Evolutionary zeal

Dennis Howlett picks me up on a few things in a recent blog post and although I commented briefly there I wanted to give a more considered, and I am afraid lengthy, response to the points he makes.

I have to say I found the post slightly confusing as Dennis often starts a paragraph saying my arguments are flawed then ends it appearing to agree with me. However, at risk of putting words into is mouth as to some degree he did with me, the main gist of Dennis's concerns appear to be the use of the word social in a business context and the advocacy of social tools spilling into ideology and revolutionary zeal.

To take the social thing first I believe it is a mistake to see social as anti-business. I have said before many times that businesses run on relationships. Relationships between their staff and with their customers. Successful businessmen and successful businesses understand the value of these relationships and the fact that they are built on social interchange of one form or another. If this is true and if you believe, as I do, that social computing enhances and extends the ability to form relationships through social exchange then surely it is intensely business focussed and key to future success.

This leads on to the second point about use of the word "revolutionary" and an inclination to politicize the use of social media in business. The paragraph Dennis quotes from me was, ironically, originally intended to warn against utopian viewpoints and dogmatic intolerance and as I said in the comment on his post I believe that most of the motivation for getting involved in social computing in business is individual, pragmatic and if anything apolitical.

It appears that Dennis assumes that I see social media and its revolutionary impact as being bottom up. This is not the case. Middle and senior managers have as much need as anyone else to be able to communicate effectively, understand and be understood, and establish effective relationships with other managers and their staff. I have held both middle and senior posts at the BBC and fully understand the need to "get things done" and meet business targets. What I am now passionate about is an exciting and more effective way of determining and ultimately achieving those business goals. If I use the word revolutionary it is with the intention of conveying the degree of change in how businesses run rather than any sort of "up the workers" zeal.

However this doesn't mean that that there is no meaning behind what is happening at the moment and this is why I am reading so much about history, politics. philosophy and a whole host of related topics. My current reading Mutual Aid by Peter Kropotkin is, I believe, relevant to the current discussion. Kropotkin's main point is that our understanding of Darwin's ideas of competition and survival of the fittest are fundamental to many of our assumptions about society and used to justify all sorts of behaviour. Yet they were in fact mistaken. Any competitive advantage species enjoy comes from their ability to help each other and share what works in the face of the considerable adversity nature throws at them rather than some ruthless culling of their own weakest members. Even between species competition is more about the relative ability to survive than it is about killing the opposition.

Dennis asks his readers to notice language and I particularly noticed his use of the phrase "hard nosed business person" as someone to whom my own use of language wouldn't appeal. While I agree with Dennis that business has, mostly, moved on from the extremes of Taylorism and rigid command and control there is a new, shiny, corporate, alpha-male form of "business-like" that is equally unattractive and ineffective. I have seen time and time again "hard nosed" attitudes squandering opportunity or causing expensive mistakes through the unwillingness to listen, a macho assumption of being right, and a callous disregard for customers and their feelings.

Not far below the surface of "hard nosed" business attitudes lurk Darwinian kill or be killed assumptions and yet if you, like me , share Kroptkin's idea that mutual aid is the greatest guarantee of success then some of the words like "love" and "passion" that seem to press Dennis's buttons make a lot more sense. The very next section of Mutual Aid that I read after reading Dennis's post contained the following quote:

Compassion is a necessary outcome of social life. But compassion also means a considerable advance in general intelligence and sensibility. It is the first step towards the development of higher moral sentiments. It is in turn, a powerful factor of further evolution.

If any "hard nosed business people" out there don't like talk of revolution try evolution. If by introducing social tools into organisational life we can allow for more robust, more honest and more effective conversations that accelerate our ability to learn from each other and treat each other with a little more compassion then I believe our businesses and institutions will have become more effective and productive.

Comments

[Dennis Howlett]

An excellent response Euan with which I largely concur. You are right to say we're not that far apart in the generality, probably only in the detail.

The middle management argument is interesting. I'm not sure about you but I find there is top and bottom acceptance/understanding but the 'blockage' comes in the middle tier where people feel threatened and not liberated.

[Euan W Semple]

Very much so. I reckon it is because the junior guys do it anyway, the senior guys are old enough to have teenage kids who get it, and the middle have the most to lose.

[Brendan]

Yes, very well said. Though you could have mentioned that Kropotkin was an anarchist. I have also read his piece on mutual aid. One of the most interesting things I always see with the Darwinism is that Survival of the Fittest is seen as the strongest. Fit as in the sense of being physically fit. But what is actually menat in my opinion is fit in the sense of fitting. The best adapted to the environment.

Furthermore I agree that the reasons for social computing are apolitical. But it can have great political impact. See the arguments by this Keen guy that amateurs are taking over. I don't think this is the case. It's just that academia is no longer the only place for knowledge and wisdom.

The unwashed masses might even sometimes have something intelligent to say. So social computing does change the power relationships. But those who are best able to connect and adapt will survive. If you are dependent on "secrecy" (this is not only dependent on your position, but also your personality and experience) then you will have trouble making connections and adapting.

I think that you also take it for granted that most people want to do good. I agree with that. But there are a few people who do not want to do good. Out of pure incompetnece or intentionally and these people have a large effect on social networks.

[Andy Tedd]

Quite amusing to read this exchange.

