~synthesis~

content, bandwidth and lunch

Marshall McLuhan was right - the medium is the message.

In almost every case, those that thought content was king were proven wrong. From analog modems (remember baud rates?) to DSL to Cable to FIOS, people routinely (and happily) pay a premium for bandwidth,  but they absolutely hate to pay for content.

Think back to the days of the original Napster and Kazaa - if I had been one of those that used either service, my thought process was simple: "I hate paying for content, but I don't mind paying as much or more than $100/month for bandwidth." I may only download 50 songs in a month but I'm still going to be happy with my killer bandwidth vs. having paid $50 for music.

These days people actually pay for multiple sources of bandwidth - I have broadband at home, a data plan for my phone (and a voice plan) and then also pay for hot spots when the need arises. But I still dislike paying for content, I do use Pandora/Hulu, etc. and will buy content, though grudgingly.

Mark Cuban wrote brilliantly about the DVR vs. internet video. In it he talks about how in their typically narrow-minded (the only thing I know is a hammer so everything looks like a nail) mentality, media companies want cable companies to eliminate or cripple DVRs because they allow viewers to avoid commercials. This perspective is shared by most if not all content publishers. They're crazy!

You know others are progressively eating more of your lunch and yet all you want to do is hang on to the meager scraps you have now? Why?

Digitization has altered the equation for publishers - they had the corner on both the medium and the message, but now anyone can distribute content (we haven't even talked about bit torrent) and most people can publish without needing an "official" publisher.

From music to video to books, each publishing machine has attempted to preserve its original business in the hopes of extracting yet one more drop of revenue. But in trying to preserve history, they're losing sight of the future.

People are willing to pay for access, but content ...not so much. Content is less-valued - not just in publishing, but also pharmaceuticals with generics, with clothing and jewelry and knock-offs, etc.

Here's the thing - digitization increases profitability. Manufacturing costs drop dramatically (no physical bits), distribution costs drop dramatically (no bits, no inventory, no returns), cost of sales drops dramatically (eliminate the middle-man), and market size increases dramatically (direct to every customer on the planet, no retail constraints).

If you had all four of these factors beckoning you, why not go that way? Why not actively pursue tomorrow instead of trying to live in yesterday?

Because the greatest predictor of future failure is past success.

forests and trees

If you're in a position of power, chances are you want to hang on to it. If you're in a position of power and you don't have to do a lot stay there, you like it even more; and if you've had it this way for years, complacency has set in as well. What's your natural reaction if someone or something challenges that power? Do you welcome change or do you hunker down, decry it, and marshal your resources to defend because you believe the status quo is righteous and "they" are just plain wrong? 

Despite all resistance, there are things beyond your control - some examples that come to mind include Open Source to Microsoft; bad carbs and saturated fats to fast food restaurants; cell phones in children's hands to teachers, etc. In the first case, the company still rails against their competition but now demonstrates interoperability and even distributes open source software of its own. In the second case, most fast food companies have seen the future and shifted to healthier options.

In the third case, most schools, teachers and unions continue to passionately resist change; they are adamant about the "right" way to learn, closing the door to Google, Wikipedia, the Internet, cell phones, etc.

Dean Shareski wrote a great blog calling out schools that on the one hand ask for technology in the classroom, but then prevent students from bringing their own tech to school because it would erode "the traditional education model." David Warlick wrote teacher shock about students who aren't being taught about the world around them.  Chris Lehmann also wrote a great post about a presentation to the FCC on the role of teachers in the new world of teaching.

A couple of months ago, I wrote that teachers and schools are the gatekeepers to information and accreditation, but it is changing rapidly - their hold on information is all but gone, and the value of their accreditation is diminishing as quality and relevance wane. Despite this, the incumbents remain vigilant in their fight to "control" the classroom in the name of true learning and status quo.

Dean, David and Chris are heroically pushing their fellow educators to shirk the past and embrace technology as an opportunity to transform education from the inside vs. resist and be done unto by external forces. In the business world, an apt metaphor is: "if someone's going to eat your lunch, it may as well be you, even if you have to cannibalize an existing revenue stream to do it."

