Author: Jemima Gibbons

Categories
Openness

In Blog we trust


Arseniy Rastorguev (known to his UK friends as Archie) works in the Moscow office of MMD, a leading corporate communications firm for central and eastern Europe. Clients include IBM, Visa and HSBC.

MMD’s regional director in Moscow, Stephen Locke, is ‘a big fan of social media’. Archie started as a consultant with MMD’s technology team two years ago. He’s now working across corporate communications, charged with masterminding MMD’s embryonic social media arm.

I met Archie at Tuttle last week, but now we’re sitting in The Hospital, having a chat about the social media scenes in our respective cities.

Archie says local firms in Moscow tend to be very ‘top down’ and that he’s found a big difference between dealing with the straightforward pyramid hierarchies at home and the more matrix-ed multinationals: “In Russia, the CEO is very much ‘in charge’; with international companies it’s a very complex chain of command”.

Whatever their structure, all businesses show a similar caution when it comes to participative media:

“Companies perceive social media as too risky and too freakish. They see it as a nerd sitting there with a computer.”

In contrast with what most people might think in the UK, Archie cites Starbucks as one of the first companies to ‘get it’.

“Starbucks attempts to be a good company. It was one of the first companies (with www.mystarbucksidea.com) to understand that there isn’t a difference between PR and how your company really operates. Everyone loves Starbucks in Russia because the local coffee shops have bad service, terrible coffee and terrible food. We hope that Starbucks will kick out the local coffee shop owners.”

When most companies decide they want to do something with social media, says Archie, it always has to be on their terms:

“I like what Olga Rasulova of Edelman says (at least, I think it was her idea), that building your own social network is the equivalent of building a beautiful boutique in the middle of the desert. Many kilometres away, on the edge of the desert, there’ll be whole cities with streets and shops and ports and people. Your boutique may look amazing, but what’s the point? You need to go to where the people are.”

Archie knows all about where to find Russian consumers online. He’s been a paid-up member of the Russian blogosphere since he first got an invite code to Livejournal six years ago.

“My first degree was in political science. When I graduated, I got a job as an assistant to the director of the Higher School of Economics. At the same time, I was doing some writing for an educational journal. They were putting together a board of experts and invited me to join. This board based all their discussions on Livejournal.

“Livejournal is the core of the blogosphere in Russia. For four reasons, firstly, you can have a friends feature and can read all their blogs [similar to RSS]; second, you can have a closed community – post private posts to friends only; third, comments are threaded – this leads to an instensive and structured discussion, fourth, Livejournal is based around user communities. In Russia it’s the communities that are important rather than the individual bloggers themselves.

“The blogging community in Russia has grown up not around geeks but around the intelligentsia – academics and political commentators. Blogging gives people a way to express themselves outside the boundaries of traditional media. Since the press is not very opposition friendly, the blogosphere is the main outlet for opposing viewpoints.”

Blogging is so popular in Russia that Yandex – the leading Russian search engine – lists the top-ranking blogs on its home page every day – having your blog featured here, says Archie, is the equivalent to having your by-line on the front page of a national newspaper.

So, how about business? Why does he think blogging has great potential for business in Russia?

“Before Glasnost there was obviously a lot of propaganda but now the business press in Russia is pretty impartial. Journalists have mastered the art of the non-biased report. People are bored with the bland, balanced, two sides to every story approach.

“In the blogosphere, you don’t have to pretend to be impartial. People express their opinions – and then get corrected if they’re wrong. The press journalist won’t write a piece about a company putting out a crappy press release or a company’s PR representative constantly phoning him or her, but the blogger would. The blogger is much closer to the consumer.

“This is not really about ‘new’ media. It’s the normal human conversations we’ve always had but they’re now accessible.”

“With old style PR, as long as you were nice to the press, you’d be fine. Today, everyone is a media outlet. Companies are having to become more and more genuinely transparent. PR and corporate social responsibility are stretching from being a business function to being an integral part. And, more than anything else, the blogosphere is a stock-market for trust.”

Categories
Miscellaneous

The view from Bangalore

Mala Bhat is over here from India on the government’s ‘highly skilled immigrants’ programme. (Well, with the lack of respect for good ideas in the UK, and fondness for lager, is it any surprise we need people like Mala?).

“In Bangalore, like most of India, the big companies tend to have everyone working in cubicles,” says Mala. “They’re the sort of places where you have to make an appointment to speak to the CEO.

