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The Web Changes (nearly) Everything…and what to do about it…

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The web has changed (nearly) everything.

Bloggers, Tweeters, Patient Opinion, Fill That Hole and so on…the web is full of people’s opinions, experiences, ideas and beliefs about you, your organisation and your products and services.

It is far more likely that we will read about what you do in a piece written on the web by our peers than a piece written by your Press Office or PR agent on your website.

We have learned to recognise and respond to authentic voices that want to converse.  We are increasingly immune to your sales pitches….

In this one day workshop we will explore exactly what has changed because of the web and how.

This will not be a day for technologists and web geeks, but for communications professionals, service managers, business developers, strategists and others who are wondering how to manage perceptions on the web and use them to build a better business.

We will not be looking in any detail at the specifics of particular social media platforms or web sites but we will be examining how the new information that it surfaces can either kill or cure an organisation.

We will then look at practical actions and strategies that will help to re-position you effectively in the web enabled world.

Remember:  your customers and service users know more about your products and services right now than you do.

And whether their experience is good or bad, increasingly they will use the web to tell people about it.  The only question is, once you accept and understand this, how do you respond?

Who Should Attend?

This workshop will be useful to anyone who is coming to terms with how the web is shaping their business and how they need to re-think strategy and communications as a consequence.

Whether you work on the delivery and management of a public service or in the private or ‘third sector’ our promise is that  this workshop will provide yo with practical ideas about how to make the most of the new web2 world.

What we will cover:

  • Why people listen to the web, and how you can too…
  • When a story breaks – how should we respond?
  • Why SHOUTING on the web won’t work – how to engage in polite yet powerful conversation
  • Finding your voice and speaking your truth
  • Moving from online to offline – what to do when you actually meet the online community
  • Dozens of ways in which the web changes everything and how you might respond as a result

Workshop Leaders

The sessions will by led by some of Leeds most influential and experienced bloggers, tweeters and social marketers.  By people who care passionately about the web, good business and civic society.

So far the list includes Mike Chitty and Phil Kirby – but is likely to grow!

If you fancy lending a hand in the design and delivery of the workshop rather than coming along as  participant, or if you have any questions then please do get in touch.

Workshop Costs

£200 per person plus VAT and booking fee.

Just 10 early bird tickets are available at £150 per person plus VAT and booking fee.  Early bird ticket sales end when all 10 have gone or on 31st September.

Grab an early bird ticket while you still can: http://webchangeseverything.eventbrite.com/

If you would love to attend but can’t afford to then drop me a comment and I will see what we can do….

Sticks, Carrots, Coercion and Coaching

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“What we did establish is that the carrots offered were far less effective than the sticks employed.”

Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP, Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts – talking about the ‘limited effect’ of Pathways to Work pilots

Sticks and carrots have a long and noble tradition in the  management of donkeys.  However even with donkeys there are times when the ‘bribe and  punish’ approach to change management fails:

  • When the donkey is not hungry enough
  • When the effort of reaching the carrot is too great (the burden is too heavy)

In these circumstances we may choose to resort to the stick.  But this too will not work if:

  • the pain of the stick is thought to be less than the pain of moving forward
  • the donkey learns to like the stick and the attention that it brings

But I think the real issue here is not about the limitations of sticks and carrots in the management of donkeys and people.

It is about the complete and utter failure to understand the nature of human motivation.  Motivation is that which energises, directs and sustains a person’s efforts.  Sustains efforts.  Sticks and carrots applied to move a donkey from one (expensive) field to another (less expensive) field do NOTHING to sustain efforts.  In fact it is likely to achieve the opposite.  The donkey returns to its passive state until more carrots and sticks appear on the scene.  And the state wants more enterprising communities?

But the major problem is not treating people like donkeys, and further dulling their enterprising souls.  It is that the state believes that this is the most effective, fair and just way of changing behaviour.  That this is such a common default setting when trying to manipulate the behaviours and choices of its citizens.

And we wonder why ‘community engagement’ is so difficult.  When you have beaten and bribed your donkeys into submission don’t expect them to engage with you, without the use of ever more sticks and carrots.

Perhaps instead of resorting to a coercive approach to change, we might try instead a coaching approach?

