It turns out that "people who make prediction their business—people who appear as experts on television, get quoted in newspaper articles, advise governments and businesses, and participate in punditry roundtables—are no better than the rest of us."
"Think for yourself" is the lesson of the review by Louis Menand in the New Yorker magazine, of Philip Tetlock’s new book, “Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?” (Princeton; $35.
Psychologists have tested and found that people who have one big idea are most likely to embrace information that supports it and severely question information that does not. When it works it pays off big. E.g, Winston Churchill was right about Hitler. But his idea about Indian independence was wrong. He's remembered for being right about Hitler. Tetlock calls this type of expert the "Hedgehog".
The other type of expert is more likely to be right, because they look for evidence and correct as they go, they are not "stuck" on one idea. It looks to me like more evidence for using the Scientific Method: Make a hypothesis, test it, and make a new model that takes the latest information into account. The beauty of this is the speed of learning: The fox dashes ahead to take into account the very latest information, is more likely to believe that their point of view needs to be modified.
But its not enough to be a fox.
In September, I attended a talk by the actor and comedian, John Cleese. He spoke about Hare Brains and Tortoise Minds. It was a profound talk to a group of people who have been battered into thinking that cost savings are the only path to profit - Contact Center Directors. It advocated thinking of new ways to connect with customers, and shifting beyond cost savings to revenue generation.
Hare brains are very logical and rational - making constant refinements, they are very effective when things are pretty well understood. Ideal for cost savings.
Tortoise minds look deeper into their unconscious, rely more on intuition. They are more likely to achieve breakthrough thinking. In the area of working with people, in the arts, in business, in customer relationships, the easy things have been done, the Hare Brains have taken care of the obvious cost savings. Its the turn of the tortoise minds to develop the breakthroughs in service excellence which then can be refined to be delivered cost effectively by the hare brains.
The next step, to achieve breakthroughs in delivering customer value and delighting customers requires tortoise mind, and opening up to what might work.
(Of course this is a very superficial summary of what was a hilarious and wonderful talk - if anyone wants to see my notes, let me know and I'll send you a copy.)
So is the path to customer connection that of the FOX? with a Tortoise Mind?
The Fox is critical to link to Tortoise Mind - Learning is essential to guide intuition and insight in customer relations and service excellence.
Sunday, December 04, 2005
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Trolling the CRM blog world... .
Found something I like:
"Don't blame CRM for your Customer Service Failures" by Rashid Khan of Ultimus.
The title caught my eye, and I very much agree with his first thesis:
"For years enterprises have tried to combat customer service issues with technology. For example, often organizations do not have a central location to keep all of a customer's data. The customer's e-mail requests are stored in one location while records of phone conversations are located someplace else. When this happens the call center manager approaches the IT manager and says, "We need a database". The IT manager then researches the latest in knowledge-bases and buys the technology that will best fit the current architecture.
After spending quite a bit of time and money getting this knowledge-base up and running, the system still doesn't seem to run smoothly. Data is not inputted regularly so the information in the knowledge-base is often stale, incomplete or inaccurate. The Call Center manager then goes back to the IT manager and complains that the customer relationship management (CRM) solution is not working properly. To which the IT manager protests that the technology is working fine, but it is the fault of the agents for not using it properly. The ensuing result of the project is another piece of technology not being used to the best of its ability and the gap between IT and the business user is driven further apart."
But I must take issue with his simple solution: "process planning and automation".
Customer Service is a human interchange, an interchange between people. YES, process planning and automation can help the interchange be more "productive", but it requires the human touch to make it more meaningful and memorable.
CRM, in fact technology of any kind, should augment our ability to fulfil the human desire to connect with each other and create value together through the connection.
For a customer, the ideal company to do business with is one that is designed exactly to fulfil the customer's needs.
With technology, we are getting closer to this ideal, but first we have to understand very well the range of experiences, services and products the business can deliver, and how to organize all of these so that each individual customer gets just the experience that is relevant, timely, memorable and personally valuable.
Process planning and automation is just part of the solution.
I do like Rashid Khan's blog of Nov 22, and just wanted to add the essential "human touch" After all, what is the good of "cheaper better faster" if there is no human meaning and human value involved?
"Don't blame CRM for your Customer Service Failures" by Rashid Khan of Ultimus.
The title caught my eye, and I very much agree with his first thesis:
"For years enterprises have tried to combat customer service issues with technology. For example, often organizations do not have a central location to keep all of a customer's data. The customer's e-mail requests are stored in one location while records of phone conversations are located someplace else. When this happens the call center manager approaches the IT manager and says, "We need a database". The IT manager then researches the latest in knowledge-bases and buys the technology that will best fit the current architecture.
After spending quite a bit of time and money getting this knowledge-base up and running, the system still doesn't seem to run smoothly. Data is not inputted regularly so the information in the knowledge-base is often stale, incomplete or inaccurate. The Call Center manager then goes back to the IT manager and complains that the customer relationship management (CRM) solution is not working properly. To which the IT manager protests that the technology is working fine, but it is the fault of the agents for not using it properly. The ensuing result of the project is another piece of technology not being used to the best of its ability and the gap between IT and the business user is driven further apart."
But I must take issue with his simple solution: "process planning and automation".
Customer Service is a human interchange, an interchange between people. YES, process planning and automation can help the interchange be more "productive", but it requires the human touch to make it more meaningful and memorable.
CRM, in fact technology of any kind, should augment our ability to fulfil the human desire to connect with each other and create value together through the connection.
For a customer, the ideal company to do business with is one that is designed exactly to fulfil the customer's needs.
With technology, we are getting closer to this ideal, but first we have to understand very well the range of experiences, services and products the business can deliver, and how to organize all of these so that each individual customer gets just the experience that is relevant, timely, memorable and personally valuable.
Process planning and automation is just part of the solution.
I do like Rashid Khan's blog of Nov 22, and just wanted to add the essential "human touch" After all, what is the good of "cheaper better faster" if there is no human meaning and human value involved?
Winners of the Best CRM Blogs: Paul Greenberg and Chris Carfi
Back blogging again! I'm inspired to write by Paul Greenberg's winning of the SearchCRM Best CRM Blog award. He won it with Chris Carfi author of The Social Customer Manifesto. Congratulations Paul and Chris!
Just returned from Singapore last week. The trip had two focusing themes:
BizARTS and Service Excellence. Both relevant to CRM.
BizARTS is the name of the new venture being launched by Min Lee, Singapore's prodigy violinist, just returned from studying in the US and amazingly, very interested in contributing to the community she grew up in. She believes Arts IS Life. I'm involved because I see business has so much to learn from the arts in the specific area of delivering Customer Experences!
Service Excellence is the Singapore National Initiative launched in October to increase the level of service in Singapore. Clearly its part of a long term push within the country to transform into a Service Economy. I'm thrilled that they are taking the long view and seeing that a gracious society is essential to having an attractive economically vibrant service economy, knowledge economy.
The Experience Economy is coming!
