Everything is in a state of flux. An old French proverb says “the more things change the more they remain the same”. Even when things seem to be in a chaotic state of change what remains the same, at least for some, is the ability to adapt.

A Fast Company article titled This Is Generation Flux: Meet The Pioneers Of The New And Chaotic Frontier Of Business  states:  Despite recession, currency crises, and tremors of financial instability, the pace of disruption is roaring ahead. The frictionless spread of information and the expansion of personal, corporate, and global networks have plenty of room to run.

And heres the conundrum: When businesspeople search for the right forecast–the road map and model that will define the next era–no credible long-term picture emerges. There is one certainty, however. The next decade or two will be defined more by fluidity than by any new, settled paradigm; if there is a pattern to all this, it is that there is no pattern. The most valuable insight is that we are, in a critical sense, in a time of chaos.To thrive in this climate requires a whole new approach, which well outline in the pages that follow. Because some people will thrive. They are the members of Generation Flux. This is less a demographic designation than a psychographic one: What defines GenFlux is a mind-set that embraces instability, that tolerates–and even enjoys–recalibrating careers, business models, and assumptions.

Not everyone will join Generation Flux, but to be successful, businesses and individuals will have to work at it. This is no simple task. The vast bulk of our institutions–educational, corporate, political–are not built for flux. Few traditional career tactics train us for an era where the most important skill is the ability to acquire new skills.

Adapting To Chaos

Prior to the web things were predictable. In the web 1.0 economy things were fairly predictable. The dynamics of web 2.0 and beyond are chaotic and the only thing  predictable is rapid change.  With this increased speed of change has come a decrease in planning for the future. We are so uncertain about what will happen five years from now that both individuals and corporations seldom plan more than a few months in advance.

Chaos creates opportunity. Those who embrace the latest technologies will make fortunes.  In the midst of accelerating change, we sometimes forget that new technologies are not new things that we must do. They are simply new ways of doing what we have always done.  The difference is technology accelerates the rate of change which changes the way we do things. Start learning how to do things differently and you will embrace chaos.

As the old French proverb says “the more things change the more they remain the same”. What remains the same is those that resist change. This time there are more people fueling change than those resisting it.

The proverbial “all-you-can-eat” business model works great for some products and not-so great for others. The opportunity, of course, is to be able to transform non-viable business methods into viable one’s using social media tools and data. In this article, we explore how the AYCE model can be improved.

Netflix for the Sky

The Netflix model for movies has been touted as one of the greatest business innovations in the modern era of technology – not because it is new, but because it works. Now, consider that the AYCE model has been applied to transportation, club membership, and telecommunication (cell phone data plans), etc. Some work better than others….

I found this recent article about American Airlines experience with the AYCE model – which became their worst nightmare. In 1981, you could buy a lifetime all access pass to first class travel on United Airlines for 250,000 dollars. While touted as a good way for AA to raise a lot of quick money, it proved to have long term liabilities that far outstripped the performance of the fund raising. Today, a small carrier called Surf Air is now trying to use a subscription based system on a limited circuit using executive turboprop aircraft.

What is the comparable human behavior?

AYCE models impact human behavior in often unpredictable (read “unprofitable”) ways. We’ve seen the unlimited plan for cell phones becoming a thing of the past. Taxi drivers have not yet introduced the subscription travel plan but certain bus routes and commuter modes lend themselves to unlimited passes where an alternate single use rate and behavior record can be used as a price comparison.

I recall a wise and successful colleague in the insurance business revealed the dark truth about unlimited subscriptions. “They are like extended warranties, the only people who should actually buy extended warrantee are those who fully intend to beat the crap out of the item that they are covering”. Like gym subscriptions, low use members are needed to subsidize high use members.

Simulated Economy

Another way to simulate the effect of an unlimited prescription without leaving the business with an unmanageable long-term liability is to create an option-like instrument. The buyer would hold the right without the obligation to purchase the service at a discount during a specific period of time where behavior will be regulated by market forces.

Holding the option would be priced relatively cheap so that the buyer does not feel a deep loss for not exercising the option, yet sufficient to subsidize the activity of those who do exercise the option for discounted service. Another feature is that the option can be traded allowing holders to build a proto-economy around the asset that they possess. This would decrease the marketing costs of the provider as the price of the options floats to meet the needs of the market.

