Going 2.0 as Lee Bryant says is not about hanging shiny new objects on your old form. It is in truth that hardest of all things to do – changing who we are. As Euan says – it is the hard work of giving up our institutional form and re-becoming human again. So how do you make these changes to the inside of ourselves and our organizations?

I have been forced to reflect on this as one of my projects comes to the very edge of success. Here is the story I told the CEO today.

You are a chief. Your tribe lives in a valley. Over tall mountains is a much larger valley that has a huge lake – larger than Lake Ontario. It is like a vast sea. But you have never been there. You have never seen a lake. You have never fished in a lake or seen a boat. This new valley is beyond what you have ever experienced and so beyond what you can imagine. For your valley is savannah. It is plain full of herd animals and game of all types. It is lush and there are many plants that you use as well. Your tribe has been there a long time hunting and gathering. You are good at this. The Tribe has organized to do this work well.

But over the last few years, there has been a shift in weather. The savannah is drying out – the drought is getting worse. The game is getting scarce. The plants are dying too. Your success over the last 100 years means that you have many mouths to fill too.

So you have heard stories about the lake on the other side of the mountains from traders who go everywhere. So you send out a small reconnaissance party over the mountain to explore this new land. A new land where the skills to get food and the processes are very different. For remember none of you have ever seen a lake, a boat, a weir, a net. None of you have built houses in such surroundings. You don’t know what a pier is. You have no idea what weather can do on a lake. All you know are stories. Stories that might be fables.

The small party does quite well and returns home to tell you what happened. Now the lake and all that is needed to live by a lake is more real to you. At least people that you trust – your own tribesmen have seen it. But you are not going to up sticks and take all your people there just on the evidence of one trip. The risk is too big. You don’t know if enough of your people could adapt. And anyway, maybe the drought will end soon.

The drought gets worse. Now you send a larger party for a longer time. You tell them to really test this new life. Their mission to to see if a move to the new place is feasible. They set up a base camp in the new valley and build some boats and make nets. After much trial and error, they start to learn how to do well in the very new place. They spend a whole year there. They make a of of mistakes. Some die. But they can now see what has to be done. They are not good at any of it but they know the basics. They return home. Everyone is both fascinated and fearful. For if it is possible to live in this new valley, then it will be possible to leave our ancestral home. Everyone hopes that they don’t have to do that. Who wants to give up all they know? Maybe the drought will end.

But the drought gets worse. It is clear that this is a trend. It is clear that if the Tribe does not leave the valley, that in 5 years all will die. So now you send a lead party back over the pass into the new valley. Their job is to set up a new home for the tribe. They are not coming home. They are the beach head.

But as the new team settle in the new valley, they go home all the time in their minds. For the only home they really know is the old valley. Even though the new is feeding them. Even though they are gradually getting the new skills. They long for what they know. They are torn. They are in the new valley but they still are organized as if they were back in the old.

Still part of the tribe is left in the old valley. This left behind part of the tribe feel bad too. They know that they have been left behind. They know that the future is in the next valley. Both sides feel separated. One from the old, the other from the new. But this separation had to stand until the Chief knew that his people could make it in the new.

You could not wait however until he was completely sure because you could feel that the disconnect between the two groups was starting to threaten the whole tribe. So you moved the rest of the tribe over the pass into the new place as well. Because they were in a new place that needed new skills and new ways of working, you also had to realign who did what and for whom. You had to ensure that the tribe was organized to live in the new way. Fortunately because of the tension of the separation, most were relieved to have their doubts settled and quickly settled down to the new. Also because they all knew that they could not go back, that longing for “home” faded. After a while the new home became “Home” for all.

As I told this story, I started to see what had in fact happened. I had missed it all even myself. What we had done only became clear today.

The institutional world is dying. But it is the only world we know. Our place in it is home. We cannot just jump to the new. We have to explore it.  This exploration needs to be organized as history tells us successful explorations are conducted – using larger and longer staying expeditions. At some point some people have to stay in the new world.

Even then history tells us that we at first long for the old. We even organize based on the old even when we live in the new. This tension is debilitating.

This is the story of America itself. Many expeditions lead in the end to the early colonies. The War of Independence is the re-org. This then opens up the west and the new culture and millions cross the sea for the dream.

Yes the tools are important, but it is the change in world view that is the key.

Soon I will have the data to prove this.

What do you think? Where are you on this journey?

Podcast: Agility

In this podcast, I talk with Rob Paterson and Neil Perkin about agility in organisations. This was sparked by Neil's post about agile planning - ways for organisations to respond more effectively to the speed of change in a networked economy.