Just returned from Singapore last week. The trip had two focusing themes:
BizARTS and Service Excellence. Both relevant to CRM.
BizARTS is the name of the new venture being launched by Min Lee, Singapore's prodigy violinist, just returned from studying in the US and amazingly, very interested in contributing to the community she grew up in. She believes Arts IS Life. I'm involved because I see business has so much to learn from the arts in the specific area of delivering Customer Experences!
Service Excellence is the Singapore National Initiative launched in October to increase the level of service in Singapore. Clearly its part of a long term push within the country to transform into a Service Economy. I'm thrilled that they are taking the long view and seeing that a gracious society is essential to having an attractive economically vibrant service economy, knowledge economy.
The Experience Economy is coming!
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Connecting the Arts and Business
The Arts are supported by the wealthy, many of the top business people in any society
Today Arts activities and events are valuable networking opportunities for doing Business
The UK has set up a whole organization called Arts and Business (see link) just to get more happening, for example: to create partnerships so that business is supporting the arts and gets something directly out of that support, e.g. publicity, goodwill, community building, employees volunteering and feeling good about it
What other Arts Business win/win connections might there be?
On the site, I found this article:
http://www.aandb.org.uk/render.aspx?siteID=1&navIDs=1,5,448,470
CREATIVITY CRISIS LEAVES UK BUSINESS AT A DISADVANTAGE
Some extracts -
* UK businesses are facing aa shortage of creativity skills at senior levels
* 60% of FTSE 500 companies now require their CEOs to have creative skills
* 48% require creative skills of their Sales Directors
* Businesses in the FTSE 500 see creativity skills as one of the main engines to business success, and seek creative people to join their Boards of Directors
* Reasons for 86% of board candidates failing to meet this criteria are
· A lack of creative mentors and suitable training (36%)
· A dull and unexciting physical work environment (27%)
· Work ethos, where the atmosphere and working practices are not conducive to the development of creativity skills (23%)
· Lack of training in general education (14%)
According to Arts & Business CEO Colin Tweedy:
"The arts are a good place to start and have a unique ability to inspire individuals to think and act differently and to increase levels of creativity and innovation. It can start by inviting a poet to speak about creative writing to developing a more complex arts access and development programme.....If businesses are to overcome the creativity skills deficit, then all that is required now is actual engagement with a primary source of creativity - the arts."
And how does this Connect to Customers?
Creating Customer Experience requires much more than mundane transaction completion - the aesthetics taught by being involved with ART, provide valuable insight into what it takes to develop with Customers authentic emotional impact and emotional connection - some call it Brand Loyalty - so that Customers feel good about doing Business with your company.
Just look at the success of the Apple iPOD and the new Nano - aesthetic creativity inside!
We have moved well beyond supplying the basics, customers want more and will pay for more:
style! design! coolness!
Today Arts activities and events are valuable networking opportunities for doing Business
The UK has set up a whole organization called Arts and Business (see link) just to get more happening, for example: to create partnerships so that business is supporting the arts and gets something directly out of that support, e.g. publicity, goodwill, community building, employees volunteering and feeling good about it
What other Arts Business win/win connections might there be?
On the site, I found this article:
http://www.aandb.org.uk/render.aspx?siteID=1&navIDs=1,5,448,470
CREATIVITY CRISIS LEAVES UK BUSINESS AT A DISADVANTAGE
Some extracts -
* UK businesses are facing aa shortage of creativity skills at senior levels
* 60% of FTSE 500 companies now require their CEOs to have creative skills
* 48% require creative skills of their Sales Directors
* Businesses in the FTSE 500 see creativity skills as one of the main engines to business success, and seek creative people to join their Boards of Directors
* Reasons for 86% of board candidates failing to meet this criteria are
· A lack of creative mentors and suitable training (36%)
· A dull and unexciting physical work environment (27%)
· Work ethos, where the atmosphere and working practices are not conducive to the development of creativity skills (23%)
· Lack of training in general education (14%)
According to Arts & Business CEO Colin Tweedy:
"The arts are a good place to start and have a unique ability to inspire individuals to think and act differently and to increase levels of creativity and innovation. It can start by inviting a poet to speak about creative writing to developing a more complex arts access and development programme.....If businesses are to overcome the creativity skills deficit, then all that is required now is actual engagement with a primary source of creativity - the arts."
And how does this Connect to Customers?
Creating Customer Experience requires much more than mundane transaction completion - the aesthetics taught by being involved with ART, provide valuable insight into what it takes to develop with Customers authentic emotional impact and emotional connection - some call it Brand Loyalty - so that Customers feel good about doing Business with your company.
Just look at the success of the Apple iPOD and the new Nano - aesthetic creativity inside!
We have moved well beyond supplying the basics, customers want more and will pay for more:
style! design! coolness!
Friday, September 09, 2005
Its the Customers Stupid
Tom Peter's blog - well I just found it, what can I say?
I like it a lot when he says in his August 25 2005 blog "Black Dogs, Loved Ones, etc" :
It's the People, stupid! It's the Customers, stupid!
My great friend Warren Bennis said, "The best thing a leader can do for a Great Group is to allow its members to discover their greatness."
My late colleague Boyd Clarke added, "I have always believed that the purpose of the corporation is to be a blessing to its employees."
End of quote from Peter's blog.
I'm downloading Tom Peter's ePaper on PSF - the Professional Service Firm
114 pages, free at www.ChangeThis.com listed under September 7
Tons of very useful papers about the new Customer Economy
I found out about Tom Peter's blog from http://zane.typepad.com/ : Zane's blog
And got to Zane's blog from
www.heartofbusiness.com
where Mark Silver is doing well by doing good.
He's combining the Karma bank and the Money bank and creating $ocial Capital:
"When you want to make a difference and you need to make a profit"
And how did I find Mark Silver's site? Because I was looking for a new domain name....
I like it a lot when he says in his August 25 2005 blog "Black Dogs, Loved Ones, etc" :
It's the People, stupid! It's the Customers, stupid!
My great friend Warren Bennis said, "The best thing a leader can do for a Great Group is to allow its members to discover their greatness."
My late colleague Boyd Clarke added, "I have always believed that the purpose of the corporation is to be a blessing to its employees."
End of quote from Peter's blog.
I'm downloading Tom Peter's ePaper on PSF - the Professional Service Firm
114 pages, free at www.ChangeThis.com listed under September 7
Tons of very useful papers about the new Customer Economy
I found out about Tom Peter's blog from http://zane.typepad.com/ : Zane's blog
And got to Zane's blog from
www.heartofbusiness.com
where Mark Silver is doing well by doing good.
He's combining the Karma bank and the Money bank and creating $ocial Capital:
"When you want to make a difference and you need to make a profit"
And how did I find Mark Silver's site? Because I was looking for a new domain name....
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Social Customer Manifesto
My post today acknowledges and recognizes an important contribution by Christopher Carfi
The Social Customer Manifesto
* I want to have a say.
* I don't want to do business with idiots.
* I want to know when something is wrong, and what you're going to do to fix it.
