For you the war is over…

I think I’ve finally done it. Click above for the soundtrack.
After building the compound, digging a trench, strategically relocating flower pots and now, building a cunningly angled inner wall…the tortoise is now contained.
She is currently sitting, sulking, in her hut either playing with a baseball or….or digging!
(By the way, she’s called Gerry…honestly)

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Put a few things in perspective

Thought I should just post this and see what happens. Probably none of it surprising, but at this time of year, when we’ve bee settling marks for students term papers and exams the bit about jobs that don’t yet exist makes you think about the skills they’re acquiring.
I’m so glad I didn’t do a vocational degree!

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Appeal

I don’t often write personal things here, in fact I don’t think I ever do.
But just in case you’re taking a few minutes to read this, please click on the link above or on the ‘Just Giving’ panel below to read about Ray Hart who is raising money for a great cause.
Evie Hart was a friend of ours – the Hart family’s youngest who was taken away suddenly and cruelly by cancer.
We all know someone who has had cancer and one in five of us will develop some form. Survival rates are increasing and the UK Government and Barack Obama’s administration are putting a lot of money into research. But that’s the future.
Right now little girls and boys are living their life in a hospice as their families try and come to terms with an illness that has no cure. Hospice in the Weald does a fantastic job supporting them in Kent and here in Greenwich.
Just give a few pounds or dollars to help them keep doing it.
Thank you.

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Plagging for beginners

Admire my parking skills, originally uploaded by Bashed.

I’ve been thinking (don’t groan like that please).

The banking crisis – the general downturn of everything as a result – is quite a complex demonstration of Garrett Hardin’s ‘Tragedy of the Commons‘ and his observation of the number of times organisations and people are selfish – despite the negative consequences even to themselves.

I thought the photo was quite a nice illustration of behaviour that clearly seemed perfectly logical to the driver, but at some cost to others.

In many areas of life, people engage in behaviour which has short term personal benefits, but causes other people to suffer. But Hardin’s insight was with regard to unregulated commons (or common goods) which are a limited resource to which many have access.

This issue is that there can be a considerable incentive to exploit the resource to the detriment of all other users and that, ultimately, to one’s own. This is a kind of prisoner’s dilemma in which two prisoners will be set free if both keep quiet. However each can incriminate the other and the first one to do so increases his/her chances of release. The result is that both are likely to co-operate with the authorities.

In the commons problem Hardin had it that cattle herders using a common would tend to over-graze the land. They tended to ‘commonize the costs’ and ‘privatize the profits’ and some have argued that is exactly what has happened in the financial services industry.

Incidentally I first came across Hardin many years ago writing something for my Masters about altruistic behaviour which I was hoping would turn into a doctoral thesis. I was inspired by the retelling of this, with some elaboration, in a fascinating book called ‘The Origins of Virtue‘ written by a guy called Matt Ridley. It’s a very well-written book and I’d recommend it.

I also found a reference to PLAG – protagonist loss/antagonist gain – behaviour. The fact is that many people do act altruistically. It’s possible to reduce this down to some kind of selfish exchange behaviour (”well, they get a kick out of giving to charity” or the ‘feel good’ reward); a utilitarian argument, but I think this over-simplifies behaviour.

At the time I was thinking about all this I established that there were enough examples of people exhibiting ‘PLAG’ behaviour to demand an explanation that wasn’t just about selfish exchange and then I found Bourdieu…but that’s another story.

Back to the financial crisis. It’s fairly clear that institutions were acting as if the market could go on climbing and they could continue to profit from this without considering the ‘resource’ that was being exploited. This ‘common’ resource could be said to be the real economy or maybe it’s just people (as workers and consumers) but, in any case, there was and is a limit to how far you can repackage and re-sell debt.

Even as the mortgage market collapsed like a souffle, banks continued to commonize costs – in fact the world’s governments seemed conditioned to accept this – after all they are there to step in and protect the little people…aren’t they? So houses and life and medical insurance are propped up by giving money to the banks.

Well, I’ve said before that I struggle with some economics, but surely the more efficient route would be to give the support direct to the consumer so they could spend or save (in a bank) as they needed. Writing off a lot of debt would help.

Instead governments, working within a broken banking system, are enabling a few to continue to ‘privatise profits’.

Matt Ridley…mmmm…feeling you’ve heard that name before? Possibly.

Until October 2007 he was Chairman of Northern Rock.

He doesn’t mention that on his CV.

[Having written this check out George Monbiot putting the boot in far more effectively than I]

