Who will control the all powerful?

I’d like you to imagine something for me.

Its a Thursday night and you’re up talking to your friends. You’ve had a great night and say goodnight to them, looking forward to chatting again in the morning.

The next morning, your world is thrown into turmoil. You wake up only to find that your contact with the outside world has been blocked. You’re not allowed to talk to any of your friends, and they can’t contact you. You have no idea why this has happened, and no-one will explain it. All you are told is that you might find out what has happened sometime in the next 30 days. You are cutoff from the outside world.

After three days of nothing you finally are told that you have been cutoff because you have made too many friends in too short a time, which is not allowed. You find out that you will be able to talk to your friends again, but only in a weeks time. You have no way to challenge this,  and no-one who can assist. You are helpless.

The above story happened in the last week to someone I know. Jono Haysom, a colleague of mine at Telstra and an avid user of Twitter (@jonoh is his Twitter id) went to bed on Thursday night last week after chatting with his friends on Twitter, and woke up on Friday morning to find that his account was suspended. He had no idea why and when he contacted Twitter they responded with an auto-response email saying  they would get back to him in 30 days. After much agitation, they eventually came back to him on Sunday and said he could re-apply to open up his account in 7 days time.

The reason they gave for suspending his account was that he had followed back too many people that had followed him in too short a time . That’s right, he followed people that were already following him! Apparently mass followings like this are a trait of spammers so he was blocked.  

Besides this being grossly unfair, the bigger issue here is that as services like Twitter become more and more prevalent, and more and more of our communications with friends moves online,  being cutoff from your social network for a lengthy period of time such as a week would be an extremely unsettling, frustrating and stressful situation for anyone, never mind a person who has done nothing wrong.  If you extend that to a business environment, exclusion like this could affect a persons livelihood in a huge way, especially if the period was not say a week but a month or longer.

The fact is, the above could happen to anyone at any time, and nothing can be done about it.  The administrators of services like Twitter have total control over who can and can’t use their service, and can kick someone off the service at anytime. There is no-one overseeing what they are doing, and no way to appeal against any of their decisions.

Ok, Jono was still able to use email and other services to talk to some of his friends with whom he had established relationships outside of Twitter, but one can easily imagine a time where all communication services are controlled by one group or organisation (look at Google Wave for an example of an integrated service which combines multiple communication mechanisms).

Imagine the power a  group like that would wield then.  Perhaps we should start thinking about that future and considering what checks and balances need to be put in place so that there is always a way to address an injustice such as what was inflicted on Jono.

Its scary when you think about it.

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Update: Well its been a week since @jonoh was suspended and he still hasnt heard anything more back from them. He has sent 7 emails,  many with the same response

“If you feel you’ve been suspended in error, please reply to this email with a short explanation if you haven’t already, and don’t forget to include your user name. We will do our best to get back to you within 30 days.”

This really is an indictment on Twitter and its error management processes . They had a loyal and high-volume user who I only ever saw promote the service, and they have totally disenfranchised him by cutting him off from the outside world.

Lets hope this doesnt start happening to more and more of us across social networking services as they try to crack down on the growing spam problem affecting their legitimate users.

Open communication can be scary to senior managers

Senior managers today face a conundrum when determining how much information they want to share with employees. In effect this is a balancing act as

• It is widely acknowledged that open communication within an organisation encourages Employee Engagement ; But 
• It is perceived by many managers that open communication can open the company up to a greater risk of leaks to the market (and a breakdown in confidentiality), which can be devastating, especially in a highly competitive situation

Determining how to handle this issue for an organisation has become even more difficult recently with the advent of a world of hyperconnectivity , both in the general public, but also within companies themselves.

It is now much easier for customers, competitors and even potential employees to source (in the public domain) information regarding a company. The open availability of email and applications like Twitter now make it much easier for information to be distributed outside of a company, whilst services like Glassdoor now mean that employees can easily share their thoughts on working in a company, senior management and even their salaries with the public (and future employees) in a confidential manner.

This increased “risk” of leakage of information has prompted some companies to clamp down on information sharing within their organisations. The result of this can be an unengaged employee base which feels dis-empowered due to a lack of access to information regarding key corporate strategies or initiatives.

This can in fact turn into a vicious cycle, with these disenchanted employees feeling the need to rebel against their lack of perceived power, increasing the likelihood that they share their negative thoughts on sites like Glassdoor, or in the worst case actually leaking confidential information that they have access to.

This issue is one of the reasons that many companies are struggling with the concept of Enterprise 2.0 whereby employees are openly encouraged to share information, and provided the tools to do so. In fact, I would argue that this is one of the main reasons that the deployment of Enterprise 2.0 services is placed in the “too hard” basket in many organisations. 

So what is the solution? Unfortunately there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer for every company. A lot of it comes down to creating a culture of open communication but implicit trust through the company, which is not a very easy thing to do at all, and not something that can be easily taught or communicated by consultants or the like.

In most cases, companies will just have to find their own path if they want to move towards becoming more open towards their employees, something that will most likely be the key to successful business in the future.

From social animals to information hoarders

Humans are social animals who love to communicate, but you often wouldn’t think so in many organisations. In many cases, communication, especially between teams, is the furthest thing from what actually happens on a day-to-day basis. Instead, employees become information hoarders who actively keep information within their teams and are extremely reluctant to share it. 

Causes

The causes for this can be many, but in most cases can be traced back to the culture of the organisation.  Specifically, the following cultural drivers are amongst a range of possible underlying reasons for this lack of communication

• Remuneration (pay) – If the pay structure of employees or teams does not explicitly encourage cross-functional teamwork there is very little incentive for groups to work together.
• Power structure – If individuals or teams are implicitly rewarded for having specific information no-one else has they are encouraged to gather and hold this information
• Structure – A structure which duplicates functions amongst teams (or does not provide clarity of function)  can create competition and discourage sharing between groups working on like functions
• Confidentiality – An over-reaction to the risk regarding confidential information leaking to the market can create an excessive focus on secrecy
• Systems – A lack of systems that allow teams to easily share info can make it difficult for this information to be disseminated

Consequences

The results of this information hoarding can be extremely detrimental to any organisation. Amongst other consequences, it can create

• Duplication of activity
• A decrease in productivity
• Increased need for explicit management of cross-company work
• A lack of positive recognition
• An increased reliance on outside expertise
• An inability to take advantage of success across the business
• A lack of trust amongst groups

Solving the problem

Given the lack of communication is often driven by underlying cultural causes it can be a very difficult issue to resolve. Addressing the problem can only really take place as part of a broader cultural change program addressing all drivers of culture, both explicit and implicit. This will be the topic of another post in the near future.