It is not innovation that matters, it is agreement. And we might need innovation to reach agreement.
I’ve this minute discovered Norwegian blog Human Resources and Social Media, where Vegard Iglebaek asks today – are there any collaborative organizations out there?
I spent much of my career consulting to a variety of multinationals in a regional hub, a career which allowed me to get a sense of how management styles differ by nationality.
Norwegian firms are highly collaborative but also very disciplined. You aren’t allowed to bypass the collaborative process. Nor can you act as a loose cannon. That can be a shock to people from more ill disciplined cultures or cultures where position allows personal license.
I think Vegard is asking a more general question. What are the opportunities in social media? I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this too and these are my conclusions.
I have rubric for aggregating #So.ME skills in an organization and slowly assimilating #So.ME expertise in a pragmatic way, if you are interested.
Many of these young organizations need some basic help in putting in management systems. We should take care though to adapt our systems to the nature of their organization. We shouldn’t just copy procedures from old organizations.
I am impressed the US military is using social media quite assertively. For the most part though, it is not enough to tack social media onto the end of an organization as an afterthought.
The correct thinking is to sketch out the value added chain for the whole industry and to ask where #So.ME will be the game changer. Then leap frog to that position creating a vigorous viable organization that is competitive right here, right now.
While these three prongs are clear, trying to service all three groups at once can split our attention.
I would love to form a consortium of HR people who use #So.ME so we could each specialize in one area and bring in our colleagues specializing in the other prongs on a project-by-project basis to add depth.
It seems to me though that HR people in #So.ME don’t have confidence in the new zeitgeist. Does it seem like that to you?
We need to put our money where our mouth is. We need to be seen to be working collaboratively (and in as disciplined way as any conventionally collaborative Norwegian organisation). The our clients will readily believe what we say.
Contact me if you are interested!
There is heaps and heaps of advice out there on how to write good blogs, mostly in the “5 easy steps” genre. Oddly, though, there is little in the “5 dazzling blogs” or “5 perfect blogs” Digg-friendly category. Maybe there is an adjective for blogs that I am missing!!
I don’t have any qualifications at all in literary analysis. Indeed having a literal rather than literary turn of mind, I was a total dunce at literature at school. What is the significance of the weather in Wuthering Heights? It rains in Yorkshire. You think it will stop because we want to be happy? You get my drift. I am bad at this sort of thing. Zero neuro circuitry for the oblique, obscure, metaphorical and mystical.
But there is an underlying structure to blogs, good blogs, that goes deeper than “5 easy steps” and I’ve been admiring @loudmouthman’s Social Media White Noise for two weeks now. What is he doing that makes his blog so compelling?
Yes. The blog posts are short.
Yes. Loudmouthman is listing resources. We love resources.
Yes. Social Media White Noise filters the social media news saving us a lot of time reading our feeds.
Yes. The prose is readable.
Yes. The layout is consistent and easy to scan.
All good.
The pattern of the content is also interesting though.
Each post seems to be a brief description of mundane details in the day of two geeks in the south-east of UK, followed by a list of major events in the social media world world wide.
The mundane details are tongue-in-cheek in the self-deprecatory style of British humour. The contrast between the mundane details and world events also seems to be the key to much British humour. There is a sort of smugness, we are above it all, the world is really ridiculous anyway, ironical view which is commonplace in our descriptions of our world. We try and try but nothing works but it doesn’t matter anyway. Humour that is incomprehensible to many cultures and faintly irritating to others.
I think the blog really works though because of the sense of two streams of time – the forceful main current of social media world wide and the choppy waves and eddies lapping at its edge.
But it is the the juxtaposition that seems important. If the content were reversed and we saw the main events of the world in the background and our own daily activities in the foreground, it wouldn’t work. It needs the tension of foreground and background interchanged.
I rather suspect the sense of motion is appealing to me – I am not sure whether it is to others. I would be interested.
What is even more important, I think, is the sense of belonging to something larger than ourselves. When we see the backdrop of our work, the mundane realities, and even brutalities, of our daily lives take on perspective, if not meaning.
It is the counterpoising of day-to-day life against the broader picture that conveys the sense of authority and feeling that these are people we look to for leadershp.
