The Great Tech Election – not

Posted on July 10, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

Romney (Photo credit: Talk Radio News Service)

Here in the United States we are preparing for Presidential and Congressional elections in which the core issues being fought over by the parties are focused on technology and the future. Research, space, implications for security and social values; innovation to drive our research and development; the steep climb up the exponential curve that will take us far in the next 2 and 4 years; the next rounds of the digital revolution.

Except that we aren’t. Whatever the merits of our parties and their respective leaders, there’s not a soul who would describe the 2012 campaign in those terms. I wonder why.

Look at these expert panels that explain something of the answer:

Looking Ahead: Investing in America’s Competitiveness » Tech Policy Summit.

When and How if you’re Marketing with Twitter

Aside

If you missed this report a week or so ago, it’s worth a visit. A Salesforce unit looked at around 300 Twitter accounts managed for major brands. Important to note that, since while many of us use Twitter to promote our businesses, this effort seems to have looked at more overtly promotional tweeting (the kind I never see as I don’t follow brands!).

There are straightforward lessons about keeping under 100 characters, including links, making sure your links work (sigh); and interesting remarks on when best to tweet – at busy times, and especially at weekends (when it seems most major brands don’t bother much).

Grist to the mill of those of us who have been repeating that major companies aren’t serious about social, and the tips on timing and length are helpful even if they are not of universal application (so if you are selling sleeping pills . . .). And the approach some of us taking to mingling professional content with quips, snarks, and general-purpose observations (not to mention cat pics); and who tweet far more than is here recommended; is not really in view.

Back to a point I keep making. This really is early days – in digital in general, in social in particular, and in Twitter especially, which is the key social medium. I suspect I shall return to these points soon . . . .

WHY TWITTER MATTERS: Tomorrow’s Knowledge Network

http://t.co/GBi0mbyp

Sorry, Marketers, You’re Doing Twitter Wrong [REPORT].

The Two Most Stunning Facts about American Business

Posted on July 7, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

No hires from west of the Mississippi! (Photo credit: Kevin Saff)

Serious question: Is there anyone out there in the Fortune 500 who actually wants to make money?

Because mainstream American business is deliberately ignoring the two key drivers of value creation – with a remarkable degree of consistency. Companies vary, but not by that much, which is why the competitive advantage implications of both should be causing CEOs (and investors) nights of sweaty, nightmarish sleeplessness or first-mover overtime.

1. As I keep noting, every survey that reports on the number of women in senior positions tells us something ridiculous. Not, primarily, unfair (though of course it is unfair). Ridiculous. Whatever they may say, corporate leaders have taken a decision to ignore 50% of the talent pool.

Think about it. No-one with brown eyes. No-one from west of the Mississippi. Dog-lovers, fine; no-one with a cat. I know, it’s complicated. But when you get paid a whole pile of moolah, you can expect zero sympathy from me if things that are complicated prove to be beyond you. Get it fixed, or get out.

We know the national numbers. Men make up 84% of corporate officers, and 86.5% of executives. To focus more narrowly, look at the latest numbers (referenced below) from the state of MA: 41 out of the 100 largest companies by revenue have no women on their boards; 52 have no women executives. No-one with brown eyes. No-one from west of the Mississippi. No-one with a cat. It is frankly hard to see how in these circumstances officers and board members can claim to be exercising their fiduciary responsibility. At a time when the pressures on U.S. business are as bad as they have ever been, nearly half the talent pool is being ignored. I feel like I should be writing this for The Onion.

I think it’s unfortunate that this has been branded as an issue about fairness, like minority representation. Because it is quite different. It is something investors, were they thinking straight, would understand. Something boards would understand. It’s about value and competitive advantage. Get it?

There’s more to be said. I’ve argued that many women are in general better suited than many men to the flexible thinking, agility, relational management, and personal shape of C21 business. There’s actually a bonus in brown-eyed, western, cat-loving hires.