The "Resistance" has powerful weapons - tenure, the political power of unions, a massive and highly distributed bureaucracy, and low self-esteem resulting from being at siege for so long. Aikido masters teach their students to blend with their opponents' motion and redirect the force to a more advantageous outcome. I think the Education community can do the same.

Blend

I'd argue for consistency and consolidation of administration across the country. Imagine how much money and energy it would save if there was one education standard mapped to one set of curriculum? The lesson plans should be at the discretion of schools and teachers, but should incorporate the use of advanced concepts like computers, calculators and cell phones - this is their biggest compromise, but look what they get in return (one standard, one curriculum).

Redirect

Take all the savings from the rationalization and invest it in increased pay and benefits for teachers.

Gain Advantageous Outcome

Improve and equalize the education service provided to every student in the country, grow teacher pay, hopefully improve student outcomes, do it without increasing the budget for education in the country, look like heroes, and get paid.

Is it possible? Yes. Is it likely? I doubt it - this is a classic case where the Resistance is stuck in the trees and can't see the forest.

risk shmisk

Accenture recently conducted a risk management survey of 260 CFOs from large companies in 21 nations that has (didn't think this was possible) increased my disappointment in corporations around the world. 85% of those surveyed said they are ineffective at considering risk, return and capital issues when making decisions. The same number said there is a lack of alignment between their company's strategy and appetite for risk, and 93% said it was really hard (whine, whimper) to align strategy to effective risk management.

C-Sense

How can you be a C-level officer, leading your corporation and yet be unable to effectively factor risk into decision-making? In good times, risk failures were compensated for by strong earnings, but now that either or both revenue and margins are shrinking, it's more difficult to hide or write off errors in judgment.

Theoretically, an executive achieves C-level status by being smarter than the average bear, having more foresight, vision and leadership skills than his or her peers, and the ability to skate to where the puck will be, and not where it is. If true, they should have recognized the following:

1. Good times creates bad habits
2. We're in the midst of a communication revolution
3. Tough times require focused investment

#1 - In good times, mistakes are forgiven/ignored because things are going so well that bad judgment is overlooked. But most critically, organizations forsake discipline in favor of expediency. Then when things change, the bad habits of the organization, which were compensated for with excess spending and often excess hiring, now surface unhidden, result in severe changes or layoffs, and are harder to fix because they're well, habits.

#2 - The stress caused by #1 creates internal and external disaffection/disloyalty, which makes people much more inclined to blog/Twitter/whatever their views and experiences. Malfeasance becomes very rapidly visible to the public, giving the company little or no time to sense, develop a strategy, and respond. In can we talk?, I wrote about transparency and immediacy being the offshoots of the communication revolution. This is either a huge risk or opportunity for most companies - the C-level "risk" executive leadership must account for this. Most don't.

#3 - If you have the means, the best time to invest is when times are tough. Whether that's acquisitions, new investments, or increased staffing, you are sure to get good (if not great) value for money, and be much more primed for growth when the market does turn. Choosing the best place to invest requires clarity of purpose - if the company's strategy is not clear, it's ability to evaluate and mitigate risk not solid, and it's leadership not focused, the resulting investments will likely accelerate poor performance and lead the company down.

C-Accountability

Chief X Officers (whether X = Executive, Financial, Marketing, Operations, etc.) get paid really well, this is because the expectations are commensurately high, and performance is expected and required. In addition to being a great sales tool for their services, the Accenture survey above is a confession by these C-levels that they don't know how to cope with change, or how to lead in these changing times.

At this level, they must own their actions, take responsibility for both their failures and those of everyone who works for them (the whole company). Shouldn't the 85% who said they didn't know what they were doing resign, so those who do can lead?

C-Response

From my can we talk? post: The industrial revolution created mechanical speed, the information revolution changed space (specifically, the distance between points in space), and the communication revolution changed time (sense and response time).

