one.

The BBC hyperbole machine is already spinning at maximum again, with the web site, radio appearances, spin off shows and blogs all present and correct. Every newspaper is in the process of being fed appropriately outrageous stories guaranteed to cause pain and embarrassment for anyone unfortunate enough to be related to or a colleague of one of the vapid contestants. Then they'll crop up as a 'talking head' on business issues all over the BBC, holding forth on issues that are actually important, or perhaps fronting a dumbed down business programme for a world with the attention span of a...oh, whatever.

The worst thing is that no one cares. We're now at the long and painful arse end of the reality TV cycle where the format is exclusively consuming itself to such a degree that Big Brother is cancelled, with virtually the entire audience inured to the hype by a fresh brand of tough cynicism and a couple of mildly amusing Ben Elton books. Thus the feedback loop is cemented and furthered as the extensive promotional mill demands further grist, achieving ever greater heights of exaggeration to get the real ultimate prizes; revenue generating votes, half witted opinions from viewers at 10p a shot.

Therefore the public gets what the public wants and vice versa; every time a viewer votes for a self aggrandising fool - so much more so for subjecting themselves to the editing razor of a machine that places them at the bottom of the hierarchy of importance - the tactics employed by these programmes are validated and extended. Television is discredited as a medium and we blindfold ourselves with dire consequences because we reduce the impact of everything we see through the big LCD in the corner of your living room; it's not just a television, it's a Lowest Common Denominating machine.

So what to call shall we name our beloved programme? What is it? It's a stupid and loud job interview with a load of obnoxious idiots so I propose; "JobCentre Plus: London", which would permit a new JobCentre plus franchise in not just every country, but in every city in every country. Now that's a model for growing a brand.

Next time, I'll be describing how Lord Sugar can benefit from the secrets of the immortal living dead.

Tread carefully, for upon these pages you stake your future

At present I find Gladwell's arguments on social media hold water and Mirani's Guardian article by turns supports and contradicts it with it's examples, despite the headline. Both comment on the current use of social media rather than the future.

The future is a quite different thing because social network connectivity is only a fraction of the equation. Much more important is the data; your opinions, expressed in a medium which is permanent and accessible.

Schmidt (Google CEO) was only half joking when he said that in future, people would change their identities to avoid being linked with their past indiscretions online. Suddenly, the post you put up in Facebook in your crazy early twenties will be used against you when you're going for a highly paid job in your mid-thirties.

What this means is that how you use your on-line identity will take on much more importance. You will think twice about supporting controversial causes because you'll have heard stories of those denied an opportunity because of causes they've joined or opinions expressed on-line.

The consequence of that is that the act of putting your name on an on-line petition or publicly supporting an opinion will increase in importance and the links described accurately by Gladwell as being weak at the moment, will become stronger.

Tread carefully, for upon these pages you stake your future.

Lessons from Max, the Lego spaceman

My daughter's off to Legoland Discovery Centre in Manchester today - her second time. Last time we were there I bought this little guy, who we'll call Max (because my daughter likes 'Where the Wild Things Are').

Max took me back to my childhood in an instant. Space Lego in particular was my toy of choice for what seemed like years. Other toys may have got a look in but it was building numerous spacecraft variants from just the Galaxy Explorer set that I really remember - and it looks like I'm not the only one.

Couldn't resist showing you this, it's great:

I now understand that as a child it teaches you some great lessons. In fact, only now is it clear that the lessons apply to many areas; developing ideas, strategies, managing people...

Here are the ones that occurred to me today:

1. Components come in two families; infrastructure and individual. The infrastructure delivers that which is necessary; the individual delivers that which is desirable. You need just enough infrastructure to keep the individual in place.
   
   (In Space Lego terms, just enough plain blue 1x4 bricks to keep the yellow angled windows in place.)
    
2. Following the instructions is enjoyable but it's more rewarding trying to produce something new; building things and breaking them, then keepnig the best groups of components.
   
   (If you've found the optimum configuration for some hinging vehicle doors you're going to use it again and again.)
    
3. ...which means that sometimes you don't have to design.
   
   (All you have to do is to try bolting together the optimum components groups in a few different ways - you'll get something useable.)
    
4. It's a training ground for creatively spotting synergies; bolting items together from different kits teaches you to try the less obvious.
   
   (For example, you can stand Max on his tip toes...I'll leave you to figure out how.)

BTW, my daughter (aged 2 and three quarters) insisted on a Lego Woody figure (the informed Toy Story choice) and a pink brick for mum. I think it might be time to scour eBay and get her started on Classic Space; the only Lego that matters...

T

Enterprise Architecture As Strategy - book

Heading into this book, my hopes were high. Particularly encouraging were the opening definitions of enterprise architecture and it's positioning as a business rather than IT issue. This makes increasing sense in today's world and fits with what I perceive as an increasing tendency to clearly separate business focused 'value add' IT from 'business as usual' or 'maintenance'.

