Connected world impact on management
The more ‘connected’ we are the less ‘connected at the hip’ we need to be – potentially only applies to work….
On the 23rd of May I gave a short presentation on ‘Connected World’ to CSC media invitees in Switzerland. The presentation touched on eight key trends in the connected world; things like presence and location, mobility in everyday and business, industry cross overs, networks as an innovation platform, time and place shifting or liquid time and place and connected things in everyday digitization, business and as systems…
One question I was asked was about the impact the connected world has on management.
The style of management in the connected world is very different to the old world style.
The main difference is that as transparency of your actions increases, real life presence decreases and access to all necessary information increases for all you need to lead rather than manage.
You lead by your ability to guide, provide inputs and insights and by your role in checks and balances [budget and outcomes]. Any organization which still has people whose only role is to ‘manage’ other ‘resources’ should seriously rethink. Why? Because a flatter approach, which means that everyone has a role to play and can run with it delivering outcomes rather than reports, is much more rewarding…
On far and near worlds
Defining the meaning of far and near in the context of this site…and maybe other…let’s see
The name far other worlds for this blog came about in a chat with a friend. I had started with a name like tuning to musings, which did not seem to gell with the experienced blogger.
He asked: What is your point of view? What are the kinds of things you want to talk about in your blog?
Both great questions. As one starts blogging it is not certain where it all goes in the end [streams still emergent] but if we don’t talk about stuff we’re interested in or even passionate about then I guess we’d lose interest in it in no time. This search for expression, style and a baseline on the areas of interest is the reason why it has taken me a long time to take this blog public.
I’ve been sand boxing it for myself for quite some time really to test that I have the continuous interest in putting my thoughts down and also sharing my thoughts, at least some of them. 
In some way many of the topics I wish to write about [not sure it is all that clear yet] evolve around my interest in the combination of emergent in technology, humanity and business shape.
I search for beauty in the way in which organizations work, in the emotions that govern my everyday and in the connectedness of this world – physical and mental.
It is a search to understand and to reach. I seek to increase the interactions which renew and energize. Of course one has to do things that are not quite in line with that but for the rest, life is too short not to seek for the ultimates, while being pragmatic.
The far other worlds are those I can evoke in my mind and seek to surround myself with on paper, in visual imagery or at times by simply getting on a place and bringing geographical distances to nil and seek to improve the cultural connecting. We humans are very much the same and yet in some dimensions, shaped over time and situation, so different. I have always been interested in digging into those variants.
Far other worlds are the mental directions of my search as well as the geographical distances to family and friends, loved ones. The search relates to personal and work life interests in the future, the human condition [la folie humaine at times], beauty of soul and our surrounding environment, continuity conditions in the business world…..
Far other worlds is an infinite world of wonder, often first expressed in imagination, and then selectively realised, call me a pragmatic dreamer
Competing in a Connected World
Do or die
An enterprise can consider a few alternative pathways as to how they respond to the technology induced changes. The enterprise can decide to create waves by defining their own way to leverage the technologies. Another possibility is to ride the waves others have created. Or the enterprise can crash some waves. The last one is not really a choice but rather a disastrous outcome due to inaction. It is like the proverbial red carpet [or any color] being pulled from underneath you.
An enterprise wishing to be competitive in this connected world needs to leverage the technologies and squeeze innovation out of them, in a way that is meaningful for the enterprise, not the market as a whole. Competitive moves come from left field at a pace and in ways that typical approaches to competitive behavior cannot keep up with.
For example the telcos are rapidly shifting their business models based on the fact that the old network revenue models do not work anymore. One example is of course BT who are investing billions to streamline their environment. BT – new core will initially replace 16 different network environments, each with their own billing systems, operating systems and even companies operating them. The cost savings alone from the new network environment are huge but that will not be enough to have a meaningfully defined role in the new connected world.