2. The second stunning fact is recent, obvious, dramatic, and at least as hopelessly out of focus as the first. It’s “social.” We keep talking about it. The posts linked below give some telling numbers that drive home the point. Not one of our major corporations has grasped the strategic significance of social media and social customer engagement. Some have responded more seriously than others. A few CEOs have set a lead. But only a handful of top CIOs are personally engaged in that combo of tech and human interface which will define both the relation of corporation and customer (B2B or B2C) in this generation and the corporation’s own capacity for agile, responsive change. It’s as big as that.

So, were I to be asked, I’d suggest the CEO snap up the top 10 social gurus on the planet and build a unit that engaged equally with CIO, CMO, every customer-facing unit, product development, and strategy. With the authority of his (sigh, yes, likely, his) office. For starters. Then next week, something else.

Now, guess what? Anyone seriously think that with women occupying around half the board and executive positions the revolutionary impact of social would be ignored? Anyone seriously think that if and when social is taken proportionately seriously, and customer values demand alignment with those of the company, the asinine male-dominated corporate culture that is well-nigh universal in U.S. business will survive?

Point is, the misalignment of society and corporate governance culture will find its most ready corrective in the revolutionary impact of social in permeating the organizational boundary and enabling market-driven pressures to reshape the business enterprise. It’s all under way. Who’s interested enough in the bottom line to jump ahead?

Customer Service and those who don’t get it: https://futureofbiz.org/2012/07/06/the-social-revolution-customer-service-and-those-who-dont-get-it/

How to Become a Social Business

82% of Moms of under-18s On Social Networks

Tech and Corporate Culture: #social #DC #Gov2.0

The business case for investing in women – Boston Business Journal.

via The Two Most Stunning Facts about American Business.

More on the #social #CIO (futureofbiz.org)
Facebook, Diversity, and Leadership in the C21 Corporation (futureofbiz.org)
Oh really? Directors go Digital? (futureofbiz.org)
More Facebook Malarkey: Why? (futureofbiz.org)
The Social Revolution: Customer Service and those who don’t get it (futureofbiz.org)

The Social Revolution: Customer Service and those who don’t get it

Posted on July 6, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

Gordon Moore on a fishing trip (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The glacially slow capacity of major companies to adjust themselves to the new world order of social media is going to cost them dear. Here’s a handy infographic to stick under the nose of your CIO/CMO/CEO. If you dare.

Seems a full 58% of Twitter users who have tweeted about bad customer experience have never had a response. Seems also that it costs, on average, three times as much to get a new customer as it does to retain an old one (I know, that varies enormously by industry; key thing to remember is that the impact is cumulative . . . an exponential factor that was around long before Moore’s Law). Ergo: duh.

We have noted repeatedly the lack of first-hand engagement by CIOs and other senior personnel in social, the continuing functional divisions that mar alignment between technology and strategic decision-making at C-Suite level, and the fact that (per Gordon Moore and his terrifying law) every single day these factors grow faster in their impact on customer retention and broader competitive advantage.

I’ve also suggested – further out on a limb – that it may be time to ditch the office of the CIO. As it has evolved, it is a tech-focused office; and in most major corporations it reports through that of the CFO (more horrors). Information now lies at the core of every endeavor, and with every passing day will drive value to a greater extent. Nobody should get anywhere near the C-Suite, whatever labels are being used, without a drenching in social media usage. Not that they all need to be coders (in fact that can be a negative; this is far from a geeks’ charter), but unless they are au fait, they should go do something else. At the leadership/management interface that the C-Suite embodies, they are incompetent. Whatever their other accomplishments. Sorry.

So back to the customer. Unlike the, well, institutionalized consumerism of a generation and two ago (think Nader), consumers are now directly empowered; and they will drive the culture of those companies sufficiently agile to be able to survive this revolution. The more numbers like those infographicked below persist, the faster we can expect new brands to emerge that get it.

Listen up, investors.

My earlier piece: https://futureofbiz.org/2012/04/13/social-risk-seems-cios-think-social-is-beneath-them/

And https://futureofbiz.org/2012/06/12/more-on-the-social-cio/

Social Customer Service – The Next Competitive Battleground [INFOGRAPHIC] – AllTwitter.

