Preparing for Business 2.0

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If you were to advise someone considering going into business or becoming an entrepreneur today, what would you tell them? What is the best advice for today’s business schools? Where would you start; with underlying processes, human psychology, supply & demand theories or principles of management? I’ve been using the wirearchy tag to note articles that talk about the changing nature of work. Here are some examples:

Wirearchy: The performance management schemes, grade levels in the organizations and compensation practices have yet to recognize how work gets done in networked environments and increasingly, in a networked world.

FastForward Blog: … the radical reduction of transaction costs shifts the economic reality enough to eliminate the current value of organizations, making organizations effectively irrelevant.

Umair Haque: That’s the third, simplest, and most fundamental step in building next-generation businesses: understanding that next-generation businesses are built on new DNA, or new ways to organize and manage economic activities. Think that sounds like science fiction? Think again. Here are just a few of the most radical new organizational and management techniques today’s revolutionaries are already utilizing: open-source production, peer production, viral distribution, radical experimentation, connected consumption, and co-creation.

Scott Anthony: The Great Disruption creates real challenges for managers who have made a career out of focused execution. Smart management and prudent cost controls might have been enough to survive the Great Depression, but they are wholly insufficient for surviving the Great Disruption. For example, all the operational acumen in the world won’t help U.S. newspaper companies handle the seismic shifts in their industry.

G. Oliver Young: I see a fundamental rethinking of the definition and function of the firm; the single biggest change since the industrial revolution.

Are there any books that you would recommend to someone entering into a commerce program or starting their first foray into business? I think that the rules are changing rather quickly, as I see what people in my own networks are doing, especially with start-ups.

Is there a way to study and prepare for business today or is it better to jump in and make mistakes as you learn? Recommendations would be appreciated, especially from younger entrepreneurs.

The leaking pyramid

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Two years ago I wrote about the the forces of change and how workers, who one could call the “Cluetrained’, were dropping out of the bottom of the industrial organisation’s pyramid and doing it on their own. “It” meaning working, learning, creating and collaborating.

Today, these outlets are bigger and more obvious:

  • Informal learning is increasingly available from formal venues, such as Stanford’s series on Darwin’s Legacy that I’m following on YouTube.
  • Social networking is getting more pervasive (Facebook, Twitter or DIY with Ning) and accepted in the mainstream, such as Linked-In for recruiting.
  • Distributed work and tele-work are becoming more acceptable. It is almost normal to work from home from time to time.
  • User generated content is getting people noticed. Job offers are posted (or reverse job postings) and made through blogs while videos on YouTube can catapult people to fame.
  • Creative Commons is becoming the normal license for digital media, enabling easier sharing, and even the White House is using it.

I would say that the bottom of the Command & Control pyramid is getting much more porous.

Understanding Blogging for Knowledge Workers

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Blogs are now mainstream and it’s no longer necessary to explain what one is. It wasn’t that long ago that bloggers were being put down as a bunch of guys in pyjamas. Lilia Efimova, Mathemagenic, was one of my early sources of understanding about blogs, as I made my initial attempts at online conversation. Lilia introduced me to the concept of personal knowledge management. Here is my first attempt at explaining PKM in action and this is my latest.

Lilia is finishing her dissertation on the blogging practices of knowledge workers and has summarized her conclusions. All of those years of analysis are boiled down into 1,000 words and now give us an excellent summary of blogs as related to Ideas; Conversations; Relations; Tasks; and Context. Read the whole post and bookmark it; it’s a classic.

Picture by Lilia Efimova

Learning about Business

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When I left the Army and started working at an applied research and consulting group at Mount Allison University I didn’t really know much about the business world. After several years, I’ve realised that there were some things that transferred from military to civilian life. In the past decade I’ve learned a lot, mostly from experience, conversation, and observation. It’s been an interesting apprenticeship.

I’ve found that you learn much more from failure than success. One difference between school and life is that in school you get the lesson followed by the test. When you run a business you get the test first and then you have to figure out the lesson. Two unsuccessful business models showed me the importance of understanding the fundamentals of what makes an organisation work, how it it supports its operations and how it works with its markets or with those who fund it. I also feel that any business success you may have is a result of luck, timing, and the support of others. Any failures are mostly yours to bear because you probably could have done things differently. Humility is a trait of the long-term successful entrepreneur.