These strategies are commonplace on Wall Street but a statistical construct for their deployment on Main Street may be emerging. New “platforms” will arise which produce and aggregate data in the right format to support an options type of instrument for the trade or exchange of any number of goods and services in a non-cash environment.

Maybe the all-you-can-eat buffet of the future will resemble a cornucopia of options for assets that everyone shares. Bon Apetite.

New market dynamics are emerging as social technology and the use of it proliferates. Making sense of the dynamics and the strategic implications is everyone’s goal. The goal is not an end rather a never-ending pursuit to learn, share and improve.

Learning and sharing is how people and organization can gain clarity of purpose on how to continuously improve. The real value in all things social is the sharing of knowledge with clarity for others to use. Imagine if an audience was focused on sharing of knowledge with clarity. What would be the outcomes? The answer: never-ending improvement and innovation.

Thinking About Social Media

Sometimes thinking about social media can be confusing, overwhelming and lacking clarity of purpose. To think clearly we need to understand the “system” and its related parts as well as the strategic elements required to optimize the “system of production”.

Life and business is a “System of Production”. Individually we receive information and produce more information for personal or professional goals. Businesses and individual engage in a system of production that takes in, processes and puts out information. Some systems are more productive than others based on the quality of related processes that encompass the parts that make up a system as a whole. The intake, processing and passing of information represents communications. Social technology is a system of communications. Communications drive everything. Communications is our collective and personal economy.

Alignment of Strategic Elements

Social media cannot be efficiently used unless a strategy is aligned with intent. Intent are strategic issues that must be thought out thoroughly because strategy drives tactics, initiatives and ultimately results.

This is a summary of a 19 page white paper available here.

The web has changed how “markets” communicate.  The change in communications has the potential of creating a new marketplace. A marketplace fueled by buyer intentions.

The intent and dynamics of the marketplace have changed and as we begin a new era all organizations will be forced to make  changes to their intents or lose the markets attention.

The word intention implies performing an action for specific purpose in doing so, the end or goal aimed at, or intended to accomplish. Whether an action is successful or unsuccessful depends at least on whether the intended result was brought about. The Cluetrain Manifesto stated : The customers who once looked you in the eye while hefting your wares in the market were transformed into consumers.  Power swung so decisively to the supply side that “market” became a verb: something you do to customers. The “market” was no longer represented by the intended buyer rather by what the supplier intended on doing.

Intentional Changes Needed 

What we have learned from the web is a result of failures to recognize that technology is creating a reversal in “market” directions. The dynamics reveal  five reasons why the current design and definition of markets are failing:  These are as follows:

1. The suppliers still think in terms of mass production and mass media, now called social media
2. Marketers still think “trap and trick” is a proper way to establish customer relationships
3. Buyers are gaining in power as their collective voices speak to the inadequacies of current “market models”
4. Technology is getting smarter in identifying the wants and needs of buyer intentions
5. Media, previously used to control the masses, is now being supplied by the masses

Marketing and messaging is no longer isolated rather it is now a reflection of the organizational intent to serve or not serve the interest of the buyer. These dynamics will fuel more changes including:

1. Technology will enable buyers to efficiently and effectively fulfill their intent.
2. Sellers will have to change their methods, messages and mediums used to serve buyer intents
3. The focus on “transparent intentions” will be elevated by the release of Doc Searls new book “The Intention Economy“. The Cluetrain Manifesto changed how we think and The Intention Economy will change how markets behave.
4. Marketing and advertising methods, messages and mediums will become centric to reflecting an organizations ability to better serve buyer intents.
5. The four suggested changes above will fuel disruptive changes in how markets run and those that lead the changes will be ahead of their competition, big and small.

The implications of the  five changes illustrated above are profound and the speed of  adaptation by businesses will decide the winners from the losers. A lot of things are changing but change will accelerate when technological advancements enable a more efficient and effective marketplace for buyers. If you think the pace of change has been crazy it will be pale compared to what will happen when Doc Searls vision of The Intention Economy becomes reality.  Buy the book and help create better markets.

How can you plan for change when you don’t know what will change? The only thing you can plan on is rapid learning. But learning about something new can be difficult for those who only know the old ways.

