The Governments Power of Information Taskforce has created a £20,000 prize fund for people who want to develop new ways to use publicly owned data for public benefit. You submit ideas through the website boldly called showusabetterway. They’ve also made a series of government data sets available for people to work with. This website though is important because its how the government is thinking in fresh ways about collaboration and its relationship with us:

We’re confident that you’ll have more and better ideas than we ever will. You don’t have to have any technical knowledge, nor any money, just a good idea, and 5 minutes spare to enter the competition.Go on, Show Us A Better Way.

The same task force has already looked for ways to make it easier or safer for civil servants to share in the ideas fest which often happens online. Openness generates better ideas. It helps people to innovate faster and work better. Yes it also means people can nick those ideas - but that doesn’t put the thieves ahead of those who habitually collaborate to progress.

(Thanks to Bill Thompson)

The recent MIT Sloan article ‘Does Being Ethical Pay?’ unintentionally highlights one of the major issues in the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) debate: are companies unethically jumping on the ethical bandwagon?
 
The article asks if the billions of dollars spent doing good works pays off by testing consumer responses to ethically and unethically made products. I agree, it is essential to measure and research consumers’ attitudes to ethical products and know the financial implications for your business so that your ethical efforts are sustainable, but not in order to find out how to use the current trend towards ethics for financial gain! “We discovered that companies don’t necessarily need to go all-out with social responsibility to win over consumers. If a company invests in even a small degree of ethical production, buyers will reward it just as much as a company that goes much further in its efforts.”
 
You could argue Trudel and Cotte are simply reflecting consumer attitudes, but I believe by omitting to talk about the bigger picture it’s a point for the cynics’ argument…that companies are moving towards being socially responsible just because it makes them look good and not because it is the right thing to do.
 
Is it naive to think any company is different? Does that actually matter as long as people and the environment gain? It does if you only do as the article implies - just make yourself a little bit ethical and you will get just as much reward! There is danger in this too though; if you state you are ethical then you open yourself up to being scrutinised, and it may well not be long before legislation is passed on ethical standards, or the market changes so much that anything else is unsaleable.
 
The article says the lessons are clear; well yes they are if you only take into account potential profit, “companies should segment their market and make a particular effort to reach out to buyers with high ethical standards, because those are the customers who can deliver the biggest potential profits on ethically produced goods”. The ethical problem with this argument is that by only producing ethical goods for ethical consumers you aren’t considering the social or environmental impact of your company as a whole.
 
Should we not abandon our cynicism just for a moment and applaud companies such as Marks and Spencer for their drive to be more sustainable and kinder to the environment. 

“We’re doing this because it’s what you want us to do. It’s also the right thing to do. We’re calling it Plan A because we believe it’s now the only way to do business. There is no Plan B.”

“Invent best practice.”  ”Let action precede strategy.”  “Throw a whole lot of mud at the wall and see how much of it sticks.”

This is the advice of Peter Sheahan, the globally renowned expert in workplace change with a client list that reads like a prime time ad break (and all at the tender age of 28!). His book ‘Flip: How to Succeed by Turning Everything You Know on its Head’ flies refreshingly in the face of conventional thinking by highlighting the powers of counter-intuitive business strategies. ’Flip’ includes lessons on embracing change and succeeding in an ideas economy from ‘flipstars’ such as Richard Branson, Google and Nintendo.  

There are some intriguing concepts here, such as:

• Powerlessness, not power, corrupts
• Style is substance
• To get control, give it up
• Fashion is function
• Feelings are the most important facts
• The soft stuff is the hardest stuff, and the hardest to get right

But the overriding message is clear: “The only way you won’t be relevant in the future is if you keep doing exactly the same thing as you’ve done up until today.”

Recently I had the delight of listening to a CEO who was experimenting with fun ideas for creating an engaged workplace.  One of them was a ground-rule which says, “In this company, you can criticise anyone’s idea.  But, first you have to come up with two good things and then (referring to the problem you see) say ‘How can I help with…’ “  Has anyone come across similarly simply but potentially practical workplace ideas?

The July-August issue of the Harvard Business Review has published the results of a fascinating four year study undertaken by Christian Stadler and his colleagues. They have produced the European equivalent of what have now become commonplace studies into what makes great American companies great. The main findings (which they call the four principles of enduring success) of Stadler and his colleagues’ research took them by surprise.

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“Institutional Hack” is a delicious, contradictory new phrase for me. Paul Miller (of the School of Everything and from time to time the think tank Demos) used it earlier today in this post on his personal blog. At first you might think an Institutional Hack is one of those cynical folk, the type whose skill, energy and expertise is focused on working the politics of their organisation principally for personal gain. Not so.

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I was impressed by Jane a Chief Executive with whom I spoke recently. She expressed clear concern that none of the top managers (Directors) in her company could identify a single person who would be able to replace them.

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Its official – in 2007 Jacques Chirac will not stand for President. He said so during a television interview this evening. And, indeed, the media is asking questions such as, Who will succeed Jacques Chirac as French President?.

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It has been said that “…prediction is really difficult, especially when it has to do with the future”. I was reminded of this by a recent conversation with a really effective senior manager in a fast growing business. She said to me, “…the Directors in my organisation are surprised by too many things!” In other words, some of their surprises could have been predicted.

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Today BT delivered customer service that truly surprised me. You see, my phone at home has not been working for the past four days and I thought it was due to faulty hand sets. Last night, I phoned BT to establish whether the fault might have anything to do with BT equipment.

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