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Month: October 2009

Is this today’s career choice- invest in crowd sourcing OR in expert filters?

Absolute Radio launched its online radio last night. It runs under the name Dabbl from 7pm to 6am.  We nominate the tracks that they should play, and the most popular tracks win.

Dabbl as a lens on social media

A critical unresolved issue in social media is whether crowd sourcing can replace expertise.

Are our votes better than the opinions of expert DJ’s on Radio 6, for example?

I think, as ever, the proof will be in the pudding. We will have to see, in other words.

  • Do we take part?
  • Are the averages of our opinions as good as the expert knowledge of DJ’s?

Dabbl : an experiment we should all copy

Whatever the outcome – Dabbl are running a good experiment that every honest industry should finance and run.

  • How good is the filter made up by our average opinions?
  • With this baseline, experts can ask themselves a straight forward question.
    • Can we do better than the average opinion?
  • And if so how exactly do we do better?
    • How can we organize a service that is consistently better?
    • And how can we develop our service over time so that it continues to be better than average opinion?
    • In what way do our consumers think our service is better?
    • And who is so convinced by our superior performance that they are willing to fund it?

Welcome to the 21st century! I reckon Dabbl is beating the path to where we all will be soon.

What would be crowd-sourcing in your industry?

With Dabbl in front of me as a clear example, I am going to be thinking about this.  What would crowd-sourcing look like in psychology, management and consulting?

What would it mean to commit to a career in crowd-sourcing?

And what would it mean to commit to a career in an expert filter that competes with crowd-sourcing?

Is there a third choice?  And if so, what is it?

What will you be discussing with youngsters you coach?

  • Crowd-sourcing?
  • Expert filters that compete with crowd sourcing?

    UPDATE:  I think the third choice is to do both.  I think we should build platforms to crowdsource in our area and add the expertise on top.  Of course some might specialize in various aspects of the enterprise.   As a profession, I think crowdsourcing should be our basic foundation and there should be a seamless gradient to expert opinion.

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    Shh! We are talking about status and pecking order and noone must hear!

    I spent 6 years’ training as a psychologist and status and pecking order were rarely mentioned. Yet, both status and pecking order are central to much of what we do, and at the heart of how we feel about the way others treat us.

    I think we should discuss status & pecking order more – at least in the circles of organizational designers and developers.

    All important topics are subject to taboos, and status & pecking order is not exception. But it is the job of social scientists to break taboos. If a subject is too important to be discussed openly, then it is also too important to be ignored!

    Status explains anger

    Take this explanation for anger, for example.  We are angry when we feel we have been demoted.  Just writing the explanation creates a frisson of annoyance.

    Resolving anger requires restoring status

    Because demotion is often the cause of anger, the quickest way to restore someone’s good temper is to resolve the status issue. Apologize. Help them take their rightful place in the pecking order.

    Anger often signals unnoticed shifts in status

    Sometimes, someone’s anger takes us by surprise.  Children, for example, sometimes assert themselves rather unexpectedly.  Suddenly, they feel they should be consulted about something, and startle us with their asssertion.

    We have to mark shifts in status of our professional colleagues

    In professional groups, shifts in status happen too.  Sometimes status changes are marked by rites-of-passage, like graduation day.  We are reminded to start involving people much more deeply in decisions that affect them. But there are also moments where there are no rites-of-passage.

    I not only studied psychology. I taught it too – in the last 3 years of the 6 year training period. My students were going from students to legally-qualified-and-registered-psychologists. Graduation was not enough for them. They needed to do something which marked the change. Sometimes they hired me as a consultant (they were the boss now), or they took me out to lunch (and paid)!

    It took me one or two batches of students to pick up the trend, and then I began to enjoy the transition.

    I also started to build ‘rites of passage’ into our professional internship system.  Students could request a slot at ‘conferences’ to show off a project that (in their minds) showed them using our professional skills at a professional level.  They volunteered, and no one ever missed these sessions because they were very good!

    Slides down the status ladder are equally interesting.   In the world of management, which pivots around power, slides-down can be quite entertaining.  I’d be amazed at how quickly people noticed poor contributors, and the way non-performers began to fall off email lists and not be consulted when important decisions were being made.

    How much of strife at work is due to mismanaged status?

    It strikes me that many issues in the workplace come about because we haven’t considered status issues.

    Active listening

    Restoring a person’s status, when it has been lowered accidently and even innocently, is sometimes seen as an insult to the next person. Yet anger from accidental reductions in status is easy to resolve. Dealing with anger is one of the 3 scenarios in active listening. No one should be in management position or in a customer service role without understanding and applying these scenarios.

    Loyalty to our colleagues

    We are also only pleased by an increase in someone else’s status when our own status is fairly secure. Those of us who are organizational designers and developers can’t expect people to manage or deal with customers when they are uncertain about their own status. Where management have reached the LCD of asserting will, rather than talking about joint goals, we can expect status wars to erupt spontaneously.

    Rituals for status shifts

    We need rituals for younger people to show off their new skills and be accorded the status they deserve. Without these rituals, only a few will discover for themselves appropriate ways to claim the status that is their due. Others will be angered by the lack of recognition. And when we miss that signal too, we hurt ourselves. We should expect passive aggression or outright hissy fits.

    Do you think we should talk about status and pecking order more forthrightly?

    I’ve noticed that not even the new ‘service designers‘ talk about status and pecking order. Funny that. Must ask them.  Why do we ignore status & pecking order?

    How many problems at work do you think we could resolve if we were more thoughtful about status and pecking order?

    And could we be more thoughtful about how we adjust our status rankings ‘as play unfolds’?

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    Social media has raised the ante in events & conference management

    I am not an events manager.  If you want information on events management, follow @tojulius and @carmenhere.

