June 22, 2004

More companies are helping employees to speak freely — and bond with customers.

An article in the most recent Business Week about how companies are turning to blogs to communicate with and amongst employees and customers.

An excerpt:

 Other companies, such as publisher Ziff-Davis, started the process by setting up internal blogs that proved enormously helpful to teams by cutting down on e-mail. They also let employees learn what was appropriate when blogging to the outside. Nike is going further. This month the company launched a blog of its own — “The Art of Speed” — and hired hip gossip blogger extraordinaire, Gawker Media, to produce it. Nike says Gawker has the following it wants to reach.

 Given blogging’s ability to give nobodies such awesome powers — The New York Post headlined the way political bloggers did in former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott as “The Internet’s First Scalp” — you’d think the idea of workers firing off would strike companies as akin to putting dynamite in the playpen. This is, after all, a medium once referred to as the electronic Jerry Springer.

 Indeed, blogs can be dangerous, representing a new legal netherworld. Microsoft’s most famous blogger, Robert “Scobleizer” Scoble once got into big trouble in a previous job for talking up a rival’s products.

Therein lies the rub: The more truthful they are, the more valuable blogs are to customers. It’s likely only a matter of time before some workplace pundit spills a trade secret, unwittingly leaks a clandestine launch date, or takes a swipe at a CEO that turns into slander.

 For now, though, many are running the risk. In an era of fragmented media, with companies struggling to get their message out any which way, blogs are becoming a kind of undercover megaphone. One way to think of them is as the latest guerrilla marketing tool, a new kind of brand bait.

 They’ll likely backfire, though, if employers attempt to exert control. “Companies inevitably will try to co-opt blogs,” says Dan Gillmor, author of We, the Media, a book about blogging due out next month.

… but then it would, no ?

I have been delivering two or three presentations per year, for at least the last four years, on “the future of work”.  And I have been writing about the erosion and morphing of hierarchy and the growing impact of the mass customization of work.

Some days I wish I had a bit more visibility, since it seems that others (like Thomas Malone) are finding some.  But then again, he wrote the book … I’ve only written a few articles and built some presentations.

Via Ross Mayfield’s blog:

The Future of Work

How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style, and Your Life
Thomas W. Malone
 (Harvard Business School Press, 2004)

Imagine organizations where bosses give employees huge freedom to decide what to do and when to do it. Imagine electing your own bosses and voting directly on important company decisions. Imagine organizations where most workers aren’t employees at all, but electronically connected freelancers living wherever they want to. And imagine that all this freedom in business lets people get more of whatever they really want in life—money, interesting work, helping other people, or time with their families.

In The Future of Work, renowned organizational theorist Thomas W. Malone, codirector of MIT’s landmark initiative “Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century,” shows where these things are already happening today and how—if we choose—they can happen much more in the future. Malone argues that a convergence of technological and economic factors—particularly the rapidly falling cost of communication—is enabling a change in business organizations as profound as the shift to democracy in governments. For the first time in history, says Malone, it will be possible to have the best of both worlds—the economic and scale efficiencies of large organizations, and the human benefits of small ones: freedom, motivation, and flexibility.

 Based on twenty years of groundbreaking research, this landmark book provides compelling models for actually designing the “company of the future.” Through vivid examples of organizations around the world Malone outlines:

    ◦     Four decentralized organizational structures—loose hierarchies, democracies, external markets, and internal markets—that will be enabled by technology but centered around enduring human values

    ◦     The shift from “command-and-control” management to “coordinate-and-cultivate,” and the new skills that will be required to succeed

    ◦     A framework for determining if a company’s situation is ripe for decentralizing and which organizational structure would be most effective


Visionary and convincing, The Future of Work shows how technology now offers us the choice of creating a world that is not just richer, but better.

I’ve usually called it “champion-and-channel” instead of “coordinate-and-cultivate”, but what the heck.

Jeneane has been writing a lot - about betrayal, personalities and fairness, and in a perverse way finding and celebrating her troll-ness … in a series of back-and-forths with Dave Winer.  and in the process maybe getting juiced about blogging again.

Which I think makes sense.  It reminds me of a line by Leonard Cohen … “the crack is how the light gets in”.

Real human conversations, unwashed by corporate missions or values or unfiltered allegiance to a flag and the many myths furled in that flag, are messy, faltering, attention-challenged concatenations of a shared search for decoding meaning.

And it’s all too easy to find and reinforce points of view that mirror our own.

Which is where flaming and trolling come into their own.  I often find that they are a reality-check.  My first impulse is to decry, in my conversation with myself, the stupidity, short-sightedness and ignorance I think I see.  Sometimes that feels right.  At other times, it makes me stop and think about my own perceptions and biases.

It satisfies me that I read … a lot !  and think … a lot !  and encountering trolls and flaming usually serves to remind me of why I think and read a lot, and how I can work at responding to my desire to be an effective, considerate and yes … judgmental person.

Flames shine light on my thinking and help to expose it’s warts … in my conversations with myself.

Ton Ziljstra’s been making me think about presence, and JOHO and Jeneane about authenticity.

If blogs are our online studios, shop fronts, workbenches, gardens, then presence and authenticity (or lack thereof) are what we experience when we are invited into these places of people.

If the Internet and the Web are creating another world … the virtual, cyber world  … it is still people who are populating this new world.

And I am not the first to notice, to remark that virtually all aspects of human social behaviour are finding expression in this new world. 

A number … nay, many remarkable people have written articles and books that have delved deeply into this vast subject - David Weinberger (Small Pieces, Loosely Joined), Kevin Kelley (Out of Control), Sherry Turkle, Manuel de Coestels, Jim Moore, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Age of Spiritual Machines, The Naked Corporation, James Gleick (What Just Happened ?), Steven Johnson (Emergence)… the list continues. 