* I want to help shape things that I'll find useful.
* I want to connect with others who are working on similar problems.
* I don't want to be called by another salesperson. Ever. (Unless they have something useful. Then I want it yesterday.)
* I want to buy things on my schedule, not yours. I don't care if it's the end of your quarter.
* I want to know your selling process.
* I want to tell you when you're screwing up. Conversely, I'm happy to tell you the things that you are doing well. I may even tell you what your competitors are doing.
* I want to do business with companies that act in a transparent and ethical manner.
* I want to know what's next. We're in partnership…where should we go?
Sounds like a Customer Manifesto to me!
Now if this is the Customer Manifesto - what is the business manifesto?
And in the light of the National Katrina Disaster on many fronts (hurricane, flood, loss of NOLA, government's contract with citizens) - what is the government manifesto?
The Social Customer Manifesto
* I want to have a say.
* I don't want to do business with idiots.
* I want to know when something is wrong, and what you're going to do to fix it.
* I want to help shape things that I'll find useful.
* I want to connect with others who are working on similar problems.
* I don't want to be called by another salesperson. Ever. (Unless they have something useful. Then I want it yesterday.)
* I want to buy things on my schedule, not yours. I don't care if it's the end of your quarter.
* I want to know your selling process.
* I want to tell you when you're screwing up. Conversely, I'm happy to tell you the things that you are doing well. I may even tell you what your competitors are doing.
* I want to do business with companies that act in a transparent and ethical manner.
* I want to know what's next. We're in partnership…where should we go?
Sounds like a Customer Manifesto to me!
Now if this is the Customer Manifesto - what is the business manifesto?
And in the light of the National Katrina Disaster on many fronts (hurricane, flood, loss of NOLA, government's contract with citizens) - what is the government manifesto?
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Blogs Customers et al
Just today, I met David through the Blogging Loom who writes:
"I believe in constant pursuit. When it's done without fearlessness and with a desire to embrace the unknown, the walls that have been created between the world and ourselves naturally dissolve."
I'm honored to meet you!
"Blogging Loom" comes from Edna St Vincent Millay's poem fragment:
Upon this gifted age, in this dark hour,
Rains from the sky a meteoric shower
Of facts... they lie unquestioned, uncombined
Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
Is daily spun, but there exists no loom
To weave it into fabric...
The Blogging Loom is slowly evolving into existence.
And that the nature of business is slowly but surely changing.
Businesses don't like it when their employees Blog about their company.
Why?
Because that's the truest "Buyers Guide" that there is.
And the Blogging Loom makes it possible for all to see how the Sausages are made inside the Sausage Factory.
Better the devil you know than the devil you don't
Customer Relationships will never be the same after the blogging loom hits mainstream
"I believe in constant pursuit. When it's done without fearlessness and with a desire to embrace the unknown, the walls that have been created between the world and ourselves naturally dissolve."
I'm honored to meet you!
"Blogging Loom" comes from Edna St Vincent Millay's poem fragment:
Upon this gifted age, in this dark hour,
Rains from the sky a meteoric shower
Of facts... they lie unquestioned, uncombined
Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
Is daily spun, but there exists no loom
To weave it into fabric...
The Blogging Loom is slowly evolving into existence.
And that the nature of business is slowly but surely changing.
Businesses don't like it when their employees Blog about their company.
Why?
Because that's the truest "Buyers Guide" that there is.
And the Blogging Loom makes it possible for all to see how the Sausages are made inside the Sausage Factory.
Better the devil you know than the devil you don't
Customer Relationships will never be the same after the blogging loom hits mainstream
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Pharmaceutical Mission Impossible
Deliver customer satisfaction and make a profit ? Who?s really able to do it? Have you guessed? Johnson and Johnson is delivering customer satisfaction and making a consistent profit. It is not Mission Impossible....
The Johnson and Johnson Credo is legendary in the pharmaceutical industry.
It is a model for good CRM practice.
I love it!
I wrote this article for Greater China CRM and suddenly realized that the J&J Credo was a somewhat like the Spring and Autumn Analects - the records by the students of Confucius on his thoughts about the relationship between people, families, community and emperor. Defining the values of key relationship has provides strong guidelines for one of the longest ongoing cultures in the world: China.
Perhaps it also accounts for Johnson and Johnson's steady success over the years.
The Johnson and Johnson Credo is legendary in the pharmaceutical industry.
It is a model for good CRM practice.
I love it!
I wrote this article for Greater China CRM and suddenly realized that the J&J Credo was a somewhat like the Spring and Autumn Analects - the records by the students of Confucius on his thoughts about the relationship between people, families, community and emperor. Defining the values of key relationship has provides strong guidelines for one of the longest ongoing cultures in the world: China.
Perhaps it also accounts for Johnson and Johnson's steady success over the years.
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Customer Lifetime Value article at CRMGuru
A long time ago, in 1998, Linda Sharpe and I gave a talk in Silicon Valley about Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) that drew a record crowd to the Marketing Special Interest Group of the Software Development Forum www.sdforum.org
Since then, my understanding continues to evolve.
Customer Lifetime Value is a great way to understand how valuable your customers are as Assets.... read my latest article just up at www.crmguru.com to find out more
Since then, my understanding continues to evolve.
Customer Lifetime Value is a great way to understand how valuable your customers are as Assets.... read my latest article just up at www.crmguru.com to find out more
Friday, July 01, 2005
The 5 Kernels of Corn - Truly Deeply Madly Valuing People
This was triggered by an article and response in the Singapore Straits Times.
Poet and Economic Development Board director Koh Buck Song wrote an article in the Straits Times June 22, 2005 about innovation in social development. “The key is to see it through”.
Joyce Tan Swee Yee won the award for Outstanding Social Worker Merit Award for 2004. Mr. Koh touched on issues she has worked all her life on. So she wrote a reply which was published in the Straits Times Jun 27 in which she said
“Unless we truly, deeply, madly value the individual citizen, there can be no true, long-lasting social development.”
Yesterday, my friend Hung Nguyen told me a story about a wealthy Asian patriarch, and I have very slightly adapted it below:
The illustrious and prosperous gentleman of the East had 5 sons, each with a family of his own. To whom would he would leave the bulk of his wealth.
In those days, it was the practice to give control of the wealth to the woman of the family. So he needed to decide which of his daughters-in-law would be the best.
He decided to test them over five years in this way, giving each daughter-in-law 5 kernels of corn and telling them he was going away and would return in five years.
The first thought he was a crazy old man, probably going senile and threw them away.
The second thought the 5 kernels must be very special, probably magical and so thought to capture those magical powers by eating the corn.
The third thought that these were given to her for safe keeping and she put them in a very special box that would protect them and put the box in a vault.
The fourth wanted to be innovative and ground the kernels into flour, and started looking for great recipes that would maximize the impact of that tiny amount of corn flour.
The fifth decided that the best thing to do would be to plant the corn.
So she prepared a planting bed and watched over the corn.
