Technology and Organizations

Loic Le Meur is the founder and CEO of Seesmic: a firm providing web and desktop applications for participating in social media like Twitter, Facebook, and video conversation. I had the pleasure of attending his May presentation to the the Bay Area CIO IT Executives Meetup Group. During the Q&A (46:45 in the video) he related a story of how he came to his strong rule of not criticizing his competition. I saw his story as an example of someone practicing TOP (technology, organizations, people) Management.

Video of Loic’s Presentation

He had founded the first shared web hosting company in France (late 1990s). One weekend he opened the paper to find that the major teleco had introduced an identical product, using a virtually identical ad image (Loic had a Scottish castle to demonstrate “rock solid” hosting — the telco had a Spanish castle).

He saw three options: 1. Sue the teleco — not a great idea given the telco would have tons of lawyers on staff, he was just a start-up; 2. Criticize the telco in the press and around town; or 3. Invite them to lunch. He went with option three.

He called the manager in charge and welcomed him to the shared web hosting space. He also complimented him on the ad and copy. During the resulting lunch they had a nice conversation and Loic and suggested that they do something together in the future. Two weeks later the telco acquired Loic’s firm for enough money to buy the nice French house (1999 tech acquisition).

I see this as an example of Loic’s systems savvy and TOP Management skills. Clearly he understands the technologies involved and the strategic opportunities. He also understands the organizational realities, and how people react to criticism versus compliments. Lunch was a way to bring the technology, organization, and people of the situation together.

Loic and his company, Seesmic, continue with this same approach. I’ve written a prior post on Loic’s IdeasProject interview “Sharing Changes Everything,” and you can also see this approach in the information posted on the Seesmic blog:

Seesmic: For the Community; By the Community
Instead of operating in “stealth mode”, Loic is creating Seesmic in the open, with the help and guidance of the Seesmic community at large. At Loic.tv, he provides a daily video show on his thoughts, experiences and decisions in crafting the business. New hires, the company’s logo, office furniture selection and more are collaborative efforts with Seesmic’s virtual community. The show is followed by more than 5,000 people a day.

As always, my colleagues and I are looking for additional examples of managers who have systems savvy and TOP Management skills. We’d love to do interviews or would appreciate links to case studies. Please feel free to contact me directly via the comments section here or via email: t at terrigriffith.com.

A few weeks ago I ran across this IdeasProject video of Seesmic CEO Loic Le Meur. He opens with descriptions of how sharing changes everything — sharing versus protecting your ideas. Good points, but he really hooked me when he talked about the value of sharing ideas with social media friends, and how this gives you instant access to their thinking:

It has already changed the way I think. I feel like I live in a room, which is across the world, but I can just call a friend and there will always be someone to answer one of my questions, as long as I share as well with them. It’s two ways. It’s about living in a world with a community that can help you….

It changed me completely. I cannot think alone anymore. I need to think with my friends, all the time.

I think you can extend these ideas to blogging and other public writing. I blog and tweet to think with my friends (join with them in a virtual conversation). I gain from their comments as Loic mentions, and I benefit by having the goal of framing my thinking to join with that of my friends. Psychologists describe this as the “cognitive benefits of teaching.”

The opportunity to microblog, blog, and/or post to Facebook all also have the benefit of being motivational. My friend Leslie Coff and I were talking Monday about how we are often inspired by our friends to write a particular post. For her it is when she has had multiple similar questions from her patients (she’s an amazing acupuncturist and provides a blog as additional outreach). For me, it’s often when I’ve heard similar questions from my students or business colleagues. Our friends can inspire a more thoughtful response than we might be able to give that the end of an appointment or in a quick question and answer period. We are inspired to think, to think for the benefit of our friends, and hopefully for the benefit of engaging in a conversation on the topic.

Do you have time to tweet, blog, or post to Facebook? How do you not have time? If your job is to have ideas, and/or to find ways to share ideas, then enlisting your friends in the work — even if only by giving you a virtual audience — can speed the thought process. I also find great value in documenting my thought process. It took a while for me to be willing to share my alpha drafts with the world. As Loic says later in his interview, “The new way of doing it is getting feedback from the very beginning.” This has its risks, as Loic notes: your friends may tell you you’re wrong, your competition may see what your up to — but the benefits to your thinking win out.

Apple’s annoucement of their new iPhone 3GS includes the news that the phone will shoot video. The Flip video camera has already turned HD video into a 3.5 oz proposition — with one click to YouTube. What does this mean for our organization knowledge gathering and consumption?

In prior posts I’ve talked about the value of video: Ease of use and the value of the content are critical. Ease of use refers to both gathering and consuming the video. Gathering is helped by these new lightweight easy-to-use cameras. Consumption — finding what you need to know — is more difficult but where there is pain it is likely someone will try and reduce it. Autotranscription, tagging, and video search are some avenues. (Thanks in advance for comments providing links to good tools.)

The value of personal video is an open question. Do we as individuals know what will be valuable? Do our organizations understand the kind of video it is important to support? Just as we are given the opportunity to be “accidental systems designers” by the possibilities of our technologies, now we are being given the opportunity to be “accidental” producers, directors, talent, and videographers.

Research focused on more formal multimedia content may be applicable. Kai H. Lim and Izak Benbasat have the following result:

Multimedia facilitates the retention and subsequent recall of explanative information but not of descriptive information. Explanative information is organized facts connected by their underlying functional relationships. Descriptive information consists of isolated facts without an explanation of the relationships between these facts. The ability to retain and recall explanative information, in turn, leads to a greater ability to make correct inferences about new organizational situations.

(Interesting eyetracking study on text versus multimedia.)

What about videochat? Seesmic, for example, provides a Twitter-like stream of video communication. How might that provide knowledge management value in organizations? What does video add? What do we add when we communicate via video? My brother just looks and sounds like my brother when we video chat. His daughters grab their latest stuffed animal, piece of art, sing….

The Flip camera is out now. The new iPhone arrives June 19th. How will you contribute to your organization’s knowledge base given these new tools?