Qapla'

Why start a new blog with the Klingon verb for success you may ask? Well, there is no such thing as coincidence. While attending the Cordial event at 'Kasteel de Vanenburg' in Putten I had an energizing discussion with a very interesting consultant/nerd/show man; Daryl Plummer (Group VP at Gartner). He ‘performed’ a fantastic presentation on the need for Service oriented architectures and its evolution to include event driven architectures. A technology presentation filled with human experiences, metaphors and lots of humour. When the phone rings, that is an event, when you pick it up you use a service to communicate with your neighbour who tells you that your dog is trying to eat their cat, which is an event. Your neighbours would probably consider it a service if you could prevent Butch from eating Fluffy. A beautiful and extremely funny way of describing the difference between a service and an event. He then went on explaining that day to day live is based on events first and on the choice you make regarding the service to deal with the event second. That is a concept that is near to my hart and part of what we are doing here. Networks are event driven and we want to empower people to not only ease the choice of service through the sharing of information and experience with others, but to empower them to build their own services to make their lives easier. Using his words, we want to compose networks by assembling the needed disciplines and orchestrate its direction (give it a self sustaining purpose).

I am not easily impressed, but this was an exception. In a meeting afterwards we discussed how we could enable business people to not only drive the development of new applications, but also make it so easy that they can develop simple event driven services for communication and collaboration without any coding knowledge. During the discussion the word Qapla' came up; I should have known he was also a 'Trekkie'. We do not only share the same view on the use of technology, but we also share a love for all things Star Trek (with the possible exception of Enterprise which they cancelled when it finally began to show some promise). We also both laugh ourselves silly when it comes to the extreme lengths some people go through to dress as their heroes. We're plain clothes fans. There is no such thing as coincidence and I may just take him up on the invitation to visit the Dragoncon event in Atlanta next year in September.

When I look back on the two day Cordial, the meeting with Daryl and the presentation of Futurologist Paul Ostendorf on the first day including the resulting discussion together with Colby Stuart and Jonathan Marks where the highlights of the event. Paul gave us a video supported view on the future and role technology will play. He did this on his own presentation software which looked superior to Powerpoint in more ways than one. I will have to look into that on www.neoversum.com, I wonder if there was fruit involved. Colby already described his presentation and the resulting discussion in her blog, so read it here!

I also had a short discussion with the founder of Cordys (Jan Baan) on the topic Colby ended her blog on the Cordial with. Where is the human element? He was initially taken aback because he linked my question with the organisation of the event, so I rephrased my question to: How will people drive the development of applications and drive the role of applications in how they collaborate? To him their product is more about human beings than it has ever been. I think he meant that it is for the good of human beings working in organisations and using services because it reduces complexity, is easier to maintain, easier to build and hopefully easier to use, but that still did not answer my question. With a thank you for the invitation, that was the end of our discussion though.

Cordys is using the terms business collaboration and excellerate (excel and accelerate) on every corner. I see application integration through an enterprise system bus and an orchestrator that can be used to accelerate application development through process modelling. This will make the ICT architecture of any company more agile. Bravo! I do not see collaboration between people or a search for and nurturing of excellence though. These are human concepts that technology can enable, but not inspire or replace. While I am very impressed with their product offering I think Cordys has a challenge in that their staff is very homogenous, very technology driven with the exception of a few sales & marketing people. I see a company that is very good at technological innovation, but seems to lack the ability to innovate their business to make money. They still do things the nineties way. To close the gap between their technology prowess and the business need of their customers, they choose to partner with consulting oriented system integrators. In my opinion, these companies have the same problem as Cordys; they are not focused on adding the human being into the equation. The paradigm shift from technology driven development ‘here’s technology and this is how you must use it’ to user driven development ‘this is what I want to do, who will create the service?’ (think of blogging and tagging as an example) has not reached them yet. They will need to reinvent themselves or repeat the late nineties mistakes of many of their predecessors and become a takeover target within the next six months.

Broaden your scope!

Collaborative Networking is most often associated with knowledge management. Immediately all the doomed KM projects spring to mind and it is perceived as old wine in new bottles. First of, KM is for a large part a ‘contradictio in terminis’. Knowledge is not something you can manage directly; knowledge is a unique combination of information and experience that resides within people. So at best what you can manage is information, people and the sharing of experience between them. When by KM, people mean that knowledge is to be governed as a strategic asset, it becomes interesting for us. If knowledge is a strategic asset, who is to actually govern it?