I’m not sure if you can train someone to become an entrepreneur or even a free-agent. Skills are not as important as attitude and motivation. I don’t think that I would have been successful running my own company when I was younger, as I wasn’t motivated. Now, with a family and an understanding of what I like to do, it’s fairly easy. That doesn’t mean that you can’t prepare for entrepreneurship. Having good communication, planning, or technical skills can be a real benefit once you decide to take the plunge. Also, the economy may force you into self-employment, so it’s handy to have a good business tool set.

Being a good communicator is important but so is the ability to listen and observe. I’ve seen businesses fail because the executives believed their own marketing hype. Early success can close your eyes to reality, so you need a trusted network of advisors who will keep you grounded. Listening includes looking outside for ideas and information. Even though I spend a lot of time reading online, books let me dig deeper into a subject.

Some books that have helped me along the way:

The Art of the Start for staying focused on the essentials of any start-up venture.

Seeing What’s Next if your business is entering an existing market.

Free Agent Nation if you want to work for yourself.

The Future of Work to understand some of the forces of change influencing how we work.

The Future of Management to see how flawed our current management models are for our needs.

Online Marketing for Free-agents

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Note: The Cluetrain Manifesto celebrates its tenth anniversary this year.

Cluetrain #1 Markets are conversation.

Without conversation (oral, written, graphical, physical) there are no social transactions. This has been the key aspect of the un-marketing approach for my consulting business. It’s not just markets, but learning and working are mostly conversation as well. I’ve also learned in the past six years that the more you give, the more you get; especially online. To market yourself as a free-agent online, start by giving.

Cluetrain # 6 The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.

I started blogging here in 2004, which my wife thought was giving away my expertise for free. My hunch was that my blog would be a good way to showcase my skills and experience, but I realised that it’s much more than that. First of all, it’s my pervasive presence on the Web. This is where you can find me as well as links to other things I may be doing. It has now become my knowledge base and provides fodder for articles and presentations. My blog enables me to have conversations with other professionals about things that matter to us. I’ve said many times that my blog doesn’t get me clients but, using a baseball metaphor, it gets me from 1st base onward. It’s also an enormous business card that tells more about what I think than any interview ever could. Blogs, podcasts or videos are excellent passive marketing devices, as long as you talk about your passions. Don’t try to sell anything. Another word of advice on blogs for free-agents is to keep them advertising free. The money isn’t worth it if you really want to sell your services and you will stand out from the crowd.

Cluetrain #7 Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.

The advantage of being a free-agent today is that you can use the Internet to get around most hierarchies. Information on almost any field is available for free. Tools like Twitter let you “follow” people in fields that interest you; making it excellent for competitive intelligence. Checking out “crowd-sourced” tags on Delicious lets you see what others find important. You can connect with people on Facebook or the more conservative Linked-In, without having to join some professional association first. Personally, I use Linked-In for business and Facebook for friends & colleagues. However, both networks have connected me to paid work.

Cluetrain #9 These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.

It still requires hard work, perseverance, skill and knowledge but you can get recognised for your expertise. Kathy Sierra has an excellent graph showing the work required, but the tools to disseminate your expertise are here now:

Not only that, but many people are there to help you; just ask. Posting a question on your blog, Twitter or social network usually results in a lot of good advice. I revamped my website in 2007 after asking advice from readers, which increased traffic to my consulting section. Once you go online, you are no longer alone, for better or worse.

We now have many tools to engage in conversation and to create some wealth along the way, without giving up our rights in indentured servitude as salaried workers.

Cluetrain #10 As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.

Jeff Jarvis:

To make the money I don’t make teaching, I consult and speak for various media companies and brands. The only reason I get those gigs is because companies read the ideas I discuss at Buzzmachine and ask me to come and repeat them in PowerPoint form and explore them with their staff. I’ve also been asked to teach executives how to blog (a class that should, by rights, take about two minutes). That work and the teaching get me to a nice income in six figures. So I’m not looking quite as idiotic now, I hope.

Rob Paterson:

NPR, all my work in New Media, Blackwater, Education – all my paying gigs have come through this medium [blogging].