To convey a picture of where we are going – our sense of purpose and even the comedy of our own confusions – against a picture of where are world is going, orients us and provides a valuable service.
Now to figure that out for my own blog.
Social Media White Noise is very clever and worth a read. So head on over and grab the feed. You will be happy.
And if you weren’t a dunce at literature, tell me what they are doing to make it work so well.
A long time ago when I drove a VW, I got some sound advice. Always have a tool kit in your car. Otherwise how else will the shining knight in a Red Ferrari fix my car when he stops to help?
And now I live half my day in a virtual world, I must make sure shining knights on Cross Loop can find me – so they can rescue me from the dragons of my own mis-steps and panic!
And so should you!
Today, Loudmouthman, speedy, nippy geek from Horsham rescued me in minutes, and I live 4 hours drive away.
This is how he did it, and this is what you need to know, because one day you are going to need Nik and you are going to feel so much better knowing he is just over the horizon!
. . . as I tidied up my computer, I created a new user just to check what standard settings looked like. All seemed in order. There were two users, both Administrators, and I was logging in and out of both quite happily.
This morning, I could only log in to the dummy.
Panic!
I logged in to the dummy account, got onto Twitter, and fired off a May Day call to no one in particular.
@Loudmouthman answered and told me to download Cross Loop and to contact him.
Minutes later, Nik was connected. He took over my machine though Cross Loop, and though other services offer this feature too, most importantly, I could also
By setting up a second user with admin rights, I was no longer given the option to login in to plain old “Admininstrator”
Working remotely, Loudmouthman showed that the Administrator account was still there (C: Drive and Documents & Setttings).
Panic subsided!
Still working remotely, Nik checked my description of the problem by having me log off to show him that Administrator really couldn’t be accessed from the Login screen (which of course he could see remotely).
I could hear him looking something up in the background (his keyboard was going noisely).
Then he had me log in again to the dummy account and he went into some Windows Settings and added a line to activate Administrator.
Hey presto, we were done. And it would have been faster if I hadn’t been in a panic.
I logged out of the dummy account and back into Administrator – and downloaded Cross Loop again which was no longer visible.
I had to make another request for service. Then I asked for an Estimate, accepted it, and then asked for a Final Bill.
A PayPal screen came up and I paid promptly and printed out the receipt for the accountants.
Just the way I like it.
Done, dusted with all the paper work wrapped up.
On Cross Loop as Loudmouthman
On Twitter as @loudmouthman
Through his website, Loudmouthman
On Skype thebutlershouse (Nik Butler)
And to find out what is causing ripples in the Social Media world in the south-east of UK on any one day, Nik’s blog Social Media White Noise is well worth a visit.
Thanks Nik! From panic to productivity in under an hour!
I find Google statistics a little bit like the Zimbabwean currency. It doesn’t take long before I am confused by the zeros.
In short, I need a Big Mac Index to give me a sense of what is a lot, or a little, of internet traffic.
You see here that about 3.5K optimistic users searched for “barbecue” in July 2009 – about 0.01% of UK’s 40M internet users.
About 7K searched for “summer” and “psychology” respectively – each accounting for about 0.02% of internet users (2 in 10 000).
Cricket against Australia this summer (the Ashes) has been exciting and 40K, or 1 out of 1000 of us turned to the internet for information. That is 0.1% of UK internet users.
But compare that to 400K searches for the “weather” (1 in 100 of us or 1%). And to 112K of us who searched for “jobs”. That is 1 in 360 of us or 0.3% of UK internet users.
About half of the “Unique Visitors” searching for “jobs” accessed the government website, BTW.
I found all the figures on Google AdPlanner by setting Geographical Location to UK and putting in the Keywords into Keywords Searched.
What is the difference between Google AdPlanner and Google Keyword Tools?
The number of people searching for “jobs” with Google Adwords – with “narrow match” and location as UK – was just under 3 000 000 searches in June. The slight mismatch of dates doesn’t really matter for our current purposes. That averages about 30 searches a month for each UV (unique visitor as calculated by Google AdPlanner), or 1 search for each day of the month.
The “broad match” for “jobs” was much higher at 124M. To keep it to round figures, that is about 1000 searches for each UV, unique visitor, or about 3 a day, or 5 searches per person per business day.
