Revolution of Me: Chapter 2: Business 2.0 – Continued
August 26, 2008
As I posted earlier, I am going to be posting my book outline in parts to my blog to get feedback and Ideas – please feel free to chime in!
Except from “Revolution of Me” – A book outline by Chris Saad
OPPORTUNITIES FOR EMPLOYERS & COMPANIES
PERSONAL BRANDS
These changes highlight how the container known as ‘The Corporation’ is now disintegrating into individual, personal brands.
As a result, staff are increasingly working from home offices, and changing jobs more frequently. This is not necessarily a bad thing for employees who are able to find positions that keep them passionate and engaged. It is indeed ‘The Revolution of Me’ because the individual ultimately benefits.
It can, however, become a burden on corporations as they continually try to compete not just for market share, but for the right people and talent to fulfill their HR needs.
The key, in fact, is to stop considering staff as ‘Human Resources’. They are no longer commodities. The corporation needs to redefine its role from one of an all encompassing entity to a loose affiliation of individual partners who are focused on common goal.
Corporations need to start considering staff as partners and service providers. Staff must provide quality services to the corporation, and the corporation must have clear, reciprocal value propositions for its partners.
Or partners will move on… or worse.
CREATE PASSIONATE PARTICIPANTS THAT BECOME EVANGELISTS
It’s not all bad news for Corporations though, because as partners move around, they take your message with them (as well as your corporate secrets – but that’s another story).
If you treat your partners well and they remain passionate about your message, they become evangelists.
Evangelists create more evangelists – and evangelists are free PR departments. Nothing is as powerful as a personal recommendation and an impassioned rant from a friend who tells you all about a product or service they just discovered. If markets are conversations, then Evangelists keep the conversation on topic. Hopefully your topic.
The secret for business in an increasingly personal world is really not a secret at all. It’s a basic truth. Build a great product or service and people will pay attention. Don’t – and they won’t care or will actively resist you. As many are now starting to understand, the best form of marketing is building a great product.
If however, your partners don’t feel passionate about your company and its products, then you can end up with brand atrophy on a grass roots level.
Huge marketing budgets can only stem the tide and generate so much buzz until the increasingly efficient word-of-mouth networks reveal the truth.
Comments, ideas and contributions welcome!
Using email as OpenID
August 22, 2008
One of the most common comments/questions I get while talking about data portability is ‘The OpenID User Experience sucks – how do we make it more user friendly?’.
The problem is two fold. First, users do not understand why they need to provide a URI to log in. Second, users get confused by bouncing around to a 3rd party site.
I’ve given a lot of thought to this problem.
The only answer I’ve had so far is that while the OpenID user experience is difficult to explain to users who expect an email address and password log in, the data portability value proposition may help justify the added cognitive load for users and vendors.
It’s probably true – but it’s not a good enough answer.
More recently I’ve been thinking about another potential solution.
I believe the 3rd party site bounce is actually becoming common place. Passport, Facebook, Google use it and, as such, users are becoming more comfortable with it.
The question of using a URI as a ‘username’ however, is a more difficult pattern to explain to users at a login screen.
Mapping email addresses to OpenIDs
The purists among us will argue that identity should not be tied to messaging. That is, uniquely identifying people by email address is a bad idea. It encourages spam and other unhealthy activity.
Putting that aside for a moment, however, imagine this.
Rather than asking for a user’s OpenID, ask them for their email address:
chris.saad@gmail.com
Now imagine the application refactoring the address on the fly to something like this:
The point here is that we take everything before the @ and place it after a slash. Remove the @ and put HTTP:// at the start and you end up with a well formed URI.
Now imagine that Gmail provided OpenID functionality for each email account in this way.
There are a number of challenges to pulling this off. Not the least of which is getting major email providers to support OpenID, and get existing OpenID consumers to refactor email addresses (if provided) on the fly.
It’s certainly worth thinking about though.
Revolution of Me: Chapter 2: Business 2.0 – Continued
August 22, 2008
As I posted earlier, I am going to be posting my book outline in parts to my blog to get feedback and Ideas – please feel free to chime in!
