New C-Levels

We all learned the economic value chain at school. From raw materials to goods to services.
According to B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore in in their 1999 book after services comes experiences.
Today I was reading "enfant terrible", Tom Peters's, blog where it is taken a couple a steps further. The chain becomes;

• Lovemark
• Dreams Come True
• Spellbinding Experiences
• Gamechanging Solutions
• Services
• Goods
• Raw Materials

So beyond experiences we get dreams and lovemark. Lovemark was introduced by Kevin Roberts in his book Lovemarks. With these new levels Tom comes up with new c-levels. The old c-levels, CEO, CFO, COO etc. are obsolete.
I found them quite amusing. Did he forget any ?

The new C-Levels

• CXO Chief eXperience Officer
• CDM Chief Dream Merchant
• CLO Chief Lovemark Officer
• CWO Chief WOW Officer
• CSTO Chief Storytelling Officer
• CRO Chief Revenue Officer

Chunking is the only way to go

Change comes swiftly, it is fast paced and reveals itself in bursts of innovations. There are 3 distinctive trends which drive this wave of change.

Distributed world, the world is becoming more and more a distributed working environment due to;

• globalization (space)
  
• specialization of products and professionals (granularity)
• 24 X 7 economy (time)
• outsourcing of non-core activities (de-centralized)
  

Collapsing lead times, yesterday’s value-added products and service are becoming today’s commodities due to;

• global competitive pressures
• shift from atoms to bits
• shortened product cycles
• shift from business chain to business webs

Customer driven & service focused, customers are expecting

• customized products
• commodity prices
• excellent service

This poses severe pressures on Business Services & Processes as well as on IT Services.
Agile Business and IT development strategies are crucial.
The best approach is by chunking. Chunking is the composing and decomposing of small chunks, self contained services, which relate to each other in a loosely coupled way. Loosely coupled means that you can take out an old chunk or add a new chunk without sending a tidal wave of change all others.
Chunks are like playing with lego blocks, combining and re-combing new services into adaptive or innovative IT services or business models.
Independend chunks makes it possible to have

• distributed development across geographic boundaries, time zones and around the clock
• re-use of existing chunks keeps prices at a minimum
  
• re-use of tried and tested chunks secure quality
• combining and re-combing chunks provides customized services with minimum maintenance

Ten chunks with six properties will give an opportunity space of 1.000.000 end products while maintenance is restricted to 10 chunks or 60 features. Right ?

The great failure of wikipedia

Wikipedia is becoming an icon. Ever more people are referring to it.
I use it a lot too. It's a great idea having just anyone posting a topic
describing and explaining what it is.
Even more amazing is that anyone can edit, delete or overwrite an existing entry.
Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia and current president of the Wikimedia Foundation called it "availability of the sum of human knowledge to everyone on Earth for free" at least that's the ultimate dream.
It's a true group effort. And as we know the group knows best. I indeed find excellent information at wikipedia. But as most successes it has it's downside too.
In a world of spammers and hackers it's hard to believe that such an open and co-operative playground will be an ongoing success.
Is this true for wikipedia ?
Recent incidents show that the true spirit, open to anyone, neutral and good information, is been violated. Why is that ? because one of the things Jimbo didn't really expect was the oncoming massive tidal wave of legality, legal threats and attacks.
Wikipedia has three events in the past year and a half that has totally changed the atmosphere of Wikipedia.
Jason Scott held a presentation/speech at Notacon 3, April 8, 2006 on the subject.
Jason Scott is somebody who has publish on his blog his criticisms before and maintains a site called textfiles.com
I still respect the idea and success of wikipedia, but Jason has a point.
I think we should listen. Read Jason's speech transcript or listen to the audio file.

Mental Models rule

Mental Models
We make thousands of decisions a day. Most of them unconsciously, a lot consciously. We use mental models to sort, classify our observations and to put them into perspective. Mental models are powerful, they make it possible to think, filter, decide and act on situations without evaluating every fact as a separate piece of information.

The organisation chart
In most organisations that mental model is the organisation chart. It give as a nice picture, mental model, of how the organization works and how each part of the organisation relates to another. It shows distinct levels, clear separation between other parts and the relation between branches and levels. It's the mental model we act on. If asked "how are you organized ?" we all draw an organisation chart.
As said, mental models are powerful, we act on them. But what if it's wrong or oversimplified ? Does that have consequences ? Sure it has. Not all consequences are grave of course, but caution is well advised .
Not so long ago are mental model of mother earth was "the pancake", flat with edges. We know better now. Still for most daily activities that's not a problem. If I'm going out to the shop, I don't need the mental model "a blue ball hanging in the infinite universe", flat is fine. However if I become a bit more ambitious, like tanning and enjoying the sun during the European winter, it's very handy to know that you can fly around the world to a summer elsewhere.
Having the best mental model gives you an advantage, it opens up novel avenues, give rise to innovative ideas and the impossible suddenly seems possible.

The relation web
The mental model I use to look at organisations is "the relation web". People are the organisation. People communicate, work and act in the context of their relations. The organisation chart in only shows 0.000000001 % of the relations, or less.
Relations make an organisation tick. No relations, no communication, no action. The picture on the left is a model, simplified that is, of the Atlantic food web. It's about fishes, surely the relations of an organisation with people is even more complex.
Very few people have this model in their head when re-organising, executing projects or plan. All these activities take an immense effort, especially if you want them to go right. Take for example a simple message from the board dripping down through the organisation, more then half of the people don't get the message, it involves a lot of effort and it takes forever.
Compare this with the speed of a rumor or a good joke, it spreads like a virus, lighting fast and a lot of those exposed to it can recite it.

One morning I was driving in my car on my way to work, listen to the radio, there was a parodie on Frank de Boer, a Dutch soccer player, at that time playing for Barcelona. He has nasal voice, the joke evolved around the fact that he said "You've got e-mail" with his distinctive voice. Two hours later I'm om the phone with Korea talking to a Dutch colleague, in the background I constantly hear, Frank de Boer voice with "You've got e-mail". Somehow what was on the Dutch radio 2 hours before ended up in Korea attached to several e-mail clients and every time somebody got an e-mail, Frankie called out "You've got e-mail". Go figure.
Aren't organisations using the wrong mental model ? What do you think ?

‘The soul never thinks without a picture.’ — Aristotle