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New year, new enthusiasm

I know I introduced this idea some time ago, but now it’s 2009 and a time for new brooms and all that, I thought I’d kick it off for real.
Here’s the deal.
Last year, whilst writing Virtually Free I met, either actually or virtually, a lot of nice people who were enthusiastic about their businesses.
What I noticed (and indeed have noticed ever since I was teaching MBA students) was that these business-people didn’t just care about what their strategy was or if they’d got their marketing mix right. They seemed to care as much, or maybe more, about their enjoyment of the business and the challenge or connecting with customers and collaborators, producing neat ideas and forging ahead.
So I asked myself; ‘What gives these kind of entrepreneurs their sense of direction?’
A long time ago now, I read a paper by two academics – Andrew Campbell and Marcus Alexander – asking an even simpler question; ‘What’s wrong with strategy?’
I’m paraphrasing them (badly) when I sum up their argument as the following.
Strategy doesn’t work as most textbooks say. The idea of a cascading structure of corporate objectives feeding down into strategies and tactics doesn’t appear to happen.
In truth (as John Rossiter observed of marketing strategies) most people can’t accurately recall what strategy they are using.
What happens (Campbell and Alexander argued) is that companies (that is, people) oscillate between gathering and using ‘insight’ and revisiting or revising their sense of ‘purpose’.
Insight can be internal – how things can work better – and/or external – what those customers really need.
Purpose is, in a sense, far clearer; what are we in business for?
Between these two (which you will see repeated in our book Marketing & PR and in Virtually Free) many small businesses get a sense of direction, of what they could do to achieve their ambitions.
But, as I observed from some of the contacts I made last year, a successful business needs more.
After some wrestling – well, serious frowning – I came the tentative conclusion that organisations need the two other ‘cardinal points’ that appear above.
Truth can relate closely to insight, since a ‘true’ solution is one with honesty where any exchange is transparent. But it also relates to how an organisation conducts itself. Truth means having nothing to hide…and that makes all communications (with customers, suppliers and others) so much easier: essential in a web 3.0 world. Truth is also a test of how well you know your customers’ needs – are you confident in the truth of your view of them?
Beauty may be more contentious. Again this links to the other cardinal points above; a truthful service solution can be beautiful as can a product that simply works. But I think we also have a responsibility to make people’s lives better by what we do (I think Guy Kawasaki agrees) – it might just be about making the world a better place to be.
The links between all these points isn’t, by the way, a weakness. Imagine these points all exerting force on the centre and you get the idea that a strong organisation exists in an equilibrium.
I would suggest that those who haven’t really worked through these issues has a blind spot somewhere.
I’m aware this is all slightly esoteric so I’m asking all my contacts (and complete strangers) to flesh this out in the next few months. I’m starting with Linked-In and will gradually seek to infect other social networking platforms as we go – feel free to do it yourself and claim some ownership!
All we want is a ratio of 70% example to 30% discussion – do successful organisations have this ‘compass’? Can we gather examples of good practice – insightful, purposeful, truthful and beautiful?
The Linked-In Group is called (surprisingly) ‘Insight, Purpose, Truth & Beauty’. Let’s see what we can do with it.

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A Quick & Happy Christmas to both our readers

I quite like the idea that the YouTube generation has a short attention span. Like all sweeping generalisations it’s attractive and has an element of truth. That is, it affirms your preconceptions.
But if you think about it, by the same token, so did the ‘telegraph’ generation, the ‘christmas card’ generation – why not simply write a letter?
For what it’s worth – here is our Christmas card to all you out there – courtesy of the Churches Advertising Network – which ran a competition for a 30 second nativity.
According to a spokesperson on BBC radio today they got literally tens of entries…

Happy Christmas or Season’s Greetings to you all (delete as applicable)

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Web Wise Women presentation

As promised; here’s the presentation which I realise makes little sense without my explanation…

…if you want me to explain, just invite me!

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I’m pleased to have been invited to speak at the Web.Wise.Women event at the Kings Place in London. Although it’s unclear how I fit the bill since I’m not wise or a woman…
Organised by the Camden Women’s Forum the event focuses on social media – essentially where web 2.0 is now – but it will inevitably have to deal with what small enterprises should do in a recession.
That’s where I think I come in.
I’ll be trying to dispel a few myths about the web and about marketing and trying to show how SMEs can invest in marketing right now – despite the ‘crunch’.
No doubt I’ll post my presentation up (expect a link to slideshare) and I’ll be setting up a PWOTG forum for ‘Virtually Free’ so that anyone who buys the book can contribute or ask questions.
If you are interested in attending just go to http://webwisewomen.eventbrite.com and register – it’s free, of course.

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I’m pleased to have been invited to speak at the Web.Wise.Women event at the Kings Place in London. Although it’s unclear how I fit the bill since I’m not wise or a woman…
Organised by the Camden Women’s Forum the event focuses on social media – essentially where web 2.0 is now – but it will inevitably have to deal with what small enterprises should do in a recession.
That’s where I think I come in.
I’ll be trying to dispel a few myths about the web and about marketing and trying to show how SMEs can invest in marketing right now – despite the ‘crunch’.
No doubt I’ll post my presentation up (expect a link to slideshare) and I’ll be setting up a PWOTG forum for ‘Virtually Free’ so that anyone who buys the book can contribute or ask questions.
If you are interested in attending just go to http://webwisewomen.eventbrite.com and register – it’s free, of course.

Subscribe in a reader

 

I’m pleased to have been invited to speak at the Web.Wise.Women event at the Kings Place in London. Although it’s unclear how I fit the bill since I’m not wise or a woman…
Organised by the Camden Women’s Forum the event focuses on social media – essentially where web 2.0 is now – but it will inevitably have to deal with what small enterprises should do in a recession.
That’s where I think I come in.
I’ll be trying to dispel a few myths about the web and about marketing and trying to show how SMEs can invest in marketing right now – despite the ‘crunch’.
No doubt I’ll post my presentation up (expect a link to slideshare) and I’ll be setting up a PWOTG forum for ‘Virtually Free’ so that anyone who buys the book can contribute or ask questions.
If you are interested in attending just go to http://webwisewomen.eventbrite.com and register – it’s free, of course.

Subscribe in a reader