Dear Canadians, Merry Christmas
I just finished watching a press conference by Jim Prentice, where he announced that the Canadian Government is finally going to cut the existing oligopoly players out of a big chunk of an upcoming auction for wireless spectrum.
In case you didn’t know: We pay outrageous rates for voice and data service here in Canada more or less because past governments have protected the industry, and it all consolidated in to having 3 dominant players who have a history of collusion (not using that word lightly).
Tom covered this on StartupNorth.
Congrats John
John Robb, who I am lucky enough to get to work with on a few different projects, has been named one of Esquire Magazine’s Best and Brightest people in 2007.
John Robb’s “Global Guerrillas” of the twenty-first century don’t aspire to defeat our militaries nor topple our governments, but merely to bankrupt both, hollowing out the West’s institutions to the point where Osama bin Laden’s vision of the future — that is, his feudal order — carries the day. Global guerrillas are cheap and plentiful. By contrast, we field the few, the proud, and the incredibly expensive.
They change battlefield tactics daily, our lumbering Leviathan develops new military doctrine every decade or so.
We wrap our effort in great secrecy, but they wage open-source warfare, swapping their tradecraft over the Web.
The Jesuit Priests of Enterprise 2.0
In 1534 a group of men, some disillusioned soldiers, some students, all a mishmash of Spaniards, Portuguese and French gathered outside paris to form an order. The Company of Jesus was a commitment to each-other and to their cause.
to “enter upon hospital and missionary work in Jerusalem, or to go without questioning wherever the pope might direct”
You don’t have to be Christian, Catholic or even religious to have some respect for that kind of commitment. A vow of poverty and a future of unknowns. These men were a special type of person, who would stay committed to their cause through untold hardship. Upon forming, the Jesuit Priests split up and set out to complete the tasks given to each member by the pope.
There are two parts of the story about this order that are relevant to the introduction of social computing in to an organization today.
The first is the story of the constitution of the order. The founder of the order, Ignatius of Loyola, was tasked with creating a constitution and set of rules for the brotherhood. I am sure that having to live within the Catholic Church, easily the largest enterprise of the day, did not make this easy.
His approach, and one we should replicate, was methodical and took place over a period of six years. Ignatius of Loyola did not draw up arbitrary rules as I can only imagine would have been common in the church, instead he introduced rules or customs and tested them out, getting rid of ones that didn’t work and keeping the ones which helped move the order forward. Instead of pretending he had the answers, which as leader would have been typical, he chose to do what was sensible.
The second lesson, or perhaps warning, is how hard the work of the Jesuit Priest was at this time. The thankless journey in to unknown populations to spread a gospel that most people didn’t understand or particularly want. This is the role of the Enterprise 2.0 Evangelist in a large organization today. Behind you, you have the enterprise, playing the role of the church, and in front you have a hostile population.
What can the Priests and Priestesses of Enterprise 2.0 do to be successful? How can a mid-level employee bring social computing in to their organization? Is it hopeless? Are the Jesuit Priests of Enterprise 2.0 bound to a life of pain and rejection? Take a page from the Jesuits. You have to go in to unknown cultures, unknown places with unknown risks and you have to put it all on the line. You must live the faith in the most stubborn way possible and only then will your message be seen and heard. Above all else, the Jesuits aimed to live their faith and be examples rather than simply act as preachers. The impact of this was profound.
Few societies have entrenched themselves so successfully across the globe as the Jesuits, they have been resilient to change and catastrophe over the years and they have, arguably, been successful in achieving many of their original goals.
Leave your views of religious orders at the door, I know I had to, and take a look at the story of a small group of revolutionaries who created one of the most distributed, organic and innovative organizations that the world has ever seen.
I am now using Defensio Anti-Spam on this blog. I will keep you posted about how good, or bad, it is.
Hello Davos (no, I do not have an invitation)
The theme of this year’s annual meeting in Davos is The Power of Collaborative Innovation.
From the website:
A “shifting power equation” was the framework in which the global agenda was discussed in Davos at the beginning of 2007. As we look towards 2008, this shift will continue to influence the strategies of business, government and other stakeholders in the world economy.
But closer examination of the international environment also reveals that leadership vacuums are beginning to emerge on a wide range of critical issues looming on the horizon. Moreover, a paradox has emerged in our networked world where knowledge is ubiquitous and change is rapid, but the absence of a common vision and agenda ensures that the status quo will be maintained with respect to major global challenges.
