Broadband and Me

Belief is becoming something of a theme at the moment. Connected to Education and Story telling is a powerful hook for me and drives a lot of passion. Mix it with a bit of religion and you could be in for a powder keg. However Philip Pullman and Rowan Williams conversation at the National Theatre highlighted a lot of interesting ideas about religion and its place in the world. Several wonderful ideas not least the most fundamental question we should be asking ourselves are what it means to be human.

On a slightly different note Pullman responds to a question on how to develop spiritualism in children by suggesting views of education. I would suggest that you can also transpose this to life, business, training and anything else that has a human element.

But I think it depends on your view of education: whether you think that the true end and purpose of education is to help children grow up, compete and face the economic challenges of a global environment that we’re going to face in the 21st century, or whether you think it’s to do with helping them see that they are the true heirs and inheritors of the riches - the philosophical, the artistic, the scientific, the literary riches - of the whole world. If you believe in setting children’s minds alive and ablaze with excitement and passion or whether it’s a matter of filling them with facts and testing on them. It depends on your vision of education - and I know which one I’d go for

So do I. And I am a successful product of the fact learning vision and I believe it to be fundamentally a failure. When I look at my children I see how their passion and excitement are often squashed. I’ll digg out a story to illustrate this later but for the time being go and read the conversation.

Anecdote: Complexity thinking can change how you think about problems in your organisation

I have been reading aboout complexity since Stuart started lecturing me on it back in 2001. His enthusiasm led me to buying numerous books and attending a number of seminars at the LSE and be inspired by people like Dave Snowden (but that’s another story).

This post that I picked up earlier, though is a fantastic summary of complexity and system thinking inspired by Kurt Richardson:

• The complementary law: A complex system is a system that has two or more potentially contradictory descriptions.

There is no right person, right answer, right perspective, right description.

• System holism principle: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts

You’re not going to be able to get an outcome you want through control.

• Incompressibility (Darkness principle): The best representation of a complex system is the system itself

When organisational issues and problems arise, it is a common mindset to want to dive into analysis mode. More and more analysis. Lets strive towards a description and understanding of this problem. The only problem is that it won’t happen. As this principle suggests, we will always be in the shadow the whole, and of course, the whole is greater than the parts. Couple this with the first principle and what do you do with all those contradictory descriptions and findings anyway?!

Communities Dominate Brands: First Economist, now Business Week cover story: says community-power biggest change since industrial age

I’m still reading Communities Dominate Brands (slowed down because of CIM exams) but its a great read. I particularly enjoy all the examples in the book which as always in whatever context helped to bring the ideas alive and resonate with the reader (well me anyway). Blogging over at the linked site Tomi notes two related pieces in the Economist and Business Week:

In March the Economist said that community-empowered customers were such a dramatic change to business, that it threatened the very survival of all businesses in all industries. Today’s Business Week says this is the biggest change to business “…since the Industrial Revolution”.

This is heady stuff. The stuff of revolution? Certainly the stuff of step change evolution. Change (evolve) or you’re dead!

At ntl their was an interesting development in this area where the commnity developed around an anti-ntl stance. ntl eventually responded by taking the site in-house i.e. they bought the site and gave its owner a job. The community bristled but because little overtly changeed it proceeded okay. The onwer for various reason got fed up becuase of the way ntl is, and ntl decided to close the site. What does community do? Develops its own site and brings that up. Not only that but because people like the ntl product but not the service surrounding it, they also developed self-help groups and user communities. Interestingly all of these forums have ntl employees actively engaged with them BUT none are offically sanctioned or even approved of by management (unless this has changed in the last few months).

My point here is to emphasise that communities simply go around the brand. ntl at best is a label rather than a brand but neverthe less, the lower level links of customers to employees mitigate to a certain extent the deficiencies of the brand, although they course also highlight the inadequacy of ntl’s approach.

Its an interesting example which I am sure is being repeated elsewhere, particularly in the service industry. The idea od Open source support as well as open souorce marketing (branding?) can be extremely powerful if organisations were to accept that they cannot control and that they must now work in partnership with customers.

Excited - yep!
Scared - of course!
But then that’s what makes life so interesting…
Edit - just noticed that James has linked to Business Week too noting its Open Source credientials.

Having spent a large amount of time over the last few years looking at management and marketing theory, and working inside a large (ish) firm, it would seem logical that I could identify people and/or practice that fits to theory and (although I dislike the concept) ‘best practice’.

Yet often I struggle and from a few conversations over the last week, I am not alone.

These conversations were primarily sparked by yet another round of redundancies and the question ‘why?’

Obvious answeer is that the business needs to cut costs because its not making its targets and the shareholders are the driving force behind any management decisions. So why are we meeting the numbers?

Acquisition targets are definitely on-track. Retention could be better but not affecting overall customer number targets. (Not that I am aware of what these are precisely…)

Costs - I am guessing that these are way over budget. But I don’t know. There are no communicated targets in terms of costs nor are there targets in other areas.

Communication in total is relatively poor despite various efforts to improve. There seems to be very little vision and very little focus on anything other than short term cashflow. This is bad. This is very bad. Not the focus itself but the conditions that push a business into needing this in the first place.

Compeition is fierce and trading conditions whilst not adverse are challenging.

Public perception doesn’t seem to be improving. There is little in the way of PR, advertising or any other promtional or communication channel other than our call centres, and they obviously are not our best asset at present. Of course they could be but performance whilst improved from the summer continues to struggle.

Money for investment that could change the perception ( I guess you could say Brand image) is not going to be forthcoming and I personally worry that in areas where we do have some strong leadership such as product development could suffer in the medium term, after all, any ntl products take time to get to market.

If I sound negative well I guess I am and more so than the usual doom and gloom merchant that I am. I have lost confidence. And I guess that means I should actively look to move on.

So, note to self - set personal objectives for 2005, brush up CV, get in touch with some contacts and look for a new role - somewhere that you can utilise your passion that so often has to be put away or wasted on furstration.

Any advice appreciated, especially on my CVs… my modern version CV is here and my traditional version is here

BBC NEWS | Business | More women ’should get top jobs’

The EOC [Equal Opportunites Commission] research found the lives of people in this country were changing, with women having babies later and men spending more time with their children.

Women accounted for 23% of top management in the civil service and 18% of MPs, but sex equality was “far from sorted”, the commission said.

It is interesting that despite legislation, chaning attitudes, females being more successful in education and high profile women being successful in business that a so called glass ceiling still exists. A glass ceiling being where women cannot rise above a certain level although it is invisible (hence its made of glass).

When considering key elements of complexity based management theory, and innovation and creativity, it suggests that the more variety the better the outcome, as there are different perspectives, cultures, opinions and ideas being brought forth. Any system that therefore limits this variety is reducing its ability to perform optimally and reducing its ability to compete and survive in an environment that changes as quickly as it does today. As the report suggests businesses are missing out, with no real need to do so.

Let’s end this and try and get some kind of balance. After all its in everyone’s mutual benefit for organisations, businesses and Government to be more effective…