Almost all KM projects have been top-down and micro managed, pretty unsuccessful I might add. The actual actors, the practitioners who use the knowledge, have rarely been involved in setting up KM solutions. These actors form social structures (networks!) to share information and experience within their field of expertise, because almost any field has become too complex for any one man to fully cover. In a sense they are already governing their own field of knowledge. Most KM projects ignored these social structures to their ruin. This is where Collaborative Networking comes in, to support this governing process and give the means to direct the knowledge and energy of a network to the actors themselves. To define the field they are responsible for, to support the social structure, interaction, capture of interesting communication (stories, cases) and to support an infrastructure to store and share information, methods and tools and to learn together.

Without top down commitment however, this will be as doomed to fail as the original KM projects. Top management is needed as a facilitator; to put in place the support structures, the reward structure, the infrastructure, etc. We help directors put a value to the networks within the knowledge field(s) they are responsible for. We help them define those fields from a strategic view point, we help them to understand, appreciate and direct the performance of existing networks and have the actual practitioners of non-networked fields of knowledge create new ones for them. This is done by benchmarking networks and potential networks on their social, human, creative and financial value, by monitoring their progress and by giving directors the means to ensure they do not fall below minimal thresholds for these values. We help pick the fertile combination of knowledge and available practitioners and help directors grow new opportunities through innovation, agility and a broadened scope.

Do we need a common enemy release 2

Though there are only two comments visible on the previous article, when I include e-mail responses it's the most controversial article so far. Reactions varied from one end of the spectrum to the other with little in between. Discussions I had on the subject mirrored these responses. Apparently there are two ways of interpreting the question. One is from a point of view where we have to fight a physical enemy that is threatening our lives (fear); the other is from a point of view where we need focused conflict to achieve and learn anything. Both are formed by our experiences and prevent us from looking at the question from a more philosophical point of view.

As both commentors point out, what we need is something to gather around and put a concerted effort in by applying to peoples need to create and add value. But, what is that something? If we want to extinguish poverty, isn’t that out of love for our fellow man, with poverty as our common enemy? When we tackle ignorance, again we do that out of love for our fellow man with ignorance being the enemy. To stop child labour we are uniting in not buying products from companies who use children. The first example is pretty clear, the second and third get muddier. Does our fellow man feel ignorant? If he doesn’t, he is not going to like our interference, if he does, will he understand that we are helping him? The parents of child labourers are desperate, because they need the income their children generate to survive with their family. It’s not about good or bad, or war and peace! Without a little empathy for all parties involved, it’s easy to create a new enemy out of love!

With al due respect for those who do not agree with the metaphorical representation of an enemy being needed to unite people, there are so many examples to prove this point. To get equal rights, women had to unite against the male establishment, something we are still seeing today in many muslim countries. Men are not ‘the enemy’, but their views are. While still loving their men, women fight against their views that brand them as inferior. In the Netherlands I visited a meeting of ‘De publieke zaak’, literally translated ‘The public cause’. This public forum was created to bring change to a government that is estranged from its citizens. One of the remarks of a former minister was that citizens only seem to unite when a government project threatens their quality of live. Such as a new railway track, highway, etc. In this he stated the government responsible for this project is not perceived as the enemy by those protesting, it’s a conflict of interest between citizens (represented by our government) who need the extra tracks and those who get them through their backyard. Does the committee against the track see it this way? Come on! The government at the very least chose sides and became the enemy. In order to create a new government, we have to destroy parts of the old one. Do you really think the ‘to be destroyed’ parts are going to thank us ?

All change is perceived as a threat because people do not like to change the status quo, even though status quo does not exist in human society, but that is food for another article. Perception is truth! Love is an important ingredient and trigger for change, but whether you like it or not, in order to get a critical mass of people to enable change you are going to be perceived as the enemy by those who do not want to change. They become your enemy, however much you love them. If you want to create, build, and add value you, love can be used to tap into the creative potential inside all individuals, but to focus it and maintain it, you need something more. Love is just too tricky and subjective to be used as anything but a catalyst. My simple conclusion is this. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck! One of the laws of nature; in order to create we destroy something else. I think we need a common enemy to unite against, but whether we do or not is irrelevant, by our actions to change things we’ll get one anyway.

Do we need a common enemy?

As I was looking at a very successful TV series this weekend something struck me. What most successful series have in common is that they have an antagonist, an enemy to fight, metaphorically or physically. Somehow this is essential for people to be interested and keep watching the show.

If we take a look in the real world, people gather around the subjects of their interest, but real commitment to a group only seems to happen when there is a common enemy to fight. Something most governments seem to exploit to stay in power. Create a common goal and a common enemy to fight and the fear, anger and frustration of the people is focused away from the leaders who created these in the first place.