Thousands of blog posts have refracted and refined the understanding that a new way of communicating and relating to each other is developing in front of our eyes.  Some key insights into the phenomenon are available in Clay Shirky’s seminal writings, George Dafermos’ Blogging the Market, Joi Ito’s Emergent Democracy, Weinberger and Searls’ World of Ends, the blinding truth of Rageboy’s ongoing scorn directed at our collective, mass-market delusions, fellow Canadians Dave Pollard’s and Rob Paterson’s and Chris Corrigan’s and Gary Murphy’s seasoned perspectives on the obstacles - structural and mental-model based - to humanity and effectiveness in and by our institutions.

By now it’s not news that blogging is about “voice” … there are many articles telling us that, in TIME, the NY Times, Wired, Vanity Fair and many other venues.  And, it’s also about facts, feelings, opinions, learning, teaching, thinking out loud … it - blogging - is becoming a touchstone for the ways humans communicate in a virtual world.

Yes, there’s IM, and VoIP, and Skype and user groups and bulletin boards and various other ways to communicate.  But blogs offer us a glimpse into, and of, the person at the other screen who’s also looking into you - who you are, what you know, what you’re thinking and feeling.

Presence and authenticity are perhaps the more recent areas of wide interest, which makes sense.  These are potent aspects of human-ness in the real world as well as online. 

Think about it … in the real-3D world we notice and remark on and store what we sense of other peoples’ presence (first impressions, anyone ?), and we make judgments about someone’s authenticity (sincerity, genuineness, honesty, believability).

And so do we make these judgments online.  How do we do that ?  Is it the colours and graphics ?  Is it the content ?  Is it the writing style (or lack thereof) ?  Is it the consuistency of a point of view ?  Is it the passion that exudes from the screen, the intensity and inchoate feelings that we can touch ?  Is it all of these ?  Is it beyond these ? 

Are we beginning to make observations about blogs and ways of blogging that are parallel to our capabilities with body language ?  Can we call this bloggy language ?  Come to think of it, will blogging be a key element of the online evolution of our languages (See “From English to Googlish“) ?

I start getting a sense of someone else - their presence - by reading their blog, of course.  And, as I get more familiar with their blog, I begin to notice … notice how they have laid out their way of presenting their ideas, their voice and the “them” that is behind the ideas and voice.

And this is what I really like about blogging - it is inevitable that the act of blogging, and reading and limning (in my mind, so to speak) other peoples’ blogs reveals literally what is there, and also what we think could or should be there. 

We project who we are and who we want to be into what we encounter on other peoples’ blogs, and we introject who we are and who we might be as we read other peoples’ thoughts, ideas, feeling.

And where this comes together … where I experience presence and authenticity … is in the peanut gallery.  I can get updates on the news from many sources, and I can get certain types of expertise-base perspective from ceratin blogs, and via Google.  But for the humanity of the interconnected Web, I get the most out of the comments , the dialogue.  As I read, I wonder … “hmm, who is she, and what is it about that post that got her going“, and “why did he say that“, and “what do I think about that“, and  “wow, he sure is great at responding to comments … I can see that he cares and wants to encourage readers to explore (this characterizes Dave Pollard for me).

Euan Semple recently posted on his wonderings about the balance between the Web and blogging (for example) empowering people, and the possibility of creating anarchic, mob-like groupings online.  To which I would reply that this is already happening … there are mob-like dynamics that occur on some of the blogs I read (and some of which I am aware), especially where there are many readers and hot topics.  In addition, I am not at all sure where the dividing lines are, online, between mob-like groupthink/speak and the much-examined phenomenon of “echo chambers”.

Comments, fact-checking, helpful additional links, trolls and flaming, group self-regulation, impassioned oratory, wry three-or-four word comments … it’s all there.  Over time, you get a sense … you develop a sense about this other person.  Watching how they interact with the peanut gallery is where I get my sense.

If I had one wish, it would be for more civility and manners, in the sense of this blogosphere being the perfect place to practice … developing one’s own authenticity and presence. 

What I mean by civility and manners is extending to all others who come and comment the basic human gift of attention, even if for a fleeting moment. 

I have seen some fine examples of bloggers tolerating, and even being gracious, to irritation-minded trolls, and my observation is that any ensuing dialogue (even of the troll gets tossed off the blog) is finer and richer for the grace originally offered.  On the other hand, I have felt sharply the sting of rejection when I have left comments on other peoples’ blogs which clearly have been ignored (I would like to believe that most of my comments are intelligible enough to warrant a “thanks for dropping by”, but I know better ;-).  Even so…

The peanut gallery is important.  Most of us are in the peanut gallery in this life.  Where and how can we speak out, in such a technological and streamlined society ?  Probably not in our organizations, at work.  Organizations have Core Groups, and they decide on the colour and flavour of the Kool-Aid each week.  Probably not (maybe not ?) by voting, in two-part ersatz democracies run by money, connections and electoral maps.  Maybe not at home, or with friends - not on deep, heartfelt subjects where doubt and conflict live. 

Who’s the Core Group in the blogosphere ? Probably depends on who you ask, and which blogs they read and why.  Who are the leaders in this Emergent Democracy that is “out” of control ?  What kind of control should it be in ?

The peanut gallery is important.  In the online interconnected world, I get a lot of my impressions about a blogger’s virtual authenticity and presence from reading the comments from the peanut gallery and observing how she or he is social on the Web.

David Weinberger’s plain words, acknowledging one of my comments ….

“I’d love to see what we look like two generations from now…“