Counting Leverage
Where is the best place to force change into the economic system? Where the money (an analog form of data) and data describing transactions are counted. Britt Blaser and Ross Mayfield both have important things to say about this.
Here's just a sampling of Britt's good ideas:
Proprietary Data is the Basis of Tyranny
Perhaps we need a systems approach, where we conceive a model transaction, one that serves both parties equally, and removes the data dominance factor. Of course, that's the purpose of our little design study. We think we've come up with the 6 essential states in every transaction (Discover, Identify, Specify, Negotiate, Invoice, Evaluate); and we think we've identified the Atomic Elements of transactions (People, Products & Tasks).
If we're right, and our standard transaction model simplifies selling and buying, then it might lead to more and better buying and selling. In any event, we'll be counting some things that haven't counted before. Like Quality ratings.
Ross's contribution includes:
My take is that this is all great thinking, but we need to keep clearly in front of us the idea that human relationships is what we are talking about. The technology is a nice-to-have accelerator, but it can be profoundly alienating. Technology, because it is usually deployed en masse is a blunt force instrument that treats everyone the same way, especially within the confines of a small group where starkly different beliefs and styles of learning and communicating come into sharp conflict.
There is no doubt in my mind or any manager’s that an organization should pick tools that enforce its priorities to some degree. It would be impossible to cook a meal in a kitchen where knives were forbidden and every company, because they do largely deal with the manipulation of information, needs to define the range of data it will try to process. So, some dogma is a very good thing. The very act of defining an organization requires managers invent a bit of dogma, a dollop of determinism in an otherwise chaotic environment—after all, we can’t be in the business of doing everything. A deterministic system is purposeful and supports goal-setting.
The mistake would be to get locked into those goals by a technology infrastructure that constantly enforced initial-state biases. If, after achieving your first-year goals for establishing internal competencies and product development, you had to go back and spend a year and a large amount of capital to retool your company for delivering its product or services to the market, instead of having these capabilities be an implicit result of your first year’s efforts, your company is not likely to succeed. Think about how many times your company or a company you know has had to retool information technology to support new processes and the consequences of setting and forgetting dogmas becomes painfully apparent.
When they fade into the background and go unexamined dogmas become invisible and do the most damage. What I am arguing for is a constant attentiveness to how technology shapes organizations. We cannot assume technology is neutral, and I don't think Britt and Ross do think so(and I am working with both of them as an advisor to their efforts) ; but many of the people who will use the tools they are creating will apply them without thinking through the consequences. That will be followed by what amounts to a lot of confusion about why initial goals haven't been achieved, whether it is greater transparency in markets or improved workgroup productivity or quality assurance in transactions.
We could sure use a revolution, but I'll always be voicing my belief that simple evolution is preferable almost every time.
Posted by Mitch Ratcliffe at April 3, 2003 11:14 AM | TrackBack