1. Choose five marker words to put into Google AdPlanner with geographical location set at UK.
2. Calculate Unique Views or users for each Keyword by picking a website (any one) and dividing the UV by the % reach and multiplying by 100.
3. Then double check against Google Adwords, using UK and both “broad match” and “narrow match”, to get a sense of the intensity of search by each unique user.
If you want to find someone in the UK, go to Facebook. 1/3 of the country is there and more than 1/2 of our internet users are there. 3/4 of Londoners are there.
Because so many Londoners are on Facebook, it is also London party. Just over a quarter people in the UK live in or close to London, but nearly half of Facebook members are Londoners
Almost everyone who uses Twitter is on Facebook. Its easier to say that 1 out of 7 Twitter users do not use Facebook.
But as 6 out of 7 of their Twitter friends will be on Facebook, they are well connected!
The question is whether you can find the other 2/3 of UK residents through your Facebook network. It would be work a try, wouldn’t it? Can you find and meet anyone of the 61 million people beginning with your Facebook network?
I made the diagram using the online chart maker, Chartle, using the numbers below, some of which I got from Google Adplanner on 2 August 2009 and some of which I got from Wolfram Alpha.
I think all ‘noobes’ to the internet struggle with Google keywords and experienced geeks around us don’t want to come clean and say simply how the system works.
Well there is a chicken-and-egg system here. You don’t know which keywords to use until you know! Maybe you may learn something from my this little experiment of mine.
On Monday afternoon, I found a Googles Voucher in my ‘maybe sometime’ box and it was about to expire on Tuesday. So I decided to run a Googles Ad and see what 30 pounds could buy me in 24 hours.
Good luck with your experiment. Buzz me if you need help.
And sorry about the ad yesterday. I wasn’t trying to sell you anything. If you are a friend of mine, I helped you practice your interview for free!
I’m a psychologist. What this means, in short, is that you come to see me when you feel frustrated and it is my job to help you find a way forward.
Clinical psychology, social workers, lawyers & doctors
For some people getting out of a bad situation is complicated. Quite often they are in extremely difficult circumstances and they need social workers, doctors, lawyers, etc. to help them solve practical problems.
They may also have lived in difficult circumstances for so long that they no longer recognize easy circumstances. Helping them unravel their view of life and live an easier life is the work of clinical psychologists.
Work & organizational psychologists
Most people who come to see me are not in a bad situation. They are at one of the normal turning points in life where they have to make a decision and they do not have sufficient information. These turning points are often frustrating and scary, but they are essentially about questions like which organization should I join? Or, how do I improve my status and my income? Psychologists like me work less like clinical psychologists, who work with what is in your head, more like social workers, doctors and lawyers. We help you understand and manage the external world, and in particular the world of organizations and work.
Indeed, we are quite often work for organizations rather than individuals and when we do, we are architects of systems. We design selection systems. We design disciplinary codes. We design bonus systems. HR systems are just formalized ways of making a lot of personal decisions about what we are doing and where we are going. When we design the systems well, we give people an easy framework to make their own decisions well. And we also strengthen the organization, by providing a place where we live and work comfortably and easily.
To design good systems, we need to know a lot about jobs and business. Of course, we don’t know as much as the people who run the business and who have worked in it all their lives. Businesses and technologies change fast too. So we are less in the business of knowing, and more in the business of asking questions.
Learning about the financial crisis
I started writing this post this morning after I read a post from the redoubtable Alice Cook, who provides a graph showing that financial debt has grown disproportionately to consumer and corporate debt in the UK. I knew that generally but didn’t have a graph at my finger tips. So thank you. I like to have data stored away neatly.
Personal action during the financial crisis
I am amazed, though, that anyone is amazed by these figures. Like many people, I feel that the managerial classes in the UK have a lot to answer for. They should have known these figures intimately and acted accordingly.
The trouble is that blaming others is pretty useless as a psychological technique. Professionals & business leaders may be to blame. We might be right to hold them in contempt. And personally, I wouldn’t feel unhappy if they were prosecuted. But blaming others doesn’t help us feel better, and more importantly, it doesn’t help use get things right. So I’ll leave that to others.
As a psychologist, what I have to say is this.
Listed below are the bare bones of an information system that I am used to having at my disposal.