They grew tall and beautiful, and she harvested the corn, keeping some to plant for the next season, doing this for each of the five years.
The old man returned, and asked what had happened to the corn he had given his daughters in law
The first said “What corn?”
The second said “They weren’t magic, I ate them and nothing happened.”
The third said “Here they are, EXACTLY the way you gave them to me.”
The fourth said “I found this world-class recipe for those kernels and here is the exquisite morsel I made from the corn”
The fifth said “Come with me to the back of the house”, in front of them, spreading as far as they could see were rows and rows of maize plants, green and lush, waving gently in the slight breeze.
The old man knew he had found the right person to inherit his wealth.
In his article, Koh Buck Song gives his view of the major obstacles to following through on social development innovation. I read it as meaning that it is the lack of follow through that results in the inability to harvest sustainably from efforts at social development.
For me, focusing on the follow through is like trying to work out how the first four daughters-in-law can follow through to maximize the impact of their five kernel’s of corn. Five is Five and stays five. (even when innovatively cooked into a worldclass recipe for eating)
It was the fifth daughter who saw the potential of the kernels of corn and nurtured them, who saw the kernels grow and multiply. Five becomes 100’s becomes 1000’s and keeps on going…
All the training and innovation will come to naught as with the first 4 daughters-in-law.
The individual citizen is like the corn kernel – all the potential is there – in each person.
Accepting all the possibilities and nurturing them to fruition, harvest and re-seeding is a joyful process.
The key is to Truly, Madly, Deeply Value the individual citizen.
What if we change citizen to customer? How would you read the story?
Poet and Economic Development Board director Koh Buck Song wrote an article in the Straits Times June 22, 2005 about innovation in social development. “The key is to see it through”.
Joyce Tan Swee Yee won the award for Outstanding Social Worker Merit Award for 2004. Mr. Koh touched on issues she has worked all her life on. So she wrote a reply which was published in the Straits Times Jun 27 in which she said
“Unless we truly, deeply, madly value the individual citizen, there can be no true, long-lasting social development.”
Yesterday, my friend Hung Nguyen told me a story about a wealthy Asian patriarch, and I have very slightly adapted it below:
The illustrious and prosperous gentleman of the East had 5 sons, each with a family of his own. To whom would he would leave the bulk of his wealth.
In those days, it was the practice to give control of the wealth to the woman of the family. So he needed to decide which of his daughters-in-law would be the best.
He decided to test them over five years in this way, giving each daughter-in-law 5 kernels of corn and telling them he was going away and would return in five years.
The first thought he was a crazy old man, probably going senile and threw them away.
The second thought the 5 kernels must be very special, probably magical and so thought to capture those magical powers by eating the corn.
The third thought that these were given to her for safe keeping and she put them in a very special box that would protect them and put the box in a vault.
The fourth wanted to be innovative and ground the kernels into flour, and started looking for great recipes that would maximize the impact of that tiny amount of corn flour.
The fifth decided that the best thing to do would be to plant the corn.
So she prepared a planting bed and watched over the corn.
They grew tall and beautiful, and she harvested the corn, keeping some to plant for the next season, doing this for each of the five years.
The old man returned, and asked what had happened to the corn he had given his daughters in law
The first said “What corn?”
The second said “They weren’t magic, I ate them and nothing happened.”
The third said “Here they are, EXACTLY the way you gave them to me.”
The fourth said “I found this world-class recipe for those kernels and here is the exquisite morsel I made from the corn”
The fifth said “Come with me to the back of the house”, in front of them, spreading as far as they could see were rows and rows of maize plants, green and lush, waving gently in the slight breeze.
The old man knew he had found the right person to inherit his wealth.
In his article, Koh Buck Song gives his view of the major obstacles to following through on social development innovation. I read it as meaning that it is the lack of follow through that results in the inability to harvest sustainably from efforts at social development.
For me, focusing on the follow through is like trying to work out how the first four daughters-in-law can follow through to maximize the impact of their five kernel’s of corn. Five is Five and stays five. (even when innovatively cooked into a worldclass recipe for eating)
It was the fifth daughter who saw the potential of the kernels of corn and nurtured them, who saw the kernels grow and multiply. Five becomes 100’s becomes 1000’s and keeps on going…
All the training and innovation will come to naught as with the first 4 daughters-in-law.
The individual citizen is like the corn kernel – all the potential is there – in each person.
Accepting all the possibilities and nurturing them to fruition, harvest and re-seeding is a joyful process.
The key is to Truly, Madly, Deeply Value the individual citizen.
What if we change citizen to customer? How would you read the story?
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Wednesday Night at PARC: Together Again
Last night was an amazing experience. John Markoff's new book "What the Dormouse Said" has stirred up a lot of memories and passion of the early days of personal computing. At the (formerly known as Xerox) Palo Alto Research Center Auditorium, a crowd gathered that may never get together in one room again. Many people from the book just turned up - it was a combination of holding the event at PARC and also seeing that some of their friends would be there on the panel: Bill Duvall, Lee Felsenstein, Larry Tesler, Dennis Allison.
It all started the day before, Tuesday morning, when Pam Cleveland from the Computer History Museum sent a note from the SD Forum organizer, Sandy Rockowitz inviting Doug Engelbart to attend. I'd been Doug's business partner for a couple years in 2002-2003 and we still get together to eat salmon together about once a month. Doug was open to doing it and so by 6 pm we were rolling up Coyote Hill Road towards PARC.
First we see Adele Goldberg speaking on her cell phone, then on the way up from the parking lot, Harvey Lehtman comes up to say hi to Doug. As we go in, people who know him or have heard of him come up for Doug's autograph - it's not easy for him to write these days, so those who got Doug's autographs are lucky!
Dan Gillmor, well known as the San Jose Mercury Technology Columnist introduced John Markoff, saying lots of normal nice things. Most memorably, that John was responsible for the most Holy Crap moments, when late in the publishing cycle, they'd see the latest article by Markoff and found they the local Silicon Valley paper been scooped again by the New York Times. As of May 13, Dan has landed in www.Bayosphere.com - a place for citizen journalism.
John Markoff talks and shows photos of folks - young, beautiful, handsome, intense from the '60's. Gosh, many of them sporting really large beards! He said, quoting someone, he felt as if he was giving a lecture on Catholic Theology in front of a group of Popes..... Technology happens through the prism of Culture and Economics, that the 1960's is echoing in the politics of today.
Ted Nelson, the "Don Quixote" of modern computing has not been widely known outside of computing circles. The book is about the People of that age, stories that must be set down before they are forgotten. John told how he'd met Ted at Doug's 79th birthday party and with no preamble Ted said (something like) "I can conclusively prove I invented backlink".
The 2 myths of the personal computer:
1. Two Steves and a garage (Jobs and Wozniak and the Apple computer)
2. Alan Kay in the early 70's.
Markoff has written a Revisionist history about the fact that the ideas that mattered more than this were created at two labs: Doug's at SRI - the Augmented Human Intellect (later known as Augmented Research Center - ARC) and John McCarthy's Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL) at opposite sides of the Stanford Campus. The ideas were synthesized at Xerox and then went out to the computer hobbyists.
