Article first published as Ten Tech Trends for Your 2012 New Year’s Resolutions List on Technorati

One of the most exciting things about working in tech is using it to create new ways to work, play—and even live. We have seen many great technology innovations develop over the past few years. Over 2012, ten of them will complete the jump from “new concept” to “mainstream trend.” How many of them are your ready for?

1. Everything Will Be Portable. The move to portable computing (smartphones, tablets and ultrabooks) will accelerate. Thick laptops and—even worse—desktops will be a relic of the past (except for those with high-power computing needs). If you are not yet mobile- and portable-ready, you better get there very soon.

2. Augmented Reality Will Go Mainstream. Augmented Reality (AR) is no longer a science fiction concept. Smartphones and (especially) tablets are mass-market platforms for everyday augmented reality. We are already seeing the first applications at Tech Meetups, CES and more. At least three innovators will exploit this, gaining mainstream adoption, by the end of 2012.

3. Touch Will Be Ubiquitous. Over the past five years, capacitive touch interfaces have re-programmed how millions of us interact with technology. As more devices are now sold today with touch than without, it is time to begin optimizing your user interface and user experience for touch (instead of a two-button mouse and keyboard).

4. Voice Will Be Next. While the intuitiveness of touch is a leapfrog improvement over mouse-and-keyboard, it still ties up our hands. Voice-based interaction is where we need to go. Apple’s Siri began the move of voice-driven interaction into the mainstream. This year, we’ll see SDKs for iOS and Android that harness the creativity of thousands to explode use of voice.

5. Fat Will Be the New Thin. Over a decade ago, broadband Internet enabled browsers to replace thick client applications. Now, portable computing usage across low power, lossy networks (e.g., mobile, WiFi, Bluetooth) coupled with AppStore Model has brought locally installed apps back in vogue. Building web apps is not enough; you need AppStore apps too.

6. Location-based Privacy Will Be Solved. Over the last two years location-based services became really hot. Unfortunately location-related privacy issues became hot too. The move of these services into mainstream populations of tens of millions will expand anecdotal security scares into weekly news stories, forcing adoption of safer location-based privacy policies.

7. Cloud Will Be the New Norm. Cloud computing is no longer an “edge market.” It is now adopted by big enterprises, public sector agencies—and even consumer tech providers. The cost, convenience and flexibility advantages of cloud computing will make it too hard for everyone not to use—everyday—by the end of this year.

8. …So Will Twitter. While people still love to debate the reasons to use Twitter, everything from the Arab Spring to the Charlie Sheen Meltdown showed that Twitter is now a well-recognized media channel. #Election2012 will accelerate mainstream use of Twitter—with the same overwhelming intensity we have seen for years in “traditional” campaign advertising.

9. ‘Consumerization of IT’ Planned and Budgeted. Consumer tech has become so sophisticated (without sacrificing ease-of-use and intuitiveness) that we began last year to demand its use in the enterprise. 2012—the first year in which most enterprise budgets include planned projects to support the consumerization of IT—will both accelerate and “lock in” this new tech trend.

10. 2012 Will Be Declared the Begin of “The ‘Big Data’ Era.” This year we will see another 40% increase in data we need to manage. This growth, coupled with recent releases of enterprise-ready high-scale NoSQL products will begin adoption of this tech by the entire industry. Looking back, 2012 will represent the start of the global, cross-industry Big Data era.

If you haven’t started embracing these already, now is a great time to add them to your “2012 Technology New Year’s Resolution List.”  Sponsor a few pilot projects in your enterprise. Buy one or two Post-CES products to help you work more efficiently at the office. Or—if you want to include the whole family—buy one to use while you shop online, watch TV or manage your household.

Article first published as Want To Know What The Next Generation of Apps Will Be Like? Talk to Siri on Technorati.

A lot of people asked me why I upgraded to the iPhone 4S. The reason I gave—before I upgraded—was to get its new 8-megapixel camera. However, the reason I would now give—after I upgraded—is to get Siri.

It is really easy to think of Siri as a “toy”, something that lets you perform a few simple “parlor tricks” with your voice (instead of you fingers). It’s not. In reality, Siri a huge step forward into the world of the next generation of Post-PC Era interface. I know, this statement sounds a little over-blown and buzz-wordy. However, it’s rather clear if you step back and look at the trends in computing that have developed since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007:

The iPhone: Life Is Integrated

While the iPhone was not the first integrated smartphone (or even the first capacitive touch phone), it was the first smartphone that made integration “of everything” easy and intuitive. You could manage your phone calls, contact lists, texting, email, web browsing, navigation, picture and photo albums in one simple, intuitive device—using the best tool known to man: your fingers. Better yet, the iPhone recognized that life always offers new opportunities. It enabled you to add new capabilities (i.e., Apps) created by others just as easily as you would add songs to your music library.

The changes since the iPhone’s introduction have been enormous. Smartphone growth since 2007 has outpaced growth of the Internet, TV or radio. Capacitive touch interfaces are now mainstream (well beyond iOS). App Stores are not just exploding, they are becoming the mainstream way to get software.

The iPad: Life Is Beyond the PC

This success of the iPhone paved the way to the iPad, the first mainstream market capacitive touch tablet. While many tablets were launched before the iPad, none of them became “must have” ubiquitous devices. The impact of the iPad has been even larger than that of the iPhone. It has heralded talk of a new Post-PC Era. It had grown even faster than iPad. Competitors have released over 100 products—in less than two years—to compete with it.  A whole new generation of touch-based apps have been created to tap this grow, from industries as diverse as startups to old media to medicine.

However, the iPad has not quite “closed the door” on PCs yet. The “$64‑Billion Question” I always hear is, “iPads are great, but people are going to still need to enter text. How will they do that without a real keyboard?” Yes, tablets are “re-wiring” how we interact with “information devices” (f.k.a. PCs). Yes, many creative apps have shown that tablets can be used to create content in ways that keyboards cannot. Nevertheless, these techniques have still not yet answered the $64‑Billion Question. Now, Siri provides the answer.

