iancollingwood

Convergence?

There's a lot of chatter right now about the Internet on your telly. There's also a lot of questions that don't yet have answers. The biggest question is fundamental: do people actually want to be able to access the web from their televisions? The answer here is "maybe" and I'll explain the reasons later.

But there's another question that (some) people seem to be confused about: "If people want Internet access on their tellys, do they want widgets & walled gardens, or do they want full Internet access?" The answer to this one is is easy: full access. End of story.

Everyone hates walled gardens. They don't work - ask AOL, or any of the mobile network providers. Why do companies still persist in this folly? We've seen this played out at least 3 times so far in the life of the Internet, and the error always comes from the same, flawed thinking. Walls exist to keep people and stuff inside or to keep people and stuff out. Neither of these concepts really chimes with the meaning of the Internet - which exists and has power simply because is open to all people and all content. You'd think most people would have gotten this by now, but I guess companies persist in this because their monetization strategies depend on enforced artificial scarcity. Such strategies are doomed.

I'll write more on this over the coming weeks. In the meantime, here's an article in the NYT that'll get you started on some of this.

Keyhole Diagnostics - Radical management thinking from an unexpected source

Matthew Parris wrote a great column in The Times last week describing a novel approach to fixing "broken" organisations (and let's face it, aren't all organisations broken?)

His idea is this: in order to fix companies and make them work better, we should rethink how we review failures.

Instead of only bringing in the consultants and investigators when companies experience catastrophic failures (Baby P is the example he uses, but things like the Hatfield train crash, or the collapse of the banks, or the chaos at Terminal 5 would also serve) you instead choose a small, apparently insignificant, but nonetheless "wrong" part of a company's operation and zoom right in to see exactly what caused this failing. In his case it's a squeaky door at Derby station that never seems to get fixed, but it could be anything - a single lost package, for the Post Office, perhaps, a broken iPod for Apple. At Amberlight, it might be something like the loss of a video recording of a user research session, or a kickoff meeting at where we didn't have all the people we needed in the room. The point is that it's something small and incontrovertibly wrong, but at the same time something which most people would normally shrug off as "one of those things".

Once identified, you go through an extremely detailed forensic analysis of this problem, identifying exactly why it happened and exactly what organisational failings allowed it to take place. You move right up and down the hierarchy, identifying what didn't happen that should have or what did happen that shouldn't have. Was it training? Communication? Lack of empowerment? Unmotivated staff? Unclear responsbility? By doing this you will spot (and, one hopes, resolve) not just the squeaky door, but a whole range of issues that affect performance across the whole company.

I love this idea - it has transformative power for organisations. Very often it's not just that the details count - it's that lack of attention to these details is indicative of bigger problems.

I remember this rhyme from when I was young...

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Here's the article in full: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article5679226.ece

The death of commitment. Or is it responsibility?

So several million people failed to make it into work yesterday after the snow. And the newspapers are whipping it up into a big, juicy "Broken Britain" story for their own, rather obscure, reasons. The blame, apparently, seems to be falling mainly on the local authorities. Or is it the the bus companies? Or the tube? Or Transport for London? Or Boris? Or his health and safety advisor?

But what about looking at ourselves? People seemed to think that what happened yesterday was some kind of crisis. Some people failed to make it into work, even though they lived within walking distance of their offices. Some people called 999 because they couldn't start their cars. At first, I thought this was because most people actually couldn't care less about their jobs and so look at the first hint of an excuse for not turning up as something to be grabbed with both hands. (The number of people who stay home at the slightest sore throat is testament to this). 

But then I started to wonder if what we're seeing is something else - something more than a simple lack of commitment, depressing though that is. I wonder if, really, what we're seeing is a complete lack of any kind of personal responsiblity or commitment to overcoming anything that might be difficult. Anything that might require a little effort. It's also manifested in the converse - a refusal to deny ourselves anything that might possibly cause us to miss out on indulging our desires.

It reminds me a lot of the reaction to the financial crisis. The papers and media were full of finger-pointing. Who's to blame? Is it Gordon Brown? The regulators? The banks? The hedge funds? The traders? The property developers? The estate agents?

What about us? What about the people who actually took the loans? Who signed up to interest only mortgages far bigger than they could realistically afford to service? And not just once, but over and over, as they remortgaged their houses again and again and spent the proceeds? What about the people who made more from the rise in the value of their homes than they did from their wages, and instead of saving, just blew it on gadgets and holidays? How can these people blame anyone else when it all went wrong?
Did they really believe that this could go on forever?  Surely anyone stupid enough to believe in an endless boom should have been denied a mortgage on the grounds of mental incapacity. And, of course, anyone who didn't believe it could go on forever, but bought into it anyway, is as surely guilty of speculation and short-term greed as any Maserati-driving hedge-fund guru. The only difference is that the guru is more honest and more competent in attaining his goals.

So next time we blame the government, or the politicians, or the banks, let's try being grownups for a change, and work out how much we, ourselves, contributed to the problem.