“It’s much better where the CEO works in an open space alongside all the other employees. That way he sees how all the projects are actually being carried out.

Mala recommends the US company Thoughtworks as having “a totally unique approach”:

“They give employees the freedom to work from home (traffic is terrible in Bangalore) and, in the office, each team sits around the same table. Employees are encouraged to come up with innovative ideas and if you have a software project you want to develop and work on, you can do it.”

The head of HR (sorry, Chief People Officer) at Thoughtworks is called Matt. Mala is going to get me his contact details.

Categories
Metanoia

Hello 2.0


It’s a non-committal sort of day (overcast, chilly) and I’ve got a fuzzy, non-committal sort of head (not enough sleep, one too many glass of red).

Here I am, later than desired, dragging my feet through the urban roadwork frenzy that now marks the entrance to London’s West End. (Shaftesbury Avenue, Oxford Street – they’re all being dug up, relentlessly, all summer. Believe me, it’s bad – even taxi drivers are refusing to go there.)

So why bother? Because Lloyd Davis’ Tuttle Club or, just simply, Tuttle, is always worth the effort. It’s a pleasant, cosy place (a room above the Coach & Horses, Greek Street), they serve freshly brewed coffee and a proper (sticky) Danish – and the people are okay.

In fact, everyone and everyone who goes to Tuttle is interesting in their own right, so when all these lively, interesting people get together, then something super-interesting should potentially occur, right?

There are the regulars – James Whatley of SpinVox who sits in the corner tapping away at his laptop, but will happily offer up instant mobile phone surgery to anyone who needs it.

There’s photographer Christian Payne who, in typical web 2.0 fashion, now makes more money out of social media wizardry than he probably ever can taking brilliant pictures.


There’s singer Lobelia and her partner (in life and work), Steve, who come all the way up here on the 159 bus from Herne Hill, and then all the way down again, just for the vibe.

And there’s Lloyd himself, generally avoiding the limelight, smiling sheepishly, and asking for the occasional fiver here and there.

Apparently the C&H opens up especially early just for Tuttle, but this place reached notoriety many years ago as Francis Bacon’s prefered watering hole so it’s no surprise at 11am to see a handful of warn-looking punters holding the bar up.

You need to nod politely at the punters, say hello to the staff, and step neatly past them through the bar and up the narrow stairs behind. Lloyd thinks this is an effectively low barrier to entry – Tuttle is open to everyone, but then you do, of course, have to hear about it in the first place.

Every week there’s a sprinkling of newcomers (who Lloyd does his best to welcome and make feel at home). This week there’s Laura Whitehead (Popokatea), who’s come all the way from Devon, Arseniy who works for a Moscow-based PR firm, Mala who’s flown in from Bangalore and Sofia who’s studying in London but comes from Caracas (hmmm, Tuttle’s gotta do something about that carbon footprint).

While the regulars generally laugh and make fun of the book concept ( ‘hello 2.0’, ‘Jemima 2.0’ etc), the international bunch are much more earnest, wanting to interview me, use the idea in research, find case studies etc.

In typical London fashion, the regulars find it impossible to take anything seriously. When asked what he thinks I mean by ‘leadership 2.0’, CTO Allix Harrison-D’Arcy says:

“SHOUTING!”

But leadership 2.0 is all ‘lower case’, surely?

“No, it’s like standing in a classroom with a stick in your hand and mortarboard on your head and yelling at people to ‘GET ON WITH IT!”

Next time I go to Tuttle, gonna stick with the visitors.

Categories
Listening

Your friendly social reporter

David Wilcox is a ‘social reporter’. He’s always been a journalist, started out at the Evening Standard in the early seventies, when pay was okay and liquid lunches de rigour: “But then, the price of oil quadrupled – and everything changed.”

He’s now interested in ‘how you can do good stuff with new stuff’.

“People are more confused than usual…I’m helping people find meaning in messy situations.

“People [in large organisations] don’t get out – they aren’t aware of what’s going on in the world. They’ll come out one day for a conference, and that’s that.

“The ‘we can’t’ bubble is very common. Why should people change? It can be very lonely. They’ll have to learn new skills. They’ll probably be unpopular. It’s easier to keep ploughing the same old track.

“Im interested in, if you are determined to pursue change in your organisation, where do you find the network and support to keep at it?

“Web 2.0 stuff is bringing a lot of issues to the surface. Leadership issues, collaboration issues. You can see them popping up all over the place.

“In the social reporter role, I’m asking, well, what are the stories here?”