It's the usual non-linear kind of conversation exploring what makes for agility in organisations and what gets in the way. We wander off into wider topics of education and innovation along the way.

Download the Podcast (30m, 12.3 MB)

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Show notes

This is not a transcript, just a rough guide with approximate timings.

0.00 Introductions

0.40 Neil: agility is a philosophy as much as a process. Traditional business approaches involve big goals, lengthy cycles and rigid processes which don't necessarily work in a fluid environment where things change rapidly.

2.00 Rob recalls working in a bank where every project was 5 years and 50 million dollars. It didn't really work very well back in the day and certainly not today. We're often dealing with issues we can't fully understand, eg health care reform in the states where the old system is breaking down but no-one can know what will emerge. The process of iteration is the only way to discover the really new. "You've got to sit around the campfire and talk about stuff and try things."

3.40 R agreeing with N, it's about what your philosophy is. Conventional planning only good for simple things like building a 1000 square foot bungalow.

4.05 Johnnie asks Rob to say more about budget process in organisations, how this gives power to those with the biggest budget and works against those with lower cost, faster approaches.

4.35 R talks about how innovation was squeezed out in an oil company because the big money and the big budget was lodged in oil.

5.05 N The process of budget setting in organisations is very laborious and budgets are out of date by the time they are approved.

6.00 N talks about alternative budgeting process which allows much more rapid revisions

6.40 R talks about KETC St Louis. They decided that the meta-project is transformation; that's the criterion by which they evaluate projects

7.30 N refers to IBM research confirming many CEOs felt their organisations weren't ready to keep up with the pace of change. Reacting to change very different from being hungry for change.

8.40 R: most businesses today are set up to not change. You see this in the school system, in the conventional media. People would rather kill the newspaper they work for or own than change.

9.40 N many organisations don't know who their competitors are going to be in a few years' time.

10.10 Johnnie talks about this YouTube video by Dan Brown: how the education system needs to change or risks dying. Not good enough just giving students content and then testing to see if they've remembered it.

11.10 We now have technology that allows us to do for ourselves things we used to rely on instutions for. The way we've organised organisations doesn't reflect that change.

11.30 R: If your local college's Professor Paterson is a third-rate physics professor and you can get the best physics guy in the world on YouTube at MIT, there's something wrong. And that's assuming lectures are still the way to go.

12.00 J: And some of those online lectures reveal the weaknesses of the system.

12.45 J: Our education system, more than anything, has taught us that the way to learn is to sit in serried ranks and listen to an expert. And that doesn't work any more. A lot of business meetings and conferences are still organised around that idea.

13.15 N: Contrast with conversation. In conversations, thing change and you need to react, change your position. That's what businesses need to be able to do.

13.45 R: Play's an important part of this. Imagine early humans sitting around a campfire and things happened by accident. Discoveries were made that way. Learning by playing.

15.00 N: Play doesn't work by setting a big fat hairy goal; the requirements are barely sufficient. All things to change as they go. End goal may not be the one you set out with at the start.

15.45 R on writing a book without knowing he's writing it.

16.10 N on how iterative development mitigates risk.

16.25 R: depends if you think change is going to be more of the same, you may not have to go down the agile route. But I don't think that the way things are going.

17.25 N: a lot of organisations in marketing, my career area, the marketers are falling behind the audience, they're playing catch up.

17.55 J: A lot of the BS talked about innovation misses that it's already happening, doesn't need to be invented, just needs to be noticed.

18.40 J: problem for organisations set up around achieving shareholder value is that they exist to perpetuate themselves, whereas disruptive technology is not about perpetuating institutions. "Social software is here to speed the creative destruction of dinosaurs" (getting a bit carried away I think.)

19.20 N talks about time and speed; technology is about things happening in real time; organisations are slower. It's a scary prospect for them, they're used to having time to plan and react.

20.00 R: when he became a consultant, had to match his pace to that of his clients. Corporate time is very slow.

21.00 N: Agile methods are changing the rhythm of work

21.20 R: Dinosaurs will die because power comes through the budget process which gives a lock on power and prestige.

22.20 J: Hierarchy is toxic to innovation

22.30 Good improv relies on the ability to change status, not keep it fixed

23.30 N expands on the idea of toxic assumptions in organisations eg that change will be incremental, that they're entitled to a certain market share or that things will be the same next year

24.20 J has a go at the notion of having to get "management buy in" and how it blocks innovation

25.10 R talks about the role of benevolent despots at eg wikipedia and wordpress. They're concerned about the health of the system.

