Will Facebook Kill the Car?

When we think about disruptive technologies over the years, whether it is electrical power, fast and safe air travel, or even more modern inventions like personal computers or smartphones, we often assess and value these inventions in the context of what prior tools or processes they have impacted. Widespread availability of electrical power replaced steam power in more modern factories, air travel transformed commerce and leisure activities while getting most of us off of transcontinental trains, and each successive iteration or improvement in computer and smartphone technology moves the functionality and capability needle just a little bit further than last year's device. Sure, every so often a new breakthrough device like the iPad comes along that while not really having a natural predecessor, is mostly used to do the same types of things, (read news, send email, watch movies), that were done on other, existing devices, (primarily laptops). I'll bet even the most ardent iPad users only spend ten or twenty percent of their time actually doing something that is only made possible by the new technology alone.Cutlass

Truly transformative and disruptive technologies do more than just offer a better version of an older tool or allow us to do the same things we were already doing before in a new, more efficient, or more powerful manner. Transformations allow us to create entirely new things, define new categories, and most importantly - change the way we lead our lives in ways that have nothing at all, (at least on the surface), to do with the technology itself. 

I was thinking about this while reading the following piece from the BBC - 'Why are US teenagers driving less?'. It turns out American teenagers are driving less than their predecessors, and the article offers some interesting speculation on why that may be the case.  From the BBC piece:

Recent research suggests many young Americans prefer to spend their money and time chatting to their friends online, as opposed to the more traditional pastime of cruising around in cars.

Ok, so maybe not that transformative or disruptive. Kids like to text and Facebook. Move along, nothing to see here, right?

Here's more from the BBC:

In a survey to be published later this year by Gartner, 46% of 18 to 24-year-olds said they would choose internet access over owning their own car. The figure is 15% among the baby boom generation, the people that grew up in the 1950s and 60s - seen as the golden age of American motoring.

Now that is indeed more interesting, and telling. The internet, and by implication the social connections and activities the internet empowers, (mostly via Facebook), is the gateway to freedom, mobility, coolness - all the things that the car used to represent to the teenager or young adult. A car can only take me, and maybe a couple of friends somewhere. The open web can take me anywhere. But isn't that a kind of sad, lonely tradeoff? Give up a car for Facebook? Isn't that anti-social?

Well let's look at one example of the motivations behind, well, leaving the car behind from Wally Neil, a 25-year-old quoted in the piece:

But it was a decision made easier by the fact that he could speak to his friends online and play games with them over the internet so did not feel he was missing out.

"We were all pretty closely connected, even before Facebook.

"So we were not driving to our friends' houses, there was the gaming network and all that. We were putting the car on the back burner.

"There is a lot to be said for the video game killing the need for a car for a lot of kids."

Really interesting, and I will bet a view on networking, connection, and even technology that most of us don't think about too often. This isn't 'gamification' as it is being tossed around in the HR Technology space fast and furious right now, but rather the social, collaborative, and disruptive power of social gaming to change a myriad of offline and seemingly unrelated behaviors. No Dad, I don't need to borrow the keys to the '94 Cutlass, we are going to play World of Warcraft this weekend.

So the statistics say that teen driving is down in the US, and certainly gas prices and limited job opportunities have something to do with that, but looking at the data, (and the stories), a little deeper suggests that there is more to the story than a simple economic argument. If indeed a generation, the next generation of the workforce, has a set of radically different attitudes towards socializing, mobility, and connecting, then it is something we should be aware of and ready for.

What do you think? Can Facebook really kill the car? Are your kids or colleagues exhibiting some of these same attitudes?

Volkswagen to BlackBerry Addicted Workers: We Know What's Good For You

A couple of weeks back this story, about Volkswagen's decision to disable company servers from pushing email out to certain employee's BlackBerry smart phones outside of 'normal' working hours, made the rounds in the tech press and blogosphere. The reaction from analysts and commenters was decidedly mixed, with probably somewhat more observers coming down on the side of 'Good for the workers, they deserve a break from email when they are home at night, and on the weekends.'I am pretty sure it runs at night and on the weekends

Leaving aside the practical exigencies of German labor law or union and work council regulations or contracts for the moment, (which certainly did have a role in the Volkswagen situation and that I can't be bothered to try and sort out), to me this decision by Volkswagen smacks of typical, classic, and old-fashioned thinking. The kind of mindset that leads organizations, (and more often individual managers), to issue edicts about where, when, and how work will actually get accomplished. The attitude that workers are generally not to be trusted, in this case not in that the employees can't be trusted to get their work done, but rather that they can't be trusted to know when to take a break, to decompress, and to disconnect. And this kind of decision or policy also can actually negatively impact so-called 'work/life' balance while trying to protect it - workers that have the need for more flexibility or have personal circumstances that don't lend themselves well to the 9 to 5 grind are hurt by such a policy.