Perhaps I've over indulged recently on Enterprise 2.0 texts; the first 100 pages feel predictable and pedestrian. There are some fine principles in there but they're expressed without objectivity; for instance, is it likely a CIO would pour scorn on a multi-million dollar enterprise resource planning (ERP) software implementation delivered under his leadership? Or give a negative assessment on his involvement in IT strategy? Hence, when the CIO waxes lyrical about his own capabilities you've got to take it all with a pinch of salt. It would have been more revealing to focus on CIOs giving mixed messages, or perhaps the experience of the customer and internal end users.

The first 100 pages fails in it's aim to be a handbook & guide; it needs to prove traction below the CxO level to do this. Indeed, it's hard to pick out the real lessons because it's hard to spot a pattern between strategies; perhaps the authors are trying too hard not to be prescriptive, but the end result is somewhat inane. For example, by the time in your career that you want to buy and read a book like this it's kind of obvious you need your IT function to be responsive to the needs of the business.

Published in 2006, much is made of the success of those companies who have pursued an enterprise architecture as strategy approach without really saying how they did it in any detail. Cemex is called out as an example of great growth due to this approach, yet the book notes that it grew by acquisition and the much referred to 'agility' seems to have made the company insufficiently agile to avoid the stock price thumping seen by many other companies in that sector since 2008's crash.

At various points you might get the impression that a whacking great ERP implementation would deliver lots of benefits, such as technology and business process standardisation, yet would allow your organisation to remain agile; the IT equivalent of having your cake and eating it. Indeed, throughout the book, you get the impression that this is a very ERP friendly approach. Considering it's 2006 publish date, failing to address the various innovative approaches of the time is, well, shortsighted at best.

The book reads like a research text written by academics; the kind of thing beloved of MBA courses everywhere.

Past page 100, it gets better as it starts to talk in some detail about lessons from real life. There are some great

The 8 Commandments

1. Think platform, not software.
2. Create functional software to extend the reach of the platform and drive platform adoption.
3. Build functionality first.
4. If the user can do it, the user has to be able to see it.
5. Aggregate, don't consolidate.
6. Independence; browser and O/S.
7. Elegance rules; speed, simplicity, immediacy.
8. The user's needs are the most important thing

Anyone doing the above will never really have any competitors; different organisations are always going to develop original (or not) spins on the same function.

 

However, if an application is a means to getting a user to the platform...then all applications are good news, no matter who generates them.

 

 

 

Everything Is Miscellaneous - book

Well, I'm not sure it had what I was looking for (secret of eternal youth, tip for the 3.30 at Ascot, designs for a real autoplane) but it sure was enjoyable getting what it did have.

In a sentence; modern technology means it's ok for everything to be messy - you can tag it and get it back later somehow.

(Thank goodness, because I really am terribly disorganised.)

Part of the book that struck me in particular was the atoms vs bits debate. Perhaps that's because it's relevant to me right now. It's not news that bits are weightless, have no dimensions and are infinite whereas atoms are constrained by the physical world - they need to be moved, stored, used, stored somewhere else and so on. Certainly it's been explored in a lot of the other Web 2.0 literature. Yet, really this is the fundamental difference between the pre-digital and post-digital age; atoms are atoms, but everything else can benefit from the weightless, infinite, immediate properties of digital. Weinberger states it elegantly, along with the ramifications for how we organise and use information in the future.

Where he doesn't choose to go is to look at those processes in the digital world which simply mirror physical processes. The assumptions behind them are invalid - the organisational walls that are breached will one day come down altogether and with them, a lot of our clunky existing systems and processes.

The 'include then postpone' concept is equally interesting - and equally extensible. It struck me almost as a digital motto and certainly my mind went to Google, Twitter, Facebook et al in that they first included everyone and everything they could, postponing monetisation and data use until much later. Weinberger chooses (rightly) to focus on data; it's natural to want to order things, but we must include messy data first and postpone the introduction of order until later.

There are clear themes in common with Chris Anderson's The Long Tail, Jeff Jarvis's What Would Google Do and other recent books; give control back to the people, promote creation by the masses, provide platforms for people to organise themselves elegantly.

Perhaps the only area that needs exploring more is the detail of the interface between physical and digital. The analogue to digital path is well understood I'd argue; capture through, say, a camera or microphone, add metadata, upload, share. However, the path back from digital to physical perhaps needs the most work; Weinberger references RFIDs and I started to think in terms of QRs, augmented reality and so on, but without too much success.

So I thought it was a good read. It's already part of the modern tech lexicon and rightly so. Another one of those books you'd like to distill and install directly into the memory banks of all your colleagues. It would be messy, but in a good way.