26.15 N on the wikipedia as one part anarchy, one part democracy; one part aristocracy; one part monarchy.

28.00 J returns to the idea of getting agile around a philosophy rather than a profit margin

28.20 N talks about the agile manifesto

29.50 R: Paint by numbers or be a painter.

30.05 End

We cut through the bullshit - how does your organization match up?

Among other things, it’s clear from history; when complex societies overshoot their resource bases and decline, one of the things that consistently happens is that centralized economic arrangements fall apart, long distance trade declines sharply, and the vast majority of what we now call consumer goods get made at home, or very close to home. Now of course that violates some of the conventional wisdom that governs economic decisions these days; centralized economic arrangements are thought to yield economies of scale that make them more profitable by definition than decentralized local arrangements.

When history conflicts with theory, though, it’s not history that’s wrong, so a second look at the conventional wisdom is in order. The economies of scale and resulting profits of centralized economic arrangements don’t happen by themselves. They depend, among other things, on transportation infrastructure. This doesn’t happen by itself, either; it happens because governments pay for it, for purposes of their own. The Roman roads that made the tightly integrated Roman economy possible, for example, and the interstate highway system that does the same thing for America, were not produced by entrepreneurs; they were created by central governments for military purposes. (The legislation that launched the interstate system in the US, for example, was pushed by the Department of Defense, which wrestled with transportation bottlenecks all through the Second World War.)

Government programs of this kind subsidize economic centralization. The same thing is true of other requirements for centralization – for example, the maintenance of public order, so that shipments of consumer goods can get from one side of the country to the other without being looted. Governments don’t establish police forces and defend their borders for the purpose of allowing businesses to ship goods safely over long distances, but businesses profit mightily from these indirect subsidies nonetheless.

When civilizations come unglued, in turn, all these indirect subsidies for economic centralization go away. Roads are no longer maintained, harbors silt up, bandits infest the countryside, migrant nations invade and carve out chunks of territory for their own, and so on. Centralization stops being profitable, because the indirect subsidies that make it profitable aren’t there any more.

Ugo Bardi has written a very readable summary of how this process unfolded in one of the best documented cases, the fall of the Roman Empire. The end of Rome was a process of radical relocalization, and the result was the Middle Ages. The Roman Empire handled defense by putting huge linear fortifications along its frontiers; the Middle Ages replaced this with fortifications around every city and baronial hall. The Roman Empire was a political unity where decisions affecting every person within its borders were made by bureaucrats in Rome. Medieval Europe was the antithesis of this, a patchwork of independent feudal kingdoms the size of a Roman province, which were internally divided into self-governing fiefs, those into still smaller fiefs, and so on, to the point that a single village with a fortified manor house could be an autonomous political unit with its own laws and the recognized right to wage war on its neighbors.

The same process of radical decentralization affected the economy as well. The Roman economy was just as centralized as the Roman polity; in major industries such as pottery, mass production at huge regional factories was the order of the day, and the products were shipped out via sea and land for anything up to a thousand miles to the end user. That came to a screeching halt when the roads weren’t repaired any more, the Mediterranean became pirate heaven, and too many of the end users were getting dispossessed, and often dismembered as well, by invading Visigoths. The economic system that evolved to fill the void left by Rome’s implosion was thus every bit as relocalized as a feudal barony, and for exactly the same reasons.

This stunningly clear piece then digs into the connection between a large economy based on easy communication - what we know now - and a hyper local one.

Greer talks about why Guilds then are essential - how they worked - and why a hyper local economy needs them.

Peter's short video really helps those of us who have not used a Kindle to get a feel for at least how it can help us "read" a newspaper.

I had lunch with Jevon MacDonald last week and he speculated about how the Kindle could save a few quality papers. It's the Cell Phone Model.

Why could the New York Times send to all subscribers a Kindle - biased to the NYT making it very easy to get and search all things Times - instead of the "Paper".

Like a Cell Phone - they tie in the reader to a 3 year deal - the reader gets all the other benefits of the Kindle - all the costs of the "paper" go away - who knows what else the Times could do with w new Reader Platform?

When the Apple Tablet comes - its the same another platform - do the deal with Apple too and offer the Times reader the choice.

This model has worked well for cell phones - why not?

The Tipping Point for digital readership is here now. Saves the book industry a bundle too - all that printing, paper and returns.

Time to get off the train

Posted on November 17th, 2009 by Harold Jarche

In Alvin & Heidi Toffler’s book, Revolutionary Wealth, they discuss the “clash of speeds” of our various societal structures, using a train analogy.

Speeding along at 100 mph is the enlightened business train; adapting and using new technologies (exploiting change).

Still fast at 90 mph is the civil society train; NGO’s, professional groups, activists, religious groups (demanding change).