He's saying that the context and milieu of the times - psychedelic sociology, not psychology were responsible for what emerged. In the collision of the sub groups - Grateful Dead, People's Computer Company, the Microprocessor - something happened. The licensing of the transistor at nominal fee was the key to the emergence of Silicon Valley, together with Xerox's decision to not enforce their patent ownership of the LCD, spread the technology widely. Sutherland's Sketchpad and Link were precursors. It was this moment that the universal media machine combined with the idea of computing which up to then had been for numerical analysis.
Within a circle of 5 miles around Kepler's bookstore in Menlo Park - it all happened, and not by any coincidence, John Markoff himself grew up.
As the second node on the Internet (ARPANET as it was known then), Doug's NLS (oNLSystem) was the killer app that allowed people to send messages, communicate, access information on remote computers. Before that moment, computing were not seen as intuitive.
McCarthy's AI Lab was on Arastradero road. John McCarthy was Father of Time Sharing. My partner RC was McCarthy's PhD student in the mid 80's and caught up with Les Earnest who was also there at the event. When RC told Les about working at Cisco, Les reminisced with stories about Len Bozak who had worked at SAIL before leaving to found Cisco.
Markoff said he'd noticed that the ones whose ideas had lasted, were the ones who realized that Scaling made a difference. That Doug had satisfied himself that computers would be able to scale down in size and increase in computing power to be able to augment human capability. That others who's concepts took root similarly were able to project trends.
Later when the panelists spoke, Larry Tesler talked about discovering the power of personal printing in this way: That in order to get student leaflets produced for a protest at Stanford, they'd made them in the basement at SAIL. Later he and others were talking and extrapolating what this meant to have anyone be able to print whatever they wanted.... anyway, they kept going and by the end of the conversation, they realized that the Soviet Union would fall. They wondered who they should tell? So they talked some more and decided they shouldn't tell anyone because otherwise the Soviet Union would take steps. So they kept quiet, and the Soviet Union fell.
Up to that point, computers had been used for numerical analysis. The political and social environment in the 60's and 70's provided the spark to shift out of numbers and into human stuff - Augmentation and AI.
Lee Felsenstein said it was not about counter culture, at least not in his circles, it was about the "Revolt against Institutions" - which in some way has it s roots back to the beginning of the Republic. That was the Zeitgeist. Free Speech, Community, Convivial Technology, Deschooling Society, Ivan Illich.
Dennis Allison founded the People's Computing Company, and produced the Computer Music Journal and Dr. Dobb's Journal (among others). The Learning Exchange, Community memory, community search and access to knowledge.
Just behind us I saw in the audience Butler Lampson, Bob Taylor - characters in this book and also in the book about JR Licklider, the Dream Machine. In front of us Ann Duvall and Markoff's wife, Leslie. Some, no many of the people who care about Doug.
Dealing Lightning with Both Hands - that was the description of Doug up on stage at the 1968 demo http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/MouseSitePg1.html - Lee Felsenstein said that he'd heard about it 3rd hand and it made a huge impression on him, the vision of what computers could do - so completely different from anything. It was in the air - Andy van Dam and Ted Nelson (inventor of hypertext) had begun working on a system with similar characteristics and couldn't believe they'd been scooped not just in the idea but in the implementation.
Larry Tesler talked about "Questioning Everything". That whatever was there had to be challenged. He also told the story of calling Microsoft Tech Support in the very early days and being helped by Bill Gates.
Someone asked what are people on the panel finding interesting these days:
Markoff - file to file sharing lawsuit is in the news these days. But Peer to Peer sharing is moving below file level granularity... he expects a peer to peer application explosion - its all about sharing information - harks back to his earlier comment about NLS being the 'net's Killer App. Another thing, the massively single player game - SPORE - individuals create content, their content together makes for a complex world, a Multi-Verse (multiple universe) - a platform for sharing user generated information (my addition - that interacts, ie, acts on the information shared). Conflating (melding, fusing) Open Source, Content Sharing, Software Sharing.
Larry Tesler, Lee Felsenstein and Dennis Allison spoke about how much further computing had to go in enhancing education. Dennis believes children should learning programming. Larry said that the unsolved problem in computing is effective education. Lee said he's been working on the bicycle powered computer for schools.
Doug had been talking about the book for weeks. In fact he'd attended two other book tour sessions with John Markoff. He'd been telling me that there were things he'd wanted to say about the counter culture but not been able to before. So Ann Duvall got the mike and asked him a question: Tonight a young man came up and said he'd just seen the 1968 demo, and he saw things there that people still don't have today. Almost 40 years later, that demo is still amazing people and causing them to think about computers in new ways. Share your thoughts Doug.
Doug stood up from his aisle seat: There's a group of people running a conference in Copenhagen "reboot" - and they want to reboot. So they asked me to talk with them after they show that 1968 video. In preparation for that today, I watched the whole 90 minutes again, which I haven't seen for a long time.
I was stimulated by the book, it made me think about countercultures - it made me think about paradigm shifts among people involved that were quite different from those described in the book. Besides the revolutionary 60's spirit. For instance, personal computing vs personal computer - we had considerably more power back in the 70's via personal computing using NLS/Augment. Yet we went down the personal computer path, even though it took decades for the personal computer to catch up with what we had in the 60's and early 70's.
(Note from Mei Lin - if Larry Tesler had worked at Doug's ARC lab instead of McCarthy's SAIL lab, would he have accepted sharing computer resources? Larry said last night, he couldn't stand getting a message like, your 3 second program will take 2 weeks to run. Les Ernest stood up from the audience and said, you would rather boot up your personal computer and have it take 10 minutes than wait a few seconds to log on to SAIL. Larry said, at least its deterministic, and I could go get a cup of coffee. Someone I forget who, said, its just normal Territorial instinct to want your own access to power with no in-betweens.)
The other thing I wanted to bring up is that we focused on capabilities - we had the feeling that there were signficant potential increaases in capability - that pursuing those was very important and that exploration of how to attain these increases was very limited by the other current of the times: That things should be easy to learn.
My view has been and still is:
First find out how much capability to achieve and only then ask if the price of learning to achieve that level of capability is too high.
Definitely not arbitrarily setting limits on how easy to learn it must be.
We haven't done this in the past. If we did, we'd all be riding tricycles because bicycles are too hard to learn to ride. (MLF - not to mention learning to drive!)
One thing Doug did not get to last night was a third point: The perspective of computing supporting groups instead of computing supporting individuals - Doug thought about saying "We had email in 1970, collaboration in group was common, software code could be accessed and worked on by anyone, we could edit code and run it in the same window. Capability in PC's didn't have spreadsheets, file sharing systems where you could access information at very granular (word, character) levels
The clash in culture between office automation vs personal computing made a real difference in how things evolved. The difference in goal between Artifical Intelligence and Augmented Intelligence also had profound effects which we live with today. How we can boost the humans capabilities? The cultures were quite different. John wrote about some differences in culture, Doug would like to see someone writing a book about these specific culture differences - because we are still not done with increasing human capability.:
Samuel Hahn asked the last question of the evening - it was already 10 pm, 1 hour over the scheduled end.