The topic which will be discussed in the light of The Power of Collaboration are
- Business Competing While Collaborating
- Economics and Finance Addressing Economic Insecurity
- Geopolitics Aligning Interests across Divides
- Science and Technology Exploring Nature’s New Frontiers
- Values and Society Understanding Future Shifts
My favorite conversations these days are less about how we can collaborate, and more about what the results might be. I feel like we have spent a lot of time building tools, pondering strategy, worrying about roadblocks, that we sometimes loose sight of the more serious global result we could see. It’s not about be prescriptive, but about dreaming a little bit.
If I were at Davos, I would be focused on the Values and Society and the Geopolitics tracks, I would spend the least time talking about Business.
For those lucky enough to get to attend, and who have been clued in to the changes that have taken place so far, I hope this is a chance to show some pretty powerful people that we don’t have to have all the answers to the world’s problems, we really have to let the answers come to us.
Who will be invited? Its anyone’s guess.
I’ll bet on Ori Brafman, Andrew McAfee, and Don Tapscott. There are a handful of people who I really think /should/ be there, but most likely won’t be.
Hat tip to Susan
Things I do not accept: Self Censorship
The CBC here in Canada appears to be pretty malleable. An official from the Chinese embassy here in Canada was able to, with a single phone call, censor a documentary from the air.
You can’t blame China on this one really. The Chinese government does not pretend to offer religious freedom to the Chinese people, so it is probably to be expected that they do not like documentaries about any sort of non-state religions that take root in China.
The CBC however, exists in a country where, and is given its mandate by people who believe that, religious freedom is an inalienable human right. You don’t just throw a documentary in the trash because you get a phone call, from another country.
I hope this issue doesn’t die. The National Post published it on page 11 or 12 today, it wasn’t a priority for them
““I was actually contacted myself by a gentleman who is a cultural consultant with the Chinese embassy,†Mr. Keay said. “He was very polite.†CBC will run a new version of the documentary “sooner rather than later,†the spokesman added, but couldn’t say precisely when.
The Canadian director of Beyond The Red Wall says he has no intention of re-editing a piece that he spent three years working on. “We have to quote-unquote give balance,†veteran filmmaker Peter Rowe said in an interview. “… I’ve never experienced anything like these kinds of demands.â€
Congratulations NPR - You Rock
Rob posted this morning about NPR Music and The Bryant Park Project. If you haven’t spent some time on them yet, go take a look.
Rob has spent almost 2 years working with NPR and I spent almost a year consulting for them alongside Rob. By the time I was done, we felt like things could go either way. We had helped them discover what they had to do, but that is only half the battle.
I can’t take credit for what has gone on, Rob deserves a lot of credit (at least for all the unbilled hours he put in over the years), but I know we both feel extremely proud of what is going on now. At its core, NPR has an incredibly precious mission and now more than ever they absolutely cannot afford to fail at it.
Their team deserves so much applause, and I know they are still innovating today with some huge obstacles and difficulties around them. Even more though, the stations in the NPR system deserve a pat on the back. They opened themselves up at a time when people were running around saying that NPR was going to leave the stations in the dust. Their reward for opening up and trusting NPR is that a stronger network continues to grow, and there seems to be a lot more sharing of success these days.
The other side to this story is how this all came together. At a time when NPR could have hired (and could afford) any of the biggest consulting firms in the country, they called us in cold, remote, Canada, after having read Rob’s blog. When your core consulting team is 3 people, you have to get creative. All we could do was to help NPR find the answers to their problems on their own. They did it brilliantly, and you can see the results today.
NPR used all the concepts we now call ‘Enterprise 2.0′ to reinvent itself. They made some use of technology (like Firestoker), but really it came down to sitting people in a room and giving up control. NPR’s leadership sat down with everyone else and participated, eye to eye and often heart to heart. Nobody knew the answers, but they did the hard work and found them.
I am sure that the public radio system still has more than enough problems. There are more than likely some organizations and people who feel slighted or forgotten, and I am sure there are bits of animosity floating around. The difference that I see now is that there is a framework of participation that can be used to solve new problems.
With all the money that big companies will spend in the next 10 years on trying to embrace Enterprise 2.0, sometimes you really just need to trust a few of the pioneers. Rob, Johnnie, Euan and a few others are the ones you can trust to disrupt your organization in incredibly useful ways. This is such a new world and there are so few who have experience and success right now. Get em’ while they’re cheap!
