Evolving Web

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It's what I called my 10x better social graph.

What do I commit to doing 10x better and for whom?

I tried this out at a mediacamp in London (without the 10x better) - just I do this for whom where and why and most people found it very hard to answer.

Hmm, I should add the 10x better in and try again. I might get better answers.

Hope you had a good NYE and are looking forward to an exceptional 2009!

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And Bill's main response is here, since he was writing it while you were transcribing this bit :)

Those people I mention, who piss people off by saying Agile isn't for everybody? They're among the creators of the term, the notion, signers of the frickin' Manifesto. And the people they piss off are Agile junkies.

Both are right. Agility is more useful, now, in many cases where it has not recently been explored.

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Well written post. I enjoyed a lot. Thanks for sharing.
regards
Photogrammetry and remote sensing services

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Very intriguing post. But I'm not sure what you refer to when you use the word "entropy". Is this a property of an organization? If so, can it be measured? I'm not trying to be pedantic; I really want to understand how organizations are characterized. So any clarifications you can offer are appreciated.

-Bill

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"The principles behind Agile...are all, I believe, universally applicable."

Hmmm. Nope. Can't give you that.

I agree that these principles have been underused in recent history, especially in business, and that there are fewer costs to changing in that direction nowadays.

But my challenge to you (and me) is to describe a scenario---which must exist, since agile practices are not ubiquitous and the world is full of diversity---in which the costs of agility outweigh the benefits. Or where the benefits of a traditional approach outweigh those of agility.

Besides Stalinism, that is. Something a little more local.

We could, for instance, think about whether oligarchies are still stable in agile organizations. And I think that in some cases they might be moreso.

I wholeheartedly agree that the costs of agility have been reduced, as communication and information-sharing costs are lower now (in real terms) than they used to be. And that opens up and changes a bunch of niches.

But if we're going to invoke biological metaphors, maybe we should think a minute about community assembly dynamics in real life. There's room for a lot of life history diversity in any biome. There are niches for "agile", nimble wanderers, and also slow, steady specialists. Predators and prey, producers and saprophytes.

In a natural community, big disruptions (like innovations) tend to open chances for new lifestyles. But these disruptions can also reinforce and enhance the old, established interactions as well. They can reduce diversity; give benefit to the big fish and stabilize the status quo.

Used to be the only people who were agile (in the sense we mean) were entrepreneurs. Now we can argue that bigger, more mature institutions can be agile too.

But the biological metaphor is sitting there instructively.

I'll buy a hat and eat it, if the complex changes in the economy and in business culture can't also make it more profitable and less risky (Pareto optimal, in other words) for some firms to become less agile. Under certain circumstances, in certain relations with other institutions.

I'm not arguing for some kind of conservation rule. Just saying that there have to be cases where agility is not the best thing for a firm. And so I'd like to hear when. :)

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Bill,

Nothing is universally applicable. In fact, we don't presuppose any methodology is universally applicable.

We use principles to guide the creation of processes that apply to specific realities. Different teams require different processes.

Scrum or XP are fairly rigid in the out-of-the-box application. This ridigity is what people are bucking against - this one-size-fits-all approach.

The principles behind Agile - dynamic teams, frequent and short group meetings, ritualized communication, limiting work in progress - are all, I believe, universally applicable.

Some groups will want time boxed work-limiting mechanisms, others will be better suited for a kanban capacity style limitation. In the end, the principle is what needs to be kept in mind, and not the dogmatic application some guy invented for his particular project.

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Ed is second guessing Modus Press' release schedule! :-)

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Pushing a little harder: I'm not sure but I think that there is often some set of circumstances for which any strategy will outperform any other. Some folks I know piss people off when they point out that Extreme Programming or "Agile" (whatever that is supposed to be) cannot be better in all cases.

It's a useful exercise to objectively explore realistic business cases where being (or becoming) "agile" or "lean" are bad ideas. There's nothing new in what we do, and we are not revolutionaries except insofar as we can understand more cases of the real world and arguably communicate them better.

The 21st century still involves moving metal objects around, and communication networks don't ensure efficient communication, and archives don't ensure knowledge capture, and politics don't transform smoothly into communitarian panarchy. And that's as it should be.

Nothing technological, cultural, social, or even philosophical happened after 2000, that didn't have a counterpart in 1900. Telegraphy and telephony and electrification and corporatization and stuff made Scientific Management possible... why should not our latest, super-enhanced versions of the same stuff not make Super-scientific Management the next big craze?

Or, shorter version: Every advantage from doing things "differently", for any difference, must have risks as well. And lacking universal adoption of the difference, there must be cases where these costs outweigh the benefits.

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Information is neither good nor bad. The application of, and decisions made based on information is where the normative judgments should be made.

Dee Hock's point: "When organizations lose shared purpose and principles – their sense of community – they are already in process of decay and dissolution..." assumes that shared purpose & principles once existed and then fell by the wayside.

What about organizations that don't share with employees what the vision? What about organizations that aren't willing to own who they truly are and position themselves accordingly? Isn't that one way you end up with scared/insecure employees? When there's no clear message around (1) what the company is; (2) what the company stands for; (3) company non-negotiable stances evaluating courses of action as on-strategy or off-strategy becomes a random walk.