Quick Start Tips to market yourself:

  1. Get your own domain name
  2. Free your Bookmarks and start sharing what you do
  3. Read blogs & make comments and don’t forget to Aggregate before you’re swamped
  4. Establish a consistent presence on Linked-In, Facebook, etc.
  5. Start your blog (WordPress, Typepad) without any fanfare
  6. Check out other social media like Twitter or what others are talking about
  7. Watch for patterns and see what makes sense for you

These Small Business Blogs may give some inspiration.

A small business boom

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Lots of industry predictions (like this for e-learning) coming out are linked to the recession, but perhaps the best predictions are those focused on demographics, because we know that almost all 20 year-olds today will be 30 in ten years. It’s hard to refute those numbers.

Judy Martin made 7 Work Life Culture Predictions this month which had me going down several Internet rabbit holes following the links. I found out that I’m part of Generation Jones or may be labeled a Cusper (b. 1959). The prediction that I found most interesting and pertinent to my work was #4:

In response to rising unemployment and battered stocks a flood of risk takers will emerge as entrepreneurs. Although the economic climate is not ripe for taking chances, people will be working harder and longer because their retirement funds have dwindled down to nothing. In the face of adversity, we might see more small home based businesses and entrepreneurs emerging from the retirement pool as getting a job after 60 can prove difficult.

I went out on my own 6 years ago, at the age of 44. At that time the economy was supposed to be doing well, but there were not a lot of jobs for my experience and skills. The incumbent boomers were not even considering retirement and I was considered too old for other jobs. Now with layoffs in several sectors, many of my age cohort will have to consider alternatives for work. This may have a significant impact on the workforce because we are the bump in the baby boom, with more of us born than in any other year.

Last year I presented Marketing Yourself as a Free-agent on the Internet and I think that this may become very important for my age cohort. We have many productive years ahead of us but we’re not overly employable, unless we get lucky. The good news is that it’s getting easier to network and learn from others with the Internet. The bad news is that competition is heating up.

I agree that we will probably see more people of my generation starting businesses or taking other risks as they realise that their savings have been reduced and that job prospects are dim. This has more potential to rejuvenate the economy and our society than creating jobs could. The self-employed by necessity are more tuned to their environment and many will now have the additional time once wasted on commuting, useless meetings and waiting for others to make decisions. This could be the change we need as a generation wakes up.

Photo by Matt McGee

Selecting OS learning technology platforms

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Dave Cormier has written a great article on selecting a content management system (CMS). Dave discusses three platforms, all of which I have used – WordPress, Moodle, Drupal. All are open source and there are a variety of hosting models available for most budgets. Like Dave, I’m not crazy about Moodle because it replicates the institutional course-centric education model, which I feel is outdated. I use a similar approach in initially analysing technology needs, succinctly stated by Dave:

I like to put CMSs into three simple categories based on the CMSs that I think of as being best of breed in the open market right now. Do you want to do a wordpress project, a moodle project or a drupal project. (you could also say ‘a wordpress.com project, a moodle hosted project or a ning project if you don’t care about controlling your data… which I do… but you may not)

I would add Elgg to mix if there is an interest in the functionality of Ning, but with the advantage of open source.

I used to use Drupal for this website but switched to WordPress a few years ago. Drupal is much too powerful to be running a simple blog like mine. Dave covers the pros and cons of these systems quite well in his post and I would recommend it to anyone considering platform selection. Yes, it can get much more complicated, but looking at these three for education or training projects is a good start.

The future of certification

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At some point in the life of a discipline there is a drive toward certification. Want to be a real estate agent? It’s a quality thing, so we’re told. I was once a Certified Performance Technologist, and as I said to Dave Ferguson, I don’t see much value in re-certification when it consists of checking off boxes of how many conferences you have attended. Tom Gram, now Certifiable (Certified Training & Development Professional with CSTD), wonders:

Most learning and performance professionals will notice areas where the competencies could be modified to incorporate crossover disciplines and meet emerging trends.  For example, I think technology in learning and performance is at this point a core skill, as are informal learning approaches and sister competencies such as knowledge management and performance consulting.