Except from “Revolution of Me” – A book outline by Chris Saad
OPPORTUNITIES FOR INDIVIDUALS
DEVELOP YOUR OWN BRAND
With individuals in a company becoming increasingly visible, the container we once thought of as “the corporations” – an entity with a single, homogenized voice – is now disintegrating into a chorus of loosely coupled individuals.
As a result, individuals are starting to (either deliberately or not) create an identity for themselves that goes far beyond that of their employer or their resume. Their own personal brand.
Try it. Do a Google search for your name and you will begin to see an emerging digital identity – a living resume of your online legacy. This is especially true in the IT world where early adopters have rushed to try new Web 2.0 tools. It will become increasingly true in most industries everywhere.
You’re resume is now just a starting place. Not only will employers vet you with Google, but they will increasingly expect to have heard of you through their social networks and online interactions. They will check your LinkedIn profile and see how many friends you have on Facebook or Twitter.
Those who have made a lasting and visible online impact with unique and relevant things to contribute to their niche have created a personal brand and have a real and significant advantage in the job market.
Similarly, corporations who look for and recruit these personal brands will be able to make better hiring decisions, and put themselves in a position to positively influence their partners and customers.
SURFACING NETWORK VALUE
One of the inherent results of individuals communicating outside the boundaries of their corporate containers more regularly, especially on the Internet, is that their network of influence becomes visible.
Your LinkedIn contacts, your blog comments, your Skype list and other recorded forms of connection and collaboration can now be measured and valued.
Consider that while your resume details your level experience and qualifications, your online interactions demonstrate your value as an influencer – and individual brand.
This, then, has implications for salaries, hiring strategies, bonus packages and more.
Increasingly (and appropriately) corporations will have to factor in this reality as a significant part of an individual’s potential contribution and value to the corporation. And pay them accordingly.
JOB SATISFACTION
The trend for increased individual visibility in the marketplace has both positive and negative effects on lifestyles and job satisfaction.
Where once corporations and PR departments shielded staff from the burden of after-hours support, spin and general customer hand-holding – now staff are increasingly tasked with taking a personal interest in the success of their products, services and customers.
This will, of course, result in longer work hours, added stress and a general change to the way most people approach their work and home life – and the boundaries between.
On the flip side, however, by extending their reach of influence and creating their own personal brand, employees have the opportunity to become more than just commodities. To set their own terms and find employers that respect their capacity for community engagement.
This careful ballancing act changes the relationship between employer and employee to one of master and subordinate to more one of partnership and mutual respect. In the end, though, corporations themselves may give way to loosely coupled groupings of specialized individuals who are determined to get something done.
Comments, ideas and contributions welcome!
Revolution of Me: Chapter 2: Business 2.0 – Continued
August 15, 2008
As I posted earlier, I am going to be posting my book outline in parts to my blog to get feedback and Ideas – please feel free to chime in!
Except from “Revolution of Me” – A book outline by Chris Saad
THE CHANGING WORKPLACE
JOB DESCRIPTIONS CHANGES
Remember when the PR, Sales and Support departments handled most of the external communication with customers? They always knew the right thing to say.
The problem now, however, is, the right thing, is not what customers and users want to hear. They want to hear the real thing.
If you write the code for your software company, then your users want to hear why you made the architecture decisions you made. They want to know why that bug occurred. They want to know what you think of the latest software innovation.
If you sing in a band, they want to know what inspires you. They want to know what it’s like living on the road – meeting other celebrities. They want to know about the emotional journey you’re on and how it informs your music.
If you’re an accountant they want to know what you think about new legislation proposals, new accounting practices, the latest accounting scandals and your ideas for corporate governance and account keeping.
And on it goes. For almost any job or industry you can think of, people want to have a personal connection with their service providers and they want honest, ongoing conversation.
You are no longer just the programmer, celebrity, accountant or knowledge worker. You are also the best person to speak with authority about your niche in the world. You are your own PR department. Except we don’t want to hear PR speak – we want you to listen, and we want you to hear our reply. We want a dialogue.
Blogs are the most obvious way these sorts of interactions are occurring; however there are also social networks, wikis, forums, newsgroups and more.
Add it to your Job Description. Clear it with the PR department. Make sure your boss knows. Read books about corporate blogging and the social media revolution. A good place to start is with the “Cluetrain Manifesto”, and then move onto “Naked Conversations”.