Insights into corporate innovation

Last week I was over in Leeds at a Corporate IT Forum day dedicated to Innovation. The presentations were from those who were shortlisted for awards last year at the Real IT Awards - we were lucky enough to win.

It's great when you turn up at these events to find a bunch of like minded individuals and if willingness to innovate was a realistic economic indicator, the national debt would be history by this time next year (well, ok, the year after).

After presentations from ourselves (SABIC Petrochemicals), Virgin Atlantic and Co-operative Financial Services, we had a number of open discussion sessions. Some common themes came out.

1. Creating time to develop an innovation is more important than funding

2. Invest small, fail fast

3. Innovations have to prove themselves quickly in delivery

Now, to my mind that reads like a list a start-up would make, rather than your average corporate. Perhaps the difference is relative scale.

For example, the corporate guys have a multi-billion pound turnover of which a relatively insignificant amount is dedicated to innovation. Start-ups have a relatively tiny turnover but most of it is dedicated to trying new things.

Corporate innovation teams are very small and very light. They typically use agile approaches to achieve something quickly and are very good at taking square pegs (both systems and people) and making them work in round holes. Start-up teams have less room for manouevre both in terms of systems and people; every blind alley or failed development is so much more expensive to them.

But it's clear that the corporate guys are learning lots from the typical agile startup. They're creating the time and space and trying to fill it with the right people. The number of attendees that referred to 'disrupting' tech was very notable.

Here were the key points from my presentation (prz available if req'd):

1. Focus on what you do; no point innovating in widget design if you're not a widget company
2. Approach innovation consistently
3. Key point: Take the straightest line to business value
1. Processes
1. How do you initiate change?
2. What happens to it then?
3. Ensure strategic alignment - or otherwise validate - and good oversight
4. Stretch evaluation into the business
5. Try lots fast
2. Culture is the result of a feedback loop
1. Let's not reorganise!
2. Don't try to mandate creativity
3. Give your people space and time and guide them in filling it
4. Improve capability and focus it on your business
3. Enable the business to add value - to itself
1. Provide open platforms, not closed tools
2. Encourage users in extending platforms inexpensively to get continual return for minimal investment
3. Do what you do best...and link to the rest
4. Focused trojan mice
5. Use platforms that encourage co-development and formation of communities

I think most people could take these key messages and build something around them for their organisation.

Cheers
Tim

Engage or die; why Amazon needs Facebook

Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com makes some good points (and stretches others) as to the future of cloud computing here, where he refers to Facebook replacing Amazon. Surely most Facebook users look at the tool as a simply as a free social networking site, many times removed from the clear online retail experience at Amazon. Rather than second guessing Marc's thoughts, it seems obvious to me why Amazon should be concerned.

Amazon's added value is it's user reviews section; if there are two identical products - identical picture, price, description - but with differing reviews, you'd be mad or deliberately contrarian to buy the unfavoured product. In fact, a terribly unscientific survey of one revealed that customers would rather pay more for the guarantee of a good product as opposed to facing the hassle of returning a bad product (or even worse, nor returning it).

The only problem with the Amazon reviews section is that a customer is taking a risk by trusting the reviews section at all; it could be skewed deliberately by paid product evangelists, by a particularly bad run off the production line, or by reviewers that aren't the true target market. Because the internet gives a veneer of anonymity (albeit ever thinning) you might never know the product you're about to buy is a total lemon.

Facebook is powerful precisely because we trust those who we befriend, to a degree that depends on our own attitude to trust; we choose who we want in our private community, while our privacy and profile settings tell the rest of the world how much we want to be part of each of their private communities. Therefore a recommendation from a friend (say, from @mcflinbob on a movie, or @euan on a book) counts much more than a faceless Amazon reviewer.

Amazon have tried to add virtual faces to reviewers through their 'real names' qualification; if it's a real name then they're more trustworthy right? Well, not quite; it's still just a name on a page.

Facebook is yet to engage it's user base in retail activity on a mass scale but the sheer numbers involved have the potential to turn webonomics on its head. Google has already proved the power of the virtuous circle with something as simple as search hits, relevancy and advertising; replace with sales, trusted reviewers and profiling and you're into telephone numbers. Should that user base then be mobilised by something - anything, good or bad - and it's a potential stampede toward or away from any product at any time.

So Facebook's community focus makes it powerful and Amazon's next move is a test of it's ability to remain agile in a socially networking world. The platform approach - the approach it should take in my opinion - is to build on it's existing credibility and invite integration with Facebook, Bebo, Digg, Twitter and so on; embed itself into Web 2.0.

After all, in a world dominated by social media, viability and engagement are synonymous.

