Wow. I was excited to learn about a new crowd-sourcing, social collaboration launch from the government’s new Chief Innovation Office – Challenge.gov. After my initial visit, I was dismayed. And after repeated visits and consideration, I’m really disappointed. First, the easy stuff. The look and feel of this new site looks like a copycat of idea exchanges that Pepsi, Dell and Starbucks have been doing a much better job with for years. The site is driven from the center of the government with agencies submitting programs that they want help to solve. Really? In case they haven’t noticed, it might be helpful for citizens to have a voice and introduce & vote about the ideas and problems they would most like to see solved.
After doing a bit of digging, I noticed that the GSA acquired this site for free. And it shows. If you’re serious about this, give it the resources and attention it deserves.
So take a quick stroll through the site and you’ll see challenges for a National Radon Poster challenge or GovGab – a project to source stories about how you’ve used government information in your life. Again, wow. Somewhere, during one of the most difficult economic climates we’ve experienced, government employees are working on these pressing challenges.
It seems to me like spending some time automating the Census process and bringing it into this century or reducing those annoying statements you get from the Social Security Administration would be much more innovative than this. And that’s just fixing old problems, not innovating and thinking about future ones.
In some recently released data from the Pew Research Center, social adoption continues to grow at a steady clips for all age groups. Interestingly, the age group with the greatest adoption is 50 – 64, with a reported adoption rate of 47% now. Wow, nearly half of all Americans in that age group are using some sort of social media. I’ve seen too many organizations brush off the idea of using social computing solutions because a large percentage of their workforce was older. This clearly isn’t an option any more with the 50-64 yr olds nearing 50% usage and all ages below that well above 50%. Yet another case for embracing some strong organizational social courage.
When I was at Deloitte, some colleagues developed this ingenious tool, The Bullfighter, and the Fight the Bull website to reduce the use of ridiculous business jargon from our work. You know what I’m talking about, the words we use with our family and friends who have jobs that require them to speak in plain, clear English. When we use them, they are returned with astonishing stares and rebukes. And certainly don’t drop them during a cocktail party…cue the crickets. I still go back to this site to look at some of their clever videos…I laugh every time I watch those because it’s too close to home.
I saw a new site today that picks up where Bullfighter left off. Unsuck It. A refreshing and new approach to ridding the scourge of awful business speak.
Now, if business schools would only do a better job of doing the same. Because nothing corrupts the power of communication, storytelling and persuasion, and undermines the momentum of change like ridiculous business jargon.
If you haven’t seen it, I recommend it. If you have, perhaps you agree that it’s a captivating movie – intellectually and visually. And as change professional and a perpetual student of my craft, it’s a really rewarding journey. And for those who lead change, the movie outlined some of the key tenets that are important to the success of any transformation. Here are a few that caught my attention:
1. Ideas are immeasurably powerful – the power of a compelling idea is inspiring, galvanizing and exponentially more powerful than the most irrefutable data
“What’s the most resilient parasite? An Idea. A single idea from the human mind can build cities. An idea can transform the world and rewrite all the rules. Which is why I have to steal it.”
2. Positive visioning – focusing on a positive outcome instead of the negative consequences is a much more powerful motivator of change
Cobb: “I think positive emotion trumps negative emotion every time.”
3. Involvement = Commitment – the art of leading change is involving the key stakeholders in crafting and creating the desired end state; and leaders that are able to share the credit for the great visionary ideas have mastered a critical part of the energy the propels change
4. It starts with good architecture – but a plan is just the beginning. As we used to say in the Army, plan the fight but fight the battle. Having a well trained, aligned team that communicates well and is flexible, stalwart and resilient in the throws of dynamic depatures from the original plan may be the leading success factor of successful change.
Now if this fantasy of being able to shape change and decisions becomes a reality, I’ll either be in a completely fascinating line of work or out of a job.
I first wrote about the concept of social courage on the Roberts Golden blog. It continues to be a hot, enigmatic topic for many.
A great article on how the US State Department is showing courage and pioneering a new trail by embracing social tools was in the recent NYTimes Magazine — it’s a must read and may help you break the inertia you have individually or as an organization. And thanks to Elisabeth Bednar at Bold Type Communications, who sent this to me hot off the digital presses in the wee hours of Sunday morning.
Welcome to my blog! I’m just getting it started so stay tuned and I look forward to sharing more with you in the days to come…
