CircaSpecting: People, Tech, and Business

ID-ent-defying: Identity is More than a Profile

One of the benefits of having two older teenage sons is that they provide a wealth of insight into emerging patterns of technology use -- particularly as relate to social and collaborative trends.  So, I asked my 17 year old son the other day "How do you use profile pages to understand things about people -- you know, to get a grip on their identity?"  His answer: "I don't.  Profiles are useless.  I look at what they are saying, who's talking with them, and what those other people are saying about them."

 

Identity is about what you DO and WITH WHOM.

 

This conversation was brought back to my mind recently by the new Dan Ariely book The Upside of Irrationality, in which he makes a good case (among others) that using a profile to understand a person's identity is like "trying to understand how a cookie will taste by reading its nutrition label."

 

I've written on this topic from a couple of other perspectives a few times (link here and here), but the topic took on new relevancy and urgency when Cisco announced Quad this week.  Quad is an integrated communication and collaboration hub.  It looks great, and it seems clear to me that Cisco are on the scent of enterprise collaboration in a way that few others are.  There are a lot of cool principles at play in Quad, but here's the one I want to drive home.  Cisco has planted a flag in some prime real estate: identity.  

 

Identity is the central datum of the human co-operating system.

 

Identity helps me interpret things from you. Identity helps me filter the things I send to you.  And, Identity is shaped by all those interactions, too.  Quad allows Cisco to incubate identity from all our communications and collaborations, which enhances our ability to communicate and collaborate in return -- a virtuous cycle.  This is a wonderful, big deal.  Finally, we have a big player who gets it: the collaborative enterprise needs tools, but the end-game here is a human co-operating system, so it's fundamentally about "person."

Renaissance Leadership

In his June 6 NYT editorial, Frank Rich calls out the President for being too deferential to committees, teams, experts, bureaucracies, incumbent interests. Rich takes the President to task for being unwilling to step out boldly and set a firm direction that is his alone, that reflects a clear and unique personal brand. At the same time, Rich also mocks the "go with your gut" attitude at the other end of the spectrum, as caricatured by the previous fellow in the Oval.

Rich's article got me thinking: clearly, there's got to be a middle ground.  And, this middle ground is fertile not just for political leadership -- but for all forms of leadership.

The economic momentum of the 50's is spent; the PC revolution juju is getting old; multiple economic Superpowers are ascendent and competing effectively for resources and consumer attention. Leadership today is a tough puzzle from a strategy perspective.  But, wait, there's more.  Now we have the cultural shifts of facebook and Gen-Y creating leadership ambiguity from an implementation perspective, too.  Namely, what's the "right" balance between participation and direction?   As a result of these strategic and cultural transitions, crafting a more effective leadership alternative for the "new normal" is complex -- as evidenced by the leadership struggles of a very bright man in the oval office.

People want to be heard. This requires openness.  People want to make progress together. This requires focus, and that requires stepping up to choose sides and impose constraints and make trade-off decisions.  No bureaucracy is going to step up.  No committee.  There's never enough facts, and you will never find a plan that humors everyone.  Going around the table making sure everyone is on the record supporting a decision is a nice gesture and perhaps a good transparency exercise, but it is worse than a waste of time as a precondition to decision-making.

  

I am not suggested that you be an idiot who ignores others. But BE. Have a personal brand, and protect it. My father calls that integrity. It is extraordinary, and it can move mountains.  Of people.  So, I humbly offer the following thoughts regarding a reformulation or renaissance of leadership for today:

1. Be a student of everything.  Breadth of knowledge is the only way you can call BS and keep people honest. BUT, don't get too carried away with being a specialist or listening to specialists.  Specialists' identity is based upon what they know, not what they can learn.  And, specialists always overestimate their grasp of causality and their ability to forecast. (see point #3 below)
2. Trust yourself.  It's a monumental lie that you need "experts" to tell you what to do.  Most expertise is cultivated in an antiseptic academic lab.  The real world is messy, almost always invalidating tidy assumptions upon which expertise is based.  It's easier to turn a truck that's moving, so the most important step of all is to get moving -- and only you can make that happen.
3. Doubt certainty.  Life happens, and rarely as we expect.  Anyone who says otherwise should be viewed with more than a little suspicion.  And, any plan that bets on prescience is DOA, in my opinion.  So, embrace messiness, and make decisions anyway.  The messiness is not REALLY going to go away; you and your team will simply start pretending it is.
4. Embrace the adversarial method.  Solicit input, but test it with fierce opposition.  And, accept the same in return.  The purpose is to gather facts and find some truths, not to be right about this or that.  Your best friend should be the person in your sphere who most frequently tells you "no, you're wrong."
5. Own it.  Even if someone else came up with the idea. Even if someone botches the implementation.  Own the decision. Decide, marshal, monitor, adapt, repeat -- and be transparent about it all.  People value transparency over accountability.  If you don't pretend to have the 100% guaranteed silver-bullet plan, then you don't have to fear making adjustments and being transparent about it.  Only the person who pretends prescience needs to fear transparency.  Make your personal leadership brand about openness, decisiveness, focus, monitoring, and adaptation. 

Your existence is defined by the changes you forge in, for, and through others.