Interestingly, the reports of the BlackBerry email quiet periods have noted that the new rules do not apply to senior management, ostensibly because they are too important to be disconnected from corporate email when on the go after hours, but also subtly indicating that senior management can handle the tremendous responsibility of actually knowing when they need to read and respond to company email and when they should be resting, being with family, or actually having a social life.

The great promise of advances in workplace technology is that the new technologies will enable us to be better at our jobs - to make better decisions, to develop better processes, to dream up and execute more fantastic ideas to progress our organization's mission and our own careers while simultaneously supporting making our non-work lives better as well. Smartphones, tablets, video conferencing, wifi pretty much in every coffee shop, bar, and airport in the world - all of these should be incredibly empowering and enabling. These tools and capabilities are different than the copy machine, the fax, and the employee workstation, and all the other workplace technology breakthroughs that came before. They were all about doing more while remaining in one place, on one schedule, and in lock step with everyone else. What will not work and will not be sustainable, is to apply to old ways of thinking to the new technologies.

If employees can't be trusted, then they can't be trusted. That has been true for hundreds of years, the BlackBerry did not create that problem.

Bundling, choice, and basketball

It is a new year, and time for the latest version of what seems like an annual public fight between a big Cable TV company and a high-profile content provider. In the latest example, Cable TV provider Time Warner Cable and the MSG (short for Madison Square Garden), Network are in a pitched battle over the rights fees that Time Warner has to pay to MSG for the rights to distribute MSG programming on its cable systems. As a deal could not be reached by December 31, as 2012 begins the MSG feeds have been blacked out on Time Warner systems. Blah, blah, blah

From a purely selfish point of view, the current dispute hits close to home for me - my cable provider is Time Warner, and the MSG Network carries most of the games for my beloved New York Knicks. I admit, the prospect of not having easy access to Knicks games has harshed my Happy New Year mellow.

However, these Cable TV contract disputes provide additional insight to how a combination of escalating programming costs, (mainly in the form of ever-increasing fees paid by networks for the rights to carry professional sports broadcasts); traditional and arcane packaging or 'bundling', and near-monopoly competitive enviroments in many localities have conspired to drive up the costs of basic and enhanced cable rates over the last decade. When ESPN agrees to pay the NFL just over $15 billion over 8 years for the right to show 'Monday Night Football', rest assured the viewers, (and in many cases the non-viewers), of ESPN end up having to pay more to watch Jaws and Gruden gush over how great a job every coach in the NFL is doing. 

The end result is a simple and classic pass on the costs gimmick - ESPN and other content providers pay more for their programming, they in turn squeeze the Time Warners and other cable systems for higher per-subscriber fees, and finally the cable systems themselves pass the increased costs down to their customers by jacking up cable rates. Traditionally the cable systems try to mask this process somewhat by their practice of packaging or bundling groups of channels into programming tiers, (Basic, Super Basic, Colossal Super Mega, etc.), that ostensibly provide some consumer choice as to the networks they'd like to subscribe to, and how much they are willing to pay for them. But even the most discrete set of packages or bundles that are generally offered still do not come close to most consumers actual viewing patterns, and likely the set of networks they would order if true a la carte pricing was available in the cable TV industry.

There has been tons written about a la carte pricing for cable TV, and speculation on whether or not it would actually decrease average cable rates. I've seen pretty compelling arguments on both sides, so it is hard to say what the outcome would be. Additionally, any system of individual pricing and ordering of cable networks is generally seen as a death knell for a slew of less popular, niche channels that simply would not have enough viewers willing to pay for them individually to keep them afloat.

Thinking about this entire situation as I have the last few days, (again as it effects my ability to easily watch the Knicks games), I can't help but wonder if this cable TV model is just a refection of a waning and outdated set of assumptions about how content should be created, distributed, and consumed. In an environment where attention, activity, and engagement with content is increasingly shifting to mobile phones and tablets, which themselves are primarily single-purpose application driven, then the idea of consumers choosing to pay monthly fees for 500 channel cable bundles in order to access the 17 channels they are interested in seems like a dying distribution model. 