Siri: Life Doesn’t Need a Keyboard

What iPhone did for smartphones, Siri will do for voice-based recognition and interaction. It is the first application that makes integrated voice interaction with multiple applications (phone, texting, pictures, email, web, picture and music album management) easy and finger-free (touch screen- and keyboard- free). The idea of being able to replace what you did with your hands with your voice is no longer a concept—it is real. Ellis Hamburger of Business Insider recently wrote how surprisingly much this changes your entire way of interacting with information devices, after just two weeks of use.

However, this is just the beginning of much more to come. The introduction of Siri to the (“not a major upgrade,” “limited market”) iPhone 4S triggers two important steps. First, it begins “training early adopters” in voice-driven interaction (while simultaneously creating “buzz” for everyone else). Second, it gives Apple valuable data needed to fully achieve a best-in-class voice-driven usability experience on a much broader scale in “major” product releases.

From, here we will see five things to come—by the end of 2012:

1. Massively Expanded Siri on iPad 3. Apple will launch a massively expanded version of Siri on the iPad 3, drawing upon its much bigger screen and integration with your home or office. Imagine people able to dictate documents, letters, etc. with nice formatting, watching the screen type faster than you can. Imagine extending this music, video, family photo albums, controls for your home, etc.

2. New Siri SDK for iOS. In combination with release of the iPad 3 (or iPhone 5), Apple will release a SDK to enable all developers (not just a select few partners) to build voice interactive applications on the iPhone, iPad, and (maybe) Apple TV. This will create an…

3. Explosion of New Voice-driven Apps. Just as the iPhone and iPad app stores created an explosion of mobile- and touch-based Apps, the Siri SDK will do the same for voice-driven applications. This creativity will yield more ideas that any one company or person could conceive of on their own.

4. Renewed Innovation from the Competition. The millions of people downloading voice-driven apps for their iPhones and iPads will be too attractive a market for competitors to ignore. They will develop voice-driven applications, SDKs and markets of their own. Google will be a major player (given their work in voice-driven search) ensuring the “iOS vs. Android” fight continues its intensity.

5. Smartphones Will Improve Microphone Quality. Human beings are (for now) much better at understanding speech than computers are. We are all now trained to “fill in the gaps” of things we cannot hear on poor-quality mobile phone calls. Voice-driven computer apps are going to take a long time to catch up. As a result, Apple, Google and Microsoft will drive handset providers to improve microphone clarity—making smartphones better for all.

By 2013, new applications will look (and sound) very little like they do today (let alone how they did in 2007). Of course the challenge at this point will be figuring out how can we all hear ourselves over everyone talking to his or her devices. I’m sure someone will figure out an app for that.

Everyone is talking about the rapid growth of the tablet market. Analysts are continually revising (upwards) the number of tablets that will be sold over the next few years. Hundreds of new tablets are competing for market leadership. Even our friends at the TSA now regularly ask us to “remove computers and tablets” for our carry-on luggage when going through airport security.

However, in the midst of this explosion, something big is changing right underneath our noses: millions of us are “re-wiring” how we interact with computers. We are discarding clumsy interface tools (physical keyboards, mice, thumb wheels and styluses) that get between us a computers in favor of the most advanced, flexible tool we possess: our fingers. We are not simply using our fingers to press “virtual” buttons. We now combine gesture with the context of what we are doing to interact in ways that are more natural than we have ever done before.  This fundamental change in human-computer interaction allows software developers to design applications the way that architects design buildings, allowing form to follow function:

Tailored Utility: We can now tailor the user interface to provide exactly what controls are needed – and no more. We can provide a big, landscape keyboard for text-intensive applications; and eliminate it entirely, replacing it with buttons and sliders, for media-intensive applications. We can finally get rid of all those pesky “modifier keys” (e.g., Control, F1) and replace them with meaningful keys or buttons (like Play, Save, New, or Edit) Our customers can use their fingers – not multi-step menus – to work as they would in “real life” to turn pages, highlight text, select items, and more.

Environmental Adaptation: We can now – using built-in APIs – exploit accelerometers and embedded cameras to automatically adapt application the surrounding environment. We can let people use natural gestures to optimize the display to suit their needs, allowing them to switch from portrait to landscape, zoom in out, or scroll faster or slower. We can automatically incorporate the tablet’s location and orientation into work or play, saving customers the need of to enter this information themselves. We can use cameras to do everything from automatically adjusting contrast and color based on ambient lighting to automatically recognizing faces and bar codes.

Universal Localization. Providing customers hardware is a loss leader in many industries (e.g., smart phones), often subsidized through software and subscriptions. Doing this across multiple markets, with different languages and character sets, is even more expensive. Touch screen tablets allow localization of application to any language, without switching hardware. In addition, their environmental adaption (above) more naturally supports non-Western languages that use right-to-left and/or top-down orientation.

Yes, capacitive touch-based interaction is not yet perfect. Virtual keyboards are still not as fast as physical ones. Touch entry can be difficult when you have large fingers (or long fingernails). However, the capacitive touch-based tablet market is no longer a fringe market; it is now a growing, mainstream one. Competition will drive innovation, resulting in tablets with better surfaces, broader APIs and increased functionality. In time, tablets will make the keyboards and mice of today as obsolete as the physical buttons and gauges of the past.

Managing the Start-up Team of Ten (or Less)

The start-up organization is small enough to put everyone in the same room (I know of one start-up that used their local Starbucks as its office). Everyone can see each other and talk to each other to plan activities, catch mistakes, etc. within minutes. For this reason, it can be the easiest size organization to manage.

However, small organizations have their challenges. The departure of one person (or even the injury) is a double-digit percentage impact to productivity (and can scuttle a whole product launch). Nevertheless, at this size, there is not much management needed. There is plenty or leadership (an entirely different thing) needed. However, there are few management techniques needed. This makes it the easiest organization to manage.

