Speaking For All Mankind

“Breitbart is, in short, expert in making the journalism industry his bitch. ‘The market has forced me to come up with techniques to be noticed,’ Breitbart says. ‘And now that I have them, I’m like, wow, this is actually great. This is fun.’”

How Andrew Breitbart Hacks the Media – Wired, April 2010.

By now, you have probably heard of how Shirley Sherrod, a former(?) Federal official, was forced to resign after a heavily-edited video of a recent speech she gave at an NAACP event was used as evidence of reverse-racism in Obama’s administration.  After the tape was released by Mr. Breitbart to FOX News, both the NAACP and White House called for Ms. Sherrod’s resignation.

Then, the unedited video was released (you can view it here).  Basically, the videotape shows that Ms. Sherrod’s statements were the exact opposite of what FOX News reported.  The NAACP apologized last night for being “snookered“  and called for her case to be reconsidered.  The farm family that Sherrod referred to even defended her while, just a few hours ago, the White House apologized.

Of course, all of this could have been avoided if the White House and the USDA remembered one basic fact – FOX News is not an actual news station.  Also, once they realized that Mr. Breitbart was behind the videotape, they should have remembered how an earlier, heavily-edited videotape falsely accused ACORN (and let to that organization’s demise).  At the very least, someone should have asked to see the complete unedited tape.  Even Mr. Breitbart admits that viewing the entire tape demonstrates that Ms. Sherrod is not a racist.

Mr. Breitbart and others like him are taking advantage of the decline of journalism.  Newsrooms are cutting back on staff and especially investigate reporters.  At the same time, they have to fill the 24-hour news hole and compete with other cable stations and local news.  Ratings are more essential now than ever.  Media manipulators know these weaknesses and use them to their partisan advantage.  As the Sherrod case shows, reputations can be damaged in just a few hours.  What is unusual about the Sherrod case is that the true picture came just as quickly.  In cases such as ACORN or Climategate, it was several months before the truth came out but was of little help in averting the damage.

It is imperative that the audience become more skeptical and reserve judgment before all of the facts are in.  More and more media manipulators are taking advantage of the decline of traditional journalism to spread their falsehoods.  Unfortunately, I don’t hold much hope as when obviously fictional news events (such as this from the Onion) are viewed as investigative journalism.

You have a strange idea of “fun,” Mr. Breitbart.

Two interesting articles about organizational culture in the latest issue of the “Journal of Organizational Change Management.”  The first article is a cultural analysis of organizational memory and its role in organizational change while the second article describes how organizational memory can hinder learning a new technology.

In the first article, McCabe gives a more detailed description of organizational culture as a collection of shared memories.  These memories can contradict each other or just be ambiguous about past organizational events but, woven together, these memories form a dynamic and conflicting culture for the organization.  McCabe disputes the common belief of many management theorists that the past can be erased in favor of the new reality because the past always blocks change.  Organizational memory is more complex than that because some memories can help facilitate change while other aspects resist change.  McCabe concludes by stating that organizational memory cannot be managed as part of the change process but must be accounted for.

McCabe’s article illuminates the findings in the second article by Becker.  The second article deals with the process of acquiring new technology in an organization.  As Becker explains, for employees to adopt a new technology they must unlearn the old technology.  They do this through releasing mental models of the workings of the old technology and create mental models of how the new technology works.  Memories of past change efforts can hinder the process of unlearning if it promotes fear and anxiety among the employees.  Becker does not have any specific remedies for dealing with organizational memory and unlearning but she does argue that further research is necessary to fully understand the unlearning process.

The relevance to Gov 2.0 is clear.  Many agencies have long and painful memories of past change efforts that have been woven into the current culture.  Gov 2.0 advocates must understand and acknowledge the past while developing strategies to alleviate the fear that will prevent government employees from unlearning the current way things are done in favor of making government transparent, open, and engaging.  Gov 2.0 advocates must take the positive aspects of the past and use those events to counter the negative past events while realizing that culture cannot be fully controlled.

References:

Becker, K. (2010). Facilitating unlearning during implementation of new technology. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 23:3. 251-268.

McCabe, D. (2010). Taking the long view: A cultural analysis of memory as resisting and facilitating organizational change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 23:3. 230-250.

“Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Benjamin: Just how do you mean that, sir?”
The Graduate – 1967

In the late 60s, plastics may have been the growth industry but, according to Mike Loukides at O’Reilly Radar, the ability to work with data is the new growth industry.

There is an experiment at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to change how government works. The idea is to stop measuring how much time an employee spends at the office but rather to measure how productive the employee is. The employee sets their own working hours and negotiates with their supervisor on what they should be producing and how it will be measured. It is a revolutionary concept and has worked in private industry.