Thriving in this world requires discipline. If all C-executives in a company can't clearly (so that a 12-year-old can understand it) and consistently state:

1. Why they are in business
2. What makes their company special or unique
3. How they succeed
4. Where the company is heading

Then how likely is it that their employees are being guided properly? How likely is it that any management discipline exists, that the company's behavior and performance are predictable?

Ensuring this is step one for the CEO. Step two is to establish a discipline of two-way information flow so that all levels of the company know; and step three is to ensure that decisions get made, and are executed predictably and with accountability. Seems like management 101?

Think of Apple during Steve Jobs' current tenure. They don't always build the best product, not all of their products succeed, not all their customers are loyal and happy. But in the main, their business runs brilliantly; most customers are rabidly loyal; every employee has (from the outside anyway) a clear, consistent view of the all that is Apple; and you'd be hard-pressed to find an organization that had a better grasp of where the puck will be than Apple - both economically and product-wise.

If you took the 221 (of 260) companies representing the 85% of executives who admitted their inability to manage risk and created a fund that shorted their stocks, I wonder how it might do in the next 12-24 months vs. say Apple?

thirds

First, sorry for the lapse in writing - I've been in Japan since just after the fourth, and in Kyoto for the first time - what a wonderful city!

It is election season in Japan, and I learned some interesting things about their process. First, the election laws in Japan are old and quite arcane - according to the BBC and Newsweek, once an election starts, you may not create new websites or update existing ones; you can only distribute so many posters or leaflets to a very small percentage (less than 5%) of your constituency; there are many others. Second, there is no interest on the part of the politicians to change the system! The politicians (I should say incumbent politicians) want to make it as difficult as possible, to impede opponents/upstarts from gaining ground.

This surprised me: only 95% of Japanese in their 20s surf the web, and only a third of them vote. The Japanese think that makes sense: "Young people shouldn't be involved, ...because they're not serious enough or they don't have the education." What's more, most of the politicians are in their 70s like Senator McCain, and recognize that their online savvy isn't comparable to their grand children's. Again the incumbent party (LDP) is old, entrenched and knows that 79% of Internet users in Japan would vote for the DPJ, so they've impeded it.

We've had a great conversation on this blog about the viability of a third party in the American political system. There's a lot of theoretical argument against it, d.eris (here and on his blog) and Dale Shelton have both mentioned Duverger's Law, and the nature of the American politic which impedes a multi-party system.

But in Canada they've shown that multi-party systems can survive, often beginning regionally (for example the Bloc Québécois is a totally regional party, but still a national force, while the New Democratic Party began in Western Canada, but is now a fully-national party). Canada, like the US has a system where only one party or candidate can win in a given district, and yet critical mass can and has occurred; multiple parties are flourishing.

I think the American system has the same "mentality" as the Japanese LDP. It believes it's OK to disenfranchise whomever it wants to as long as the incumbents prevail (can you say "redistricting"?). Perhaps American politicians will take a lesson from the citizens of Iran, who have demonstrated that when they're pushed far enough, they will rise up and insist that their voices are heard.

Further to what I wrote in threeway anyone? - this is the first time in history that it is possibly to directly reach practically every voter in the United States - all you need is their mobile phone number. Moreover, because of the technology proficiency gap between the contemporaries of most of today's politicians and the 18-29 year-old demographic, it is fair to assume that the 18-29 year-olds are actually more reachable and more interconnected than any other demographic in history.

This convinces me that it is possible to organize a national party or at a minimum a strong regional party (both coasts + cities like Chicago, Austin, other university towns, etc.) that would dramatically alter the political landscape and balance of power in Congress. I don't think it'll take something as dramatic as recent events in Iran to create a groundswell, it might be much simpler - perhaps the next mortgage-the-future spending proposal by the President or Congress?

Can we talk?

Wordnet defines "Revolution" as "a drastic and far-reaching change in ways of thinking and behaving."