It is true I have not seen this information being made freely available to employees since I have arrived in the UK but I’ve lived elsewhere where a key player in the provision of information to people in business has been, ironically, British-listed banks.
If we want to get out of the biggest mess since the great Depression, we are going to have to do something. And to do something, we have to begin. The first steps I will tell you, being a psychologist, is to ask questions.
You have a computer and internet? So let’s go. If you haven’t already done it, it’s time to set up your own economic intelligence system.
FIVE steps will do it. Set up folders on your email, feeds reader, bookmarkers and hard drive, and a page on your blog.
1. Google Alerts. Set up Google Alerts for your industry.
I have alerts for UK jobs and UK GDP and use a ‘rule’ to send them straight to my “intelligence” folder in email. I read them once a week or when I need a break from other tasks.
2. As you find useful blogs, subscribe in your feeds reader.
I scan these at my leisure and make a point of reading The Economist on Thursday evenings.
3. Bookmark articles you might want to come back to.
One big folder works better than many little ones. Bookmarks saves you Google-time when you want to re-call something.
4. Save useful graphs, data and pictures on your hard drive for the presentation you will make later!
5. Blog from time to time to organize your thoughts.
Then make an index of useful posts on a separate page where your readers can find all your writings on the future of your industry and local economy.
Keeping an eye on the economy does not stop other people from being foolish, of course. And it can also make you feel panicky when you see a trend that no one else seems to care about.
I find that understanding the economy is like knowing the motorway ahead is congested. I have created choice for myself. I can keep driving and join the throngs inching along and losing their tempers. Or I can pull off, and take a longer route through the back roads.
Neither may be a great outcome and it is also possible to put far too much effort into deciding the best alternative. But I prefer a leisurely drive down the back roads enjoying the country view than boiling with frustration on an ugly motorway.
And I quite happy to leave behind badly run organizations for a business venture that is smaller and more likely to be here tomorrow.
If you haven’t already done so, begin. Spend a few hours a week following the economic data. It gets easier.
And if we all do it, we won’t be routed by unscrupulous managers, at least for a while.
Leave a CommentLast weekend, I set up the first email update for the members of Olney100, the community website that we run on the Ning platform for the town of Olney in England.
The broadcast facility in Ning doesn’t allow formatting, so I downloaded the membership list into a CSV file and imported it into my email. After a hard afternoon designing the newsletter and trying to keep it short, useful and readable in 10 seconds, rather tired, I sent it out. Oops! I put the group name into CC and not Bcc.
Only one person wrote to complained, and one of course, was sufficient to alert me to the error of my ways. My apologies.
Interestingly, one of the members also made this mistake this week in his business. In his case, he had received an inquiry and he replied to everyone on his mailing list. As it happened, the person making the inquiry was a competitor who was delighted to receive a list of qualified leads and promptly wrote to them all offering his services.
My young friend received a lot more complaints than U – 5% of his list. His customers are generally younger than mine, and a lot more aware of the norms and law of the internet.
This is the way he responded.
1 He apologized immediately and unreservedly to his customers.
2 He checked the Data Protection Act and copied and pasted relevant portions into a ‘cease and desist’ notice which he sent to his competitor making it clear that is is an offense to make use of electronic data for purposes other than it was intended.
3 Then he thought some more and recalled that the impersonation of a consumer by a business is also an offense.
Internet laws are much stricter than people realize. And so they should be. The rules for driving a car are tighter than the rules for walking on the pavement.
It strikes me that there may be a parallel between internet law and tax law.
Very few people know that crooks are required to pay tax on their ill-gotten gains and that equally, tax officials are bound over not to report our nefarious dealings to the police or any other authority!
Governments are generally quite zealous about collecting taxes and do inventive things, like audit drivers of flashy cars, the keepers of yachts and persons whose conspicuous consumption exceeds their declared income. This leads to crooks, like Al Capone, being busted not for crookery, but for tax evasion.
It strikes me that firms who sail close to the line and entice people to purchase their services with false claims might similarly find themselves, not being busted for fraud, but being busted for trying same wide-boy behaviour on the internet.
Sharp operators need to watch out. Gen Y are quite savvy and know the rules!
Have you seen any dodgy activity around electronic data recently?