The Orange Chair

I finished reading Generation Blend (Rob Salkowitz, 2008) during the holidays. The book covered generational issues and implications for management and technology, and is definitely worth a read if you’re interested in the demographic changes sweeping our society or Web 2.0 adoption (and the difficulties thereof).

The book crystallized some nagging doubts I’d had for a while. Many companies - mine included - often optimistically count on a generation of digital natives–Generation Y–to power the organizational changes that required to fully take advantage of the collaborative technologies lumped together under Enterprise 2.0. After all, we grew up connecting, collaborating, and sharing on the Internet. We demand intranet technologies at par with the powerful and easy-to-use consumer tools we can’t imagine living without. We ignore organizational and geographic boundaries. We’ve been helping people figure out VCRs and laptops since we were kids. We’re going to help your company get the hang of blogs and wikis, too. Right? Right?

Sure, I’ve seen a bit of that in practice. My Gen Y Guide to Web 2.0 at Work has been viewed more than 25,000 times. I’ve set up numerous wikis for groups who were curious about the technology but who needed a little extra help getting started. I’ve coached many Baby Boomers and Generation Xers on how to start a blog and use it for professional success. I’ve facilitated workshops helping our clients figure out Web 2.0, Generation Y as consumers and as employees, and how they can evolve their business strategies to take these new realities into account. I hear plenty of stories–both inside and outside IBM–of how younger employees are trying to help their teams or organizations learn about and adopt the tools.

But it’s not easy.

Generation Blend has excellent analyses of how adoption of a new tool and its corresponding process can stall due to technology anxiety. When unfamiliar technologies are coupled with generational gaps and authority issues, the politics can outweigh the benefits. If you’re an experienced Baby Boomer struggling with the needs of the changing business environment on top of your heavy workload, you don’t need a young upstart with little experience telling you to try out this unfamiliar tool.

Enterprise 2.0 transformation might even be more difficult if it seems to be associated with youth. Generation Blend points out that advertising campaigns typically link technology with youth, which contributes to the anxiety older generations feel about technology. And in most cases, young employees have neither the credibility nor the authority to lead change. (According to True Change (Janice Klein, 2004), experienced hires are much more likely to influence change.)

So don’t count on us to change your culture. Baby Boomers and Gen Xers need to do most of the heavy lifting.

I’ve known this for a while. I do a lot of internal technology evangelism at IBM, and I’m often asked to speak to groups because my enthusiasm is infectious. I can handle people’s concerns while encouraging them to explore the possibilities. But whenever I can, I try to refer the organizers of the talk to evangelists or budding evangelists who share many things in common with the target audience. Instead of evangelizing directly, I focus on providing evangelists with tools and resources. Yes, people will appreciate my enthusiasm, but true change happens when they take those ideas into their everyday lives. As Crossing the Chasm (Geoffrey Moore) and other books about innovation diffusion have noted, modeling someone whose day-to-day work is similar to theirs will be much more effective, in the long run. By organizing and documenting our collective knowledge, exploring new opportunities, and inspiring people through what I share and what I do, I make full use of my strengths as a Gen Yer who’s learned so much about Enterprise 2.0 in the last three years that I’ve been researching or using it.

So if Generation Y can’t be your primary evangelists for Enterprise 2.0, how can we help your organization transform? Here’s what we can be good at:

• Bringing in new ideas - We’re exposed to a lot of different ideas, and we haven’t (usually) settled on the One Way To Do Things. Tap us for creative thinking in combination with people who bring more depth and experience to the table. My team members ask me to help during our clients’ strategic planning workshops because they know I’ll come up with tons of ideas.
• Challenging assumptions - We do things differently, and that gives everyone opportunities to re-examine what people take for granted. Many people have told me that the way I share what I’m learning has caused them to reevaluate their assumption that knowledge is power and that you should keep it secret. I show that knowledge shared is power, too. One of the most valuable ways I contribute to IBM and to our clients is to show what’s possible, simply by acting as if the Enterprise 2.0 organization already existed.
• Learning - Everything’s new to us, and we’re learning so much. We also recognize the need to build our reputation and our network, and sharing knowledge is the best way we know - but it should be associated with us, not just archived in a knowledge repository. If you can capture some of that energy with wikis, blogs, or a peer-to-peer learning solution, you’ll probably get far more growth and knowledge-sharing than you would if you bombarded your subject-matter experts with directives to share what they know through wikis and blogs.

If you want to help people in your organization connect and collaborate more effectively using Enterprise 2.0 tools, don’t leave it to Gen Y. Involve us, engage us, and support us. Connect us with opportunities to make a difference. But don’t make Enterprise 2.0 a generational issue, because the contributions of the Baby Boomers and the Gen Xers in your organization are probably going to make a much bigger difference and you won’t be able to engage them if you draw those generational lines. If you’d like to learn more about this topic, leave a comment or e-mail me your questions, or check out these other interesting resources:

Interesting reading:

• Generation Blend, book and blog
• Crossing the Chasm, book
• True Change, book
• Grown Up Digital, book
• Can Millennials Really Change the Work Place, blog entry, Tom Davenport
• The millennial organisation, blog entry, Mark Gould
• Net Gen Nonsense, blog

You might have thought that with the current financial crisis, people might turn away from new sites with names like Mint and SmartyPig and turn towards well established banks. But the new sites offer better features to their users, features that take advantage of Web 2.0 technology and approaches. And the old sites belong to banks that in the U.S. may have gone under. No surprise then that the new sites are experiencing signifigant growth.

