Blog
News, insight and tips from the social web.
The Hoop blog covers the evolving digital landscape, social media, mobile communications, content marketing and also includes 5 top finds and Fish on Friday. Feel free to make comments.
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How are things for you? »
Most of the people we work with are facing big changes. Rather than batten down the hatches, this is the ideal opportunity to innovate.
As business considers the challenges that lie ahead it can, with the right advice and help, discover, trial, and adopt new web based tools that increase workflow, improve customer engagement and drive down costs. These new tools, coming in from the edge to the mainstream, can deliver huge downstream benefits and help make change exciting rather than onerous, and free up people to do more with less.
Now is the time to innovate
Economic pressure, a new Government agenda and a general change in the wind are forcing many organisations to rethink how they do things. As the digital infrastructure around us becomes ever more sophisticated, people are finding new ways to design and deliver services in more agile, efficient and user friendly ways. This is an era of innovation, driven by those that have the vision and guile to make things happen. Many of them responding a social, rather than business need.
The signal we are getting from the people we work with is very clear - with so much technology around, how do we know we are making the right choices? It's a valid point. Keeping up with the pace of digital business is beyond many. But technology isn't really the issue. There's a lot of it around and it's getting smarter everyday. It's what people do with that really matters. And that's where it gets interesting.
In our research work we talk with people about their experiences of using technologies business and consumer technologies. The insights we gain into their needs, frustrations, requirements and capabilities are accumulating in our research knowledge bank. Certain themes recur: (ease of) access, (fair) value, (good) usability, relevance and (quality) service. Compare this desire with the experience most of us have of using existing technology. It's generally the polar opposite.
Fat technology - or light and fast
Many organisations are tied in knots by technology that is no longer fit for purpose. Bloated, over-specified enterprise systems, conceived in a different era, and with little involvement of the poor folk who have to use them every day. It's not easy for a business to uncouple from such systems, but if a strategic decision to do so is not taken, frustrated staff simply work around it in any case.
They generally seek out and recommend to others, web based tools and applications that enable them to work in newer, smarter ways. These tools tend to be easier to use than the systems specified by their employer. By working around complicated and cumbersome IT systems they become freer, more connected and more productive.
Employers should not try to crack down on this and force their people back behind the firewall. Instead, they should empower their people to work in the way that best suits them. Encourage this user led innovation and go with it. Enterprises that embrace this shift away from IT specification enjoy many benefits. Staff are happier, productivity increases and costs are reduced.
People are choosing their own preferred tools
The emergence of web based tools that can be adopted by even large enterprises is part of a wider shift from ownership of technology to subscription. It also marks a shift towards people self selecting the technology they find most useful. What this tells us is that people are taking technology into their own hands and completely redesigning the way they work.
This is another step change in the evolution of the web that's being driven by people, not technology. Many enterprises however, adhering to the top down rather than bottom up change approach are too inflexible to grasp the opportunity. This is unsurprising, and will continue until a move away from IT is common place.
Much of the real innovation in people's hands now happens on the edge, and is often a response to a social rather than business need. In trying to meet or improve a social need, these new tools can reveal new and exciting benefits and even entirely new business models. Tools such as Patient Opinion and MyPolice are bringing service providers and the public closer together and delivering improvements and efficiencies that weren't possible by any other means. School of Everything is revolutionising learning and has the power to make massive savings for Local Authorities. And the king of edge innovations - Twitter - which started out as side project - proves that small tools that aim to do one thing brilliantly can be much more effective than a big one that does many things badly.
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Tags: Business strategy, Digital strategy, User centred thinking
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Free seminar session for you and your team »
Round up your colleagues for a one hour insight session on how digital is creating the new business paradigm.
One of the concerns regularly flagged up by our clients is how to keep up with what's happening in the wider world of digital media and how to apply it to their business.
Scan the horizon
With developments taking place at constant break neck speed, it's a full time job to keep on top of new applications, new methods, technology and, in particular, the changing habits of customers. Add to this the fact that enthusiasm and know within client teams is usually inconsistent, and you see how this concern can easily escalate.
Upgrade your digital know-how
To help bridge the knowledge gap an share latest developments form the nexus of digital media and business strategy in the wider world, we are offering free group sessions to organisations that want to:
- understand how digital is forcing fundamental changes in business practice
- see how other organisations are grasping new opportunities
- gain an overview of the new tools available
- learn simple ways to get closer to customers, staff and stakeholders
Start a conversation
These sessions are intended to provide an overview of the latest trends. They should help to bring everyone up to bring everyone in your team to the same level of understanding. But above all, it should start a conversation inside your organisation that leads to new opportunities for success.
We are offering these sessions to existing and former clients first and are happy to travel to you if you are within the M25 area. For new enquiries or to book a session further afield please contact us to discuss.
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Unlearning - the only way to learn »
What if most of what you know now is no longer appropriate for the future? Time to pick up some new skills for the digital workplace.
Russell Ackoff, long term scourge of established corporate thinking, maveric teacher and highly influential management guru, maintained that everything taught at business school is irrelevant. He was still banging this drum up to his death, aged 90, in October 2009.
In this inspiring interview for Peter Day's World of Business programme on BBC Radio 4, Ackoff asserts that nearly everything we need to learn in business, we learn on the job. This is not the case for Medical School graduates who, as he points out, leave college work-ready, having already had some on the job training.
It does explain though, why business school graduates take years to reach positions of responsibility, rather than going in at the top.
The lesson here is simple. If what we need to know in order run things we learn by doing, then what we need now is to learn new skills relevant for our times. The work we do here at Hoop brings us into close contact with many for whom learning the skills required in the digital era is painful and unfamiliar.
But to be useful in business in a networked, collaborative world, people already in work, particularly those in management, must un-learn most of what they picked up since starting out, and develop new skills, new tools and new ways of collaborating.
The old saying tells us old dogs find it hard to learn new tricks. But learn them they must. Otherwise, they will have no legitimacy in positions of leadership.
The tools are certainly available, so too is the evidence that these new tools actually work. In most cases, the thing holding back progress is fear and self preservation. Neither of which can exist if any new learning is to take place.
So we try to help people unlearn in a safe and constructive way and pick up new skills free from fear. It's only by doing this that they ensure their own relevance and value in the future.
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