Helping people to recognise their long term self interest and how it may be pursued.  Helping  them to develop the power they need to make progress in their lives.  Helping them to recognise that it is possible and that they don’t need to be pushed around by a bureaucratic system of sticks and carrots.  That THEY have choices and agency in their own lives.  Vegetable wielding bureaucrats do not have to be the architects of their future.

And what if someone decides that their long-term self interest is served by staying exactly where they are?

Well, we could just leave them alone and put our time, energy and investment into those that want to explore pastures new.  Why should the squeaky wheel get all the grease?

Because perhaps people are more like sheep than donkeys.  When they see some of the flock moving forward others are sure to follow.

Aren’t they?

Engaging in the Vision for Leeds

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Warning: This post was written in a state of frustration, high dudgeon and anger.

I remember advising Chris Johnstone many months ago not to get too excited about the Vision for Leeds process.  I had my own visions of some of the city’s best activists getting drawn into bureaucratic processes that would achieve little, instead of doing what activists do best – organising campaigns, raising awareness and lobbying for change.  I was cynical about who would listen and what would change if we did choose to work with the council on their preferred methodologies of Visioning for the City.

But recently I sensed that perhaps I was wrong.

Council employees started to show interest in what we were doing.  Some expressed opinions online.   To show up at events where ‘we’, ordinary Leeds residents, were gathering to talk and plan about the future not because it was out jobs, but because it was our futures.   The tone may have been generally apologetic and defensive (on both sides) but at least we were talking.  They were no longer just inviting us into their territory to help fulfil some statutory obligations around consultation, but to step into ours.

Perhaps I should at least reciprocate?

So it was with some enthusiasm that I waited for the launch of the What If Leeds… site, which promised to be a place to share views on how Leeds can become a better place to live, work and play.  Not withstanding reservations about branding and design, the intent felt right.

The site launched on Monday.  I wrote a piece.  I was encouraged to ‘Do the Math’ to save.  I did the math.  And my post was lost into the ether.  I tried again.  Same result. I swapped browser.  Same result.

I tried to look at  another debate.  But when I clicked the link I was told the debate I was interested in ‘was not found’.  So I tried to create it.  But no luck.

A couple of us decided to set up a site that would do the job.  A simple grou.ps site and a wordpress blog that would provide all the functionality we needed for free.  It took us half an hour.

But we were counselled to be patient.  Let the council fix the site.  Don’t set up competing sites. (In our mind it was not so much about ‘competing’ but ‘working’.  We thought we might actually be helping…).

The Council site was taken down because of ‘technical difficulties’.

Today, Wednesday it came back online.  I wrote a post and guess what…Groundhog Day.  Deja Vu! More wasted time….

I was angry and frustrated.  I still am.

Not primarily because my time had been wasted and my words lost.  Some will think that no bad thing.  But because:

  • the potential for an interesting use of social media to inform policy in the city, and through which ideas could be developed has been damaged
  • an opportunity to build social capital through online conversations about topics that matter to us has been lost
  • a platform that may allow fresh voices to be heard has so far failed to deliver
  • we have given petrol to the cynics who would make a bonfire of our attempts at online engagement and dialogue.

And the cynics lie both inside and outside of the council.

I know of at least four influential bloggers and tweeters who have attempted to work with the site and would have happily promoted it to their extensive networks, had it done what it said on the tin.

But I also know people who say to me ‘Mike, why do you bother? Even if the site was well designed and worked, do you really think they would listen?’  People who dispense the advice to me that I had dispensed to Chris all those months ago.

And as my daughter said to me this morning. ‘The Council?  What have they got to do with us?’.  And for me this says everything about the work that needs to be done to build the partnership between council and residents.

You can access the What If Leeds site here

If you have something to say, but that site won’t work for you, then you can access the site we built here.

NB This is not an attempt at ‘council bashing’.  I know and respect many in the council.  Good people, doing good work.  They get much very right.  I was an employee myself for a couple for years.  It is just a report of my experience and feelings in relation to this one piece of activity.

And hallelujah that the web makes it easy for me to do so!

The Cluetrain Manifesto for Councils

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The Cluetrain Manifesto knocked me sideways when I read it in the late 1990s.