The NYTimes.com has a good article with the details: Lose Confidence in Your Bank? Turn to the Web

Expect to hear more about these new sites soon.

Not a good page to hit during the Holiday (shopping) Season. But credit to J. Crew for a) having a fail page and b) providing a backup (in this case, a phone number). Much better than getting a “500″ error or some other error code that would mystify most people.

Let’s up this page, J. Crew Fail Page, is replaced by the real home page soon.

The old joke used to go: “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?….Practice, practice, practice!”

Well, YouTube has added a new spin on this. Until the end of January, 2009, musicians can audition via YouTube for a collaborative virtual performance and the best performances will earn the artist the opportunity to play at Carnegie Hall. This is social media and Web 2.0 at its best.

I would encourage anyone with the heart and the talent to perform this piece to give it their best and submit it to YouTube. Regardless of the outcome, it will be a great experience. And hey….you never know. Go to YouTube - symphony’s Channel for more information.

See you on stage!

For anyone doing or interesting in doing widget development, you might want to consider the MOTODEV Challenge. Motorola is offering prizes up to $25,000 for widgets submitted to them between now and the Feb. 25, 2009. Not only could you win some nice prize money, but you will surely get lots of recognition for your great work from Motorola and others.

Motorola provides all the information you need at the MOTODDEV site. I’d be interested in know what people are doing here.

ITbusiness.ca has an excellent experience report on one company’s experience with cloud computing:  How to shift your business to the cloud with minimal risk and maximum benefit. There’s lots of talk about cloud computing: this article is about putting talk into practice, with all the benefits and drawbacks that come with it. Any company looking to make the shift should read this.

By the way, while I get many newsletters and feeds from various sources on IT, I find ITbusiness.ca I read things from this site more and more. It has a very good mix of articles. I highly recommend them as a source of information.

Interesting: Wells Fargo is offering a service called vSafe to Protect, Organize & Access Important Documents.

It looks low cost ($4.95/month for 1 GB of storage) and since it is Wells Fargo, they have a reputation to maintain. And it is a good reputation, particularly in the area of innovation.

They also have a free 30 month trial, with some restrictions (e.g. you need a U.S. mailing address).

Worth considering if you are interested in cloud computing but are concerned about who is controlling your data.

In talking to clients recently, a number of them have talked to us about how Obama’s team was able to capitalize on the Internet to be successful. This article, In Election’s Wake, Campaigns Offer a Peek at What Really Happened over at the  NYTimes.com provides a glimpse into both campaigns and talks about things that went well and not so well.

One thing that struck me was this quote, from Obama’s deputy campaign manager, Steve Hildebrand:

“We’re not supposed to give these numbers out, but I’ll give them out,” Mr. Hildebrand said at another point… “We have 90 people on our Internet team. And they weren’t just doing the Internet. They were producing videos, they were slicing and dicing people who showed up on our Web site to figure who is more likely to give more money.

“We also spent a record amount of money on Internet advertising,” he said. “I want to say in the end $8 million on the Internet advertising alone. That really, really mattered.”

I am not surprised by these numbers: the ability to create and change information at the rate they did, and the ability to raise the type of money they did would required, would require alot of people and resources.

Anyone wanting to duplicate Obama’s success now has a better idea just what it took him to achieve that.

There are a number of articles out, including one in GlobeAndMail.com, about this study that shows that Happiness is contagious. A key section of the Globe’s article said that the study,

“…(u)sing a standard measure of well-being, the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression scale…found that when an individual becomes happy, a friend who lives nearby experiences a 25-per-cent increased chance of becoming happy. And the more centrally located you are in your social cluster of happy people, the more likely you are to become happy.”

You might think, “well, it might have been a small scale, rinky-dink study”. However,

“(t)he research, being published today in the British Medical Journal, is the latest analysis of data gleaned from the Framingham Heart Study, a longitudinal U.S. survey begun in 1948. The researchers, who have previously published similar findings on the spread of obesity and smoking from the data, focused on 4,739 individuals over 20 years, accounting for 50,000 social and family ties.”

Now what has this to do with Web 2.0? Well it could be that social networks supported by social platforms like Facebook, twitter, and flickr, can support the propagation of happiness (or other feelings). I know when I see pictures of family and friends happy, it makes me happy. And when I hear that they are having a difficult time, it adversely affects me. Perhaps not as strongly as it would if I were there in person, but what social networks lack in quality (i.e., directness) they can make up for in quantity (i.e., I am more aware of more of the feelings of family and friends potentially).

It remains to be seen if this is actually happening generally with people. But I am conscious of what I say when I use social platforms, knowing that people are reading what I write and many times responding to it. It affects how people think, not just about you, but how they think about life in generally. Not that you have to try and make people happy with what you say, but knowing that you might be able to is something to seriously consider.

As for me, I am happy you took the time to read this and think about it! I hope your day is a happy one.

(A most excellent photo of “Mel C” courtesy of *SMILING PUG*’s photostream on flickr)

Then go over to the blog AfriGadget and check out this post:  Support AfriGadget’s Young Mobile Reporters.

As for me, everything I believe that is going to matter in the 21st century is tied up in this project, so I decided to get out my PayPal account and contribute.  It’s sounds like a worthwhile initiative.

BTW, this blog was rated one of the 50 best web sites of 2008. A very good addition to your bookmarks or RSS feeds.