Author: Jeremie Averous

The Demise of the Publisher: Content Marketing

During the Industrial Age, Publishers enjoyed a fantastic position as being the only one to be able to spread the information. Newspapers in particular, were the only way for companies to advertise until the invention of other broadcasting techniques such as radio and TV.

classified ads newspaperIn the post “Content marketing is our next big revenue threat — unless we embrace it now“, Kylie Davis provides an excellent summary of the issue that publishers face today, in the particular example of newspaper publishing (however this would apply to all other broadcasting media).

In summary, those organizations that were using publishers as intermediaries are now broadcasting directly their message to the world. No need of a publisher any more! Why would you continue to believe that only publishers can get you access to some kind of captive audience that you would not be able to reach otherwise? You can, today, make your information available on the internet in a format you can better control, using all different kinds of techniques from written ads to videos.

This is what is called ‘content marketing’. Kylie’s position in her post that it is possible to make the published content evolve to make it better suited to the advertiser’s needs can be discussed – in any case it shows that the publishers cannot any more decide what’s worthy or not as when they enjoyed this fantastic monopolistic position of being the only ones able to spread information to the world.

As we move through the Fourth Revolution, organizations and individuals will increasingly publish themselves or through content aggregators. Publishers will become extinct as a profession. It is ineluctable.

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Do you master the Art of Asking?

How well do you master the art of asking? In a recent talk at TED, Amanda Palmer (the singer that raised more than a million on Kickstarter) speaks about how connection can be triggered by asking (and not just giving first!). And how by asking her tribe she got everything she needed during her trips.

“By asking people, you connect with them, and by connecting with them, they want to help you“. This redefines the economics of many fields, in particular music and arts in general: you create a connection by asking first; and then you can nurture this connection into a great relationship that is mutually beneficial.

Artists can and should be supported by fans, as broadcast of their art is becoming free. Like Amanda, can we make an art to ask?

From now, how are you going to Ask better?

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How humans intervene in Internet’s workings

“There has been a shift in our thinking,” said Scott Huffman, an engineering director in charge of search quality at Google. “A part of our resources are now more human curated.”

Brain in a computer
Which is really the brain of internet: humans or chips?

This is an except of an interesting paper, Computer Algorithms Rely Increasingly on Human Helpers. Where you discover that humans are increasingly being used to increase the relevance of some choices where algorithms struggle.

According to the paper, there would be an increasing trend in putting humans at the core of certain processes to enhance them. Is that a temporary fix until new algorithms appear that would be better or is it a durable trend? Actually there seems to be two types of human intervention:

  • those that do systematic data churning like the Facebook and Google Indian offices that administer part of the services – they will be replaced someday by a machine (like we had mentioned in our post on Google Maps, there are armies of people behind many of the internet services we are using daily, that link or correct information that machines cannot link or understand properly.)
  • those that work to improve the machine (algorithms), which are those mainly described in the paper and which number will remain steady or increase in time.

Internet is an ever complex machine that needs engineers and technicians to improve the tools. When it comes to the borders of human nature and psychology, humans will remain for long at the core of the design of the machine.

Of course, the internet algorithms are still designed by humans. And as requirements become finer and finer, edging to psychology, humans are still indispensable, with an ever higher level of knowledge. And humans will remain so. Machines are not yet fully in charge!

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How we can really identify important information

We still identify important information through personal contacts (or even, get the information through these contacts) – and this will continue. Faceless social networks will not replace the amount of information filtering through personal trust. Internet will not replace personal networks built over time and patience.

social word of mouth in action
Nothing will replace personal networks as a source of worthy information

While our information environment has grown to the point of being inaudible, we try to filter it, and we do that by leveraging on our network. We look at those links and materials shared by our known contacts with much more interest and focus. We ask our relations to help us in finding the right answer to our needs.

Some marketers are trying to leverage this observation into a technique, like Andy Sernowitz and “word of mouth marketing“.

Fourth Revolution’s social networks allow us to draw much quicker and easier on our community of relations, and get to the information efficiently and remotely. Yet it does not mean that we would believe social networks members we would not know personally, or with which we would not have developed a relationship through consistent exchange over time.

Do you leverage enough your network community to filter out important information or to get informed of things that are important to you? What could you do to make it more effective?