    I am writing this because someone asked me how an event could be better.  Events are a highly specialized and skilled form of organizational management, but as a sub-class of organizational management, some general rules apply.

    My question is this:  if apply the four basic rules, do I arrive at any insights of value?

    1. Make it easy to join in

    If we stumble on the sign up, or forget our passwords, nothing more will happen.

    The basics are having the event at a place we can reach with public transport, on a day that isn’t filled with competing events, etc.  You get the point?  I can move on?

    2.  Make it easy for people to connect

    I still go to conferences where I cannot see in advance who is attending, let alone connect with them.  And the attendance list does not include email addresses or twitter handles.  There is no way to find anyone at the conference once we get there.  We are under-utilizing the social, or connect-potential, of the meeting.  Grossly.

    I know why we continue to organize like this.  It is not technology. Amiando and Meetup have full social capacity.  It is the ‘control-freak’ nature of British-society.  We like to dis the government for being control-freaks, but it start with us.

    Maybe we should give every meetup a control-freak rating?  Anyway, it is time to stop.  I don’t come to your meetup just to meet you!  I want to meet other people too.  I don’t want to meet up with 1% of people I could meet.  I want the full potential!

    3.  Find a way for people to learn

    We learn whenever we ‘do’.  We are learning animals.

    But just as there are levels of convenience in #1 and levels of sociability in #2, there are levels of learning.

    When I introduce myself and the other person struggles to understand what I am on about, I learn.

    I also learn when Twitter feeds go up on a big screen. Those big screens can be distracting though.  Sometimes they are just a techie gimmick.

    Whether they add value or not seems to revolve around ‘feedback loops’. Which feedback loops can we add to highlight great examples of what we do?  And is there a way of making data available so people with the skills and inclination can mash it up, dress it up, and present it back to us?

    A raffle in which we put our business cards in a bowl for a prize is an example of this principle.  The pile of cards grows and we feel good to be at a popular event.  The lucky winner is highlighted for being present (and being lucky).   I am sure the organizers are looking through the cards too, to see who came (with cards and who will have a gamble)?

    What else can we amplify in this way?  How can we help people learn?

    4.  Find a way for the event to add meaning

    We all want to belong to something bigger than ourselves.  I don’t mean belong to a group bigger than ourselves.  We want our group to fit into a wider landscape in a meaningful way.  The existential purpose of the group must be clear.  Not just the instrumental purpose or the social purpose.

    How does this group fit into the wider community?  Why would the wider community be happy that we are there?  Why would they mourn if we were not there?  How does our meaning change with our activity?  How does the wider community thrive and flourish because we thrive and flourish?

    This is the big ask.  So many old organizations feel rotten because they are no longer connected with the wider well-being of the community – in the community’s eyes, that is, not their own.  Does the community see them?  How does the community see them?  What is the symbiosis?

    What is the symbiosis between our event or startup and the wider community?  How do they see us? When they talk about us, or our activities?  Which parts of our work bring a light to their eyes?

    Social media has raised the ante in events management

    Tough.  In the olden-days we were a star to get #1 right.  It is not enough any more.  We have to step up through the levels. So point me to good examples, please, because I am still learning too.

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    Events management from the point of view of a participant

    I am choosy about events

    Well, I am easy-going in the sense that I will pitch up and help anywhere if I can, but I distinguish in my mind between events where I am just being obliging and events which I really enjoy.

    Seeing events from the point of view of a participant

    I’ve been asked about why I enjoy some events and I’ve tried to articulate the whole process of event participation – the flip side of events management.

    When I am being choosy,  I look for three things.

    #1 When I look at myself in the mirror of the event, do I feel more vital and more alive? Do my dreams seem more full and more colourful?  Do my dreams seem to belong and do I get the feeling that if I choose, I can make my dreams come true?  So not all events are for everyone.

    #2 Does the location, timing and pace of the event allow me to be relaxed and playful?  Do ideas start connecting in unusual ways?  Am I likely to end the day having made new connections that I could have made at home or at the office but won’t because it is too busy there?  An event that doesn’t allow time to unwind will just be work.

    #3 Was I able to be heard at the event?  We often don’t know what we think until we hear ourselves aloud.  Sometimes the simplest things aren’t getting done because we didn’t label the task out loud.  Sometimes priorities have shifted and as soon as we say so out loud, our action plan is startlingly clear.   When I hear other people, do their lives provide sufficient insight about my life that I get an “aha” experience.  Actually, I am greedy.  I want many “aha” experiences.  I want to get an inkling that an idea is worth pursuing.  And then I will  pursue it away from the meetup – much richer for realising there are interesting possibilities in places that I had never thought to look.

    What is likely to be part of an event that I really enjoy?

    #1 Style. I am sensitive to chi and like to feel it flow.

    #2 Good food.  I don’t mind the style of cuisine and it can be very simple but I like it to be done well.

    #3 Competence.  I love listening to competent people and watching them work.  I like mixing with competent people.  I like admiring competent event managers.  I cannot do what they do.  But I watch them as happily as I will watch a Wimbledon Tennis Final.

    #4 Voice.  I want people to be able to speak up and be heard.  It is hard to organize an event where everyone is heard.  It is a big ask and I think it can only be done when all the other factors are in place.

    #5 Connections.  Surprising connections bring astonishing futures.  The right people, who are interested in meeting each other and helping each other, generate possibilities we couldn’t imagine until we got together.  We attend new events hoping this ingredient is there.  We go back when it is right.

    Creating atmosphere as a competency

    Now, none of this is too hard, is it?

    I jest.  Creating a good atmosphere is the most mysterious of competences.  Good Headmasters and Headmistresses do it.  Good Presidents and Primeministers do it.  And so do event managers.

    Maybe this is the age of event management.

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