Keeping up at 60 mph is the family train; working, shopping, trading & selling from home (adapting to change).

A distance back, at 30 mph is the union train, still focused on a mass-production mindset (denying change).

A bit further back at 25 mph is the large government bureaucracy train; slowing everybody else down (fighting change).

Limping along at 10 mph is the education train; protected by monopoly, bureaucracy & unions (blind to change).

Way back is at 5 mph is the international agency train: comprising organizations like WIPO, WTO, IMF (immune to change).

Even slower, at 3 mph is the political system train; discussing, debating but not accomplishing much (too busy to change).

Pulling up the rear at 1 mph is the legal train; so far behind that it hasn’t noticed the beginning of the financial bubble, let alone its collapse (rigor mortis).

Reflecting on the organizations I have worked in and worked with, I think these speed comparisons make a lot sense. Given that certain businesses can change so much quicker than education, it’s obvious that educational reform will come from without, not within, the system.

When we significantly change how we work, our education systems should follow suit, but due to its design constraints, the Edu-train cannot keep up with the Ent 2.0 train. Perhaps the only option for the passengers is to get off and find another train.

Harold makes so much sense with this post. I was having breakfast with another Free Lancer today - we talked a lot about time as well. Of course Free Lancers freed of all those meetings, commutes, IT and HR departments - go at about 400 miles an hour - very hard to stay in touch with even business and GOVERNMENT!!!!!

For folks who can't help thinking about the new - picking the right client becomes ever more crucial.

In the Power Up Project we look at the 3 Values sets that are part of this "speed" issue.

Nurturers - include Unions, Goverment and Education - hate all change - it is who they are

Providers - most business - will go for it if they can see how they can "Win"

Pioneers - Who "See" the future and can feel the past - Are all about Change

The challenge is clear - the hardest group to reach are Nurturers - They need lots of examples to think of shifting. Likely to start with Pioneers who have a nurturing side or with Providers with a Nurturing side.

But a direct approach merely based on evidence will get the same response as Galileo did from that epitome of Nuturing organizations - the Catholic Church. I am not making a snide joke. The Church responded to Galileo as all nurturers do when faced with the threat of real change - an Inquisition.

All those trying 2.0 in Ed will feel the power of the Inquisition I fear

When you're managing software development projects, you need to know the difference between complex and complicated. Not knowing this difference means you might apply exactly the wrong approach to the right problem. (Or, if you prefer, the right approach to the wrong problem.)

It's a simple message, really. But if you don't get it, you're headed for chaos.

Simple = easily knowable.

Complicated = not simple, but still knowable.

Complex = not fully knowable, but reasonably predictable.

Chaotic = neither knowable nor predictable.

My car key is simple.
It took me about three seconds to understand how my car key works. OK, maybe that's not quite correct. Mine has a battery in it. If I take it apart it might take me another three hours to understand its details. But yeah, I'm smart, I'll manage.

My car is complicated.
It would take me years to understand how my car works. And I don't intend to. But if I did, then some day in the far future I would know with certainty the purpose of each mechanism and each electrical circuit. I would fully understand how to control it, and I would be able to take my car apart and reassemble it, driving it exactly as I did before. In theory, of course. In practice, only real men do things like that.

Car traffic is complex.
I can travel up and down the same street for twenty years, and things would be different every time. There is no way to fully understand and know what happens around me on the road when I drive, how other drivers operate their vehicles, and how the people in the streets interact. I can make guesses, and I can gain experience in predicting outcomes. But I will never know for sure.

Car traffic in Lagos (Nigeria) is chaotic.
When things get too complex, they easily become chaotic. Traffic in Lagos is so bad, it is not even predictable. Poor infrastructure and planning, heaps of waste, pollution, lack of security, floods, and many more problems make it one of the worst places in the world to be, as a simple car driver.

My computer is complicated. My software project is complex. My house is complicated. My household is complex. My blog is complicated. My thoughts are complex. Your dinner is complicated. Your dog is complex.

Simple and complicated systems are all fully predictable.

The main difference between predictable systems and complex systems is our approach to understanding them. We can understand simple and complicated systems by taking them apart and analyzing the details. However, we cannot understand complex systems by applying the same strategy of reductionism. But we can achieve some understanding by watching and studying how the whole system operates.

What's important for managers is that this also works the other way around. We create complicated systems by first designing the parts, and then putting them together. This works well for mechanical things, like buildings, watches and Quattro Stagioni pizzas. But it doesn't work for complex systems, like brains, software development teams, and the local pizzeria. We cannot build a system from scratch and expect it to become complex in the way that we intended. Complex systems defy attempts to be created in an engineering effort.