It still knocks me sideways now.

I have spent some time thinking about how it might shape up if we were to apply it to conversations between councils and communities rather than between ‘corporations’ and ‘markets’.  In most cases it holds up pretty well.

The only place it doesn’t hold up quite so well is that in the private sector most companies that don’t get web 2.0 are likely to go to the wall.  There is no such survival imperative for councils.   There are no competitors waiting in the wings to take our council tax away.  But then again…perhaps there are… Perhaps this cuts to the heart of council as smart commissioner and clever facilitator of ‘community services’.

If you have not read the Cluetrain Manifesto, I cannot recommend it highly enough.  Just try replacing ‘corporation/company’ with ‘council’ and ‘market’ with ‘community’.  Customers may also become residents…

Here are a few highlights from my experiment:

  • Communities are conversations.
  • Communities consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
  • Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
  • Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.
  • Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.
  • Communities are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked community changes people fundamentally.
  • People in networked communities have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from agencies.
  • There are no secrets. The networked community knows more than councils do about their own products and services. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.
  • What’s happening to communities is also happening among employees.
  • Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, councils sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.
  • In just a few more years, the current homogenized “voice” of business—the sound of mission statements, visions and brochures—will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.
  • Already, councils that speak in the language of ‘the pitch’ are no longer speaking to anyone.

Some of these may be trivial.  Others perhaps profound.  If peers really do provide a better job than agencies in professionals in delivering the support that we need the implications could be massive.

When the bureaucrats show up in Leeds….

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‘Bureaucrat’ to me is not a dirty word.  I happen to think we need people to organise policies and procedures to bring some sense of organisation and pattern.  To enforce the rules when they need enforcing.  Government and governance can be good.  As long as they remember certain things.

Bureaucrats have been turning up at meetings organised by people who do not work in the official bureaucracies of the city.  They are not employed by the Council, or Business Link, or the Regional Development Agency, or the Arts Council.  But they recognise gaps that these agencies leave and they fill them.  There are enormous gaps left in the online world (anyone tell me of a bureaucracy that does a good job of engagement online?) and the world of the independent and the creative.

These ‘worlds of ones’ are difficult to service for bureaucracies who prefer to batch process large groups of similar types as this offers a much more cost efficient way to ‘achieve’ the outputs that they are contracted to achieve.   At least on the surface.

For me the presence of the bureaucrats is a very welcome one.  The more diverse the group the more potential for something interesting to happen!  They bring skills, resources, political insights and a certain knowledge about how things actually get done in the city that few of us can match.

It is interesting to watch the way in which some of the bureaucrats engage.  For some there is much  note-taking and reporting back, but very little interaction or contribution.  For others the contributions are mainly defensive and explanatory, providing the background to a particular campaign or decision that the ‘world of ones’  has been less than impressed by.  And some perhaps offer personal opinions, thoughts and beliefs, fearlessly, recognising that they attend these conversations as people and not primarily as bureaucrats.  And some, perhaps most yo an feel are torn between keeping their heads down and ‘managing’ risk or just diving in and facing the consequences, whatever they may be, later on.

Leeds Council and its agencies are beginning to wake up to the ‘online community’ (I hate that label as most of my life is not lived online).   What is interesting for me know is to see what happens now.

Are we (The Twitterati, the Web 2.0 Evangelists, the ‘people that slag us off’ as we were recently described) simply a new addition to the list of ‘stakeholders’ to be ‘managed’? Or is there an understanding that perhaps things have changed.  That hyperlinks subvert hierarchy and bureacracy.  That we may be impossible to manage but might respond well to engagement and facilitation. That we are not interested in justification and defence but in relevance, identity and soul.  That co-creation might offer a way forward?

We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching. But we are not waiting.  I wonder if we will be able to develop a way of working in the city that blends the best of chaos and order.

Who is up for Chaordic Leeds?

Elvis said it best: “We can’t go on together with suspicious minds.”

We’re both inside corporations and outside them. The boundaries that separate our conversations look like the Berlin Wall today, but they’re really just an annoyance. We know they’re coming down. We’re going to work from both sides to take them down. – Cluetrain Manifesto