I gained much from my CPT certification process as it was based on what I had done and I had to show competence. My professional responsibilities derive from the CPT standards of behaviour. However, certification can create a closed society that keeps competent people out and reinforces the status quo and the money flow. Such was the case the Ontario College of Teachers when a judge determined there is more than one way to show competence in a field. Certification can also become self-serving, as a primary revenue generator for the association.

In my case I didn’t renew my CPT designation because not a single one of my clients recognized it. I still follow the code of ethics and stay current in my field, but the piece of paper has no business value. So what is the future of certification when disciplines overlap and meld and certification bodies move with glacial speed in keeping up with the times? Certification, like professional associations, will have to change and become more reflective of the networked workplace.

Getting over a haggis

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Guest post by Graham McTavish Watt

Apropos of nothing other than a getting over a haggis munch yesterday at the Robbie Burn’s Evening, let me run this by your keen eyes.

The Inuit people have been teaching and learning for at least a thousand years. And their learning is important because frequently the lack of it can be fatal. Not fatal to the learning, fatal to the learner. They have done all this learning through the oral tradition. They are acknowledged technological experts and tremendous innovators: The geodesic dome, the kayak, the bone-spring-in-frozen-meat Polar Bear killer with built-in blood trail feature, and so much more. Much of today’s technological detritus is in a way oral, even text messaging. But much of it is frittered (sorry) rather than substantial.

How would we equate the essential oral aspects of Inuit learning efficacy with your industry’s seemingly ever-changing technological learning approaches (I might add, often delivered with scorn for the already existing)? Why do we not go back to survey and explore the aboriginal learning perspectives rather than pushing forward with this or next week’s latest technological thematic? Or would Inuit learning just become next week’s technology thematic? Perhaps you do go back, I’m sure you do, and I acknowledge there are oral aspects to technology, but the oral tradition among aboriginals means the learner and teacher both learn, and it is the synergy which keeps the learning momentum going. There is humility to it, rather than a wisp or two of contempt

Two interesting books you may have read but which I am presently reading:

UQALURAIT: An Oral History of Nunavut Compiled and edited by John Bennett and Susan Rowley. And John Ralston Saul’s A FAIR COUNTRY Telling Truths About Canada.

The former has incredible detail on clothing, skin preparation, fashion, astronomy, medicine, external relations, food sharing, navigation, kayak building, trading, hunting, fishing, social activity, house building, leadership and many other orally learned techniques. Is it any wonder they valued their elders? Why do we tend to denigrate ours? Saul’s book is, in my view, a wonderful continuation to the work of Harold Adams Innis on the oral tradition, and draws upon the aboriginal example as a main component of many aspects of Canada’s rather well-known use of negotiation rather than violence and threat. Ironicly, caucus is an Algonquian oral word which meant meeting, talking and listening. Now we use it to plot to defeat others. It was used by aboriginals to find ways to reach agreements that sustain each other’s cultures and prevent war.

Graham Watt

Close the Training Department

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I get a lot of unsolicited e-mail asking me to review a new product or service, a small portion that actually gets my attention. A recent e-mail said how much the writer liked my post on inverting the pyramid, and by the way, their product enabled this —

“Now, what if you could incorporate social media practices like blogging and chat and incorporate social media feeds and video directly into the training courses? wouldn’t it be even more effective then? What if the people building the course could freely collaborate and share ideas within the course building tool and even share reusable course elements?”

I think that social media can be powerful tools for collaboration, working and learning, but they are rather useless inside a training box. Sticking blogs, RSS, chats and widgets into your training delivery system has little to do with my advice to the training department or my suggestion to learning professionals to wake up and smell the coffee.

I am advocating the closure of the training department per se. We need to get out of the training delivery mindset but that is where most vendors are stuck. Jay Cross sums up our approach at TogetherLearn:

“Next week, we will close the training department. We are shifting our focus from training to performance. Legal or the line departments can handle compliance. Any remaining training staff will become mentors, coaches, and facilitators who work on improving core business processes, strengthening relationships with customers, and cutting costs.”

That’s right, compliance can be covered by legal. Now look at what remains. Talk to the people at the coal face and find out what they really need. Few will say training. The days of developing & delivering are almost over. Connecting & Communicating should be the focus of learning and performance professionals in a networked environment.