Monday, 7 April 2003

Clueless Via the latest Feedback at New Scientist comes this marvellous example of Clueless Technolatin from Matsushita, in its "Annual Management Policy": 1. Purpose of "Value Creation 21" plan To make the transition from a mass-production-oriented operation, Matsushita will establish a business model to become a "super manufacturing company." This will enable a value-chained business model with higher profit from synergy effects of components and devices, finished products and services & solutions. Link Feedback offers: We're not at all sure, but we think this means: "We will continue to sell electronic equipment." Then again, perhaps not. Aye! There are people in the world who not only write this kind of stuff, but think it means something? 11:32:01 PM    comment []

Friday, 14 March 2003

Converting Leaders OK, now to what I was going to write about tonight. Yup, the red wine (Alkoomi 99 Cabernet Sauvignon) has kicked in, I hit terminal tiredness a while back, so there's no holding me back. Now, if y'all will excuse the rather deep nesting, Joi Ito posted this comment on the Dee Hock email I mentioned last night. He quoted part of Sébastien Paquet's entry The Challenge of Converting Leaders. Go read the whole thing; it's not long. Joi quoted this fragment: Reading this helped me pin down precisely what makes me uneasy about David and Doc's World of Ends piece. They're trying to do exactly that, make current executives and the ilk streamline themselves, instead of targeting, giving hope to, and helping organize those who have little to lose. I suspect that the attitude shift that David and Doc are hoping for is only going to materialize once this groundwork alternative organization effort is well underway and pretty much everybody has woken up and smelled the coffee. Now, Sébastien actually refers to the same bit of Dee Hock's email that I quoted. Joi responded with: Yes... my precious... This is what I was trying to talk about in my entry about the lust for power. It is really difficult to ask the people who have power to give it up. Even if they are your friends. Telling them may even tip them off to your strategy and allow them to more easily resist it. How do you organize a more grassroots, "lets just get on with it" attitude? It is important to have a message and a framework that is easy to understand, but we have to make sure that we target the people and empower the people instead of targeting power and trying unpower them. (Not trying to say here that World of Ends is wrong. It is just that some people are asking, "who are you talking to?") Now, this I can absolutely relate to. I've seen it on a small scale, seen it fail to happen I should say. Here's the story, briefly because I'm tired and starting to shut down. A coupla years' back, 2 chaps I know partnered with 1 more and launched a new company: a consultancy specialising in Business Intelligence (no comment). I was in a bad situation professionally, and they offered me a contract that sounded better than where I was. So I signed up. As a contractor; I must make that clear. A little later I referred to them a close friend and they subsequently employed her. Now, my friend and I, and a few other recruits, had pretty much the same thinking: this is a brand new company with no baggage to carry. We joined up because we've had it with normal companies; they're all the same. They pay lip service to empowerment, open communication and the rest of it, but it's all the same in the end. It's all top-down, command and control, us and them. But we thought this really could be different. We had visions of something totally open, where the company books were available to all, where everyone was empowered to talk to prospective clients on behalf of the company, where we all could drive the thing in a mutually beneficial way, where we all felt a sense of ownership. We tried for a while; we called it Operation Stealth. We engaged the principals as often as we could. We took them to lunch. We lent them books. I wrote email after email. I said over and over again: "people need a sense of ownership, need a stake. You want commitment, but what are you offering in return? How about equity stakes for everyone? Yes, your slice of the pie gets smaller, but the whole pie is only going to get bigger." Do I bother with the rest? Of course it didn't happen. OK, they did try a little: for example they were brave enough to put up a slide at each monthly meeting with a graph of net revenue. And one of the 3 directors, by virtue of his open nature, did tell us a lot about what was going on higher up. But, in my reading -- I stress, my reading -- of the situation at least, their inability to change their set ways caused pain and unhappiness and dissatisfaction among the employees. I found yesterday a 'phone list from December 2001; there were around 2 dozen staff. A year later, they still had 2 dozen staff, but around half of the names on that list were no longer with the company. That kind of turnover is a clue that something is possibly amiss. And finally, early this year, they made redundant a number of people -- including my dear friend -- and took pay cuts and refocussed their strategy, etc. Because the market is so poor right now. And there's no arguing that the market isn't poor right now, and it's been that way for 18 months or more. Consider though that my friend made 2 'phone calls and was able to choose from 3 jobs within days of leaving, and could have made a couple more calls with similar results. The point is that the way the directors chose to operate meant that they couldn't harness her ability to so easily find work. All they had to do was open up some, let go some, involve people some. But they couldn't see it. I must say here that I'm not casting nasturtiums on the health of this company, or the integrity of its directors. Absolutely not. What I'm saying is that they missed the chance to create something that, by my definition, woild have been very different and amazingly cool. And reading Joi's comment, my slow brain now realises why we didn't get anywhere. Read it again. But did these people suffer A Lust for Power? I'm not convinced. Instead, I think they honestly thought they were doing things in the best way, even if that way is predicated upon some rather negative assumptions about the capabilities and motivations of anyone not-a-manager. But ultimately, for whatever reason, they would not let go of the power that they had. Put it another way: for me, the necessity of openness, involvement and direct communication is a self-evident truth. That's my reality. For them, either their definitions of these things differ to mine, or they do not hold the same truths to be self-evident. Their reality is different. Just as, I imagine, the music-industry execs will never operate in a reality where cheap CDs, all-you-can-eat online music services, and free downloads are the only way that they'll ultimately stay in business. I suppose I have 2 questions here: If people in power can't persuaded to let go of power for the sake of greater glory for all, are they different people to rest of us who are trying to persuade them? Or would we react the same in the same circumstance? Joi thinks that power does tend to go to one's head in the end, but that it can be resisted. So, are the managers, the music moguls, the politicians, are they fundamentally different animals to the rest of us? OK, I'll take a position here and say, "Yep. I think so." This gets back to the old joke, though I'd argue it's axiomatic, that the very desire to be in power should disqualify one from actually being permitted to achieve it. Um, after having popped off for a shower, my question is: what was my second question? Oh dear :-( "Anyway", he said briskly, moving right along, "let that be a lesson to you all. And hands above the desk Master Smedley. Oh yeah, I remembered! I want to know what kind of organisational structure, be it 2-bit company or national government, can we build that mitigates against this kind of us-and-them divide? Commie? No. Cooperative? Yes. Ideas please. 11:56:06 PM    comment []

