Only Dead Fish

Post Of The Month - January 2015 - Nominations

A couple of nominations already along with a particularly rich reading month mean that we have a longer than usual starting list for this months Post of the Month vote, but lots of good stuff. If you have something that you've read (and that was posted in January) and would like to nominate alongside these please send the link to me or leave it in the comments below. So the starting list is:

The Dunning-Kruger Peak of Advertising by Eaon Pritchard

Pulp Viral by Dan Weingrod

A Mile Wide, An Inch Deep by Ev Williams

The Future of Brand Building is Triangular from Tracey Follows

Make Your Presents Felt by Dave Trott

How We Read Today by Nick Hammond

Any additional nominations please send or leave a comment below. 

Why Some Teams Are Smarter Than Others

In following rabbit holes whilst researching the book I came across this interesting piece on what makes some teams smarter than others. This, as the authors (Professors from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon, the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management, and Union College) point out, is an important question given how many decisions of significance are made by groups of people.

In studies that the team conducted back in 2010, 697 volunteers were grouped into teams of between two to five people, with each team being given a series of tasks representative of the kinds of problems that teams are commonly expected to address. The studies revealed that general intelligence applied to the groups (as it does to individuals) so teams that did well on one task often did well on others too.

But interestingly it wasn't the average individual intelligence of team members (as measured by I.Q tests), or levels of extroversion, or even motivation that made them smarter. It turns out that there were three distinguishing characteristics:

1. Team members contributing more equally, no individuals dominating
2. They were also good at reading the emotional states of other group members (scoring high on a test called 'Reading the Mind in the Eyes')
3. And it was notable how teams with more women outperformed teams with more men ('Indeed, it appeared that it was not “diversity” (having equal numbers of men and women) that mattered for a team’s intelligence, but simply having more women. This last effect, however, was partly explained by the fact that women, on average, were better at “mindreading” than men').

A more recent study conducted by the academics considered the difference that working face to face or working remotely from each other online made to team collective intelligence. Here, the same teams consistently worked smarter than others regardless of whether they worked online or offline. Whatever the mode of interaction it was the volume of communication, equality of participation and good emotion-reading skills that made the difference.

This Week's Favourite Fraggl Links

Digital, Social & Mobile in 2015 from We Are Social Singapore

Here are my favourite links from this week curated by Fraggl:

• Very useful - just about every digital stat you could want in one deck
• And this is interesting - Tumblr launching an in-house creative lab crowdsourcing from their 420m users
• A thought-provoking post from Simon Veksner on overvaluing extroverts and undervaluing introverts in agencies (and elsewhere)
• The hottest new open source projects right now (according to Wired)
• Taster is the BBC's brand new public beta-testing concept that will be a space where it can develop its latest ideas for digital content and emerging technology - some very interesting prototypes that are worth checking out including the Story of Now, and Idris Elba fronted interactive documentary looking into the big questions of life in very different way

And of-course you can sign up to Fraggl here.

Blogging and Lazy Endism

As ever Adam, who is just so good at blogging, is on the money with his view on it too.  The fact that Andrew Sullivan has stopped writing a blog has led some to catch a nasty dose of lazy endism. But as Adam says, blogging has simply evolved (Medium, Tumblr et al), and so many services now have something of the characteristics of the medium. It's no longer one thing. So he could well be right when he says: 'Blogging is so deeply entwined with the web itself that we don't even really need the word any more'.

It's true. It's not the 'blogosphere' (as we used to call it) of years back, and I lament many bloggers whom I used to love reading but who have fallen by the wayside over the years. But nothing killed blogging because blogging isn't dead. It simply sits amongst its own echoes in the myriad other opportunities we have for digital self-expression and as Adam says, 'is just part of the language of publishing on the web'.

For what it's worth I'll keep doing what I do here as long as I find it useful and people want to read it. If I'm honest I think I'd struggle without it. It would be like an itch I couldn't scratch. It is by far the best way I know of thinking out loud, of working out what I think about all the stuff I read about. I've met so many amazing people because of it. It has enabled me to start my own business. It has been creds deck, business development tool, and cathartic soapbox in one. And it has (in so many unanticipated ways) brought me so much value over the years.

The Digital Board

"If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near."

Jack Welch

(N.B. This post is part of an occasional series I'm doing, drawing from some of the thinking that's going into the book I'm writing - any feedback is appreciated)

In today's world, slow decision-making can generate real problems for companies. As the pace of digital development accelerates and pressure on resources intensifies, one of the key challenges that arises in organisations undergoing digital transformation is the effective prioritisation of digital projects and developments. There is just so much to do, so many different (and potentially competing) priorities that it can be hugely difficult for those at the top to know the right thing to do (especially if their level of knowledge of all things digital is not what it could be).

The issue is often not about the significance attributed to digital projects and development by the company board. Digital development of some kind is a strategic priority of just about every company I've come into contact with. A more likely scenario is that whilst an organisation may already have digital development as a corporate strategic pillar, the difficulty comes in taking account of multiple dependencies or risk factors and in elucidating a priority list that will ensure that the most meaningful and impactful changes are prioritised above those which may have less significance.

Sometimes impact is difficult to demonstrate or even to determine. Sometimes changes that have short-term impact might be unfairly or misguidedly prioritised over those with potentially much larger long-term impact. Sometimes involvement of multiple senior-level stakeholders slows the decision-making down to the point where the impact of development is negated.

Companies might try to mitigate this risk by appointing digitally-savvy people to the board, or having a board member take responsibility for becoming a digital ‘champion’. Both of these options can help. Yet there can be little substitute for a board that is conversant and experienced as well as informed. The broader this capability across the board the better. Every company is operating in a digitally-empowered world which means there is now little excuse for lack of board level competency and proficiency.

Outside of board meetings decision-making structures need to be agile in support of an empowered board. Clear delineation of responsibility helps (Peter Thiel has said: “The best thing I did as a manager at PayPal, was to make every person in the company responsible for doing just one thing. Every employee’s one thing was unique, and everyone knew I would evaluate him only on that one thing”. Whilst the clarity, focus and simplicity that this brings may reap dividends for startups and small businesses, as a company scales applying this approach to small teams rather than individuals is likely to be easier). Clear and sensible escalation procedures also helps. As can empowered front-line staff and heightened team autonomy.

But sometimes more formalised senior decision-making and feedback structures are needed. The creation of a ‘digital board’ can prove to be extremely valuable in facilitating agile governance whilst providing a crucial link to the most crucial decision-making body in the company: the main board. A ‘digital board’ might typically comprise key main board members (the board ‘digital champion’, or Finance Director or perhaps even the Managing Director or CEO) and other principal digital stakeholders, and becomes the main decision-making body for the digital development roadmap, meeting regularly to make key investment and strategy decisions.

This ensures the ongoing commitment, involvement and engagement of key senior staff including the CEO, CFO, and/or the IT and Operations Director, provides a crucial link between digital operations and the main board, whilst still keeping the decision-making process as agile as possible. And when the business is in the midst of transformation, agility is exactly what you need.