Misinformation/information hoarding leads to suboptimal decision making by those with less information. Trust people to think & empower them to use their judgment after understanding the risks. Otherwise, a paternalistic culture with wasted human resources can become a reality.

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new book from @ourfounder:

Information rules change people: principles of the social fiber business.

coming soon.

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Awesome comment. I am working on a blog post now to answer it. I love that I'm going to write a blog post in answer to a comment to a block post that was an answer to two comments.

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Great post - what you are talking about has many facets. And, I think there's an ongoing challenge to present these ideas in compelling forms that we all can digest and utilize in our work with information-driven organizations.

I think this is an interesting idea, but either overstated or in need of more exploration:

"Information is, by its very nature, subversive. Information tells you the right thing to do."

I think one could just as easily assert that "information is, by its very nature, oppressive. Information tells you the wrong thing to do."

As a conjecture: when has anyone every done the wrong thing without doing so based on some information?

Also, you could look at Stalin (etc) and observe that their tyranny was possible specifically because of how they shared information--and how they encouraged others to share information.

So, again (in our larger dialog with each other), I'd suggest that there's a fundamental issue around the *quality* of information that can override any quantity information.E.g., more information can be oppressive, if it's "bad" information.

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Thanks, Jim, this is great. I can't help but think of the ongoing Obama/Rick Warren flap. Maybe I'm naive but it seems a microcosm of what a working foreign policy might look like. Hell no I don't agree with Rick Warren, but is he influential? Let's keep the lines open.

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You want to go for the home run here, throw in Scott Page's notions on diversity and intellectual toolkits. Because that's the killer app, still more or less untapped, for social network storytelling.

Drag out your copy of The Difference, thumb through it, and refactor in your #1, #7, #10... and there's a thing in the middle most folks haven't seen yet.

I give this to you, Karma man, because you're getting so close anyway.

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How do you get to the decentralized when working with the centralized? How do you convince people to adopt decentralized practices?

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Good stuff. Find myself bookmarking you more than most. Thanks for the thoughtful & graphically interesting content.

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Neil,

Absolutely, and this is a tool problem. It's also one of the reasons I'm doing these principles.

Right now tools like LinkedIn get their valuation by hoarding the important parts of your information (the network itself) and then broadcasting the less important bits (new connections [temporal and untrackable], and status updates.)

Their ultimate goal is to provide you with the features that they can provide at the least cost both in terms of provision and imagination.

LinkedIn could be the world's most effective business tool ever - but it chooses not to be by intentionally limiting how you can access the important information - your actual network.

All social media tools are currently guilty of this.

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The problem with LinkedIn is that when you accept a connection request, you'll often find your news feed - the most important part of the experience - is flooded with updates about the new connection. They may be interested in you, and you don't want to rudely deny a connection request to someone, but that doesn't mean you want this connection to augment the results of your home page. By accepting the request, you get a greater reach, but you also get more noise. Have you ever noticed this, Jim?

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Jay,

Awesome comments, thank you.

I still think the management of your network is key and the tool you are using to network drives that management. So the tool itself may require you to make specific value judgments as to who you let into your network (thereby creating the need to keep the network limited to high value people). With better management, a big pot of people could be created with little topical pots as subsets. This gives you the broad reach of the big network, but the focus of a small one.

As for immediacy - getting info when you need it is important. But permanence is also import and why you need findability and to understand that context can shift.

It was pretty hard to mash these down to 10, as you might guess. :-)

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Whenever people describe these kinds of things, I always try to spot any items that seem to be heavily influenced by the technology du jour. Often, people are over-influenced by something that is in fashion right now.

So, that said, you did a great job coming up a with list that should prove durable beyond this year's social media fashion trends. The one item I'd question though is #8: "Immediacy in all things."

Because these technologies expand how we connect in space and time, as much as they enable greater immediacy, it's also true that they enable significantly "delayed" connections.

So, I don't know how best to rephrase what you suggested, because it's somewhat paradoxical--it's: strike while the iron is hot, but note that there's no telling when or how many times the iron might be hot after it seems not to be hot any longer.

***

Also, I feel like "Associations are inherently good" is too idealistic--there are bad associations and associations that are burdensome (that get in the way of opportunities).

But, part of the issue may be one of "style"--I think you aren't including a style of association that's different than your own. To use the terminology of Gladwell's "Tipping Point": connectors and salespeople do their thing by capitalizing on more association with more people. But, experts may capitalize on having higher quality associations with fewer people.

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how is the brand any more cheapened than when they started selling iPods in Walmart?

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This is a thoughtful post, and brings to mind some questions. How does Twittering uncertain information affect one's reputation score in the Twitter community? What is the expectation around quality of information? I'm interested to see how the news delivery and consumption paradigms shift as the technology tools become more mainstream.

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Thanks for the Buddhism link, Jim. My latest saying is "You can't make a cat walk backwards!"

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Love your blog. I don't think we can count big box out yet. They've done well enough over the last few years to invest money in completely changing the way they do business. I think we'll see them scale down before we see them bow out.

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Well, I guess I won't have to worry about neglecting Plurk any more.

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