Saturday, 8 March 2003

World of Ends Doc Searls and David Weinberger have created an article, World of Ends: What the Internet Is and How to stop Mistaking It for Something Else. Doc Searls explains here, and David Weinberger explains here. Casting around the usual blogs sees a mostly positive response, though Burningbird pushes back some. I'm not sure yet; I read the thing through a haze of red wine and Friday-night tiredness. I also take a little while to process these things in background and work out what I think. So I'll write a proper response later, perhaps in a day or two. Having said that, a couple of things occur to me: Any "article" that gathers enough mind share to demand its own web site was likely a strong statement of position to start with, a manifesto if you will. Think of Cluetrain and The Cathedral and the Bazaar. And World of Ends was launched on its own site. Are Doc and Dave expecting big things from this one? Are they deliberately trying to engineer a movement? I do hope so ;-) In the context of our western, middle-class, privileged existence, Statement 8: The Internet's three virtues, and in particular 8b: Everyone can use it, is true. And so are statements like "Everyone has enough to eat". Yet, we don't have to look too far from our comfortable situation to see that for a very large part of the world, these things aren't true. OK, I'm hardly being original pointing this out, but for now it's still a real, and uncomfortable, obstacle to aligning with the movement. Except, except, I don't think Doc and Dave meant it this way. For a couple of related reasons: Think 42 years from now, to an age of ubiquitous, pervasive, wireless connectivity -- a true global net -- and 3-a-penny computing devices of all kinds, especially ones that let people talk or "pict" instead of read and type: the barrier to participation might be so low as to be effectively non-existent. Think of transistor radios today. OK, not a great example because they receive only, but I'm trying for the image of dirt cheap and globally available. "Using it" doesn't have to imply a PC, broadband connection, etc.: just as with a simple radio receiver where an entire village might cluster around to hear the BBC World Service, a single device might serve an entire family, or village, or community. I think while the Net right now is not able to be used by everyone, that's almost all about its current state of evolution, not its true and ultimate nature. Finally, for now, I'm wondering about something else related to all of the above: Cluetrain told us about what the Net was doing to markets and marketing; The Cathedral and the Bazaar told us about what open-source was doing to software development; and now World of Ends talks further about the Net itself. All good stuff. What I'm curious about is this: what does all this have to say about the business of business itself? To clarify, if everything naturally moves to decentralisation, to a distributed model, are large organisations as we know them ultimately doomed to go the way of the dinosaurs? And then, from a personal perspective -- personal, because I want to create a business and make some money -- how exactly does one make money in this brave, new world? You see, I have this uncomfortable feeling that capitalism, at least large-scale capitalism, just doesn't fit in. I'd love to get rich, but I think it's mutually exclusive with the truths that these movements have revealed to me. Yet again, I've come to the party after the booze ran out. Seriously, the way I think it can work is that while behemoths are indeed doomed, there's still money to be made. Not billions of dollars, but certainly enough to be comfy. This money can come from helping a few tens, or hundreds or thousands, of people get connected in some way, allowing them to find a way to express themselves. And we'll be doubly comfy because of the knowledge that the money has come from making a real difference to the lives of people. (Hmmm, haven't phrased any of that very well but the battery is running out and I want to get out for a walk. I'll try again a bit later.) All of which is kinda funny, because the Net was going to let the few businesses that got there first and had enough money behind them to build markets of billions of people. And now it looks as if what it's really going to do is let billions of people develop their own markets of just a few people. It's not really commie, more like in fact the small-scale capitalism that China has been slowly allowing to happen. 2:50:33 PM    comment []