Audrey's lessons for a (dis)connected world

For some reason I never pick up a basket at the supermarket when the need for it is marginal; if there's a chance of carrying all the items without one - even if it means balancing a frozen chicken on my head - then I'll go without.

So needless to say when making it to the front of the express queue laden with unnecessary fripperies and a couple of bottles of M&S's finest slipping through one's fingers, it's a bit of a blow to see the Customer Service Representative attending the till run off to help someone else.

As it happens, our CSR has gone to the aid of a lady sat waiting patiently on a nearby bench - a couple of seconds later, I realise she's waiting to be guided out of the store because she's blind. They know each other by name so we can assume 'Audrey' is a regular. Outside they meet a cab driver who again knows his customer by name and is prepared with the cab step down, door open, ready to take Audrey home.

Clearly, Audrey has built a rapport with M&S and her cab company. Probably there are a few companies she trusts to provide her a service and they value that trust because a violation of it would affect the way they feel about themselves, regardless of whether that trust affects the revenue stream from Audrey in the future.

So Audrey's favourite companies will be ones she trusts and her dependency on that trust highlights the problem we all have in a world where connectivity is virtually ubiquitous but opportunities to build trust are rare; where we can claim hundreds of people as friends yet not really know any of them. Robbed of key senses we use to evaluate whether someone is trustworthy we take a gamble on human nature; the optimistic invite everyone into their lives, the pessimistic don't go on line.

This means that trust is the key factor in maintaining relationships. If I were to Twitter something inappropriate (plug: @timjsharpe) then my followers (few as they are) would lose trust in my judgement. I stopped following Boris Johnson because he was boring me to tears (@mayoroflondon if you must). Those with a substantial following often have media careers, precisely because their judgement is considered as sound in some way.

And that's how social networking is working for me; a load of editors that I trust are all editing the internet for me, providing links.

Where it's the web being edited into precise links today, tomorrow it will be business flowing from and to communities of like minded individuals. Trust is the currency of the future.

Time Bandits: Why effort counts

Being brought up in the glorious North West of England, the legacy of the Industrial Revolution is part of my DNA; mill towns, factories and grim working conditions...but I didn't expect to find the roots of management consultancy there, which started with time and motion studies carried out by innovators in the field in the late 1800's. Indeed, history may judge the 1900s not as the tail end of the Industrial Revolution but as the start of the Consultancy Era.

So given that industry has been scientifically analysing worker behaviour for a hundred years, it's a shock to me every time I go into a big corporate and it has no time recording function. How can such a key component be missing? In my experience a US corporate is more likely to gather such data and put it to use in project plans, whereas UK companies just don't seem to be driven towards the same rigorous statistical analysis.

Simply put, to ignore effort is to ignore your business and, perhaps paradoxically, the least important information you get out is who's working and who's shirking.

The primary benefit is actually realised months after deploying a time recording tool as the data begins to build up a historical record of task execution. There's an argument for properly structuring the entry of time data and then doing nothing but collect data for months, finessing the capture process and ensuring compliance while the database builds the real management information.

It's easy to see uses for this data but applying it to estimate generation can produce real benefits, as it supports and informs the estimates that technicians produce. With your database behind you, you can play variables into the decision making process; changes in productivity between different project approaches or types of deliverable for instance.

If you're in the business of quoting fixed price projects then you can be more accurate, reducing the contingency in your proposals and therefore giving better value to the customer whilst retaining margin.

More obvious but to be treated with caution is the management hook; "cost visibility". Some visibility is better than none but it's absolutely not a panacea and ill-managed it's a nightmare as the temptation is to react to a perceived statistical trend rather than managing it's root cause. For example, a valuable member of staff can look like a luxury player when in fact they're just being badly managed.

It's not just a service industry focus either. Working with a manufacturing business at the moment, it's clear they have no interest in charging out resources to third parties, or quoting for jobs - after all, they make bulk chemicals. However, two things are in the pipeline; getting third parties to self bill using timesheets and a more active internal market structure aimed at driving operating costs down. So even in such an introverted environment, time recording is seen as a crucial component.

Somehow I think none of these requirements would be a surprise to the mill owners of the late 1800s. Where wool and cotton were the valuable assets, effort and expertise have replaced them. In fact our Victorian ancestors would have no trouble adjusting to a modern manufacturing world (well, perhaps with the exception of Safety, Health and Environment regulations).

Both then and now, effort is just one key datum common to all businesses. Administering it - allocating effort, collecting data and so on - is only an easy  first step. As even introverted corporations start to virtual team and social and corporate networks merge, successful management becomes more about people rather than less; efficiency becomes the differentiating factor between avatars if you like.

And so management needs to evolve to reflect these democratising processes. Those we work with are masters of their own destiny; it's a Democratic Revolution. I'll have more thoughts on how this might occur soon.