Managing the Small Company of 10-100

Once an organization grows beyond 10, the group is simply too big to manage detailed activity with everyone in the room. Professional management structures are required:

• Beyond 10 people, you need at least one manager (generally one for every 8-15 people depending on function) who can focus on coordination of who does what—and, just as importantly, when. If you don’t do this you will start to see productivity losses—vs. gains—as you grow larger (Mark Suster has a great post on what happens when startups do not make the management shift when they grow past 10).
• Beyond 20 people, you are big enough to always have someone hurt or sick at any given time. However, you are not big enough to have many people you can easily swap in to recover lost work. You have to learn to factor these losses into all planning and scheduling.
• When you grow beyond 40 people, you will need another level of management. This forces your organization to learn how to manage multi-level delegation and communication effectively (a common challenge for new managers).
• When you grow beyond 60 people, you become large enough to statistically have a major “life event” (wedding, family death, new child, etc.) in process during any given pay period. However, you are nowhere near large enough to absorb these without disruption. (Reminder: US-based companies above 50 people must comply with the Family Medical and Leave Act.)

In addition, organizations of these sizes are almost always trying to grow their businesses. As they grow, they see bursts in demand (as they win new customers). However, retaining reserve in organizations of less than 100 people is very difficult. As a result, the organization leader is always wresting to juggle people, projects, hiring, office expansion, and numerous other challenges.

Managing the Mid-sized Company (or Large Company Division) of 100-1,000

As you organization approaches around 100 people, an interesting phenomenon takes place. You begin to benefit from the Law of Large Numbers:

• First, you are statistically likely to have enough people in place with the requisite skills and experience to step in if you lose someone (or need to augment a project that is behind schedule).
• Second, it is much easier to staff for variance the size and timing of work. Quite simply the spare capacity you need to cover projects with 90% staffing is less then 5% at 100 people (and less than 1% at 500) vs. 15% at 10 people.

This is why the staffing of hospital beds is easier for a large hospital than a small one (and why telcos, insurance agencies, credit card providers and others benefit from serving larger populations than small ones).

Of course, large organizations require more layers of management. However, moving from two layers of management to three (or more is much) easier than moving from zero to one (or one to two):

• Moving to from zero layers to one requires you to learn to delegate activities.
• Moving from one layer to two requires you to learn to delegate goals.
• Moving beyond two layers requires you to delegate goals more effectively (i.e., you need to be improve a skill, not learn a new one).

Caveat: It is harder to change direction in large organizations (due to both the sheer number of people and the number of layers inhibiting communication). However, change is motivating people to do something they would not normally do (this is leadership, not management). Management is an every-day activity.

Why Managing the Mid-sized Organization Can Be the Hardest

The mid-sized organization is large enough to have the majority of management challenges but too small to seamlessly handle changes in demand (or staff availability). The following two diagrams (courtesy of Wikipedia) sum this up beautifully:

So What Kind of Managers Do I Refer to Recruiters?

When a recruiter asks me, “What is the largest number of people [Insert Name Here] managed?” I ask, “How big is your organization now, and how will it change over the next three years?” Based on that answer, I will pick a few names that best match their needs to refer. However, the easiest referrals are those who have managed organizations of small, medium and large size—both through growth and contraction.

First, see the change from the leader’s point of view. What does the change threaten, what does it enable? Will the leader understand this? Is the person likely to be initially supportive or resistant as a result? What, or who, can win the leader over? What influences the leader?

Although I cringe to say this since it invites a comparison I don’t love, this can be a bit like being car salesperson with only one model on the lot to sell. In addition, once you get the leaders to “buy in”…you will then turn around and ask them to sell, too!

Sell the change

For those leaders you think you can win over—or who simply must be supportive for success—start by talking about the change in a language they understand. Tell them what the “car” can do and why that’s good for the organization. Get rid of the buzzwords and talk in practical, simple terms about the intent of the change. Answer the critical question, “What’s in it for me?” What are the “options” that will be appealing?

Give leaders an opportunity to shape the change. For big changes to work across a complex organization, it’s almost always true that the initial plan misses some critical nuances. Appeal to leaders for help in getting key aspects of the change right; this builds toward authentic ownership.

Discuss the fine print and provide a service plan

Be realistic: acknowledge the difficulty of the change, the disruptiveness of the transition and the resistance that leaders will face from their staffs and their peers. Listen to what they say about the impact of the change on their organizations. What will they have to change about the way they work in order to make the transition successfully? You will have to partner with them to address these impacts.

Establish metrics for assessing change progress and effectiveness, as well as proposed alignment of incentive structures to support the change. Talk with leaders about these and what it takes to apply them in their organizations. Get feedback on whether the metrics are meaningful to them, or if they have other suggestions. What incentives—a balance of positive and negative—will help people understand the importance of the change and support it?

Develop leader sales plans

Give newly supportive leaders a script and a vocabulary for talking to their organizations, along with a simple, tailored change management toolkit that helps them do all of the above steps with their staffs. Be there as a partner to help them through each step. Work with them on communications and engagement planning; this is never one-size-fits all, and they can tell you what works in their organizations and for them personally. This is your opportunity to teach them the concepts of change management and help them to apply them in support of the change at hand.

As the change progresses and leaders see successes in their organizations, enlist them as evangelists to more resistant areas. Help them to translate the real business results they are seeing into language that is meaningful for these other areas. Also ensure that they and their staff are visibly recognized and rewarded—engage them in awards ceremonies.

Hand over the keys!

Once you have done a change program or two, you will have leaders who excel at driving change and are excited about the process—if you’ve done it right. Give these change leaders an opportunity to help other leaders new to the process; they may lend added credibility and trust to what you are trying to do.