Complex systems are not constructed, they are grown.

Some people picture complexity as a state that somehow surpasses that of complicatedness (see next picture). But this view is incorrect.

From: Managing Game Design Risk: Part I

"Complicated" refers to a system having many parts, making it somewhat harder to understand, whereas "complex" refers to a system being not fully predictable. What is complicated is not necessarily complex, like two cars in a garage. And what is complex need not be complicated, like two people in a bedroom. (But what these people do in the bedroom can be quite complicated. And unpredictable.)

As I start the series on "Seeing through the Complexity of Culture" with Stuart Baker, I will offer up what I think are some of the best pieces from others. Here is post from Jurgen at NOO.NL that offers an exceptionally elegant description of the key problem of today - that we refuse to see the complex and work as if complexity was complicated or simple.

Stuart and I hope that we can help you at least see the elements of the complexity that is human culture and so be able to make more assured judgments about what might happen.

Please go to full volume.

Many of know that we are in trouble, the economy, the environment, social justice are all going the wrong way. But they are frustrated that others not only don’t seem to see this but continue to work hard to make the trouble worse.

So the response is to think that these people are bad or worse evil. The response of the business guys is to think that those who “care” are unrealistic nuts. Worse, there are some other people who can see beyond the problems and see solutions. But no one wants to listen. So they think that the other two groups are stupid.

The result is that we seem stuck. Those who know we have to take better care of each other and of the planet are frustrated and angry. Those who know that we to make a living feel blamed. Those who know the way feel ignored.

Can we find a way though this?

Yes I think we can. If we can see that this impasse is a consequence of our human culture. It is not about good versus evil but because we don’t have a lens to “see” how human culture is made as a system. It’s just like it was very hard to navigate before Galileo’s helio-centric view of the heavens was generally accepted. It was impossible to cope with infectious disease before Pasteur’s view of germs was accepted.

It’s all about “Seeing” the rules of the system. Once you can do that, you can act upon it with some confidence.

This blog is here to help us explore the system of human culture and to see its rules. You will be shocked at how simple the system is. Like all natural systems, it has few parts and few rules. But as in all natural systems, these can combine to offer infinite complexity. So my promise to you is that the initial insight is exceptionally easy to “get”. Not only will you understand it easily, but you will be able to use the ideas immediately to make sense of what confronts you.

Here is a link to a short summary of what we will be talking about in the 9 videos

Central to any new insight like this, is a person who has “seen” the new. In our case this person is my friend, Stuart Baker who has been working on this insight now for more than a decade.

We have recorded a series of 9 short videos that will take you through his discovery. What you will find by the end is that you will be able to “see” how our culture works or not. What the ideal would be. How to diagnose problems in hours. How to see what might have to be done to improve things.

Here he opens with what may seem like heresy – that it is the intangibles that shape the tangibles. Just a gravity, an unseen force, shapes the universe, so culture shapes human society and our impact on the planet. This arena of intangibles is our human culture.

It is our culture that enables us to adapt to changing environments or not. Our use of fire and clothes and tools took us from the world of all other species that had to rely on their bodies adaptation.

When confronted with a challenge, the key is to find a response that can be accepted by our culture. When organizing, the best organizations line up along their ideal culture or sets of values.

When we fail to adapt, the failing is a block caused by problems in our culture. When organizations fail, they too have evolved along a cultural path that is not ideal.

This may seem like heresy because we think that it is our actions or our reason that have priority. Many think that if they only do the right things with their kids, that they will be well nurtured and have the best chance – not true. Many hope that if they could only offer the facts, the other would agree. But as anyone who has been in a conflict of ideas knows, you will never argue your way to success.

But if you understand gravity and its rules, understand bacteria and their rules, understand culture and its rules then you can do a lot. That is why we call this the Power Up Project – if you have the map, you can know where you are and where is best to go – this is power. You have a lot more control back in an uncertain world.

Welcome to a new way of being and seeing.

Why is Rupert Murdoch taking such a stand that seems wrong to many about the web? Is he stupid? I don't think so.

I am sure that his issue is this - that he is the embodiment of a set of values that are all about "winning". He is the ultimate "Provider". As such he was the success story of a system that saw news as a transactional commodity.

He is the very embodiment of one of three complimentary sets of values that make up the system of Human Culture.

He is so over invested in this one perspective that he cannot "see" the relational world and does not care about it. This is not because he is evil. It is about his core values as a "Provider". He cannot see the value of the web because he cannot see how he can win with it. For Providers, winning is everything. If some one could show him how to make money now on the web - he would go there. But as it is likely that the answer will involve relationships and caring more than just about winning, he likely never will.