Monday, 24 February 2003

Suits Where I work, nearly everyone dresses casually. That's "corporate casual", which Dilbert described as something like unfashionable meets unprofessional -- you know, no t-shirts, denim, etc. And when occasionally a group of suits come in for a meeting they stand out like dog's, er um a sore thumb. It's kinda interesting what a suit does -- it hides the body so all you really see is someone's head. And when they're all fat, saggy-chinned, grey-haired old buggers with shiny, shaved faces and identical haircuts, there's not a lot of individuality in evidence. I decided a while back that I'd worn a suit and tie for the last time. Apart from the rampant eczema I suffer due to wearing woollen trousers in summer heat, I don't want to be one of "them" ever again. Yeah, a suit offers a fair degree of presence; I can't argue that. But it dehumanises: the person wearing it becomes secondary to the suit itself. It's a costume, fancy dress. Have you ever worked in a place where people do dress formally, then one day they all come in wearing normal clothes? Suddenly people have personality; their faces are younger and more alive, reflecting the brighter colours of their clothes. Suits are supposed to be more professional, and I agree. But I don't mean that in an entirely positive way. Professional means hiding one's humanity, behaving in a strange, so-called-proper way, instead of the way we really are. We use odd language, camouflage our personality and feelings. We can tell people they don't have a job any more, but we still have a job. The suit is the uniform that lets us do that. And professional people hiding behind suits do bad things too: they lie and cheat and act disloyally and assume unwarranted airs of importance. And they do it on a sometimes-huge scale and bugger up the lives of thousands or millions of people. No, I'm not being a simple-minded commie. I'm ranting and generalising quite deliberately. My point is, that once used to hiding behind the suit to be that artificial thing called professional, it's a shorter journey to acting untruthful, uncaring, without human integrity. I really don't want to be associated with any of that again. And I don't want to hafta hide my personality and voice away in the name of this thing called professionalism. No more, no more, no more. 10:12:30 PM    comment []

Monday, 17 February 2003

Bored and miserable Another slow day today. I have work to do, but it's ill-defined, tedious, of doubtful value in my estimation, and no one really seems to care quite when I do it. So, I sit there, slowly doing a little work. I break it up with a little reading, email, trips to the tea room. Everyone else is too busy to chat or not responding to email and phone messages. All the while my mood becomes lower and lower. Then an email arrives from my brother, Sean. He says, in part: ...the world has gone crazy - thousands of people sitting at their desks wishing they were elsewhere, not having anything to do that holds their interest or belief that they should be doing Funny he should say that. Irony. How much could I have achieved in the last few years if it were something that did engage my passion, and if I were working with like-minded souls? And here's the worst bit: it seems more acceptable to do nothing than something, anything, meaningful but unsactioned. Better to while away the day, sinking into something not far short of misery and depression, losing all energy and motivation. We can't risk being caught working hard on, say, some groovy and useful trend-analysis system that would save people time in their daily work, because that's not a priority right now. Bah! 10:13:44 PM    comment []

Tuesday, 28 January 2003

What am I? Professionally, I mean. A couple of years' back, I started tossing around whether to rename my little one-man company to something groovy so I could pass for a "real" business. I think I had by this stage decided that I did not want to start one more little consultancy or body shop. So, my thoughts were more around creating the name, the brand if you will, and then co-ordinating loose, evolving, alliances of people to work on this project or that project. I wanted a name that signified qualities of elegant, adaptive, efficient, lean... Then one day I twigged that I already had a brand: me! I'd already established my name as a quality software developer and oracle on most things Oracle. So, the logical thing to do was to build on that. Except that now, like Flemming Funch, I don't know what it is that I do. I used to be sort of an Oracle expert, if not really guru status. But my knowledge is dated now and I feel I'm becoming a dinosaur. I'm an OK analyst, designer and programmer -- at least within the sheltered confines of relational databases and corporate IT departments -- but I can't cope with the antiquated top-down SDLC that most of these places persist with. And I'd possibly never make it in the real world of software development. I'm increasingly consumed with communication, knowledge sharing, human social interaction, especially applied to organisations -- which is what led me to blogging -- but I'm no expert and don't really know how I'd earn money from nothing more than a strong conviction that most of what government and business does is inhuman and wrong, and that there's a better way. So, I write a little SQL, tune a few queries, dabble in Web stuff and XML, write the odd little analysis document. Mostly though, I seem to add most value connecting people who need to talk to each other to get the job done. But there's nothing much any more that I feel I can point to and say, "I do that." And I dream endlessly of building a different kind of enterprise. 9:33:03 AM    comment []