1. Lead. Managers muddle – leaders inspire. Leaders inspire with clear vision of how things can be done better.
2. Manage Less. “We are constantly amazed by how much people will do when they are not told what to do by management.” Let your people do their what you hired them to do.
3. Articulate Your Vision. “Leaders inspire people with clear visions of how things can be done better.” Leaders do not provide a step-by-step instruction manual for their teams, they let their vision inspire action.
4. Simplify. Keeping it simple. “Simple messages travel faster, simpler designs reach the market faster and the elimination of clutter allows faster decision making.” Simplicity is not easy, but is effective.
5. Get Less Formal. “You must realize now how important it is to maintain the kind of corporate informality that encourages a training class to comfortably challenge the boss’s pet ideas.” I have learned the most when people told me a better idea they had.
6. Energize Others. Genuine leadership comes from the quality of your vision and your ability to spark others to extraordinary performance. Getting employees excited about their work is the key to being a great business leader. Your job is the create the environment for them to thrive, then let them do so.
7. Face Reality. Face reality, then act decisively. Most mistakes that leaders make arise from not being willing to face reality and then acting on it. No where can reality change more quickly than technology.
8. See Change as an Opportunity. Change is a big part of the reality in business. This reminds me of the old Chinese proverb that the icon for danger is the same as the one for opportunity.
9. Get Good Ideas from Everywhere. New ideas are the lifeblood of business. “The operative assumption today is that someone, somewhere, has a better idea; and the operative compulsion is to find out who has that better idea, learn it, and put it into action – fast.” The best ideas of all usually change the entire game–vs. trying to improve it.
10. Follow up. Follow up on everything. Follow-up is one key measure of success for a business. It is also simply polite.
11. Get Rid of Bureaucracy. The way to harness the power of your people is “to turn them loose, and get the management layers off their backs, the bureaucratic shackles off their feet and the functional barriers out of their way.” Keep bureaucracy to the absolute minimum required to scale with predictability and quality.
12. Eliminate Boundaries. In order to make sure that people are free to reach for the impossible, you must remove anything that gets in their way. Boundaries are created no only  by obstacles, they are also created by lack of resources and support.
13. Put Values First. Don’t focus too much on the numbers. “Numbers aren’t the vision; numbers are the products.” I have seen vision destroyed when organisations shift to much of their focus from it to quarterly or monthly numbers.
14. Cultivate Leaders. Cultivate leaders who have the four E’s of leadership: Energy, Energize, Edge, and Execution. The best organisations I have worked in would not promote me until I developed at least one successor (who always added new improvements I would have never through of).
15. Create a Learning Culture. “The desire, and the ability, of an organization to continuously learn from any source, anywhere – and to rapidly convert this learning into action – is its ultimate competitive advantage.” When you stop learning you are dead.
16. Involve Everyone. Business is all about capturing intellect from every person. The way to engender enthusiasm it to allow employees far more freedom and far more responsibility. If people are not involved, they have little reason to be creative and add more to the pie.
17. Make Everybody a Team Player. Managers should learn to become team players. Take steps against those managers who wouldn’t learn to become team players. Your whole company is your team (the competition is the opposition).
18. Stretch. Stretch targets energize. They compel growth and learning. “We have found that by reaching for what appears to be the impossible, we often actually do the impossible; and even when we don’t quite make it, we inevitably wind up doing much better than we would have done.“
19. Instill Confidence. Self-confident people are open to good ideas regardless of their source and are willing to share them. I have never been penalised by giving appropriate credit to the great idea of someone I worked with.
20. Have Fun. Fun must be a big element in your business strategy. Life is too short to not have fun.
21. Be Number 1 or Number 2. “When you’re number four or five in a market, when number one sneezes, you get pneumonia. When you’re number one, you control your destiny.” If you are not Number 1 or 2, aspire to be — and work to get there.
22. Live Quality. “We want to change the competitive landscape by being not just better than our competitors, but by taking quality to a whole new level.” Deliver products and services you would be happy to use yourself.
23. Constantly Focus on Innovation. “You have just got to constantly focus on innovation. And more competitors. You’ve got to constantly produce more for less through intellectual capital. Shun the incremental, and look for the quantum leap.” Again, something very true in today’s technology world where no leaders can emerge from anywhere – if they have a solution that is far more innovative to all others.
24. Live Speed. “Speed is everything. It is the indispensable ingredient of competitiveness.” Everyone who gets the market second is a “me too” follower.
25. Behave Like a Small Company. Small companies have huge competitive advantages. They “are uncluttered, simple informal. They thrive on passion and ridicule bureaucracy. Small companies grow on good ideas – regardless of their source. They need everyone, involve everyone, and reward or remove people based on their contribution to winning. Small companies dream big dreams and set the bar high – increments and fractions don’t interest them.“

It would be wonderful to work for Jack Welch (I envy those who have).

*I need to give credit to three sites who post various versions of these lessons: 1000 Ventures, The Practice of Leadership, and Cite HR.

Over the course of the past month, I have had to opportunity to reconnect with several mentors and colleagues from across my career. All of these professionals started their careers as technical experts (in their respective domains) before moving on to becoming celebrated industry speakers and organizational leaders. As we recounted our activities across the past few years we got into a discussion on what enabled us to move from individual contributors to technology leaders. We came up with three key essential skills for technology leadership:

Communication

Communication is the means by which you share and obtain knowledge and information. It enables you to elicit support from investors. It enables you to understand what you customers want. It is required to enable your staff to understand you strategy, goals and plans.

New leaders often forget that the key to communicating effectively is understanding the point of view of your audience. This begins by listening to what others want and need. One you have learned this, you can use this understanding to shape when and how you share information to satisfy the needs of your investors, customers and staff.

Learning to communicate effectively can be especially hard for new technology leaders because so much of their prior education and work experience is focused on the details of technology (rather than the perceptions of people). However, it is an essential skill that serves as a foundation for all other aspects of effective leadership.

Motivation

Architects and Technical Leads demonstrate expertise by telling others how to do something; technology leaders by motivating others to figure this out for themselves. Once you learn to motivate others, you magnify what you achieve from what you can personally think of and do yourself to the collective creativity and skill of your entire organization.

Technology leaders usually need to learn motivation at two different points in their careers. The first is when they begin leading line staff for the first time. The second is when they begin leading managers for the first time. At each of these times, the keys to success are: 1) getting your staff excited about your goals, 2) providing them the freedom to figure out how to achieve them and 3) creating the environment that enables their success.

Switching from a controller who does things yourself to a leader who motivates others to act on your behalf can be scary (essentially, it puts your career in the hands your teams). However, people who do not do this become micro-managers (instead of motivational leaders).

