Jun 24, 2010 | Change, Innovation
The current debate, such as it is in Australia in relation to climate change, is all about the sort of tax regime that is required, and the need to change peoples behavior, and thus their attitudes.
What all this misses is the fundamental nature of the change that is needed, and the only way to get that is to recognise that commercial opportunity and activity will eventually deliver the answers (although it is likely we will not like all of them) by providing the incentives and long term funding of technical development, then commercialising it.
The role of governments here should be to assist in creating the field in which the technology, typically with 20 year horizons, can evolve. Playing with today’s tax regime is just putting a band-aid on a gaping wound, useless as anything beyond a gesture.
This argument is put very convincingly by the clip “Reinventing Fire”, that has come from the Rocky Mountain Institute, a very smart think tank and technology developer in the US. It deserves some air-time.
Jun 2, 2010 | Change, Leadership
Management involves a huge amount of compromise, and hubris amongst all the more usual stuff you see about strategy, vision, performance measures and the like. We are all human, and often seek the easy way out, the low risk option.
Often, this involves telling others what they want to hear.
Making a difference in any environment usually means being prepared to be different, to rock the boat, take a risk, and offer others an alternative to consider, and to tell it as you see it, be prepared to be wrong, but work hard to bring a different perspective to the table.
This is usually a pretty uncomfortable place to be, particularly in an environment of so called collaboration where conformance is valued, which is most organisations I see.
Real value is rarely added by conformance, the best that can bring is more of the same, perhaps done a bit more efficiently.
What we need in a world changing at the rate it is, are people who do not conform, who are prepared to take risks and have a go, and welcome the consequences.
Jun 1, 2010 | Change, Leadership, Personal Rant
Increasingly it would appear that Australians are prepared to sit back and leave the social problems we have to government to solve, and in the process are becoming increasingly cynical about the ability of governments to make any positive difference at all. Indeed, the recent comment that the Federal Government could not sell heaters to Eskimos rings true with most of us.
Over the last few days there has been a vigorous debate about the closing of hotels earlier in an effort to reduce alcohol fuelled violence. Listening to the babble, I was reminded of the thoughts of Peter Drucker, who 40 years ago foresaw the increasing reliance of western society on Government responsibility at the expense of personal responsibility, and concluded that there was little, if any impact government could have on the core of the problem, all they could do is allocate the bandages. Rather, he saw the corporate sector as being a more effective mechanism for the implementation of programs to address problems, simply because it was in their long term best interests to do so, in order to have orderly markets, educated and engaged employees, and stakeholders willing to extend credit.
Recent events would cause me to consider that something in the corporate sector has also gone array, as it seems some individuals in senior positions have lost any sense of wider responsibility in the quest for more, and more personal assets.
It is my view that essentially the solution of social problems remains with each of us to do our bit express our views, and importantly take those small individual and group actions that cumulatively make change happen. Leaving it to others, whoever “others” may be, is an abrogation of personal responsibility, and diminishes us all.
May 20, 2010 | Change, Innovation, Leadership
Being successful is hard enough, sustaining that success appears even harder, as success breeds a status quo that is focused on more of the same stuff that worked last time, but not necessarily what will work in the future. Safety first, risk elimination, self interest, and hubris appear to become the norm.
This process is pretty well documented with the benefit of hindsight, but it is not always obvious as it is happening.
Microsoft was the success story of the 20th century, it transformed the way we worked and lived, it developed a virtual monopoly in a highly contested market, it remains hugely profitable, but has it dropped the ball whilst still generating those profits on the back of past success?
Microsoft missed the transformation of the music industry, tablet computing, gaming, were wiped out in search, and are losing share in their core server software markets to Linux, and now Google has a free alternative to Office, currently with microscopic share, but perhaps it is a beginning .
The slow erosion of Microsoft a business that just a decade ago was considered sufficiently powerful to attract the attention of the anti-trust laws in the US, potentially forcing a break-up as happened to previous businesses that had developed a virtual monopoly. Now, Microsoft appears to have lost all its edge, and is just trading on past success and the mountains of cash accumulated as a result.
The AT&T telephone monopoly was broken up in 1984, probably a few years before it would have happened by the mergence of new technology, Standard Oil of New Jersey broken up by the Sherman Act in 1911 would have taken a bit longer, but would certainly not have been able to maintain it monopoly after the discovery of oil in the Middle East.
Again, we see the parallels to the natural eco-systems that provide so many lessons for corporations, where sustainable success is dependent on evolution, and change at the margins, not power over the existing environment.
May 6, 2010 | Change, Communication, Leadership, Strategy
For years there have been libraries written on the value of business purpose, vision, mission, and values, consultants have made a good living out of running workshops and managing implementation projects. Now, at a TED event, all the complication has been stripped away by Simon Sinek in a terrific presentation about “why” .
As managers, and in my case, a consultant and advisor, we talk about all this stuff, but never have I seen it put so simply, and so compellingly.
May 5, 2010 | Change, Communication, Innovation, Social Media
What happens next?
Mega platforms for social networking have overtaken many of our lives, from email, facebook, twitter, and the rest. All have the common trait of being “mass” platforms, designed to be used by anyone, with very modest generally available customisation allowed at the fringes.
For most people, in most situations, this is enough.
However, every time something has been invented, that reaches a wide audience, and satisfies a generic proposition, someone starts playing with the tailoring. This applies throughout history, to all widely used devices from armor to iphone apps.
Bespoke social networking at the edges is about to evolve into a fragmented range of networks where there are substantial barriers to entry, and therefore attract a highly focused group, with a deep connection of some sort, who can network amongst a select group of peers.
Imagine a social network of PhD qualified nuclear physicians from a selected group of institutions, which excludes the University of West Bumcrack and its brothers. This tiny, exclusive group of geeks, would love a social networking platform, an app that enables them to interact with the couple of dozen others around the place who understand them, but to date it has not been offered because it does not “scale” and the established rules for success of these networks is “scalability” which means it is capable of being monetarised. In addition, it would work differently, much more like a series of human interactions as would occur in the university common room, rather than being reduced to a series of quantitative options as is the case in a mass app.
The corollary is that if you are not in the “frame” for the bespoke app, you will probably never even know about it.