I have always thought that metaphors were essential to creating a group conscience and focus its energy. It appears that the enemy metaphor is no exception. Monitoring the metaphoric representation of the enemy is essential, since it becomes an instrument to direct the energy of a group.

Still I wonder. Do we need a common enemy to create collaborative networks? Am I being naïve in hoping that this is not the case? If it is, is the metaphoric approach the way to go?

Vive la evolution!

Getting our message out there is easier and more difficult than we expected it to be. Easier because we have mostly been preaching to the choir; people who already think something worthwhile is happening. Vive la revolution! More difficult because just outside our own group, most parties we talk to have not come to this conclusion, or do not want to get it and lack the curiosity to explore. Letting go of the bars that hold you is a painful process.

It’s all well and good to find confirmation with people who agree with us, and who comfort us and give us a warm and fuzzy feeling by belonging to a group. In the end what matters is that what we see as essential - to awaken an entrepreneurial spirit and have fun innovating together - is shared by a critical mass of people. A critical mass that takes our ideas a step further and starts bringing in more and more people, until finally we have achieved what we want by evolution instead of revolution.

Most people lack our curiosity and are happy with the way things are going; never touch a working system, we have always done it this way, et cetera. This is fact, not condemnation! Resistance to change is a fact of life, even if the grass is greener on the other side. We need to find a path where people feel safe and need to provide quick wins to keep them on it. I am not one of those people who say that the journey is more important than the destination. If you say that about Rome, you have never been there! I do however agree on there being more ways then one to Rome, in which case we’d better pick the fun one.

To those we try to convince this might seem condescending, but since they do not read this blog and I am preaching to my own choir, I will leave you with the assignment to find ways to include people and make us as much a part of them as we try to make them a part of us!

New Orleans

Though not even close to being an expert on American politics, I would say that the White house is very good at 'Economies of Scale' and it is blatantly obvious how bad they are at 'Economies of Scope'. I will not go into the Iraq case, because it has more angles to prove my point than I could write down in this blog. The New Orleans situation is a much clearer case where executive-style leadership, 'We've got good people in all the top positions, we're hierarchical, we plan' is how the Whitehouse is trying to recover the situation. They are going with their strength to a point of weakness. No way can you plan for such a disaster. The governing chain is managed very efficiently for day to day operations, but is vulnerable because its staff lacks the room to manoeuvre and the chain collapses with these kind of disruptions. In my view, the only option is to empower local authorities to deal with local situations and give them control over what is needed where. They are the ones with a clear scope of what is happening and what is needed, but are powerless to do anything with this information until someone on a federal level approves. The interview Ray Nagin (Mayor of New Orleans) gave is a painful statement to this effect.

I always have this optimistic hope that we learn something from these human tragedies, sadly it always ends up a ‘blame game’ with the first signs already showing. Let’s hope this time we can move past blaming people and start empowering them.

Economies of Scope and Scale

It’s a topic that has passed here before, but not explicitly. Why? It is hard to explain the differences between ‘Economies of Scale’ and ‘Economies of Scope’ and more importantly why that matters. Telescopes are a beautiful metaphor where this can be made visual, no pun intended.

It all started with the Dutch using two lenses to bring distant objects closer (so they could recognize incoming ships earlier and use that knowledge on the stock exchange) and Galilei using it to study the sky. Through the centuries they built bigger and bigger lenses (telescopes) to capture more of the sky in greater detail. The bigger the lens, the more photons you could capture. The clearer the lens the more efficient it became. Today bigger and clearer lenses are not an option anymore; they can not carry their own weight and any clearer is not cost effective. The solution to getting better resolution is simple, put the telescopes far apart and connect them to each other to combine the images. The visible spectrum was not enough to gain new insight into distant solar systems, so radio telescopes where introduced. These can be linked efficiently and size is not an option anymore. You can link 2000 radio telescopes and combine the resulting images; together with the visible spectrum of 50 linked telescopes you gain new insights into the how and what of the universe.

To those of you who have been reading my blogs, this should sound familiar. The ‘Economies of Scale’ aspect is the bigger lens; the ‘Economies of Scope’ aspect is linking the telescopes. Through efficiency more could be done in the same time, through combining different locations and disciplines (a network!) new insights led to new discoveries at lower cost. A beautiful combination!

That is what we are about. Not replacing one approach with the other, but expanding the possibilities. Efficiency is an important ingredient of today’s business, so ‘Economies of Scale’ are essential. Agility and flexibility are just as important, and this is where ‘Economies of Scope’ come in.