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Why it is ever more difficult to identify actionable information

The Fourth Revolution comes with a new challenge for most of us: we have much more information to our fingertips or in our phone than ever before – and potentially, too much information, a noise that hides what might really be important.

We have maps, public transportation schedules, the latest news and rumors from all over the world in our pockets. We can apprehend the world with a detail never achieved before. Yet the same old problem still lingers: how can we really identify what is important for us and for what we intend to achieve?

difficult to hear from the background noiseWhat is really difficult is to extract the useful information. Data might be available but because connections don’t happen, it is not transformed in useful information (for example after 9-11, it was ascertained that federal agencies in the US collectively had enough data to understand what was being prepared, but failed to connect the pieces). Even more annoying, because there is ever more data available, there are ever more spurious correlations – and the possibility of wrong decisions and innocent people being impacted.

We all reach the limits of what we can physically receive, process and transmit (whereas in the past that was only limited to a few individuals at the top of organizations).

While some believe that thanks to new technology, we are better informed in our decisions, it might not be true. Because the background noise intensity has grown so much, it has become harder to discern the important information. It also sometimes give the wrong impression of being able to understand what is happening.

How are you discerning important information, the information at the basis of your action?

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How to Cut Through Complexity: Using Compelling Purpose

Cutting through complexity and simplifying complexity is a key value proposition for organizations and individuals. That’s why good consulting or coaching is about simplifying complexity.

Purpose signOne of the most elegant ways of achieving this result is to find the organization’s or individual’s purpose, and let them align their actions and issues with their purpose. If the purpose is strong and compelling enough, the rest will be certainly simplified:

  • what’s not a priority will be easily abandoned in favor of what’s important
  • what’s a priority will be clear, compel action-taking and destroy all sorts of procrastination.

Are you doubting it? Well, remember the last time you were madly in love with someone. It was a purpose. Didn’t your life suddenly appear simple, and wasn’t action-taking made easier? Didn’t you do things you would never have dreamed of trying before?

It all comes down to the compelling factor. To passion. If, when you think about your purpose, you don’t feel emotion, it’s not your real purpose.

Find your real compelling purpose. It will simplify your life.

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Good consulting or coaching is about simplifying complexity

What is actually good consulting or coaching? As a professional consultant and coach it might be time that I ponder on that question!

Zen Garden
Focus and reflection is often what people expect from external contributions

Reflecting on my most successful and satisfying moments, I can relate them to AHA moments for my clients, who were discovering an entire new perspective on things. This perspective was in fact often a way to simplify their life (or their organization’s) by providing new focus. Of course, consulting and coaching are not the same thing: consulting comes with advice and solutions; while coaching takes an open approach and lets the client come up with its personal solution. Still, again and again, the key of the intervention was to simplify real or subjective complexity. It often got realized through finding purpose, or what the actual, real, objective of the endeavor is.

Often enough most of the value is brought in when the coach or the consultant simplifies complexity, letting a clear path readily visible and less confusion as to the way forward. One consulting firm (KPMG) even has the tagline “cutting through complexity”. It can only take a few minutes – but the external eye, sounding board and independent perspective is essential in discovering that new path. I love these moments where coming with an independent, sometimes irreverent viewpoint suddenly simplifies years of artificially added complexity layers!

How did the coaches and consultants you’ve used performed in simplifying complexity?

Hat tip to Patrick Laredo, President of X-PM, a leading interim management company, for the thoughts and discussions on consulting and complexity

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How to Really Being Productive in the Collaborative Age

“Being productive isn’t about wringing every last minute out of every day doing something or checking stuff off a to-do list and building a relentlessly efficient system that allows nothing through the cracks.” – Amber Naslund

Productive Ape
Is that the way you are productive?

Now that’s quite an interesting thought, which is further developed in this blog post “Rethinking Productivity“.

Amber Naslund is an entrepreneur and she’s working in social networks business. She’s quite advanced in the Fourth Revolution. So, no wonder that when she looks at productivity, she looks at it from the point of view of the K.E.E.N. (Knowledge Exchanging Enhancing Networker): productivity of the K.E.E.N. is very much about creativity, not about repeating tasks efficiently!…

Let’s leave the last word to Amber:

“We need time to float along on the breeze. Have a casual, spontaneous conversation. Enjoy some silence. Write a bunch of random stuff that we never finish, and be okay with that. Productivity, at its essence, means being able to bring things about.”