Estimation

I know what you are thinking: this skill seems a little low-level in comparison to more strategic ones like communication and motivation. However, it too, is a critical skill for effective technology leadership.

Estimation is the art of diving how much time and resources are required to achieve an objective. When you are able to estimate with great accuracy, you can repeatedly “do what you say, when you promise, with your planned cost.” This is absolutely essential for hitting launch dates and achieving profitability targets. (It also avoids undesirable outcomes ranging from getting beaten to market by your competitors to running out of investor funds.)

There are many, many estimation techniques of varying rigor. However, all of them share the following critical success factors: 1) break down large tasks into smaller ones for greater accuracy, 2) let the people will do the work build the estimate, and 3) use past outcomes as proxies for future ones.

Leaders who become good at estimation build enormous trust with customers and investors. They establish reputations for “always doing what they promised.” The rewards for this range from repeat work to expanded market share to increased capital investment.

* * *

The best way to learn these skills is to find mentors. Look for learners inside and outside your organization and ask them to share their wisdom and experience. It can also be helpful to study the published lessons learned from others on these topics. I recommend the following books:

• Communication: Effective Business & Nonfiction Writing by Jan Yager, The Quick & Easy Way to Effective Speaking by Dale Carnegie, Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss and the Chicago Manual of Style.
• Motivation: Organizational Culture & Leadership by Edgar Schein, Organizational Transitions: Managing Complex Change by Richard Beckhard and Rueban Harris, and Leading Change by John Kotter. You can also explore some interesting concepts on self-motivation in Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
• Estimation: My all-time favorite book is Demystifying the Black Art by Steve McConnell. I also recommend Guy Kawasaki’s Reality Check for a completely different perspective on how important it is to be able to hit cost and time goals.

The first step is a change in culture

The very first step down the path becoming an organization that used risk-based approaches to program and initiative execution is purely a change management one:

Your entire chain of command—from executive to line staff members—needs to embrace the concept of freely discussing risk on a daily basis

This may seem like a very obvious and simple change. It is not. This is fundamental change in how most organizations operate.

You need to encourage free and open discussion of risks and concerns

How many Status Review meetings have we sat through in which nearly everything has a “Green” status? (Even though “everyone” in the room knows which initiatives are having problems—and often what those “unspoken” problems are.) Too many.

At best this is a waste of meeting time. At worst, it lets risks fester and develop into large-scale problems. This happens because—in most enterprises—too many people are afraid to point out risks, concerns and problems (specifically to the very people who are empowered to help resolve them quickly). As long as this cultural phenomenon is in place, it will be impossible to actively manage risk.

To resolve this you need a new paradigm. I recommend employing both the “carrot and stick” (or what Change Management guru, Kurt Lewin, called “Force Field Analysis”). I use three steps to do this:

1. Hold regular portfolio reviews in which you review the risks and issues of each initiative
2. Reward those who raise risks (along with actionable recommendations to address them) with by combining of praise with direct support that helps them resolve their risks
3. Mark the initiatives of those who do not do this as “Red” and require them to review their projects with you in detail (so you can help them see the risks they are missing).

I apply this at all levels: executive through line staff. It is a constructive approach that uses mentoring and support to drive change. Over time (the time will vary based on the speed of your initiatives), it will create the culture you need to actively manage risk.

You need to be comfortable with what this will expose

Making these changes will fundamentally alter how your organization discusses initiatives and their status. You will initially see almost all of your “All-Green” reports turn “Red.” From the outside, things may look worse in comparison to other organizations. You may even get less-than-desired attention because of this appearance.

This discomfort will be rewarded

Even though things may look worse, the opposite will be true. Your entire organization will be concentrating on preventing problems that could stand in the way of success before they will occur. You will create a much more trusting and open environment.

As a result, you will become more efficient, effective and creative at managing risk. The result of this will be increased level of success in your initiatives and far fewer cost and schedule overruns.

These rewards will become visible externally as well. I have implemented this approach many times, across several industries. Every time it resulted in greater trust and respect for the organization that employed it.

Currently, Mr. Roger Baker (CIO for the US Department of Veterans Affairs) is doing something very similar. It is not an easy process. However, it is earning the department a lot of respect for openness and transparency – and enabling them to focus on providing more effective services for their staff and veteran stakeholders.

Enterprises routinely start with a top-down approach

Enterprises traditionally employ top-down approaches when defining standards, policies and procedures. This is natural and unsurprising as the majority of enterprises are hierarchical entities.

Top-down approaches are great at driving compliance

Top-down approaches are very effective when the goal is to prevent outliers and discrepancies. Their use is ideal when you want to drive adherence to things like plans and regulatory compliance.

However, top-down approaches are counter-productive to encouraging creativity

Creativity is not something you can drive on demand, from the top downward. Have you ever tried to order a team to be creative according to a plan? If so, did this produce the results you desired? Likely not. Creativity needs to be encouraged, not driven.

Social media requires a bottom-up approach

Social media is inherently non-hierarchical. It creates a “flat” network that enables all members to participate in the same way, regardless of level, time or location.

Social media results develop along embryonic lines

Social media-based creativity follows a rather organic approach.  Members initially join social media networks and share information about topics of personal concern or interest. Members with similar interests then link together to collaboratively develop initial thoughts into fleshed-out Ideas. These more complete Ideas then compete with the Ideas of others for attention and support. Those that “rise to the top” attract increased interest and collaboration, resulting in fully-vetted solutions to problems or unmet needs. While the social media community has coined worlds like “crowdsourcing” and “wikification” to describe this process, it is essentially embryology at work (albeit embryology of Ideas).

Embryology works from the bottom-up, following local rules

Embryology forms rich, complex works from simple beginnings by following a bottom-up process. Richard Dawkins, elegantly described the power of this on page 220 of his latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth:

Dawkin’s major point is that you will obtain richer, more robust results by defining bottom-up, local rules for the evolution of Ideas (instead of driving them top-down from a master plan or policy).