82% of Moms of under-18s On Social Networks (futureofbiz.org)
#C-Suite Executives and #Social (futureofbiz.org)
Most consumers prefer social media customer service (prdaily.com)

More Facebook Malarkey: Why?

Posted on July 3, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Murdoch at the Vanity Fair party celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Tribeca Film Festival. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If Facebook were looking for further ways to undermine user and (by implication) investor confidence, it is on a roll.

The big story has been their switching 900 million default emails to their own system; with an adjunct (and even nastier) effect in some phones of changing contact lists also. This latter is put down to a bug that is being fixed, though the fact remains that scads of emails will have ended up in Facebook mailboxes rather than where they were intended to go.

There are two other stories floating around. One is that Facebook staff have what has been referred to as a private (anti-) stalking capacity, so they know who checks their own pages. Another is that Facebook has created bogus Facebook pages for non-users.

The basic email switching issue, unlike various others, is not a “privacy” issue. Much of the discussion around Facebook’s approach to its users has centered on what are seen by some as competing ideas of privacy. This decision suggests an overbearing disregard of consumer choice, and, back of that, a failure of judgment and governance. These failures, which become more egregious all the time, are illustrated by the privacy concerns. But they are more fundamental, and now that Facebook is a public company are revealing flaws that need to be taken seriously by the market as well as users.

It seems to me there are, at root, two.

1. Facebook’s governance culture, and the structure which in the post-IPO situation has grown out of it, are distinctive and would much better fit the “old economy” companies that flourished in the 20th century than one prepared for the 21st. Not to go over old ground: The board’s lack of diversity is well recognized (adding one woman has been good but is a marginal shift since she is is an exec who reports to Zuckerberg). And the shareholder governance structure gives Zuckerberg supreme command, in a model reflected most publicly in current business by Rupert Murdoch’s family control of News Corp. It may be a good model for some companies; that is not my point. But no-one would argue that it represents the cutting-edge of governance designed to navigate the Moore’s-Law-driven rapids facing a digital behemoth in the 21st century.

2. There is a dramatic discontinuity between Facebook’s de facto emergence as the world’s major social network, and governance structures that would seem to be utterly unaffected by any interest in, well, “social.” One could mount a more radical argument and suggest that social networks will best be governed using models of shared, stakeholder governance, that will require distinctive corporate and financing structures – either reflecting mutualization or the non-profit status of Wikipedia; or developing innovative models that are both for-profit and multi-stakeholder in nature.

Point here is more limited. Just as the most visionary companies around are slowly learning now to use social engagement to align values and decisions with their customers, the leading social platform doesn’t seem to give a fig for what they think about their own email access.

All of which suggests to me that, qua company, Facebook is aging fast.

Is Facebook Doomed?

Is #Facebook Doomed?

On diversity:

Facebook, Diversity, and Leadership in the C21 Corporation

Facebook’s Email Change Results in Changed Address Books, Fix on Way – ABC News.

The Law of Digital Instability

Aside

The collapse of RIM’s sales and postponement of its latest model, hard on the heels of what have seemed to be less than adroit management changes, underline a principle that seems obvious enough even though it is generally being ignored.

Digital-age companies, to the extent that their technologies are digitally powered, and to the extent that they essentially are built around one technology, are inherently unstable and liable to rapid collapse.

This directly follows from the profoundly disruptive impact of Moore’s Law over relatively short periods of time.

But it is not widely noted. Which is why during IBM’s centennial year there was speculation about which great contemporary companies would be around in a century. Which is why the valuation of companies such as Facebook is so high – and that applies also to Google, for example, even though it has a much lower P/E ratio. Both Facebook and Google, despite their best best efforts (especially on Google’s part) are essentially one-tech digitally-driven companies – with, which is of course a separate point, one dominant business model and product.

It’s the Law of Digital Instability. The sooner we build it into our valuations, the better. And the sooner companies in its grip realize (as Google gives evidence of realizing) how risky is their position over time, the more likely they will find ways to broaden their product/tech/biz mode base.

IS FACEBOOK DOOMED? https://futureofbiz.org/2012/06/04/is-facebook-doomed/

RIM earnings: BlackBerry maker plans to slash 5,000 jobs, new devices delayed until 2013 | FP Tech Desk | Financial Post.