Comments, ideas and contributions welcome!
Revolution of Me: Chapter 2: Business 2.0
August 12, 2008
As I posted earlier, I am going to be posting my book outline in parts to my blog to get feedback and Ideas – please feel free to chime in!
Except from “Revolution of Me” – A book outline by Chris Saad
BUSINESS 2.0
Introduction
Further Reading: The themes of this section are explored in more details at these locations: The Starfish and the Spider
Customers, employees, markets and corporations are increasingly speaking in casual voices.
This phenomenon was thoroughly predicted and discussed in the book “The Cluetrain Manifesto”.
To summarize, The Cluetrain Manifesto predicted the blogging and social media revolution whereby the blank, benign committee vetted language of “The Corporation” would give way to increasing customer/market demand to hear real answers in a normal, casual and conversational dialogue with individuals inside a corporation.
The book encourages corporations to enable their staff to engage with markets on a one-to-one basis to provide authentic engagement.
Now that blogging and other social tools have emerged and are becoming increasingly common place, the Clutrain’s predictions have become an accepted reality. As a result, a number of other trends are emerging that continue the theme of the disintegration from containers.
Comments, ideas and contributions welcome!
As I posted earlier, I am going to be posting my book outline in parts to my blog to get feedback and Ideas – please feel free to chime in!
Except from “Revolution of Me” – A book outline by Chris Saad
BLOGGING VS. JOURNALISM
Comparing Blogging and Journalism is like comparing Text (print) and Video (TV). Where there is a change in medium there is always a change in message – or at least the way the message is composed, shaped, delivered and consumed. Blogging has had the same effect on the journalism world. Neither is particularly worse or better and neither will kill the other.
Before digging much deeper, it must clarified that there are a broad spectrum of bloggers; even broader than the spectrum of journalists. The definition of blogging includes kids keeping journals about their lives on MySpace right through to serious professionals who investigate and report on news much like traditional journalists.
The reality, however, is that irrespective of the kind of blogger or their intentions (personal gratification, personal brand building or even making money by building an audience), the result is often the same. An individual telling a passionate audience a very personal story. A story filled with bias, timeliness and opinion. A story that is published in near-real time and is open to participation by the audience.
Often a blogger will connect with a very small audience. In the case of a young girl on Myspace, she is only reaching her friends and family. In the case of a tech blogger he or she is probably only reaching the small community of readers they have managed to pull together. The fact is, though, that the writer has connected with his audience on a very personal level. Their style, substance and ‘news’ often resonates in ways that mainstream, mass-market news never can.
Because the salience of news is not determined by its impact on the world, but rather the impact on you – personally. Your daughter doing well at a school play is probably the most important news of your day.
The result is that blogging often has a total lack of objectivity and is often done by ‘amature’ reporters.
Why is the absence of objectivity and saturation of amature reporting such a desirable thing to so many people? Because the growing social media population implicitly understands that bias has always existed, that we have always told stories to each other (without the need for intermediaries) and that people are in the best position to tell their own story. Story telling is a basic human need.
An employee working in a company can blog about their strike better than a reporter can. A CEO involved in a controversy can tell his side of the story with more passionate and verve than an impartial reporter. So can his shareholders.
The characters in these stories now have a voice.
There will always be a place for high level reporting however. There will always be individuals who specialize in packaging the bigger stories for a broader audience. Even still, the existence of personal reporting and storytelling can and must play an increasing part in the process of composing these overviews.
In this new storytelling ecosystem, mainstream media companies have an opportunity to play the role of human-powered aggregators. To encourage their communities of interest to submit their perspectives for aggregation into a broader story.
Comments, ideas and contributions welcome!
I’m speaking at Web 2.0 NY
August 4, 2008
Are you coming?
I will be speaking on “Understanding the Basics of Personal Data: Vendors, Users, and You” – 09/18/2008 3:05pm – 3:55pm EDT Room: 1A06 &07.
Here’s a $100 discount code if you’re planning on going webny08mc23.
Hope to see you there!
In the mean time, I’m hanging out in the Bay Area.
Paying Attention 