I like the world revolution - and use it often in my vernacular. Today I was thinking about some of the revolutions we've all experienced.

The Industrial Revolution (IR) began in the 18th century, and marked the point when the growth of mechanical work began outpacing the growth of manual work. The technologies that shaped IR were the steam engine, iron founding and textile manufacturing. The business model was centralized, patent-based monetization, where few were granted IP rights, and they built huge economic machines. Resulting innovations in transportation (rail, ship, automobile) caused the effects of the industrial revolution to go global, albeit over a generation or three.

The Information Revolution (IR2) began in the mid-20th century. It was marked by the connection of easily-stored content to widely-available distribution. The technologies that shaped this time were reduction in storage prices, improved data transmission through telephony, TCP/IP for networking, the massively widespread use of PCs, and the invention of the World Wide Web and Internet (thanks to Al Gore of course). The business model shifted from big to small, from centralized to decentralized, and most critically away from just Western centers of power. The value of IP waned compared to the value of awareness and "eyeballs", which when combined with much lower costs of entry into the "network" resulted in more content being available to more people with almost no effort on the publisher's part. Moreover, banking had evolved to the point where people almost anywhere in the world were able to buy things from anywhere else, thereby monetizing their content. The proliferation of PCs combined with the availability of phone lines that could handle data (via modems to start) made this revolution go global in a matter of decades.

The next revolution (which we are now at the beginning of) is the Communication Revolution (CR). It is marked by the proliferation of mobile telephony; search engines (which is really the transition between IR2 and CR); and non-verbal communication modes (SMS, data, email, etc.) and Internet access via cell phones.

In each Revolution, the infrastructure required to participate is progressively smaller. In fact, having a lot of infrastructure actually impedes and steepens (is that a word?) the on-ramp to the next Revolution.

Moreover, the generations that were born in these latter revolutions have very different preconceptions and approaches to doing things. They live in a world that is steeped in "polyphonicness" - and they're comfortable there. They don't feel the need for communication to replicate face-to-face experiences <-- this is a big one IMO. There is no need to simulate a live meeting for effective communication; each has value and impact, but one doesn't supersede the other. They're also less about persistent fidelity (i.e. highest definition audio/video, immersive feel, etc.) and more about efficacy and fitness for purpose. The concept that I needed to talk to you now, found you, in eight words communicated my message, you acknowledged, and we're done, is very efficient and without the burden of "building a relationship first". This can be done via simple text messaging; no need for a Video Conferencing Room that costs $50,000 and requires three admins, five technicians, an owners' manual, four remotes, and all that crap.

With the proliferation of mobile phone systems, this Revolution has begun even more quickly (a decade?). But CR isn't about blurring boundaries (that happened with IR2). This is rather about blurring time.

Standardization --> Discoverability --> Transparency & Immediacy

IR was about standardization through mechanization (you can have any color you want as long as it's black). IR2 was about publishing and sharing. CR is about not being able to hide (or more poetically, being no longer being cloaked in a veil of time, place, and knowledge).

Everybody talked about "Internet time" back in the day, well we're now in cellular time, Dorothy. I don't even need to wait to boot up my machine and open a browser. If I want to know what's going on somewhere, I can call and find out, if I want to talk about something, I can call and share. But I can also Twitter, text, blog, send pictures, etc. - all in real time.

This is the revolution, and its implications are profound.

Most organizations today have a clearly-defined a protocol and hierarchy. This structure creates latency. They simply don't have the ability to respond in real time to real problems or opportunities. In the CR world, MBAs are a hindrance - they take too long and obsess overly about historical patterns and writing reports.

The concept of a sense-and-respond organization does not yet exist. The Communication Revolution is pointing this out every day as we learn about the bungling acts of corporations and governments. In the past, they would have had the time to manage the conversation, control the message, and have a measured response or be able to hide it. Now they look like buffoons with their heads cut off.