"The technology is much more advanced now. So is the time ripe for Doug's quest to focus technology on Augmenting Human capability?"
Answer - was it Felsenstein and/or Tesler: The momentum and energy are slowly building. No one knows when the critical mass with be reached. The bubble of interest and available technology is continuing to grow.
Paraphrasing Markoff "sometimes it can take decades, even when all the pieces seem to be in place, for something to hit. I can't predict."
It was really a great night for Doug, he was happy to see everyone again and glad to be still around to remind everyone of how much work there still is to be done.
Tom Foremski felt the passion too, read his article on the event at
http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2005/06/a_tribute_to_on.php
It all started the day before, Tuesday morning, when Pam Cleveland from the Computer History Museum sent a note from the SD Forum organizer, Sandy Rockowitz inviting Doug Engelbart to attend. I'd been Doug's business partner for a couple years in 2002-2003 and we still get together to eat salmon together about once a month. Doug was open to doing it and so by 6 pm we were rolling up Coyote Hill Road towards PARC.
First we see Adele Goldberg speaking on her cell phone, then on the way up from the parking lot, Harvey Lehtman comes up to say hi to Doug. As we go in, people who know him or have heard of him come up for Doug's autograph - it's not easy for him to write these days, so those who got Doug's autographs are lucky!
Dan Gillmor, well known as the San Jose Mercury Technology Columnist introduced John Markoff, saying lots of normal nice things. Most memorably, that John was responsible for the most Holy Crap moments, when late in the publishing cycle, they'd see the latest article by Markoff and found they the local Silicon Valley paper been scooped again by the New York Times. As of May 13, Dan has landed in www.Bayosphere.com - a place for citizen journalism.
John Markoff talks and shows photos of folks - young, beautiful, handsome, intense from the '60's. Gosh, many of them sporting really large beards! He said, quoting someone, he felt as if he was giving a lecture on Catholic Theology in front of a group of Popes..... Technology happens through the prism of Culture and Economics, that the 1960's is echoing in the politics of today.
Ted Nelson, the "Don Quixote" of modern computing has not been widely known outside of computing circles. The book is about the People of that age, stories that must be set down before they are forgotten. John told how he'd met Ted at Doug's 79th birthday party and with no preamble Ted said (something like) "I can conclusively prove I invented backlink".
The 2 myths of the personal computer:
1. Two Steves and a garage (Jobs and Wozniak and the Apple computer)
2. Alan Kay in the early 70's.
Markoff has written a Revisionist history about the fact that the ideas that mattered more than this were created at two labs: Doug's at SRI - the Augmented Human Intellect (later known as Augmented Research Center - ARC) and John McCarthy's Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL) at opposite sides of the Stanford Campus. The ideas were synthesized at Xerox and then went out to the computer hobbyists.
He's saying that the context and milieu of the times - psychedelic sociology, not psychology were responsible for what emerged. In the collision of the sub groups - Grateful Dead, People's Computer Company, the Microprocessor - something happened. The licensing of the transistor at nominal fee was the key to the emergence of Silicon Valley, together with Xerox's decision to not enforce their patent ownership of the LCD, spread the technology widely. Sutherland's Sketchpad and Link were precursors. It was this moment that the universal media machine combined with the idea of computing which up to then had been for numerical analysis.
Within a circle of 5 miles around Kepler's bookstore in Menlo Park - it all happened, and not by any coincidence, John Markoff himself grew up.
As the second node on the Internet (ARPANET as it was known then), Doug's NLS (oNLSystem) was the killer app that allowed people to send messages, communicate, access information on remote computers. Before that moment, computing were not seen as intuitive.
McCarthy's AI Lab was on Arastradero road. John McCarthy was Father of Time Sharing. My partner RC was McCarthy's PhD student in the mid 80's and caught up with Les Earnest who was also there at the event. When RC told Les about working at Cisco, Les reminisced with stories about Len Bozak who had worked at SAIL before leaving to found Cisco.
Markoff said he'd noticed that the ones whose ideas had lasted, were the ones who realized that Scaling made a difference. That Doug had satisfied himself that computers would be able to scale down in size and increase in computing power to be able to augment human capability. That others who's concepts took root similarly were able to project trends.
Later when the panelists spoke, Larry Tesler talked about discovering the power of personal printing in this way: That in order to get student leaflets produced for a protest at Stanford, they'd made them in the basement at SAIL. Later he and others were talking and extrapolating what this meant to have anyone be able to print whatever they wanted.... anyway, they kept going and by the end of the conversation, they realized that the Soviet Union would fall. They wondered who they should tell? So they talked some more and decided they shouldn't tell anyone because otherwise the Soviet Union would take steps. So they kept quiet, and the Soviet Union fell.
Up to that point, computers had been used for numerical analysis. The political and social environment in the 60's and 70's provided the spark to shift out of numbers and into human stuff - Augmentation and AI.
Lee Felsenstein said it was not about counter culture, at least not in his circles, it was about the "Revolt against Institutions" - which in some way has it s roots back to the beginning of the Republic. That was the Zeitgeist. Free Speech, Community, Convivial Technology, Deschooling Society, Ivan Illich.
Dennis Allison founded the People's Computing Company, and produced the Computer Music Journal and Dr. Dobb's Journal (among others). The Learning Exchange, Community memory, community search and access to knowledge.
Just behind us I saw in the audience Butler Lampson, Bob Taylor - characters in this book and also in the book about JR Licklider, the Dream Machine. In front of us Ann Duvall and Markoff's wife, Leslie. Some, no many of the people who care about Doug.
Dealing Lightning with Both Hands - that was the description of Doug up on stage at the 1968 demo http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/MouseSitePg1.html - Lee Felsenstein said that he'd heard about it 3rd hand and it made a huge impression on him, the vision of what computers could do - so completely different from anything. It was in the air - Andy van Dam and Ted Nelson (inventor of hypertext) had begun working on a system with similar characteristics and couldn't believe they'd been scooped not just in the idea but in the implementation.
Larry Tesler talked about "Questioning Everything". That whatever was there had to be challenged. He also told the story of calling Microsoft Tech Support in the very early days and being helped by Bill Gates.
Someone asked what are people on the panel finding interesting these days:
Markoff - file to file sharing lawsuit is in the news these days. But Peer to Peer sharing is moving below file level granularity... he expects a peer to peer application explosion - its all about sharing information - harks back to his earlier comment about NLS being the 'net's Killer App. Another thing, the massively single player game - SPORE - individuals create content, their content together makes for a complex world, a Multi-Verse (multiple universe) - a platform for sharing user generated information (my addition - that interacts, ie, acts on the information shared). Conflating (melding, fusing) Open Source, Content Sharing, Software Sharing.