The evolution of the web is accelerating with new tools, new discoveries and the subsequent market dynamics effected by these changes. As more and more conversations begin to impact business models, market relations and the supply and demand equations the more traditional mind sets try and fit these changes into the old box.

Most executives are totally disconnected from the dynamics created by all things social. Yet the same executives expect their managers to come up with a plan to use this thing called social media.  If you ask someone for a plan that neither you or they understand you’ll get a plan that doesn’t create anything new rather it only addresses all things social in context to what they know.  What they know is not what they need to know.

Learning By Diving In

Guy Kawasaki: Don’t Plan Your Social Media; Just Do It | Inc.com says: Lets say an entrepreneur is new to the whole social media thing. Theres a tendency to hire a consultant and formulate a plan. Is that the right approach?No. Just dive in. Dive in to Facebook or Google+ or Twitter. Create a personal account and test the water. See what those sensibilities are, and just have at it. Ts is very different than the typical expert telling you that you first have to set your strategy and your goals and have this massive document and a working plan. I think thats a mistake. Its very difficult to create goals and strategies for something like Google+ or Facebook or Twitter if you’re not familiar with Google+, Facebook, and Twitter.

When Guy says “ if you’re not familiar with Google+, Facebook, and Twitter” I don’t think he is talking about the names or the technology rather the dynamics created by these tools.  There is a huge different between being familiar with a tool and knowing how to use it effectively.  The Cluetrain Manifesto talks about markets are conversations however since the industrial revolution the markets thought they were the conversations.  The web has changed the direction of the conversations and the directional change means everything you thought you could plan for is no longer what you thought.

When I say “the social plan is not the plan” I am not saying organizations need not plan. What I am saying is that the context of the plan ought to be more about understanding, learning and adapting to the new marketplace dynamics that are changing your relationships with buyers rather than planning for the wrong things.

It was supposed to be a routine heart check up but it turned into three open heart surgeries, three strokes, paralysis, death, resurrection and a long way home.

Just over a year ago I went to see my cardiologist for a heart check up. Twelve years ago I had a mild heart attack and subsequently I routinely see my cardiologist for a review of my heart condition.  In addition I have been a diabetic for more than forty years and diabetics are known for having heart problems due to fluctuating blood sugars.

My routine check up was six months late. Prior to the appointment I had my blood drawn to measure relevant issues that indicate heart conditions. Upon arrival for my appointment I had a electrocardiograph done and an echo-cardiogram both of which provide details of how well the heart functions are performing.

After the exams I sat in the waiting room waiting for the results. Then the nurse came out and said “the doctor is ready for you”….. My cardiologist is a teaching doctor whom likes to explain all the details of his exam and what the details indicate. We’ve become friends over the last 15 years and  I always enjoy learning from him with exception of this visit…..

The doctor came right out and showed me the test results and the pictures were obvious. He asked “what do you see?”. I said “this valve seems to be moving slow and these arteries looked clogged. He replied “Yes, your aortic valve is failing and yes you have two clogged arteries, one on the left and one on the right. We’ve been watching these for sometime but now they need treatment and as soon as possible.  I replied what treatment and when?’. He replied “Open heart surgery to replace your aortic valve and do two artery by-passes. I suggest we get you into the hospital as soon as I can get it scheduled with one of the top surgeons at Vanderbilt Hospital.”

Within two weeks I was scheduled for surgery. The surgeon told my wife and I this would be routine. It would take about five hours for the surgery and you’ll be home in five days. You’ll feel a lot better than you have in years and if your cardiologist hadn’t caught this you would have been dead in no more than six months.

Then Everything Goes Wrong

I was scheduled to arrive at the hospital at 5:00 am in order to get prepped for surgery scheduled for 7:00 am. My wife drove me in and on the way there we had a flat tire….first sign things weren’t going well.

My wife was in the waiting room and the doctor told her he would probably be there to report the outcomes to her within about five hours.  Tweleve hours passed and my wife knew something was wrong.

The surgeon came into the waiting room looking exhausted. He approached my wife and said “We ran into complications but your husband is alive. We performed the surgery then closed up his chest only to discover his heart cavity was filling up with blood. We had to open him up again and drain the heart cavity of blood and repair the arteries that were leaking. During the second surgery your husband suffered three strokes and we don’t know the impact as of yet.  He is being moved to intensive care and we can see him in about 30 minutes.