One thing that fascinates me in all this is that the networks created from mid 1800s to end of the 20th century were done obviously over a long time and also were done with technologies and even in some cases raw materials we could not redo any more due to the sheer volume of demand. Imagine redigging the ground for copper wires to every home. No way! and then do that in China….
Now we have several players, so very soon after many of those just re-emerged from the financially challenging 3G auctions in the early 2000, again reinvesting billions of dollars to completely change the landscape. And the target for doing so is a short 5-10 years. May we live in interesting times ……
The enterprise plays a role in this rebuild, as a client but also as a provider. How’s that? Many of the innovations as to how exactly the key technologies are leveraged and used for the benefit of the connected world come out of the enterprise vision and strategy.
By all means leave the doing to others but without a sense of who you wish to be when you grow up you are bound to be crashing some waves you did not see coming.
Thoughts on meaning of life after Burt Bacharach concert in Sydney on the 13th of July
The joy of being able to point to, easily, one’s life work
There was no hesitation at the Sydney Concert Hall to give Burt Bacharach a standing ovation at the end of the concert on Friday. Thank you Burt for letting us sing along too. That was the hardest thing, staying mum when one knew the songs so well.
Burt’s music has been with me since I was a kid. There was no other way but to listen to it, and get very familiar with it, on our long drives to Lapland to go skiing. Burt and Santana remain in my memory. Oh yes and my father liked Abba too, they’re not so bad either. Many Australians seem to think so. Thankfully as my mum sang professionally her taste and understanding of music was good so we did not have to listen to Finnish ‘humppa’ and other ‘delightful’ outputs of the Finnish music scene at the time.
This concert and the Edith Piaf movie [La Vie en Rose] generated conversations among friends and family about the meaning of life. When one has a passion and it creates a clear and public output it must be wonderful to know that there it is; clear, simple, appreciated.
What is it that we’re really here for? What am I going to leave behind? What is it that someone, anyone , might remember me for? My salmon pasta? My co-authored books? My consumer foresight at Nokia? My overall contribution to the mobile markets? My role as a mother? My role as a daughter? Hmm not sure.
I’ve been questioning the degree of passion expressed in my life at the moment, leading a life of passion, being in the flow – I’ve been there and it feels great but it is also slightly scary. A person who is passionate about one thing, is good at it [since birth or through hard work], and the output is his own, often a creative output, has many advantages. One is that he/she does not do things because he/she has to for livelihood [although it often results in a livelihood too] but because he is pulled or driven to do it and loves doing it.
I had a chat about this with a friend who has done a number of things [world class in tennis, IT security] but one creative outlet has been his forte for a long time. Since a few years ago he took the plunge and makes a living out of his creative passion. He believes that often what holds us back is fear. We get scared of our potential output, partly maybe as the creative outputs reveal so much of our own soul. During a chat with my good friend we also identified some other reasons like being afraid of how it will consume, take us into a world from which it is hard to come out to breathe.
There are so many stories of people shifting gears later in life to do something they really did not even know they were so good at but for years said they’d love to try.
Would we all be much happier people if we were encouraged to have at least one creative activity going at any point in time? Something to be passionate about. I think so.
….more on changing names….
It is done
Now I have a new passport arriving from France with my maiden name, which was already there anyway, but the passport needed to be redone, getting in to the biometrics era. I have received my name change document from the Australian births deaths and marriages office and I just got a letter from Finland that my name change has been approved. That is kind of funny cause hey it was my name to start with but processing my name reversal is one way to make money for the government.
In Finland it is actually rather cool. The officials called ‘Maistraatti’ will have the name change on their systems and hence many official parties will see it automatically. In Finland I don’t have to carry a name change document with me everywhere I want to make a change, like I need to in Australia.
Finland is one of those countries where big brother, aside from being a global/local reality TV show, which has hopefully run its course, is one of the least feared issues of the Connected World. In the US and in Australia such access to information seems to cause people some privacy issues. I guess cause people have so much to hide???
