Collaborative Age | The Fourth Revolution Blog

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.

In 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.

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?

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?

What 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?

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.

One 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.

What the World Needs is More People that Are Alive. How Alive are You?

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive” ~Howard Thurman

In the Industrial Age, not so long ago, society wanted us to become a standard conforming commodity. A class of weird artists was (barely, sometimes) tolerated. It is now quite obvious that boring conformity is not the best solution, neither for society as a whole (its needs increasing innovation), nor for us as individuals (we need purpose for happiness).

Yet most people are still asleep and need to become alive in the Fourth Revolution. They are not connected with their purpose or whatever would make them enthusiastic.

While it is difficult to envisage an organized world where everybody would be following its passions (some compromise might be needed at some point!), there is certainly a huge leap that can be made to reveal our common potential.

As a coach, what I am achieving most of the time is to make people become alive around a burning passion that they discover within themselves and that they realize can do more of it in their lives.

How alive are you in your daily life? How about NOW for a good time to wake up and start living?

If you want to read more about coming alive, visit Manal’s excellent blog post “What Makes Us Come Alive“, from which I noted the quote that inspired this note.

Shun the Critics. Create a Tribe and Connect with It

Seth Godin makes a great point in the Icarus Deception.

“Shun the non-believers. First you must pick yourself, then you must pick your audience”

Seth goes on to explain that the key is to grow your own tribe of believers so that you expose yourself often to people who know you and believe in your ideas. That’s also an other way to deal with critics. Make their voice disappear in the background of your tribe.

The thing is, it takes time, patience and consistent production and interaction to slowly create a tribe that is well connected with you to a point of supporting your initiatives. It is something that needs to be started early. Still it can be done. It must be done if you want to benefit from a louder voice in the world and from support for your projects.

It also requires to take a stand on a number of issues that are unconventional or outright contrarian. Because growing a tribe is like marketing: you need to define a narrow niche market where people that are particulary interested will join immediately.

How can you grow your supporting tribe to deal more easily with ever more difficult projects and endeavors? How can you define better your voice niche?

Why, even in a Complex World, you Need to Head Towards your Purpose!

In an ever more complex world where many events become difficult to predict, our tendency would be to follow the flow, let the events drive us.

That’s not how we’ll reach greatness. An acute observer of companies taking decisions in complex environments, Jim Collins, the famous author of Good to Great and his latest book Great by Choice, states:

“Most people start with the outside world and try to figure out, how can we adapt to it? Greatness doesn’t happen that way. It starts with an internal drive. And there is really a key question with big decisions: What are your core values and your real aspirations?”

sailing in storm — While the storm might bring you astray from the route, you sure still know where you want to go!

It is vital to have a direction when it comes to taking decisions, even in a complex world. Personal Purpose is essential, aligned with your core values and true aspirations. And actually, Jim Collin’s research shows that the most successful companies are those that maintain their heading the most consistently. Like the captain of a ship in the midst of a storm, he can accommodate temporary changes of direction to minimize the effect of wind and waves, but still knows where his goal lies.

Be agile in responding to events. But keep your eye fixed on where you want to go, and come back to your initial heading! Only then, of course, will you be able to reach it!

Quotes are from the foreword to the book The Greatest Business Decisions of All Times by Fortune Magazine editors

Why We Need to Stop the Race for Complication

“Simplicity has been difficult to implement in modern life because it is against the spirit of a certain brand of people who seek sophistication so that they can justify their profession” – Nicholas Taleb in his highly recommended new book, Antifragile.

During my time as a civil servant I could not stop wondering (and admiring) how bureaucrats were constantly complicating rules and processes “to better take into account individual situations and avoid threshold effects”. Bureaucrats cannot imagine anything different than complicated systems and procedures. But what they did not realize is that real life is complex. And complication is not the same as complex! Their quest to manage the complex using even more complicated rules is doomed to fail. Yet they continue. Legal systems become increasingly bloated as they try to deal with all sorts of situation. This quest will be lost – nature will always be far more imaginative than the most imaginative bureaucrat.