Why can't the MSG network or the History Channel or the hundreds of other channels out there simply create their own an iPad application that would allow consumers to make individual choices about what content they'd like to access and pay for? And to take it a step further, why can't the individual entertainment producers simply skip the traditional networks, cable systems, and satellite providers completely, and market their shows, movies, sporting events, etc. directly to the end user, either with applications or direct streaming or download?

The answer is of course they can, and many are already moving in that direction.

But sadly for me, the era of direct, low friction, and discrete consumption of New York Knicks games has not started as yet. So until then, I get to listen to Time Warner and MSG call each other names.

Put down your iPhone for a second, we're strategizing here.

A prediction for 2012: There will be about 17,294 '2012 Predictions' blog posts and newsletter articles stressing the importance of mobile technology for workforce tools, marketing, branding, recruiting, gaming, training - you name it, chances are you will be warned that you'd better have a 'mobile strategy' for all of it.

And you better. So get on that now. And as the funny and apt cartoon from the Marketoonist reminds us, you might need to put down your toys for a few minutes while you sort that out.

Hello? Bueller?

Jokes aside, the correct approaches to mobile technology and the mobile-enablement of current workplace technologies probably present a set of challenges, (and certainly opportunities), unlike previous or last generation problems that needed to be solved. 

Needed to make sure the time and attendance system met your needs? Well, since everyone used to report to the office, the process of badging or punching in was fairly simple. As long as the data was passed to the payroll system, you had most of your problem licked. 

Today that same system and process might need to be supported on 5 mobile operating systems, on dozens of devices, and multiple languages. Not so simple for sure. And that doesn't even begin to touch upon the issues surrounding preferred usage styles and form factors on these devices, and just what workplace functionality should be mobile-enabled and what perhaps should not.

All in all, you will be told that in 2012 mobile will get even more important for getting work done, for engaging with employees, candidates, and customers; and for competing globally.

What you won't be told is that you'll need to sign off of Angry Birds and Flipboard for a few minutes to sort it out.

Wait, maybe we can build an Angry Birds extension that equates punching in at work to smashing a few pigs?

Making a Half Million Dollar Ask? Maybe a Little Prep Makes Sense

You have to love the openness and transparency in (most) of the public sector. As my friend Mark Stelzner so accurately pointed out a few weeks back, the Freedom of Information Act and other local regulations often require that meetings, documents, contracts, and proceedings of various governmental bodies are regularly made available to the public and/or posted online for all to see.I'd like $500K please.

Case in point - a recent article describing a meeting of the San Antonio, Texas based Alamo Community College District, a collection of Texas Community Colleges having about 6,000 total employees, where the Vice Chancellor of Human Resources pitched a close to $500,000 purchase of some new HR software to the college system's Board of Trustees. Making the pitch as an HR leader to the ultimate decision makers for a big outlay for HR software is never easy, but as the article in the Ranger online aptly demonstrates, making said pitch without ready and defensible answers to some of the obvious questions that responsible budget holders are bound to ask is a recipe for failure, (and a little embarrassment).

Some highlights in case you don't read the entire Ranger piece: (questions and answers edited a bit for clarity)

Trustee Question #1 - Why are we doing this, i.e. why do we need to drop half a million on HR software?

HR Leader Answer: "We just really don't know a lot about how we're developing or if we're developing the talent we have out there waiting for us."

Eek. While that is likely true, when presented in that context it does not really inspire much confidence in the HR function. Make the case be about what the new tools will enable HR to do in order to help the organization meet its goals and develop talent sure, just don't state, 'We really have no idea what is doing on with our people and we need help.'

Trustee Question #2 - Are there any other similar customers using this solution, specifically, any other community colleges?

HR Leader Answer: "I don't know."

Ack. I don't completely blame the HR pro on this one. Not totally. Any vendor rep that had a clue what they were doing would have prepped the HR professional for this question and provided her with a list of references. But budget authorities the world over are not typically known for their willingness to embrace risk. Not having an answer to the question just makes HR seem more out of touch with business risk and reality.

Trustee Question #3 - What happens if we don't buy this software now?

HR Leader Answer: "Nothing really. If we wait until after December, then we will have to pay a higher price. 

Trustee follow up - How much more?

HR Leader Answer : I am not sure.

You get the idea by now I am sure. Walking into the room, making the big money ask, and not anticipating an preparing for the obvious questions related to the software, the benefits, and the simple risk mitigation strategies associated with large software implementation projects just makes you look unprofessional, and ill-prepared to handle a costly, complex project.

The answers to these questions are not always easy, but the questions are easy to anticipate. If you can't answer them, then maybe you're not ready to sit at the grown-up table.