I awoke in the intensive care unit with tubes coming out of a half dozen locations on my body.   I could vaguely see my wife surrounded by white coats and she was pointing at them and speaking with a stern voice.   The doctors turned to me and asked me to move my legs. Nothing moved! My wife’s face was white then I could feel my bed move rapidly as the doctors rushed me off to some room.

I was put to sleep and awoke back in the intensive care unit with my wife holding my hand. The doctor was next to me and said “move your legs”. I did and my wie bursted into tears.  I was too full of drugs to feel any emotion whatsoever. All I knew was my legs were moving.

I had a two week recovery period before I was sent home. During the recovery I was given the wrong pain medication, the one my wife told them I was allergic to, and the results of the error made me sick, unable to walk and I hallucinated several times during a 24 hour period. One night I called my wife and awoke her at 3:00 in the morning to tell her they had put me in a cellar with no windows and they were trying to hide me (I was hallucinating).

The next day my wife came into the hospital and asked to see my chart with all the meds I had been given. Then she discovered that they had made a mistake….To say the least my wife got their attention and fixed the problem.

Sent Home Only To Fly Back

I was finally able to go home even though I still wasn’t strong enough to walk. After two days at home my wife was worried that I was failing yet again. She got help to put me in the car and she took me to my cardiologist office for an exam.  My doctor put me into the hospital, not Vanderbilt this time. He told my wife they would keep me overnight to run some test. I was checked into a room and my wife went home to take care of our nine year old son.

The next morning at 4:00 am my wife was awoken by a phone call from my doctor. He told her that he had been with me all night and was able to keep me alive. She needed to get to the hospital as soon as possible. Upon arriving my wife discovered I was failing fast, water had filled my lungs and blood was again filling my chest cavity. My doctor said we need to life flight (helicopter) me back to Vanderbilt where the originacl surgeon could attempt to remedy the problems.  My wife objected and my doctor said “The surgeon is the best to save his life since he did the original surgery he was well equipped to go back in. My wife approved and I was life flighted back to Vanderbilt.

I arrived back at Vanderbilt and rushed into surgery. Upon being placed on the operating table my heart stopped and I died only to be brought back to life due to the swiftness of the surgeons hands and his God given skills.

I went home a week later and never went back. Now after more than a year I am fully recovered, stronger than ever before and thankful I am here to share this story and to love on my family and friends.  Life means a lot more once you loose it.

It isn’t what you do or how you sell it is why that makes the difference.

A lot of marketers talk about how great their product or company is and what they sell that makes them so great. But few talk about “why” which is a matter of beliefs and beliefs is what draws people to a product or service

Simon Sinek was able to demonstrate that even without the bottomless pockets, the network of people, or the sheer brilliance of the greatest minds money can buy, the people and companies that became household names did so by reversing the way they share their message with others. He calls it “The Golden Circle”, and shows that most marketing messages – even from the most well-known (and well-funded) companies, go something like this:

100% of all organizations know WHAT they do.
Some know HOW they do it.
Very few know WHY they do what they do.

Sinek’s main message is: very few organizations know why they do what they do. Why does the organization exist? Why should the CEO get out of bed in the morning? But until an organization identifies it’s central belief and message, they will most likely continue to communicate in a mediocre way.

“Why” Makes A Difference

All of us ask lots of questions about everything and everyone. These questions include:

1. Who is it about?
2. What is it about?
3. Where is it?
4. When is it?
5. Why is it important?

The principle underlying the maxim is that each question should elicit a relationship with the subject matter, the person, the business or the product — information necessary to spark a consideration.

The primal question that solicits rationale for a possible relationship is “why”?. Before answering the what and how great companies also begin with the why and they tell why over and over. Subsequently the audience first identifies with the why before the what and how.  The why gives us all meaning and it is meaning that drives our purpose.

Without answering why there is no real purpose or meaning,  Get it?

For years sellers maintained power over buyers. Technology is changing the game and buyers are now gaining power over sellers. As a result corporate behavior, regardless of industry, will have to change in order to survive.

