Ageism on the net

I have been wondering whether I was the only one getting annoyed by some of the ageism on the net…

Today I found out at the Enterprise 2.0 Future Exploration that no I am not the only one getting tired of this simplistic cop-out or even worse, ageism by hiring only those under 45, cause those above have some sort of genetic mutation which makes it impossible for them to a/ get it and b/ add value.

We heard from the final panel, four people who were baby boomers or gen xers and who have Twitter streams, blog, use wikis and work and play enthusiastically in the evolving Enterprise 2.0 space.

Peter Evans-Greenwood from Capgemini said it well. He is tired of the tendency to lump enormous masses of people into “age based horizontal categories” and then think that it is somehow a useful be all and end all for any particular decision agenda.

Just because there are loads of people out there who don’t get a kick out of how it works in detail does not make them ‘to-be-ignored’ consumers of the technologies and services – it still has to be said – or poor decision makers in companies who create the technologies and services.

It is in the attitude, willingness to engage and adapt previous knowledge with the new. Us humans are very adaptable, we have to.

So next time a baby boomer CEO of any top net company launches into a “the over xx year olds just don’t get it” – I think it would be good to contextualize that answer with the individual speaking.

Yes I am a baby boomer too, just …….and in my head – say what?

Enterprise 2.0 is about changing behaviours

At the Enterprise 2.0 Future Exploration…..

One fundamental change will be in the day to day way in which people in the company work.

Euan Semple a former leader in BBC on knowledge management spoke of the difficulty to counter some of the arguments against leveraging the social networking and collaboration tools like wikis, blogs and RSS in the Enterprise. The fear is that people will be wasting time roaming around other people’s blogs or reading feeds or taking part in meandering conversations.

One approach Euan took was examining the old ways if the new ways were so frightening.

One of my favorite quotes by a systems scientist Marilyn Ferguson, a system theorist, is around change and the difficulty with it…..”it is not so much that we’re so in love with the old ways but change is like being in between trapezes…..”. Part of the solution is taking those for whom letting go is too hard by the hand and giving them a sample of the experience.

Those who are already in flat and less hierarchical organisations are likely to have embraced these technologies as they fit neatly to the behaviours already. The transparency and level setting technologies bring about visibility to the dead wood and the meetings which do not advance the organisations agendas.

It is fundamentally about how we all change our behaviours and our role in the organisation. Us vulnerable people need to deal with our fears.

What gets nettified?

Previously I asked whether your business was being nettified. Now I’d like to ponder on what does get nettified or is being nettified.

Nettify and nettification

I found no dictionary results and only two other references to the word being used for this meaning.

v. Nettified

v.tr

1. To make web friendly

2. To intertwine/entangle with the web

v.intr

To become nettified

noun

Nettification

There is another sort of meaning it seems to the word nettified [found only one reference to that], which is something like homogenized/ net effect.

Often words like digitized, web-enabled, standardization, connectedness and openness are linked with nettification.

OK, now that we’ve sorted that one out… What does get or is being nettified?

1. Business models

- Advertising and its future pleasing variants [one hopes] are becoming a means to fund many kinds of businesses

2. Processes

- Sales, client relationship management, operations, supply chain, financial and legal advice, consulting, development, human resources, marketing, IT services, administration, E2E and B2C and B2B communication and collaboration, product and service creation…..

3. Employee models

- Loosely coupled, tightly coupled models and anything in between

4. Corporate and other communications

- Brand, PR, marketing, shareholder, customer, partner, employee

Many examples exist in every category mentioned here. No one organization has taken nettification to every aspect, as far as I know. For in-house I think the US military might be approaching something along these lines. Companies like Lego, Pfizer and others are doing interesting things in engaging with their audiences.

Interesting times ahead.

Is your business nettified?

One industry (ICTI) has swelled up a strong wind for all other industries. The Internet, a breeze in the early 90s, is hungry for more.

Life is in the nettification’s embrace with technologies like:

• online/offline (Adobe – Air),
• mobile (like Android and other open promises),
• location brilliant (many emerging businesses and applied businesses),
• multi-sensory,
• searchable/findable,
• workflow/processes and
• beautifully presented experiences

Isn’t it amazing how much of your life now depends on the seemingly geekish activity to augment it, speed it up, slow it down, delight you, nurture you….

This is an avalanche of innovation and change in your life and the business you’re in

In many ways the future is not yet visible and yet it is already there in a myriad of smallish experiments of what is possible when current/new technologies are applied to newly thought through business model elements and customer delight. Simple implementations to extend a net based application to the desktop/mobile device for off-line work using the Adobe Air product is a clear example.

In short if your business has not got some serious thinking going on about its nettification I think you might leaving lots of money on the table in the next few years or worse yet, the whole company. If you can develop and launch services and businesses on the net in a matter of weeks, how do you compete?

How very exciting!