And while David might appreciate recognition for his work, he certainly doesn’t want praise – at least, not of the simpering (old-fashioned) type:

“The term leadership is okay but ‘leaders’? I balk at ‘leaders’. There’s an organisation called Common Purpose and they send me emails beginning ‘as one of the leaders of the future…’ What does that mean exactly? They’ve got it completely wrong!”

Categories
Metanoia

Lloyd Davis on the birth of Tuttle

“In the future, organisations aren’t going to be the same. This is about different ways of organising. In fact, it’s not the ‘organisation’ we’re talking about any more, it’s the ‘collaboration’.”

So says Lloyd Davis, consultant, ukulele player and all-round good egg. Since January, Lloyd has been running what is now known as the Tuttle Club – a space where social media types in London can get together to chat, work and collaborate.

“This time last year, a few people were starting up coffee mornings, where everyone would meet in a café somewhere and chat. The mornings were popular, but it was all very ad hoc.

“I felt there was a need for something more permanent, outside of an organisation, where people working in social media could meet and talk on a regular basis, and hopefully go on to actually create projects and maybe work together.

“Ever since I saw the film Brazil, Harry Tuttle [the lowly engineer who is able to single-handedly challenge the system] has been a hero of mine. When I started up this ‘social media café’ it seemed to make sense to call it the ‘Tuttle Club’.

Lloyd clearly delights in the random nature of the group he has created.

“You get such a diverse mix of people and back-grounds – geeky start up types, social media consultants, advertising/digital agency people, classic media people (by that I mean BBC, Channel 4 etc), creative people – musicians, filmmakers, mobile geeks…

“It shifts – we get different dominant cliques from one week to the next. One week there a whole load of musicians turned up, the next there was a load of film scripts being passed around.”

“Anything could happen. People come with different perspectives and come up with creative solutions. I want to encourage that.

The model has proved so popular that ‘Tuttle Clubs’ are now spreading to other parts of the UK – Brighton and Birmingham are both starting up in the next few weeks.

With growth come calls for a more organised approach, but Lloyd is adamant that this type of gathering/collective can only thrive if the framework is loose.

In organising Tuttle, there are two golden rules:

1. Let go of control
2. Minimise structure

“I have to work very hard to stop it becoming more structured” he admits. “There is some structure, there is a ritual: every Friday, 10am, Coach and Horses. Step across the bar. That’s it.”

“The Tuttle Club is not about competing with Starbucks, One Alfred Place or The Hospital. It’s about the people you’ll meet there. It’s about talking, innovation, chatting, sharing. And the people who say I can’t come because I’m at work are missing the point – because this is work, just in a different way.”

Categories
Metanoia

Scaling the ivory towers

In 2001, Adriana Lukas was working for a large financial firm in the City of London when she started blogging with Samizdata, a quasi-political blog “for people with a critically rational individualist perspective”.

Back then, there were dozens of bloggers rather than millions, and the term social media wasn’t even a glint in Mark Zuckerberg’s eye.

Adriana liked blogging so much, she left her finance job and started up an agency, the Big Blog Company, telling businesses how to use blogs.

With a degree from Oxford University and an earlier stint spent at ‘Big 5’ consultancy, KPMG, she could have been your archetypal management consultant.

“No, no, I hate that term,” says Adriana. “A friend of mine says I’m an ‘insultant’ – I much prefer that.”

Companies be warned, it’s not the blogs we’re really talking about here. The blogs are simply an entrée, a conversation starter, or, potentially, a metaphor. Adriana’s big blog crusade is all about business change.

We’re chatting over chilled water (it’s hot, it’s August) at Adriana’s town-house in Chelsea. And Adriana’s feeling frustrated and maybe a little bit fed up.

Adriana at home in Chelsea

“I’m amazed when I go into businesses how little they know about the outside world. Managers are so bogged down in the day to day minutiae of running the organisation they don’t have a chance to be aware of what’s really going on.

“Businesses are SO behind. If you think about a typical business organisation, certain words come to mind – control, autocracy, systems, closed – whereas if you look at the web, the networked world, it’s completely the opposite. The networked world is completely heterarchical.

“We’re talking about two totally contradictory environments – offline versus networked. It’s a war!”

As Adriana sees it, the business structures we see today are the result of many different layers, wrought first by industrialisation, then by the impact of mass media and, finally, by complex legal regulations.

This tangled mesh of restrictions is virtually impossible to un-pick. As a result, any positive steps towards change are difficult.