Facebook, Diversity, and Leadership in the C21 Corporation

Posted on June 26, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

In her latest Reuters column, Lucy Marcus (@lucymarcus) smart, suave authority on board governance, welcomes Sheryl Sandberg’s appointment to the Facebook board – as the first woman, and a second executive voice from inside the corporation. She also notes, though, that since Zuckerberg controls more than half the stock, when push comes to shove he will get his way.

The Facebook story will no doubt be used for case studies of several kinds as we move ahead, whether or not it justifies its vast valuation and survives into the next decade as the mainspring of social networking (both propositions, as I have argued before, to my mind highly doubtful).

4 key issues are raised here that go much wider.

1. It’s unfortunate that the term “diversity” has come to be associated with the need for women to be better represented in traditionally male preserves, and other ethnicities in traditionally white. There are indeed issues of equity to be addressed. But the core need for “diversity” on boards and in leadership more generally has less to do with gender and pigmentation and everything to do with perspective. Monochrome and monogendered bodies are far less suited to governance. And while that has always been true, at a time of rapid, exponential, change, it is risible that anyone could suggest anything other. Radical diversity of perspective is crucial to managing increasingly rapid change.

2. As Lucy Marcus notes, Facebook has shown itself out of step with the slow “spring” in corporate governance – both in board diversity and also, strikingly, in the old-style control that is built into Zuckerberg’s position. That is (in my words) we have a company presented as the key to the new social economy being governed like a Victorian family business. I am not without deep admiration for Zuckerberg’s creativity and vision; but it is his plain failure to understand this point that makes me most uneasy about the company’s capacity to weather the coming years. Such a concern is constantly reinforced by the plain bad decision-making that keeps flowing from the top. Latest: the ridiculous email switch this week – pitching 900 million people into unwanted email accounts.

3. What 21st century corporations need above all, and especially those driven by digital technologies and congruent social attitudes in constant flux, is an agile capacity for decision-making and responsiveness that will come only from deep and open-textured conversation at their heart – and candid social engagement across the organizational boundary. That is, contrarians need to be appointed to boards, and social engagement to reach far higher than the joke of a privacy referendum recently triggered in the aforementioned Facebook. Both contrarians inside and an open boundary with customers, prospects, and the wider culture, will prove worth more than their weight in gold; and prove key drivers of competitive advantage. Facebook has displayed interest in neither.

4. The core question is a model of leadership, personal and shared, for Century 21. The old-tyme Fordist models worked well back in the day – the Great Leader, the supportive and largely consensus-minded board of buddies, the trusting stakeholders/market. In all respects this situation is now history. Except that so many of our long-established companies are still trying to make it work. And leading allegedly new-economy companies such as Facebook, while they are driven by constantly exploding digital technologies, are striving to replicate a model that cannot thrive in the new context of constant, innovative disruption – while social is eroding the organizational boundary and shaping the possibilities faced by the corporation.

I see Microsoft as the last of the behemoth Fordist survivals. The titans of a century ago, Ford and Carnegie, would have recognized it, admired its founder, and generally resonated with his post-leadership generosity. Apple has straddled the models, driven by genius, and blessed so far by much good luck. Whether our focus is governance, leadership, social media, or social responsibility (to which Apple has slowly awakened through its sign-on to Fair Labor), the C21 company will look nothing like the grand successes of C20. Among the slew of first-generation digital behemoths (we can throw Google into the mix here), Henry Ford would just have been too much at home to give me confidence they can evolve rapidly enough to flourish rather than simply (if they do) survive.

And it’s notable that Rupert Murdoch, a C20 titan if ever there was one, discovered Twitter at the turn of the year and is engaging frequently and personally (you can tell; he can’t type well and keeps saying things that make his PR people cringe). Strikes me he may have it in him to adapt faster than Zuck. Sorry.

Is Facebook Doomed? https://futureofbiz.org/2012/06/04/is-facebook-doomed/

Facebook’s board needs more than Sheryl Sandberg | Lucy P. Marcus.