Let’s stop this stupid quest for complication. The solution lies in simplicity. Because complex systems – real life – will react and adapt to simple messages and solutions. Because the cost of complication is far greater than its advantage. Let’s seek simplicity in all we do – and suddenly we’ll tame complexity.

Complicated is not the same as Complex – and Why this is Important

Complicated is a very different concept from Complex. Yet most of us do not distinguish them. Even more, we try to manage Complex systems with Complicated solutions. And this turns out to be a very huge problem.

A watch: a complicated system - predictable and reliable — A watch: a complicated system – predictable and reliable

A watch is complicated. It is composed of a large number of pieces; yet they are carefully engineered to fit and move together. The system is very reliable (it’s a watch!). Most engineered systems are complicated, yet reliable. The more the components fit seamlessly together, the better the reliability.

A complex system: a representation of the situation in Afghanistan

On the contrary, a complex system involves a lot of different components or contributors; they are all interconnected and inter-dependent; but they all follow a different interest, and they make the system unpredictable. The now classical slide describing the situation in Afghanistan to General McCrystal is a classical example of the depiction of a complex system.

Complex systems are unpredictable. They are what happens in real life outside what can be carefully engineered. They are what creates the unforeseen, the adventure.

Because we mix all the time those two concepts we misunderstand a lot of what is happening around us. The way to tackle and repair complicated systems is completely different from how we can influence complex systems. The way these systems fail belongs to different realms. And when a complicated system encounters unpredictable complexity, it is where our engineering capabilities are overwhelmed. It is where our certainties become shaky. It is when catastrophes like Fukushima happen.

How Many Seeds Did You Plant Today?

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant” – Robert Louis Stevenson.

Our life is uncertain and unpredictable. We can’t know what will come out of our latest initiative, and possibly, it will look quite different from what we envisaged.

What we can do, though, is make sure we plant everyday enough seeds so that when they grow, we’ll have a few successes among the outright failures and those other seeds that won’t grow any useful products. Most of what you start will fail. It’s just a matter of starting enough stuff to succeed.

Ask yourself how many seeds you planted today: how many new people you met, how many initiatives you started or tested. That’s what should be your golden standard.

How will you double the number of seeds you plant daily, weekly?

Why our Current Political System is Reaching its Limits

Political systems (autocracy, representative democracy, etc) including the way they are implemented, have a limit: a given political system can only manage up to a certain level of complexity.

Are our current democratic institutions reaching the limits of the complexity they can manage?

When that maximum level is reached, fragility becomes a key property of the system, and the system will one day break apart. Suddenly. Completely. The Soviet political system was unable to bear the complexity driven by the Western world in the 1980’s; and to manage the inherent complexity of the modern world (as shown by the Tchernobyl accident investigation). The French political system in the 1700’s became unable to manage the increasing complexity and globalization of the world. The French Revolution and decades of instability ensued.

Sometimes (rarely), political institutions succeed in reforming themselves before reaching a critical level of fragility.

Our current representative democracies are probably the most elaborate political system, and can manage a far higher level of complexity than any of the previous political institutions. We can see everyday that autocratic regimes are overwhelmed by much lower levels of complexity. Still, the question is now, whether it can manage the level of complexity we are reaching globally?

I fear that it is not the case and that currently, we are reaching uncomfortable levels of institutional fragility. Representative democracy might need to be replaced by (or, evolve in) a new political system that will be better to deal with the current level of complexity – by choice or by default if we reach the limits before we can change. That new system needs to leverage better on networks and direct democracy. It needs to be much more global.

Let’s start now to build this new political system, before the increasing fragility of the previous one creates dramatic consequences.

Bringing the World Closer: Real-Time Audio Translation is Live

While automatic translators on internet make it easy nowadays to understand at least the sense of a text in any other language, live audio translation between languages was only something of the future.

Is that really so? In that stunning demonstration, a Microsoft executive demonstrates both live text and audio translation between English and Chinese (if you don’t have time to watch the 9 min video, watch after 6:40 for the live audio – here is the link to YouTube for that part of the video):

More information on that technology breakthrough on this TheNextWeb post: “Amazing: Microsoft turns spoken English into spoken Mandarin – in the same voice”

The world just became smaller!

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