“Take pharmaceutical companies, for example, they’re not allowed to talk about their products [drugs] unless it’s in a certain way – and that makes whatever’s written, unreadable. They’re totally straight-jacketed. ”

The established systems within businesses are equally restrictive:

“You are more important than your job description but, in business, it’s the job description that matters.”

Traditional business behaviours throw up “limiting mental models” which people need to change if they are to evolve. The first step is becoming aware of these models.

“For example, when people talk about networks, we still tend to think of a bicycle wheel, with ourselves at the centre, rather than a loosely connected pattern of nodes.”

“We need to start looking at the ‘because’ business model – ie, I don’t make money with this product, I make money because of this product. Because people are using that, they can be persuaded to pay for this.

“That’s what businesses have to understand – the money’s there. But until you change the mental models, you’ll never be able to benefit.”

It’s still early days, and Adriana admits it’s often hard to see exactly what we’re meant to be working towards: “It’s as if the amoeba are just beginning to separate [over here] and we’re looking at fashion design [over here].”

Is that the stage we’re at, then – amoeba separating?

“Yes – exactly! It’s like the five blind men trying to describe an elephant. One says ‘it’s tusks’, one says, ‘it’s a tail’, the other says ‘it’s a trunk’…but none of them can feel the whole elephant. That’s where we are.”

Adriana is furious that certain companies – like Noka chocolate, which “practices a very 1.0 ways of doing things” – can be denounced on the internet and still carry on as before.

“A food blogger in Dallas did an expose of Noka and revealed that there was a 150 per cent mark up on their products. Noka were completely exposed, completely humiliated, but they’re still going strong. I’d really like to know – how much difference do these things [blogs, wikis etc] make? How much damage do they really cause?”

Indeed. How long does Adriana think it’s going to take before the ‘2.0’ message gets through?

“Maybe there’s going to be a dark age. The movement for net neutrality is getting quite big in the States – and it will do here. It’s possible the telcos could decide to restrict access to the pipes. But you could kill the web but you can’t kill the net. The geeks will find a way.”

And for now?

“I’m focusing on building up pressure on the side. I’m focusing on people rather than companies. I think the individual is far more dynamic, advanced and creative [than the business organisation].”

Categories
Listening

Bad habits die hard

Clay Shirky makes a nice observation about the origins of knowledge mis-management, which he traces back to the US railway industry c.1855.

In order to oversee the challenges of a rapidly expanding railway system, a superintendent for one railroad firm drew what was possibly the world’s first organisational chart. The chart had a pyramid structure and proposed a clear demarcation of responsibility for each segment of track.

As one of his principles for running a hierarchical organisation, the superintendent, David McCallum, wrote that it was important to that any information passed upwards would not embarrass principal officers.

“The idea of limiting communications, so that they only flow from one layer of the hierarchy to the next,” writes Shirky, “was part of the very design of the system at the dawn of managerial culture.” (Here Comes Everybody, p.42).

Concern of embarrassing superiors might be a bit of a PR take on traditional organisational culture. A far more common reason for not telling your boss the truth is the fear-factor.

Witness the salutary tale of pilot, Malburn McBroom. The DC-8 he was flying crashed near Portland Airport, Oregon, in 1978, killing ten people. In the investigation that followed, it was revealed that McBroom had such fearsome temper, not one of his crew could bring themselves to tell him that the plane was low on fuel.

These may be two extreme examples, but the unhealthy habit of restricting information flow – for whatever reason – is one that future-focused organisations need to address.

Categories
Context

Whose side are you on?

When Clay Shirky arrived in the UK in Feb 2008 to promote his book, Here Comes Everybody, he drew a great deal of interest – nearly all favourable. How could anyone argue with such ‘motherhood and apple pie’ concepts as empowerment, collaboration and improved communication?

Of course, like the small print on a financial services poster, there’s an underlying message running through his thesis –- social change can be good or bad (the value of your investment can go down as well as up).

We all like to think that the new social media tools will help us in a positive way, but then, we never know what rogue operators may lurk around the corner, ready to hijack our new tool-kit for selfish, destructive ends.

For all the talk of universal moral codes, it seems there’s always someone who’s prepared to abuse trust and delight in the chaos that results (Heath Ledger’s Joker, anyone?)

One point made by Nicolas Carr in The Big Switch really resonated with me: namely that, when faced by something it doesn’t understand, human nature tends to plump for an overly optimistic view (it’s easier to imagine warm, fuzzy outcomes than harsh brutal ones).