I offer up RM as an example because his challenge is an example of the challenge that we all face today. Those who we don't agree with, we see as the enemy. look at American Politics! Look at the abortion/healthcare issue. The lines are drawn and there seems no way forward.

We cannot see a way of bringing the "other" around. The result is that we are stuck.

But what if we could see a way?

Before we could see that the sun was the centre of a system, we could make no progress in navigation. Before we could see bacteria and how they worked as part of a system, we could make no progress in health care.

What if culture was a system of nature? Then it would have key parts and a few rules. If we could see the system and know the rules, then we might be able to break out of our impasse.

There is always an individual that "sees" the new early. This video is of my friend Stuart Baker. I am convinced that he has "seen" how we can see culture as a system and that he has seen the rules that enable us to make sense of what is going on and then what is best to get an outcome.

How to get these ideas out there? The web of course.

With my pal Stuart Baker, we are launching a series of videos and posts that I hope can help in the same way as "seeing" the systems and their rules in other parts of nature have helped us make progress.

Stuart is of course not the only person working on this. We intend to add as many to this site as we can find who are working on elements of this system - hence the "Project" in the site title.

The Power Up part is about finding our power to act in a complex world with a strong likelihood that we may get the outcome that we seek. Not with the precision of the machine POV with at least a high probability.

The kind of probability that we get in gardening or child rearing. If we set the early environment up to the ideal for the plant or the child - we stand a good chance of getting fruit or a good person.

Welcome

I have been helping my wife edit some short videos she recently made for a client. The whole thing was shot and edited on what is disparagingly called "consumer" kit but, even though I say so myself, ended up looking remarkably professional. In fact you'd be hard pushed to tell it part from output costing thousands. In terms of story telling the means of production, and indeed of distribution, is most definitely in the hands of each of us to an extent that hasn't been true for decades.  

Then I found myself watching Strictly Come Dancing last night and marvelling at the BBC's ability to pull together such a large scale, complex, and highly professional operation. I found myself lapsing back into thinking that only a big organisation like the BBC could produce something like this. But then it wasn't "the BBC" that did it. It was a collection of highly skilled individuals working together. The number of full time craft staff has been being cut back since my own early days as a manager and certainly a high proportion of the most skilled staff are freelancers. The programme will have put together by teams assembled on the basis of recommendation -  networks of trusting and trusted professionals. Even the directors and producers may well have been freelance. The whole thing could, and indeed might, have been pulled together without the need of the BBC.

Trust me -  I know. I was a manager of half of my 21 years at the BBC, the last few at a senior level. I know the extent to which people in suits sit in meetings "playing at shops" while others get on with doing things - very often in spite of the obstacles thrown in their way by the organisation whose espoused purpose is to support them. But it isn't. It is to perpetrate itself. t is like most, if not all, organisations that get to a certain size. They lose the plot and forget that they are there to serve an original purpose. They become a self perpetuating end in themselves.

This is the root of the biggest problem I have with most Enterprise 2.0 thinking. It is really little different from the institutional, centralised, professionalised thinking that we already have. It is about large scale corporate entities with large scale corporate budgets. It is about centralised technology decisions made by professionalised managers. It is about a monster recreating itself in its own image. It is emphatically not about getting more done better for less. To do so would take too much of a radical repositioning by people brought up from kindergarten to think that what we have now is the only way to get things done.

Euan made my day this Sunday as he posted this gem. It seems to me that the Holy Grail of many involved in Social Media is to bolt on the new to the old. That is where the "Bollocks" comes in. It cannot be done.

The old only want to coopt and keep the good old ways - even if it means their death. As we can see with the newspapers - they then blame others.

I add only this for my pals in Pub Media land in America - as the squeeze intensifies on station's budgets - that a move to a more networked operation may be your only chance - it can be done as Euan's example shows us.

Back to the main theme: the media dares not say anything too negative about financial services firms or their government operatives lest they lose access. The private sector has learned the lesson of the Bush Administration, that the threat of freezing a reporter out is a powerful weapon. I have had some well connected readers tell of story ideas that they served up in some detail that the media would not touch out of fear of alienating their sources. This is the sort of thing that one associates with banana republics, but we have been operating on that level for quite some time.

Not surprisingly, the government and large corporations were firmly in charge of the message during the crisis (remember the gap between the MSM reporting and the anger in the populace over the TARP, which was finally noted ONLY when Congress responded to a barrage of calls and e-mails and voted down TARP v. 1.0?) and perhaps more important, in pushing the, “move past that car wreck, things are really better” message. From the Pew Research Center:

Three storylines have dominated: efforts to help revive the banking sector, the battle over the stimulus package and the struggles of the U.S. auto industry. Together they accounted for nearly 40% of the economic coverage from February 1 through August 31. Other topics related to the crisis have been covered much less. As an example, all the reporting of retail sales, food prices, the impact of the crisis on Social Security and Medicare, its effect on education and the implications for health care combined accounted for just over 2% of all the economic coverage.