The good thing, is that it just killed our guilt of doodling around (next time you’re asked, say that you are growing your next ideas)!

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Focus means saying no. How often do you say no?

Here’s a famous quote from Steve Jobs about creativity:

no, thanks“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other ideas that they are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done.”

Again and again, in my coaching practice, when people develop plan to evolve and change their life, I encounter that one very fundamental question is:

“What are you ready to stop doing?”

It’s a tough question. It is hard – but necessary. You can’t just add up stuff to your life. Letting go of something you are doing shows commitment, prioritization, focus.

Are you as proud of the things you have stopped doing than of the stuff you’ve been recently starting?

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Is national investment in R&D a fallacy for economic growth ?

It is a commonly held belief that to create innovation, and hence economic growth and competitiveness, governments and companies should invest in R&D. R&D expenditure is an important indicator used at political level to evaluate the competitiveness of economies.

The first powered flight by the Wright brothers
The first powered flight by the Wright brothers

However, there is plenty of substantial evidence, at least anecdotal, that the most impacting and most fundamental inventions were rarely created by government or centralized spending. For example, computers created in a garage; or powered flight invented by self-taught bicycle shop owners. Sometimes R&D spending creates something unexpected, not part of the original program.

The competition between the Wright Brothers and Samuel Langley, a well established academic with generous funding from government, is possibly the best example.

Samuel Langley
Samuel Langley (a true academic!)

It went to the point where the US government denied the Wright brothers recognition for forty years, so upset were they that they had succeeded and not the program the government had funded!

Some details on that story can be found here, here. On this link there are some interesting thoughts about the effect of government and bureaucratic funding, with reflections around this story.

(Centrally planned) government or corporate funding might not be the most effective way to foster innovation. Letting an ecosystem of innovators create, destroy, fail and finally evolve into suitable innovations is certainly a much better solution. But central planning and bureaucratic management is unable to support or control such an arrangement.

The issue is more about creating a social context where failure needs to be accepted as part of the search for innovation, and where innovation needs to remain nested in action. It is not certain that the huge push of China in R&D and academic research will be effective if there is no possibility to experiment and to fail in Chinese society.

How can we release the inventive potential in a society better than spreading centrally controlled funds?

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What Makes Great Organizations and Individuals different?

According to Simon Sinek, what makes the difference for great organizations – and great leaders – is that they know their ‘Why”. It is from their purpose that they derive how they do things and what they do in detail.

All individuals and organizations know their “What”. Some organizations know their “How”, but very rarely their “Why”.

Watch Simon Sinek give a great explanation with fantastic examples related to the Wright Brothers versus the establishment, and other great examples in this TED speech (if you’re a hurry, watch from 1:20 to 5:50 – if you can stop then!):

(Here is the link if you can’t see the video)

“People don’t buy What you do, they buy Why you do it” – Simon Sinek

Simon_sinekSimon Sinek’s Golden Circle (Why-How-What) is an interesting approach. It triggers important questions for ourselves and for our organizations.

Is your personal “Why” clear and compelling? Is your organization’s “Why” clear and compelling?

If not, what are you going to do about it?

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Stop blaming, and take responsibility for once!

Naturally, we almost always blame someone or something else for our powerlessness to achieve what we would like. And the worst is that we often don’t realize it because it has become so second-nature to us! It sometimes take someone else to pinpoint this awful habit.

The search for someone to blame is always successfulWhenever in a workshop or a meeting, for example in organizations, I instill the rule of ‘no blaming’, it soon becomes apparent how natural it is for us to find (good) reasons why we did not do what we committed to, or what we intended to. When you pay attention to it, you’ll find people fall all the time into the blaming mode. Not only blaming others, but also blaming the weather, the system, their family and/or their origin, and so on (our inventiveness in the field of excuses is truly fantastic)…

By the way, the higher ranking the participants are, the easier they will find excuses, which makes it even more fun to instill that rule of no blaming in executive or board meetings!

What if we would take responsibility more often? What if we would take responsibility for the delay, for the screw-up, for our incapacity to exercise more or eat less? Just taking responsibility changes everything. It makes us in charge of our own life. It stops creating this tyranny of unchangeable fate and destiny.

Once you are aware of it, you’ll realize each time you use blame and excuses. You won’t bear it any more. And slowly you’ll become more responsible. You’ll become more human. And you’ll change your fate and destiny.

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