Larry Tesler, Lee Felsenstein and Dennis Allison spoke about how much further computing had to go in enhancing education. Dennis believes children should learning programming. Larry said that the unsolved problem in computing is effective education. Lee said he's been working on the bicycle powered computer for schools.
Doug had been talking about the book for weeks. In fact he'd attended two other book tour sessions with John Markoff. He'd been telling me that there were things he'd wanted to say about the counter culture but not been able to before. So Ann Duvall got the mike and asked him a question: Tonight a young man came up and said he'd just seen the 1968 demo, and he saw things there that people still don't have today. Almost 40 years later, that demo is still amazing people and causing them to think about computers in new ways. Share your thoughts Doug.
Doug stood up from his aisle seat: There's a group of people running a conference in Copenhagen "reboot" - and they want to reboot. So they asked me to talk with them after they show that 1968 video. In preparation for that today, I watched the whole 90 minutes again, which I haven't seen for a long time.
I was stimulated by the book, it made me think about countercultures - it made me think about paradigm shifts among people involved that were quite different from those described in the book. Besides the revolutionary 60's spirit. For instance, personal computing vs personal computer - we had considerably more power back in the 70's via personal computing using NLS/Augment. Yet we went down the personal computer path, even though it took decades for the personal computer to catch up with what we had in the 60's and early 70's.
(Note from Mei Lin - if Larry Tesler had worked at Doug's ARC lab instead of McCarthy's SAIL lab, would he have accepted sharing computer resources? Larry said last night, he couldn't stand getting a message like, your 3 second program will take 2 weeks to run. Les Ernest stood up from the audience and said, you would rather boot up your personal computer and have it take 10 minutes than wait a few seconds to log on to SAIL. Larry said, at least its deterministic, and I could go get a cup of coffee. Someone I forget who, said, its just normal Territorial instinct to want your own access to power with no in-betweens.)
The other thing I wanted to bring up is that we focused on capabilities - we had the feeling that there were signficant potential increaases in capability - that pursuing those was very important and that exploration of how to attain these increases was very limited by the other current of the times: That things should be easy to learn.
My view has been and still is:
First find out how much capability to achieve and only then ask if the price of learning to achieve that level of capability is too high.
Definitely not arbitrarily setting limits on how easy to learn it must be.
We haven't done this in the past. If we did, we'd all be riding tricycles because bicycles are too hard to learn to ride. (MLF - not to mention learning to drive!)
One thing Doug did not get to last night was a third point: The perspective of computing supporting groups instead of computing supporting individuals - Doug thought about saying "We had email in 1970, collaboration in group was common, software code could be accessed and worked on by anyone, we could edit code and run it in the same window. Capability in PC's didn't have spreadsheets, file sharing systems where you could access information at very granular (word, character) levels
The clash in culture between office automation vs personal computing made a real difference in how things evolved. The difference in goal between Artifical Intelligence and Augmented Intelligence also had profound effects which we live with today. How we can boost the humans capabilities? The cultures were quite different. John wrote about some differences in culture, Doug would like to see someone writing a book about these specific culture differences - because we are still not done with increasing human capability.:
Samuel Hahn asked the last question of the evening - it was already 10 pm, 1 hour over the scheduled end.
"The technology is much more advanced now. So is the time ripe for Doug's quest to focus technology on Augmenting Human capability?"
Answer - was it Felsenstein and/or Tesler: The momentum and energy are slowly building. No one knows when the critical mass with be reached. The bubble of interest and available technology is continuing to grow.
Paraphrasing Markoff "sometimes it can take decades, even when all the pieces seem to be in place, for something to hit. I can't predict."
It was really a great night for Doug, he was happy to see everyone again and glad to be still around to remind everyone of how much work there still is to be done.
Tom Foremski felt the passion too, read his article on the event at
http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2005/06/a_tribute_to_on.php
Friday, June 03, 2005
Friday Light Musings - for movie buffs mostly....
My favorite movie-watching companion, RC and I recently watched the movie "The Hustler". Paul Newman's role is Fast Eddie the pool-playing conman - great pool-playing with the Minnesota Fats character (reminded me of my mis-spent youth. Just for fun a digression: My first job was as an assembler programmer for Shell Australia. I worked in the DataCenter in Doncaster and next to our cafeteria, we had a pool room. We played pool everyday after lunch. Ahhh those were the days.)
The Hustler is really a classic. A few weeks later we watched The Color of Money - in that movie, the new kid pool-player is Tom Cruise, with Paul Newman playing Fast Eddie 20 years later, who takes the kid pool player up to the big time. Afterwards, RC said "What about a double bill starting with The Color of Money with Collateral?" That got me thinking. Tom Cruise is called Vince/Vincent in both movies. That can't be a coincidence (or can it? :')
So then, I thought, how about a Trilogy with The Hustler. The Color of Money. Collateral?
Then after I watched Star Wars Episode III, the parallels jumped out and begged to be blogged.
Fast Eddie and Minnesota Fats - what else? Obiwan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn.
Tom Cruise as Vince in the Color of Money - Anakin Skywalker
Tom Cruise as Vincent in Collateral - Darth Vader
Neat huh?
Looks like the same tension plays out between the Force and the Dark Side in many stories.
So what's the connection with Customer Connect?
Well first, this blog was named Customer Connect before I realized that Diamler Chrysler uses this name for their customer program. So for the record, I have no connection with Diamler Chrysler or their customer program whatsoever.
After seeing Star Wars Episode III I went to see the documentary Enron - The Smartest Guys in the Room.
Now that is a really scary movie! The people in Enron really seemed to believe that the whole point of business was making money and nothing else mattered. They seemed to have been seduced by the Dark Side. The Force was not with them. Sidebar: There's an interesting article The Biggest Contract on the changing identity of business in the Economist last week by McKinsey & Company's Managing Director, Ian Davis. (Yoda?) http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4008642
They certainly did not care about customers. Especially the customers of electricity over here in California. The Enron documentary brought back into vivid recollection those days in California of power shortages and blackouts. I lived through several of those blackouts and there's nothing like a blackout to remind one of how powerless as a customer you are. Pun intended!
When you are seduced by the Dark Side, you think it is just what you want that matters, everything else is out there to be "used" to get your goal.
In unenlightened Customer Relationship Management, many of the tools and techniques are geared to what our business wants and what our business needs. What is the return on investment to us, the business who is doing the selling? Me Me Me ! What about Me?
See the problem with this picture? In enlightened CRM, we use and seek tools that are geared to matching what customers need with what our best skills and capabilities can deliver.
See Kim and Mauborgne's "Blue Ocean Strategy" - a whole book on new approaches. http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/methods_kim_blue_ocean_strategy.html
Steer clear of the tempting but dangerous Territory on the Dark Side. Remember Enron.
The Force is with the Customer.
May the Force be with you.
