I just spent 3 days in an MBA seminar designed to teach us things we should know in our future careers but weren't important to appear in the regular class curriculum. Guess what one of those classes was? No come on, don't read ahead. Guess. You got it, right up there with "Executive Wellness" - we had a fluffy seminar on business ethics.
You get a B!
It quickly became clear that many of my classmates don't spend a lot of time either thinking about or pondering ethics. This may be because they don't encounter ethically challenging issues very often. Or, it may be that their religion gives them a code to live by. Whatever it is, the time we had clearly wasn't enough - as one classmate shouted out the spine chilling proclamation, "well if it's legal, then it must be ethical." That's pretty par for the course in business today. Well actually - it's more like "it's ethical if you don't get caught and you can rationalize it to the people that need to know what you're up to." "Legal" is just a technicality.
Ok, watch this. Now I'm going to connect this to Web 2.0. No really, I can do it. Hang tight!
In a world where horrific ethical breaches barely make your stock price waver (HP) and you can clearly get away with a lot for a long time and get very rich doing so (WorldComm, Enron), and just about everyCorp is under investigation for accounting creativity of some sort or another... it PAYS not to get too connected to people. It pays to only see the numbers. Creativity in the books means someone is getting more while someone is getting less. As long as you can keep it "us" and "them" and you don't see the people you're screwing around as people with lives and their own financial pressures (I'm seeing those Enron people walking to their cars holding their boxes of possessions), then well, you can do whatever you want to to "maximize shareholder value." But it's the connections that really are the rub.
And the Web 2.0 world allows us to bring those connections to bear in some important ways.
1. It's no longer just the companies that have a voice on the internet. We all do. The presses are in the hands of the people! If you screw me over, or I think you're doing something you shouldn't, I might blog about it. I might comment on someone else's blog about it. And then people will know. And we'll all talk about it. And the media will know... and then you'll be asked some hard questions... and then....
2. Because everyone has a voice, and they talk about what happened inside their companies, we can identify cues that something bad might be happening to us.
3. Because we all have a voice, companies hear us. The marketplace hears us.
Whether companies choose to connect with "us" or not, Web 2.0 has allowed "us" to connect with each other. And that's made us stronger. A blogger onslaught can have the strength of a financially mild yet immediate and VERY public class action suit. And that hurts companies where they feel it most.
Connections = power. Connections in business = good. Connections make it easier to get things done.
Tune in tomorrow, when I talk about Burning Man again.
Showing posts with label burning man;. Show all posts
Showing posts with label burning man;. Show all posts
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Why Web 2.0 is Like Burning Man
School is almost out. I can post again!
Last weekend, which was my last official "class" weekend of MBA Year 1 - I presented a controversial paper on Burning Man's gift economy. My Fellow Future Leaders of America (aka the FFLA) were entranced with the concept of *giving* gifts of service and things to others and the community all while expecting absolutely nothing in return.
In a well-timed sequel, we had the founder of glimmerofhope.org speak to my elective class today. He spoke a lot about how he made his zillions, and how he was now able to spend time and money helping the world. I have a problem with that. I don't think you need to have made your zillions to make a difference.
And here's my point. Like Web 2.0 so clearly demonstrates, we are all connected and not only that... we *want* to be connected. Sure, you can hole up in your room with your tv on and live your little pretend life, but your little pretend life tends to disintegrate into community (Second Life anyone?). Man, this is a really big topic to cover in one post. So I'm not going to try. Let me just stop here, for today and say: Web 2.0 shows that the world is more like Burning Man than an office building full of cubicles.
Tune in later this week... and I promise this will make more sense.
Last weekend, which was my last official "class" weekend of MBA Year 1 - I presented a controversial paper on Burning Man's gift economy. My Fellow Future Leaders of America (aka the FFLA) were entranced with the concept of *giving* gifts of service and things to others and the community all while expecting absolutely nothing in return.
In a well-timed sequel, we had the founder of glimmerofhope.org speak to my elective class today. He spoke a lot about how he made his zillions, and how he was now able to spend time and money helping the world. I have a problem with that. I don't think you need to have made your zillions to make a difference.
And here's my point. Like Web 2.0 so clearly demonstrates, we are all connected and not only that... we *want* to be connected. Sure, you can hole up in your room with your tv on and live your little pretend life, but your little pretend life tends to disintegrate into community (Second Life anyone?). Man, this is a really big topic to cover in one post. So I'm not going to try. Let me just stop here, for today and say: Web 2.0 shows that the world is more like Burning Man than an office building full of cubicles.
Tune in later this week... and I promise this will make more sense.
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