While Euan does adopt the language of the hippy/neo-Marxist :) from time to time I think Dennis should consider how much of what people get out of work is more important than the work itself. How many lifelong relationships, marriages, children are formed, endured and born?

Work is inherently and primarily social, and the long-term bottom line is a function of how effective a social space your workplace is.

[Brad]

Euan,

I really enjoyed reading this thoughtful post and the way it was written. I think you have made the critical point that, as social beings, working is not incompatible with the social dimension. The problem often stems from labels - "social" being taken to mean something that is supposed to happen "outside" of work, as if conversations inside a business or with customers are something conducted in monotone business-speak and little else!

Moreover, the social dimension at work reveals itself as co-operation - mutual aid - and therefore has immense value in the business context.

Regards,
Brad

[Lee Bryant]

I tend to eschew the term revolutionary, because (a) revolutions are usually bloody and lead to counter-revolutions, and (b) I actually think we are looking at waves of innovation that get folded into the mainstream, so it more like a form of evolution based on rapid cycles of punctuated equilibria.

However, I do not see the word 'social' as having political baggage or overtones. Nor do I agree that "hard-nosed businessmen" are the test for new language. In any socio-political system, the "hard-nosed" defenders of the old faith tend to be lower down the food chain than the entrepreneurs and visionary CEOs who create new businesses, markets or categories.

Perhaps in accountancy, individual practitioners internalise a view of businesslike behaviour that regards "hard-nosed" as a good thing, but I rarely meet a senior exec, consultant or lawyer who does not understand the notion that successful business is inherently a social thing. This is not new. Old boys networks, golf, lunch, conference circuits have all been around for much longer than our webby ideas, and they embody the idea of social business, for better or worse.

The more free-thinking and successful a businessperson is, the less they seem to care about appearing hard-nosed and buttoned-up. In fact, as gangster movies attest, genuinely hard-nosed operators are often quite successful in hiding it.

[Dennis Howlett]

@Lee - you're spot on but think broader. My 'lot' are not exactly what you'd call up there with current trends though progress is being made. More important, they're lousy communicators at the best of times (trust me - that's not anecdotal but born out from ICAEW thinking).

Broader - these are people who cut cheques and as some of us know, once a project comes out of being a skunkworks, unless it can be done within departmental budget, requires a CFO type to at least sign the money over. If you believe that these technologies should pervade the entire business/enterprise, then it is pretty hard to avoid these folk.

The 'hard nosed' reference was a throw back to something Euan Tweeted to me. My interpretation: "If there's no money in it, piss off."

Middle management is where the battleground really lies but I still say - based on what I've seen and heard from those who are/have implemented - that 'social' is a problem. Any whiff of the neo-Marxist/anarchist scares the bejeebers out of managers. Visions of lunatics running the farm and all that.

[Euan W Semple]

This is were our experiences obviously differ. Mine is that people who are successfully implementing this stuff very much care about improving their businesses, including the bottom line, but believe that the way of going about that is to engage staff and acknowledge the social nature of business. This attitude goes to the top and I have met many CEO's and CFO's, and in all sorts of businesses, who completely get what we are talking about.

One man's lunatic .....

[Lee Bryant]

Hi Dennis,

Thanks for replying. I agree, of course, that a lot of larger organisations carry far too many process parasites, who think of protecting their own choke points above the interests of the business. One of the great things about social tools, of course, is that they become more exposed and easier to route around.

My own view is that we need to bring these people with us into a lower-transaction-cost, lower-friction, disintermediated business future. Everybody has a trigger - you just have to find it. Social tools should be justified and signed off on the basis of hard and fast business goals - no question about that - and if they cannot see past the end of their hard noses to the business value then it is they, not Euan, who are political.

I should add that we downplay some of the sillier ideas of the social software blowhards so as to create common ground with the people we serve (e.g. not everything should be 'open' at all times), but we do not pander to out-dated and wrongheaded notions of power games, etc.

[Jon Husband]

Mcluhan once said that new technology retrieves some things / concepts from the past.

The OD pioneers of 50 - 75 years ago were both hard-nosed business people helping organizations come to live, thrive and grow productivity, and humanists who understood that people were social and often worked better in interaction rather than reduced to a unit of repeatable production in a production (or today business) process.

Efficiency and being hard-nosed about everything has, as you have pointed out, it's limits and there are many many major fuck-ups and mistaken directions that can be attributed to hard-nosed business group think when someone who felt or knew differently was "afraid to speak out".

Social tools should just help people work with information flows, problems, challenges and opportunities, and each other more easily and more effectively. It seems that this is beginning to happen. It's certain that the tools and services to support knowledge work will, as the future unfolds, become even easier to use and more comprehensive in how they help us manage our cognitive limits and our ways to collaborate.

The business world imposes the need to justify one's efforts. That hasn't changed, and won't change. And the internet and hyperlinks and the fact that people interact and converse, and have motivations other than just money and objectives, won't be disappearing any time soon.

[mad]

Euan, I take away a bravo here. The lunatics are running the farm here in the USA and they are quite hard-nosed about it. Not working too well in my view, which I do hope will end soon. In the meantime, online conversations and access to all these ideas, voices, cultures etc. seems to be leading to more energy, inevitably more chaos, but also, potentially, more tolerance. It's a big wide world out there. Knowing what is behind whatever you are selling, buying or investing in; the who, the how, the where, of what and at what cost, can only be positive.