The New Participation Model

“Corporations will allow the public to participate in the construction and representation of their creations or they will, eventually, compromise the commercial value of their properties. The new consumer will help to create value or they will refuse it… Corporations have a right to keep copyright but they have an interest in releasing it.” –Grant McCracken (1997)

The New Buyer

If old consumers were assumed to be passive, then new consumers are active. If old consumers were predictable and stayed where you told them, then new consumers are migratory, showing a declining loyalty to networks or media. If old consumers were isolated individuals, then new consumers are more socially connected. If the work of media consumers was once silent and invisible, then new consumers are now noisy and public (Jenkins 2006a, pp. 18-19).

The Economy Will Be Driven By Buyer Intentions

Doc Searls release of “The Intention Economy” has the promise of starting yet another “net revolution” but this one could change the entire dynamics of all markets.

The first paragraph of the Introduction explains,

This book stands with the customer. This is out of necessity, not sympathy. Over the coming years customers will be emancipated from systems built to control them. They will become free and independent actors in the marketplace, equipped to tell vendors what they want, how they want it, where and when—even how much they’d like to pay—outside of any vendor’s system of customer control. Customers will be able to form and break relationships with vendors, on customers’ own terms, and not just on the take-it-or-leave-it terms that have been pro forma since Industry won the Industrial Revolution.

Pay close attention to the future because the power will now rest with the buyers not the suppliers. Everything will change yet again.  Listen to Docs discussion about “The Intention Economy” below:

298__Winning_in_the_Intention_Economy

The next era we are about to witness is technological collaboration enabled by related technology and the resulting impact will change everything.

The 21st Century business model is one where service-users become partners rather than customers and where context is as important as the transaction. At the heart of this new era of collaboration is a set of paradigm shifts being fueled by discrete ‘enabling’ technologies and innovations.

Business is moving to the unusual and the leaders are those who will think about different things rather than just think differently. Customers are now suppliers which means the historical view of the system has been flipped. The customer is the input and the output is now the supplier. Processes are being replaced by technology. This means the amount of human resources needed to process information has and will continue to decrease.

Business is no longer a series of isolated activities rather all things are now connected to everything and everyone.  The buyer has become empowered and the crowd is much smarter than ever before. Knowledge about everything is being assimilated by the “network” faster than ever before and subsequently new knowledge is being created that is replacing the old knowledge.

The Era of Technological Collaboration

We are witnessing technological collaboration that is fueling new knowledge which is changing everything.  Networks of information talking to other networks of information fueled by human interaction are creating influences yet unknown and unforeseen.

When machines transform knowledge creation and human interactions then it is the technology that is changing human behavior not the other way around. We’ve just begun to witness the power of human collaboration to create ripples of change previously unforeseen. The ripples are forming into waves as the current of technological change fuels the momentum.

Human collaboration on a mass scale has been enabled by technology. The next era we are about to witness is technological collaboration enabled by related technology and the resulting impact on human behavior, society and economics promises to re-engineer everything we thought we knew about human behavior, society, business and economics.

A new birth is on the horizon but no one knows what will be born.

“The more people speak the more some think speech needs to be governed”

Social media are fueling debates about how to control social media or one could say control the freedom of speech. People have been given the power of distributed and connected conversations through social technology. These social dynamics reveal new paradigms not previously considered by organizations, institutions and governments. With the exploding growth of social technology there is an increased attempt to govern the new paradigms.

Who Has The Right To Govern?

From  The Next Governance Frontier: Social Media – Forbes:  At the end of the day, companies have to ask, “can we afford to be social or can we afford not to be social?”  Clearly, social media has business benefits.  But, there are risks lurking in the shadows and no company wants to be caught unprepared should litigation arise.  Getting the policies and tactics right upfront will go a long way toward mitigating risk.  Any company engaging in social media should also be crafting a social media governance plan.  Companies need to decide if they want to monitor workers, how (ask for permission or just monitor any on-network activity) to monitor workers, and how to deal with publishers’ policies.

Everyone understands the risk of saying the wrong things to the wrong people at the wrong time. Speech is a powerful influence over people’s hearts and minds. Saying the wrong things or igniting people to gather together to say something can create a revolution or bring down entire governments and destroy politicians.

In a connected world people can now organize faster, unite with one voice seamlessly and move markets at the click of a mouse. This dynamic doesn’t happen as the result of governance by a formal organization rather it happens informally and is self governed by the crowds.

Today the choice is not about how organizations govern people rather it is about enabling people to govern self organization. There is a huge difference between the two. One comes from old organizational theories and the other comes from  wisdom about the human network.