Many examples of this exist throughout the technology world

Bottom-up self-assembly of robust, complex systems through use of local rules is not simply confined to the biological world. Some of the most successful expansions of technological change were built on the same approach. Just take a look at everything from Internet routing and open source technologies to Google’s Page Rank algorithm and Apple’s iPhone application development model.

Creating a social media policy based on bottom-up principles

Using bottom-up, locally followed rules to develop a Social Media Policy looks very different in structure than a traditional top-down policy.

Below is an outline of sample rules (and how they would locally execute throughout a social media ideation process) that I would initially consider to develop an effective Social Media Policy. For simplicity’s sake my unit is an Idea. An Idea could be a plan, policy, design, rule, product or anything else you can imagine.

A) Define the stages of ideation

Define what stages a collaborative idea should pass through from a root concept to completion. This is the skeleton for all other local rules. An example:

1. Brainstorming of Ideas to consider
2. Competition of Ideas to see which should be elaborate upon
3. Elaboration of Winning Ideas into a critical level of detail
4. Editing of Elaborated Ideas to a Released State

Once Ideas are Releases they become subject for further Brainstorming efforts to adapt them to changing business conditions (evolution at work).

B) Define the allowed actions at each stage

Define what staff can do to an Idea at each Stage. For example, staff can—

• Create or delete Ideas during Brainstorming
• Vote, share (internally) or comment on them during Competition
• Add or remove whole Idea Components during Elaboration
• Refine existing Idea Components (only) during Editing

Limiting what can be done at each stage provides just enough organization to reduce chaos and encourage productive collaboration. Brainstorming is all done in one place. You do not waste time fleshing out Ideas until they proceed through the Competition Stage. Similarly you focus on Elaborating upon and Editing late-stage Ideas (instead of chaotically replacing them with an unexplored, pre-Brainstormed half-Idea).

C) Define the transitions between each stage

Define what conditions triggers movement of an Idea from one stage to another (forward or backward). By defining the conditions you let the network act without requiring extensive oversight. Samples for movement out of Competition could include the following:

• When an Idea gets enough votes it moves into Elaboration
• When an Idea gets flagged as offensive or disruptive enough times it moves back to Brainstorming

D) Define who can see what at each stage

For example, only I would be able to see my Idea until I advance it for Competition. Once this occurs, only My Organization would be able to see and vote on it until it reaches a particular threshold (or is approved by the Organization Leader)

This type of rule set encourages two things. First, it enables edge-condition “long tail” idea creators to participate. Second, it makes department heads feel safer encouraging their employees to ideate and collaborate.

E) Define who can do what to an idea at each stage

For example—

• Only I may be able to edit my Idea in Brainstorming
• Only my department Colleagues (i.e., my friends) may be able to add or remove Components of an Idea in Elaboration
• While everyone can refine Idea Components in Editing

The first rule protects the individual and encourages Ideation. The second protects the Department, encouraging the Department Head to allow social media-based Ideation. The third protects the mission or the enterprise (and can even ensure regulatory compliance).

These rules are just a brainstorm to start

These Rules are only Ideas at the Brainstorming stage. They require a full cycle of collaboration to see which win out and which do not. (After all, defining these as the rules for social media and collaboration would be Top-Down thinking.)

Social networking is not new

Social networking has been around since our ancestors combined living in groups, social hierarchy and the use of speech. In addition (as much as I hate to admit it) social networking technology is not new either: BBS systems and Usenet were social networks; Blogs, Forums, Comments use most of the same technologies we build Web 1.0 on; AOL had Community Leaders in the 1990s.

However, social networking as a business model has exploded since the high valuations of companies like Facebook. This has lead to a proliferation of companies, technologies and experts advancing the use of social networking and social networking-related concepts.

The social networking business model is now “[Your Term Here] 2.0”

Over the 12-18 months, I have been in many discussions (real and @virtual) that have advanced the point that we should not call this model “social” networking because it is about work and creating (public or business)—not about socializing. We now see more and more terms like Enterprise 2.0, Government 2.0, Mobile 2.0, Health 2.0, etc., in greater use as we move away from the “purely social” social networks.

Credit. www.McKinseyQuarterly.com

However, it is STILL about connecting people

As we use these terms, the run the risk of moving away from focusing on core of what we were trying to do in the first place: improve how people connect, share information and collaborate so they accomplish whatever they are trying to do (from picking a baby-sitter to discovering a cure for cancer) more easily and efficiency. Rather than debate nomenclature and terminology, we should instead debate about what are the best ways to foster trust and innovation in whatever respective area (Business, Government, Health Care, etc.) we are trying to address.

People ARE the network

At the end of the day ideas, work and achievements come from people. As people realize success and failure they develop connections with other and learn who to go to for help or insight and who to avoid. This combination of knowledge, experience and connections is the network.

Social networking and 2.0 technology should be about making this easy

All of the technologies we are building and marketing around the concepts of Social Networking, Web 2.0, etc. should be focused on one thing: making it easier of people (the real network) to find each other and share knowledge, experiences and insight to “get something done” that is important to them. Everything else is noise and distraction.

My tips on how to achieve this

Here are my five tips on how to make it easy for people to use all of this stuff we are creating to make their lives and work easier:

Focus on Something That Matters to Us, Not Just Creating Yet-Another-Network. We already have our real networks in life. Don’t focus on making us re-create these in your product. Instead let us focus on using your product to make something we want to do as part of our everyday lives. (For more on this, see my post on Business Services).

Let Us Drive Before We Buy. Don’t make us log in as soon as we get to your product. First, we want to see if there is something there that helps us. Wait until we need to do something that requires me to identify oursevles (like add an idea) before you make us log in.

Don’t Make Us Create Yet-Another-ID (YAID). All of us already have our existing email accounts and user names for AIM, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Let us use these rather than creating yet another account we have to remember.

Fit How We Work, Don’t Make Us Fit How You Work. We are busy and do not have time to manage yet another technology. Enable your technology to integrate with or fit on top of what we use today – from our systems at work to our mobile phones. (For the techies among us, see my series on architecture principles to achieve this).