A great example of this is how IBM has reinvented itself to use a ROWE-like environment. As Robert Paterson explains, IBM employees can live where they want and work in virtual teams based on their own schedules. What holds the workforce together is the use of social networking tools and the occasional face-to-face meeting. As Paterson writes, “If IBM can do this with 200,000 people so can you.”

One aspect that he mentions is the use of chat tools in place of meetings. This is not revolutionary as places I have worked at have using instant messaging systems to hold impromptu meetings. You can quickly get to the point, bring in people as needed, and there is a record of the meeting when you are finished.  And this was easily done with 2001 technology. I do not understand why more organizations don’t hold meetings this way instead of dragging everyone into the conference room for the weekly staff meeting.

Another great example from IBM is how well the virtual team works even though employees are in different countries and different time zones.  Allowing people to work at their natural productive hours means you will have better work and happier people.  An interesting point in the IBM experience is that face-to-face meetings are used to help workers build trust and tend to be about team-building rather than doing work.  I wonder how much more effective government workers would be if agencies devoted substantial time to team-building?

ROWE solves a lot of problems from the time wasted to commuting to balancing work-life issues. I’m hoping the OPM experiment is a success.  ROWE is clearly working in the private sector.

According to Mark Drapeau of O’Reilly.

I’ve been saying in various posts on GovLoop how important apps are to Gov 2.0 (not a unique insight as plenty of others have come to the same conclusion).  What is great is the idea of crowdsourcing the development of government apps.

White House released the self-evaluations of the agencies open government plans.  Only three agencies (Health and Human Services,  Department of Transportation, and NASA) fully met the requirements while the rest made progress on their goals.

I’ve fully read both NASA’s plan and the Office of Personnel Management’s plan while skimming the rest of the plans.  NASA does have a great plan that is detailed and just well thought out.  Other plans used the right buzzwords but you can tell that there is not a strategy for fully realizing the capabilities of social networking.

It would be good to see some independent reviews of the plans.  Might be an interesting project for the summer.

As we work on how to use social networking technologies in Gov 2.0, I thought this article from IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management might be of some interest to practitioners. “The Strategic Implications of Web Technologies: A Process Model of How Web Technologies Enhance Organizational Performance” answers two questions:

1) “How do Web technologies support the strategies of an organization?”
2) “How do Web technologies enhance organizational performance?”

The authors of the study argue that existing efforts to use Web technologies are not being effectively utilized because the organizations do not know how to align the technologies with the strategic goals of the organization due to a limited understanding of how to achieve such an alignment. Using a case study of a Singapore IT publication (Hardwarezone.com), the authors list the seven capabilities of Web technologies:

1) “Enable an organization to transcend geographical and temporal boundaries.”
2) “Facilitate improvements to processes in an organization’s value chain.”
3) “Provide an effective means of collecting customer information and feedback.”
4) “Enhance the timeliness of organizational information.”
5) “Reinforce offline business models and facilitate the creation of new business models.”
6) “Reduce the capital outlay involved in establishing and expanding a business.”
7) “Enable the development of virtual communities.”

None of the above should be surprising to Gov 2.0 practitioners. Having listed the seven capabilities, the authors then describe their process model which consists of the three core logics of strategic management and the two core logics of organizational sociology:

1) Strategic Management
a. Logic of Positioning – how a company strategically positions itself in the marketplace
b. Logic of Leverage – effectively using strategic resources and capabilities
c. Logic of Opportunity – innovating effectively in response to a changing external environment
2) Organizational Sociology
a. Logic of Optimality – creation of the optimal organizational form for the current environment
b. Logic of Social Congruence – organization harmonizes relationships with key stakeholders

So, what does this mean for Gov 2.0 practitioners? Even though the process model applies to business organizations, the same logics can be transformed into public administration equivalents. For example, when selling a new social networking technology to agency management, you can demonstrate how the technology’s capabilities can fulfill one of the logics.

Let’s say you want to start up a Twitter feed to publicize agency activities. The Twitter feed meets capabilities 1, 3, 4, and 7. These capabilities meet the logics of Positioning, Opportunity, and Social Congruence. By demonstrating how the new technology aligns with some of the strategic goals of the organization, Gov 2.0 practitioners can better sell these new technologies to upper agency management.

References:
Tan, B.C.C., Pan, S.L., & Hackney, R. (2010). The strategic implications of web technologies: A process model of how web technologies enhance organizational performance. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 57: 2. 181-197.

(Cross-posted on GovLoop)

A much-needed antidote to the modern workplace.

“POIA requires Executive Branch agencies to publish all publicly available information on the Internet in a timely fashion and in user-friendly formats. It also creates an advisory committee to help develop government-wide Internet publication policies.“