Actions by government officials and business leaders drove much of the coverage. The White House and federal agencies alone initiated nearly a third (32%) of economic stories studied through July 3. Business triggered another 21%. About a quarter of the stories (23%) was initiated by the press itself and did not rely on an external news trigger. Ordinary citizens and union workers combined to act as the catalyst for only 2% of the stories about the economy.

Fully 76% of the datelines on economic stories studied during the first five months of the Obama presidency were New York (44%) or metro Washington D.C. (32%). Only about one-fifth (21%) of the stories originated in any other city in the U.S., and about a quarter of those emanated from two other major media centers: Atlanta and Los Angeles…

Once the economic situation showed some signs of improvement—and the political fights over legislative action subsided—media coverage began to diminish. After accounting for 46% of the overall news coverage in February and March, for instance, coverage of the economic crisis dropped by more than half (to 21% of the newshole studied) from April through June. And in July and August, it fell even further (to 16%). The clearest example came in cable news. Once the political battles subsided, coverage fell by about two-thirds from March to April.

Notice even Pew has fallen for the party line a bit. The stock market rally started in March. That is not a sign of economic improvement (Krugman has said something along the lines of “The stock market has predicted 20 of the past 9 recoveries.”).

So what do we have? A media that predominantly bases its stories on what it is fed because it has to. Ever-leaner staffing, compressed news cycles, and access journalism all conspire to drive reporters to focus on the “must cover” news, which is to a large degree influenced by the parties that initiate the story. And that means they are increasingly in an echo chamber, spending so much time with the influential sources they feel they must cover that they start to be swayed by them. It is less intense, but not dissimilar to the effect achieved when reporters are embedded in military units. The journalists often wind up adopting the views of the people they associate with frequently (I am sure readers will add more nefarious theories in comments, but the point here is a simple: an up the center description of what has happened to the media shows it has fallen under the sway of powerful interests).

Now how do we get to the propaganda part? Not only, per Taibbi, are we getting the view of the economy from the vantage of the bankers, as opposed to a broad swathe of the population, but we now we have the media (well, this example is that odd hybrid, an MSM blog) telling us there is no outrage. From the Los Angeles Times (hat tip JohnD):

Except for Michael Moore, whose new movie posits that capitalism is one big Ponzi scheme, the news Wednesday that banks are thriving and that Wall Street analysts are in line for big bonuses this year seemed to land with all the political weight of a dull thud.

Oh sure, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said he’ll soon hold hearings on executive pay at firms that got taxpayer bailout money, like AIG and Bank of America….

But with the Dow Jones hitting 10,000 and the economy stepping back from the precipice of last fall’s collapse, there was little of that tea-party outrage that might have been expected.

Have we moved on? Arguing that the country is now more concerned with Afghanistan and healthcare, the Wall Street Journal said of bonus outrage: “That’s so last March.”

Maybe taxpayers have simply given up on Washington’s efforts to corral Wall Street.

Now why is this sort of thing (and the media was full of more subtle versions, of happy talk re Dow 10,000 and Goldman earnings) more pernicious than it might appear?

The message, quite overly, is: if you are pissed, you are in a minority. The country has moved on. Things are getting better, get with the program. Now I saw the polar opposite today. There is a group of varying sizes, depending on the topic, that e-mails among itself, mainly professional investors, analysts, economists (I’m usually on the periphery but sometimes chime in). I never saw such an angry, active, and large thread about the Goldman BS fest today. Now if people who have not suffered much, and are presumably benefitting from the market recovery are furious, it isn’t hard to imagine that what looks like complacency in the heartlands may simply be contained rage looking for an outlet.

But per the social psychology research, this “you are in a minority, you are wrong” message DOES dissuade a lot of people. It is remarkably poisonous. And it discourages people from taking concrete action. I was surprised that some people bothered to comment on a post I put up yesterday, calling on people in the Chicago area to attend some peaceful demonstrations against the banking industry during the American Bankers Association national meeting, October 25 through 27. Some people weighed in, saying (basically) “don’t bother”.

I suppose it makes a difference whether one is old enough to remember the 1960s. Because people in large numbers got out and protested, two sets of changes that seemed impossible came about: civil rights for blacks and an end to the US involvement in Vietnam (if you read the histories, the military and intelligence experts were on the whole persuaded it was an unwinnable war, but it was seen as too costly to US prestige for America to withdraw).