We need to build a business model that embraces sense/response; it needs to have measures, discipline, and an infrastructure that's able to accommodate what CR requires. This capacity is a priority for survival in this Revolution and for whatever is coming next. The leaders of this new model are very much not the leaders to today's corporations or government.

I was reading this MSNBC article today and was freaked out at the thought that Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer or Robert Gates don't use email for work! So if you want to communicate quickly to them, you need to write a memo, print it, and deliver it to one of their minions who will (if the mood strikes) find a way to get it in their hands at some point.  Holy SH*T! This is how we run a country?

The industrial revolution created mechanical speed, the information revolution changed space (specifically, the distance between points in space), and the communication revolution changed time (sense and response time).

Are you ready?

Education CTOs Beware!

eSchool News posted an interesting article about the relationship between a CTO (Chief Technology Office) and her/his Superintendent. In a nutshell, they say you should be a good servant - communication and trust are the key ingredients.

I don't agree.

The role of a good CTO in any organization is to:

1. Know your business (i.e. the business of your employer); know it really well, and have total clarity on how success is defined, measured and achieved.
2. Know the ICT landscape as it relates to your business (not just the mainstream, but the periphery too); most critically, know where it's heading three to five years out; and know where others in your industry are heading.
3. Be a leader and visionary within your organization, championing the best of #2 where it materially contributes to #1, or where it will in the future materially contribute to #1.
4. Work with other ICT leaders in the business to make sure you have an ICT infrastructure that offers the most flexibility and latitude to be whatever it needs to be today and tomorrow with minimal change/remediation.
5. Be the force, help others use it, and use it wisely.

Anything else is too small, too narrow, and actually the job of an IT implementer vs. a CTO.

If a school system has a CTO, the implication is that they invested in this resource because they view ICT as a strategic advantage to achieve even more excellent learning outcomes for their students.

For a legitimate CTO that takes this role on without that kind of affirmation, I regret that unless you got lucky, you're in for an unhappy reality.

Communication and trust are important for every employee. The CTO needs to be more and have more. Much more.

Student teaching?

Scott McLeod wrote recently about student-delivered professional development. Really insightful and right on regarding the use of technology and the students' proficiency therein.

I think there's a huge opportunity for students to participate (for credit - academic or community service) in training both educators and the community on the use of technology.

I would add Big Idea #6 to Scott's entry.  Why not also have students help with teaching content approaches and technique? I wrote earlier about how the students aren't learning as well as we'd like, and wonder if we're not involving them enough in the process?

One of my favorite examples of student-inspired learning is Pokemon (ok - so this isn't real learning - or is it??).

Most Pokemon aficionados that I know mastered the game in about six months. Mastery implies a full understanding of the Pokemon vocabulary, ecosystem, evolutionary paths, strengths and weaknesses of each character and appropriate strategies with which to select the right Pokemon and win battles, etc.

Moreover, each child also learns to interact with their peers, learn tricks and technique from each other, and of course battling to achieve supremacy in the game.

Finally, for particularly tough battles, students need to also do research online to uncover cheats that they can use to achieve status.

How did Nintendo build such an amazing learning environment? They started with a premise, built examples, tested it extensively with children, and then released the product. Each iteration of Pokemon is equally tested, children are involved in helping create scenarios, outcomes, etc., as well as providing insights on game play, use of vocabulary, etc.

It seems to me that Big Idea #6 should equally involve students, they should be co-creating the curriculum, participating even in defining learning outcomes, and then being active in refining the content to ensure that the learning outcomes are achieved. I recently met Marja Brandon, head of the Seattle Girls School. She is a visionary.  Among other things, the eight grade class at her school actually does this - the curriculum for that year is co-created with the students. 

Her students are out-performers (routinely excelling in AP classes once they move on from SGS), and equally importantly - don't just walk, but run to school because they love it so much. This is a wonderful school, and I hope to write much more about it in the days to come, but if you live in the Seattle area and have a daughter who is going into grade 5 or 6, this school MUST be on your list to evaluate, and I'm certain will be at the top of that list.