Social media – villain or saviour? What do you think?

I’m off to design a Cosmo/ FHM -style quiz for readers to find out. Watch this space.

Categories
Passion

Bring on the change police!

OK, so assuming that we (us little, geeky, leaders – with a small ‘l’ – of the digital revolution) all believe a positive change is going to come, how is it going to happen?

Do we march in to corporate businesses like The Change Police, demanding an end to all this management 1.0 way of doing things, and lining up detractors against a (fire)wall?

Or do we run it like a viral campaign, planting comments in a few choice places, choosing tastemakers and creating a gentle buzz (see 2gether08’s ice cream experiment).

There’s no doubt that, to be lasting, the change needs to come in an incremental, organic way.

So how to we persuade private business do this?

Euan Semple recently listed some reasons as to why most companies who try to do Enterprise 2.0 will fail.

Here are some challenges to each point:

1. Sure, it’s a matter of perception, but once Generation Y gets established in the workplace, fear of ‘technology’ won’t be an issue.

2. This is true, but given enough success stories, even the hardest of heads will be turned.

3. Managers have to experience the ‘Web 2.0’ way for themselves. And see the light. Only then they will realise that the underlying business culture needs to change.

4. See 3.

5. If early adopters are likely to be ground down, then it’s high time they got out and did their own thing.

6. Own goal, then.

7. Yes, but even the most lowly of us know that short-termism isn’t the answer to anything.

8. Very true. But see 1.

Categories
News

In search of Leadership 2.0

Update (November 2009): Monkeys with Typewriters – the end result of my Leadership 2.0 project, is available now.

Thank you to everyone who’s shown an interest in the book I’ve been working on. The book, due to be published by Triarchy Press in Autumn 2009, will be based on interviews with 50 leading practitioners and thinkers in the Web 2.0/ social media space.

You can see it taking shape right here on the blog as the interviews are written up.

When people ask what the book’s actually about, it’s a slightly different answer every time. In Search of Leadership 2.0 is the working title (plenty of wise people have advised me not to use ‘2.0’ but it’s useful for now in that everyone seems to understand, or at least have a feel for, what this meme means).

The outline is changing and morphing a bit, too, but I’m posting my original proposal here (submitted August 2007) so you can get a flavour for where I’m going:

Title: In Search of Leadership 2.0

Synopsis:

As the world wide web matures and moves towards a more participative model, so 21st century businesses are realising that ego-centric, command-and-control type structures no longer apply in a diversified, global marketplace. In the new knowledge economy, the leader who can most effectively harness the combined wisdom of his workforce will win. Collaboration and sharing will replace petty feifdoms and “jobsworth” mentalities. Welcome to Leadership 2.0.

This book will build on the seminal work of thinkers such as Senge, de Geus and Fairtlough by exploring how the forces that make up today’s online revolution can also be harnessed for successful business. Each chapter will take an aspect of Web 2.0 and describe a parallel practice in leadership, using case studies and insightful quotes from leading practitioners to illustrate its point.

Chapters:

1. Introduction

2. The Business With A Mind Of Its Own Collective intelligence can be harnessed to achieve an innovative, highly-charged creative environment (Senge called it “metanoia”). How can business structures change to encourage such creativity?

3. The Power Of A Common Interest Online communities have been shown to prosper if the unifying cause is appropriate; corporate loyalty is the same. How can businesses tap into genuine passions to motivate staff?

4. I Didn’t Know You Knew That! Wikis are web pages edited by the users; successful intranets and other forms of knowledge management ensure that no-one’s knowledge goes to waste. What are the latest innovations?

5. Making The Private Public Blogs and online profiles open up the personal to public scrutiny, but also aid our understanding of each other; the “duvet days” policy adopted by some companies acknowledges that employees are more than just corporate animals. What are the pros and cons?

6. Who’ll be Number One in 2020? Web 2.0’s Long Tail shows us that its important not to just concentrate on creating the big “hits” – the little ones can be just as successful. How far can businesses accommodate this?

7. Facilitating Workplace Democracy Tagging and social bookmarking are creating new hierarchies of language online; it’s been argued that participation equals power but can folksonomies really change businesses for the better?

8. Open Source Business Open Source and Creative Commons have been intrinsic to the success of Web 2.0 – but seem counter-intuitive in business. What models have been proven to work?

9. Conclusion The “Leadership 2.0” way of doing things

If you’ve any comments/thoughts, please let me know – all feedback appreciated!