And even if the effort you make narrowly is not successful (does any one person’s effort have much impact?) it breeds apathy and cynicism to suggest that doing nothing is the best course of action. If nothing else, it is better for one’s psyche to do what one can, however small, to make a difference.

Now America does not have a tradition of taking to the streets; demonstrations and rallies historically are working class affairs. But the middle class is on a path of downward mobility while the elites continue to take the cream. The widening gap might waken some impulses that have been dormant in the American psyche.

What I get most annoyed about is the constant myth of "Journalism" that is is unbiased. In reality the mass media is more like Pravda everyday.

The bias is deep and is a POV bias.

Naked Capitalism offers a strong argument for this accusation.

The more accurate assessment of what is going on is found on the blogosphere. The economy, health, warfare - powerful forces keep the lid on a real debate.

Part of this is about who owns the media, the other is about access.

Enough already. This is not CBS in the 1960's. The mass media have got the Koolaid POV for decades.

Within minutes of being in the room, a woman a bit older than me and from the traditional media side of things said, (paraphrasing, I am), “Well, once WE set the standards of what we’ll accept from citizen journalists, then we can work with them.” A well-established blogger in DC, without skipping a beat and with passion in his heart, informed her, “We don’t want to volunteer for you. We want to be in partnership with you.”

And that’s when I had my ah-hah. My take-away, so to speak. See, GenXers (born 1961-1981) have been the junior gen to Boomers since the day they arrived. Boomers, while they typically don’t see this in themselves or their gen, are turf squatters, and believe that if they’ve sat long enough on turf, it’s theirs, dammit. GenXers (the Nomad generation in archetypal language) grows up and moves through young adulthood deeply understanding that there just isn’t any room for them at the table. So, the skill set most GenXers develop is to find ways around obstacles, fortresses, dysfunctional systems, calcified processes.

As social media has ascended, and more GenXers than any other generation have embraced the tools (there’s a reason for this, but that’s another convo), the GenXers have been banging on Boomer doors (traditional media, in this case), saying, “Hey! Hey, listen, there’s some really interesting stuff happening over here.” But most Boomers/traditional institution leaders have continued to treat GenXers as they’ve known them: the temp worker/slacker/lackeys to whom they push off the onerous tasks of dealing with complexities and icky details. They (the Boomers) continue to see themselves as King of the Hill.

** I’m intentionally being big and — even gross — with my generalizations for story-telling here, k? **

When the blogger said emphatically to the well-paid, entrenched traditional media lady who was assuming that a blogger would want to volunteer under her organization’s terms of providing content, “We don’t want to volunteer for you. We want to be in partnership with you.” I knew then that the tides had shifted.

The shift is a subtle one. And it’s bigger than most any entrenched leaders in traditional media, corporate America or government organizations probably understand. The shift is that GenXers have moved away from asking for attention and respect, vis-a-vis their ideas/visions/Web 2.0 activity and new problem-solving and are moving on, with or without the institutions. Like I said, it’s subtle. But mark my words, it’s the subtle but huge things that I notice. GenXers are offering Boomers a last chance for partnership and the opportunity to be involved and engaged. Boomers who continue to think as though they still are in control (even if they are by title), and who think that from that control they will set the rules without treating GenXers as partners, will be marginalized. Not because GenXers want to marginalize Boomers, but because the time is now to collaborate and to allow new leadership and perspectives to have equal, if not greater, sway in going forward.

So, my take-away: the shift has occurred. Now, it’s only a matter of observing it. It’s not personal. It’s not violent or aggressive. It’s a natural order of change and development. GenXers across America will do well to step into the leadership that is right and natural to them. Boomers will do well to release their grip and their assumption that because they’ve sat on turf for decades it is theirs perpetuity. As GenXers transform from being isolated and alienated and as Boomers transform from being the first and last say on operational details, the rate of change and development is going to accelerate even faster than things have been moving for the last several years.

And to any Boomers who have a hard time with this, let me clue you in: We have the pressure of Millennials behind us. We’re not just asking you to move over. We’re moving on with or without you because we have to. A generation is behind us, itching to move forward as well.

Rock on, beautiful people, rock on.

I was only able to attend Pub Camp by Twitter - Even so I was able to pick up the tension between the establishment and the new. This post by Jessie X is worth reading in full. It outlines the divide and the stakes for the establishment.

The new are not your junior lackeys but the future. You partner with them or they will go around you.

This was Vaclev Havel's strategy as the new in Eastern Europe. The system said no. So they were made irrelevant.

Open your arms and embrace the future!