Protect Us. Most of us were brought up on the model of not talking to strangers. This is even truer on the Internet. Let us control the privacy of our information. Provide moderation to protect us from Internet harassment. These two items are key to creating trust—which in turn is key to fostering collaboration and sharing.

Why this focuses on the management of UGC

Open Collaboration intrinsically involves the collection, moderation and management user generated content (UGC). In general, moderation of UGC is not a simple prospect. Moderation of UGC in a regulated space is even tougher – especially in the very highly regulated biotech, pharmaceutical and health care industries where UGC can now include disclosure of personal health history or inadvertent reporting of adverse events.  Based on the sensitivity of any discussion of regulatory compliance, it is worth diverting a little of your attention to some disclaimers and background information:

• I am not currently affiliated with any biotech, pharmaceutical or health care company. Nor am I affiliated with and PAC or PR firm supporting those industries. I am a Chief Information Officer for an enterprise social networking company, Neighborhood America.
• Prior to this, I worked at Amgen (the world’s largest biotech.) Most of my tenure here was in their Regulatory Affairs & Safety Operations organization leading a program to scale closeout of clinical trial data and submission of Biologic and Drug Licensing Applications to the FDA (and its global counterparts)–a highly-regulated process–through combined use of process re-design and Enterprise 2.0 technologies
• Before this, I worked at AOL where I owned many systems subject to compliance with numerous financial regulations (especially Regulations E and FD, and Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act)
• Prior to AOL, I spent nearly seven years Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin and the US National Laboratory System where I learned strict adherence to control of information of various classification levels.

I state this so you will understand that, while I am someone deeply experienced in managing compliance of information management, I am not a doctor, FDA or EMEA official or similar certified compliance professional.

What regulations do I need to consider?

The range and depth of biotech, pharma and health care regulations are vast. They cover a wide range of areas spanning how you manage clinical trials to manufacturing to sales and control of patient information. For this reason, it is absolutely critical to ensure you separate the social networking components of your Health 2.0 infrastructure from your other enterprise systems. This directly contradicts what some analysts are calling for in the evolution of enterprise social networking. However, it your do not do this, you will subject your social networking infrastructure to so many regulations that it will be impossible to manage it as an effective network AND maintain regulatory compliance.  (My preferred method of this separation is the publish/subscribe model—however, that is a subject of another blog post.)

With this understanding in mind, I am assuming—

• You are using your social network to manage outreach to bring interested parties into the fold to inform them of where to get information, gather their ideas, priorities and interests, and connect them with other professionals with related interests and expertise and…
• You are not using your social network to manage clinical trial subject data; drug, biologic or medical device manufacturing data; or safety data

If these are true you have two bodies of regulation to watch in particular:

1. Title 21 CFR Part 11
2. HIPAA Title II

In addition, you will need to ensure your social networking infrastructure enables mining and export of UGC to support of your organizations’ pharmacovigilance practices.

The impact of Title 21 CFR Part 11 on your social network

Title 21, Part 11 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) deals with the FDA guidelines on electronic records and electronic signatures.  In the social networking area this means you must do three things:

1. Never delete: In general it is bad practice, to delete data. It is much better practice to turn the status of data to “Inactive” or “Archived” so you can find it later (if needed a part of a legal or similar investigation.) To assure Part 11 compliance, you will need to ensure your system does not delete data (and your back office systems administration processes ensure data are archived prior any removal as part of hardware tuning or decommissioning)
2. Use secure, electronic signatures: Here is where user attribution of UGC is so very important. You cannot let unauthenticated users provide content. You must register and authenticate them first. They you register them, you must confirm their identity (e.g., confirm provided email addresses) and authenticate them with encrypted, strong passwords. You then must attribute all UGC to each authenticated user. (It would also not hurt to get SAFE to review your registration and authentication approach.)
3. Document that you do this: You will need to demonstrate that you have designed, built and tested a system that does the above. This includes documenting requirements, design, test cases and successful completion of those test cases. It also includes demonstration that your configuration management processes ensure that the code you have in production has completed full documentation of the above before going to production. (For software, this is known as Validation; for infrastructure, this is known as Qualification.)

The impact of HIPAA Title II on your social network

In general, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) protects the ability for workers and their families to gain access to health care when the switch employers or jurisdictions (i.e., when they move).  Title II of HIPPA contains something called The Privacy Rule that governs the use and disclosure of Protected Health Information (PHI). This is where social network—even when they are not used to manage medical information—cross into HIPPA regulation.

Imagine you have a social networking site where patients are discussing places to go for cancer recovery support. On this site, a person starts to discuss their medical history. They list enough of their identity that anyone accessing the site can see that they (or a family member) has certain health conditions. This leads to an insurance company declining coverage to them or a family member when they move jobs due to “pre-existing conditions.” Now you potentially have Privacy Rule compliance risk.

However, you can easily guard against this, if you build the following elements into your enterprise social network:

1. Make it a closed network. Your network needs to be more like facebook (where you need to be member to see UGC) then Twitter (where everything is open).  In addition, you need to apply White List / Black List Rules to enforce who can join the network (e.g., pre-filtered list of doctors or patients and/or blocking of users from specific domains such as insurance companies).
2. Strictly manage profile information. You need to help your members protect themselves by limiting profiling information. Do not capture any PHI data fields. Strongly encourage Display Names to not include names or other identifiers (this includes either prohibiting Avatars or only allowing members to pick from a list generic Avatar icons). Finally, encrypt all profile information (and – to assure Part 11 compliance – never delete past profile information.)
3. Moderate all UGC prior to publication. Yes, this slows down the dynamics of your network. However, it protects you and your patients. By moderating all UGC before publishing it, you can protect members from disclosing information that would make maintaining their privacy difficult or impossible to anyone reading their content.

Additional support for pharmacovigilance

The WHO defines pharmacovigilance as “the pharmacological science relating to the detection, assessment, understanding and prevention of adverse effects, particularly long term and short term side effects of medicines.”