The Hustler is really a classic. A few weeks later we watched The Color of Money - in that movie, the new kid pool-player is Tom Cruise, with Paul Newman playing Fast Eddie 20 years later, who takes the kid pool player up to the big time. Afterwards, RC said "What about a double bill starting with The Color of Money with Collateral?" That got me thinking. Tom Cruise is called Vince/Vincent in both movies. That can't be a coincidence (or can it? :')
So then, I thought, how about a Trilogy with The Hustler. The Color of Money. Collateral?
Then after I watched Star Wars Episode III, the parallels jumped out and begged to be blogged.
Fast Eddie and Minnesota Fats - what else? Obiwan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn.
Tom Cruise as Vince in the Color of Money - Anakin Skywalker
Tom Cruise as Vincent in Collateral - Darth Vader
Neat huh?
Looks like the same tension plays out between the Force and the Dark Side in many stories.
So what's the connection with Customer Connect?
Well first, this blog was named Customer Connect before I realized that Diamler Chrysler uses this name for their customer program. So for the record, I have no connection with Diamler Chrysler or their customer program whatsoever.
After seeing Star Wars Episode III I went to see the documentary Enron - The Smartest Guys in the Room.
Now that is a really scary movie! The people in Enron really seemed to believe that the whole point of business was making money and nothing else mattered. They seemed to have been seduced by the Dark Side. The Force was not with them. Sidebar: There's an interesting article The Biggest Contract on the changing identity of business in the Economist last week by McKinsey & Company's Managing Director, Ian Davis. (Yoda?) http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4008642
They certainly did not care about customers. Especially the customers of electricity over here in California. The Enron documentary brought back into vivid recollection those days in California of power shortages and blackouts. I lived through several of those blackouts and there's nothing like a blackout to remind one of how powerless as a customer you are. Pun intended!
When you are seduced by the Dark Side, you think it is just what you want that matters, everything else is out there to be "used" to get your goal.
In unenlightened Customer Relationship Management, many of the tools and techniques are geared to what our business wants and what our business needs. What is the return on investment to us, the business who is doing the selling? Me Me Me ! What about Me?
See the problem with this picture? In enlightened CRM, we use and seek tools that are geared to matching what customers need with what our best skills and capabilities can deliver.
See Kim and Mauborgne's "Blue Ocean Strategy" - a whole book on new approaches. http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/methods_kim_blue_ocean_strategy.html
Steer clear of the tempting but dangerous Territory on the Dark Side. Remember Enron.
The Force is with the Customer.
May the Force be with you.
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Rembrandt vs Vermeer - insights for CRM and the dynamic Chinese perspective
This post was inspired by reading Lawrence Weschler's article "Vanishing Point" in the June 2005 issue of Harper's Magazine.
Art history holds some lessons for us: Artist David Hockney in "Secret Knowledge" his 2001 book credibly claims that many of the most acclaimed European artists (Vermeer Caravaggio, van Eyck) used optical projection to increase the precision of their drawing. What it gave them was a way to very accurately draw what they saw from a pinhole (because that's what the optical aids provided). These pictures provided an "optical" look at the world - a very famous Vermeer painting "The Little Street" is an acclaimed example
Here, Hockney describes this painting as a window - we are outside observers with a one point perspective.
Rembrandt shook that world - and some say the difference might be due to the influence of Chinese porcelain painting imports and exports in his hometown. Chinese paintings and scrolls are drawn from a perspective that is dynamic and changing - the world as you would see it, walking along, shifting all the time. The view from the bottom of the hill is different from the view from the top of the hill. Unless you are in a helicopter, you would never see the whole thing from one point - but from the moving series of points.
Rembrandt took the perspective of the individual one further, not just physically dynamic, but emotionally dynamic . Take a look at his sketch: Child being Taught to Walk (c) Trustees of the British Musuem (See http://people.csail.mit.edu/fredo/PUBLI/WillatsDurandAxiomathes.pdf for a picture of this amazing drawing). You can feel the anxious love of the toddler's sister, and the steady confidence of the mother, the pride and excitement of the father squating down ready to receive the tottering child.
Perspective in art is different in time and culture.
Why should perspective in business and technology be any different?
What does this mean for CRM?
We have fallen in love with the pinhole perspective of the financial analyst looking at ROI. Its neat, its convenient, it gives a way to resolve many complicated relationships, and to systematically view a situation using a method that others can follow and understand.
Customer Lifetime Value is the pinhole perspective. Frozen in one point in time, encompassing the history of transactions and future projections with extreme precision.
But a relationship is between people and organizations of people.
Customers are not frozen in time neither are organizations or business.
The Chinese artistic tradition enhanced by Rembrandts dynamic emotional coloring is what we should be aiming at, when we describe the kinds of relationships we want to build with our customers.
Art is what people remember.
The Perspectives of Art are necessary ingredients for making relationships memorable.
We have a long way to go in CRM to doing this... but first we must acknowledge the limitations of our pinhole perspective.
Art history holds some lessons for us: Artist David Hockney in "Secret Knowledge" his 2001 book credibly claims that many of the most acclaimed European artists (Vermeer Caravaggio, van Eyck) used optical projection to increase the precision of their drawing. What it gave them was a way to very accurately draw what they saw from a pinhole (because that's what the optical aids provided). These pictures provided an "optical" look at the world - a very famous Vermeer painting "The Little Street" is an acclaimed example
Here, Hockney describes this painting as a window - we are outside observers with a one point perspective.
Rembrandt shook that world - and some say the difference might be due to the influence of Chinese porcelain painting imports and exports in his hometown. Chinese paintings and scrolls are drawn from a perspective that is dynamic and changing - the world as you would see it, walking along, shifting all the time. The view from the bottom of the hill is different from the view from the top of the hill. Unless you are in a helicopter, you would never see the whole thing from one point - but from the moving series of points.
Rembrandt took the perspective of the individual one further, not just physically dynamic, but emotionally dynamic . Take a look at his sketch: Child being Taught to Walk (c) Trustees of the British Musuem (See http://people.csail.mit.edu/fredo/PUBLI/WillatsDurandAxiomathes.pdf for a picture of this amazing drawing). You can feel the anxious love of the toddler's sister, and the steady confidence of the mother, the pride and excitement of the father squating down ready to receive the tottering child.
Perspective in art is different in time and culture.
Why should perspective in business and technology be any different?
What does this mean for CRM?
We have fallen in love with the pinhole perspective of the financial analyst looking at ROI. Its neat, its convenient, it gives a way to resolve many complicated relationships, and to systematically view a situation using a method that others can follow and understand.
Customer Lifetime Value is the pinhole perspective. Frozen in one point in time, encompassing the history of transactions and future projections with extreme precision.
But a relationship is between people and organizations of people.
Customers are not frozen in time neither are organizations or business.
The Chinese artistic tradition enhanced by Rembrandts dynamic emotional coloring is what we should be aiming at, when we describe the kinds of relationships we want to build with our customers.
Art is what people remember.
The Perspectives of Art are necessary ingredients for making relationships memorable.
We have a long way to go in CRM to doing this... but first we must acknowledge the limitations of our pinhole perspective.
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