From a social networking perspective, this means you need to make provisions to handle situations where someone (inadvertantly) reports an adverse effect (AE) via UGC. This could be real-life AE or a fake AE provided by a malicious member. (Adhering to the six 21 CFR Part 11 and Title II HIPAA recommendations above significantly reduces the risk of malicious AE reporting.)

You should implement the following two items to ensure your social networking supports strong pharmacovigilance:

1. Moderate all UGC prior to publication. If you are following the HIPAA recommendation above, you are already doing this. However, not only are you protecting patient privacy, you are also monitoring for reported AEs. This lets you both prevent inadvertent publication of malicious reports and detect and direct AE data to you Safety Reporting Systems
2. House all UGC in a true enterprise data warehouse. Pharmacovigilance does not simply span the processing of AE reports; it also includes the mining of information sources to detect safety signals. By pulling social networking UGC into a enterprise data warehouse and providing your safety monitoring team access to this, you are providing them a new channel to mine and monitor safety information.

Should I take the dive into social networking?

I can only imagine how many people are saying, “Social Networking in Biotech, Pharma and Health Care = Unwarranted Risks.”  This is a natural reaction to the many challenges imposed by this new and dynamically expanding medium of interaction.

However, social networking is here to stay – not as the “next great technology” but as an expected medium to interact with others. When taking these recommendations in mind, companies, associations, and research organizations can tap this new medium to—

• Foster greater collaboration on new products
• Improve internal processes
• Increase the effectiveness and efficiency managing regulatory compliance
• Enable doctors and patients to more easily access needed information
• Increasing the efficiency in the delivery of health care through innovation and collaboration
• Strengthen post-marketing pharmacovigilance their products

Of course, given the push for Health 2.0 and the agenda of the Obama Administration, you have heard all these arguments. You only need to search “Health20″ on Twitter to find the latest.

I was one of those lucky few to be a part of the explosion of the Internet (not just the dot-com boom but also the earlier DARPA-driven R&D at MIT, CMU, Stanford and Berkeley the 80s). For those of you who do not remember (or — I am sad to remind myself — may be too young to remember) here are some things that were going on in the Web 1.0 world in 1999:

• The Horsemen of the Internet (Cisco, EMC, Oracle and Sun in the B2B world, Amazon, AOL and Yahoo! in the B2C one) had introduced “new models of doing business that would change everything” to millions of people
• These models were very technology-centric and focused on “new measures of value” such as click-thru’s, eyeballs, audience, etc. (discarding traditional EPS and PEG values)
• Lots of “traditional” companies were racing to adopt these models — instead one core to their businesses. (Remember all those tracking stocks like NBCi and Borders Online?)
• Technology vendors were rushing out tool boxes to build web sites,
• As same time, analysts were heavily questioning if these models had staying power (the stocks of the horsemen actually dipped heavily at this time — just before rising as part of the last-minute Y2K Technology Gold Rush

The Web 2.0 parallels of today are eerie

This sounds a little familiar what is happening today in the Web 2.0 world (minus the overtones of the current world recession):

• Thanks to Web 2.0 Horsemen (Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter) millions of people now roughly understand what Web 2.0 means — at least in the consumer space
• Like 1999, the business models in the Web 2.0 space are still largely in the formative stages (just a few minutes on TechCrunch or Silicon Alley Insider will highlight this)
• Lots of “traditional” companies were racing to add Web 2.0 offerings — with varying degrees of success. (At least we are avoiding Web 2.0 tracking stocks for now)
• As the analyst reports attest, the Web 2.0 space is becoming filled with companies who offer “toolboxes that can uses to quickly stand up communities”
• At the same time, many are asking if “there is any there there” in the Web 2.0 business model (and the valuation of Web 2.0 companies have crashed — ahead of the recession)

What happened after 1999 to Web 1.0

Within five years, the Web 1.0 world have moved to a very different place than it was in 1999.  Essentially, it integrated with (instead of disrupting) the rest of the business world.  Web technology moved from being an end-to-itself to becoming a means to create value. This significantly changed the market space:  web-only companies diminished or disappeared (web hosting, domain name services and email are now commodities) while companies who could use web technology to create value-added Business Solutions created whole new markets.  Examples easily come to mind:

• Content Management systems replaced the build-your-own-website tool kits (and pushed these companies aside)
• eCommerce platforms became a core purchase for every major CPG company
• Advertising and creative agencies became Interactive Agencies, providing holistic advertising and brand service across all media channels (pushing the ‘webmaster’ back to the IT department)
• CRM moved from a back office function to an real-time service to manage revenue creation
• Digital music replaced the experience of going to the record (or CD) store
• Searching for information online (instead of going to a library or buying a “List of…” book)

We are now ready for this in the Web 2.0 world

I believe Web 2.0 will follow a similar integration path that Web 1.0 did. Those companies who can figure out how to create value-added Business Services using Web 2.0 communication approaches (be them technology firms of consulting and creative groups) will expand and develop new markets. Those enterprises who fold these services into the day-to-day execution of their mission will realize the most benefit.

If you disagree, the perhaps you can answer the following question for me:  what is the value of a blog or a forum?  I do not think blogs or forums have much intrinsic value in themselves.  However they can create value when integrated into a higher value business service or process.

On the other hand, what is the follow of the following services?:

• Leveraging your customers to tell you what you need to invest in to sell more (would save a lot on Product Development and increase product success rate)
• Harnessing  citizen input to shape more efficient public budgeting (would save a lot on public referenda)
• Using the the contributions and input of your customers to drive advertising traffic and urge new customers to buy your product (saves on advertising costs and increases sales)

Not only are these services valuable, they are also broadly applicable, easy to understand (from both a business model and end user perspective).  The firms that can create these will become the Vignettes, Crispin Porters, Salesforce.coms and Apples of the Web 2.0 world.

Addendum: I am not the only person who thinks this

McKinsely & Company recently included a segment “Six Ways to Make Web 2.0 Work” in their last McKinseyQuarterly publication. This article discussed a very similar evolution of adoption of Web 2.0 “tools” that will overlay existing infrastructure to encourage engagement and participation.  They included a graph that shows the same ten-year repetitive cycle:

Credit. www.McKinseyQuarterly.com