Archive for the ‘sensemaking’ Category

Your voices needed to help a worthy project

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

Can the sharing of stories bring a community together?

It worked in the olden days, but has become a lost art in the age of television, internet, and videogames. Robert Putnam’s book “Bowling Alone” described a society where isolation reigns and communities are frayed.

My friend and colleague Cynthia Kurtz has applied for a Knight News Challenge grant to develop web2.0 software precisely to facilitate the gathering, sharing and passing on of stories that used to go on around the campfire or village square. The Knight folks want the public (that means you) to review and comment on the applications. It would be doing a great service if you would visit the site here and weigh in on Cynthia’s application.

Here’s how she describes the project:


Long ago, story caretakers tended the diverse stories of the community: eliciting, understanding, maintaining. But those traditions have declined as commercial storytelling rose and community coherence fell. The physical-digital split means that today older people tell stories in community centers while younger people tell them on Facebook. People still tell stories, but no one is bringing all of the stories together into community-wide patterns, making sense of those patterns, and helping the stories get to where they need to be in times of need. We are building a free and open source software package called Rakontu (”tell a story” in Esperanto) that will help communities share and work with raw stories of personal experience for mutual understanding, conflict resolution and decision support. By supporting and bridging online and offline storytelling, Rakontu will help communities regenerate the sustaining functions of story caretakers so that they can take better care of their stories again.

An important part of the project is how this would bring benefit to communities. Cynthia explains it this way:


Rakontu will help communities tell, annotate and connect stories; discover insight-creating patterns in them; and use stories to resolve conflicts and make decisions together. This degree of support is only available today through the help of experienced narrative practitioners. Rakontu will embody understandings about narrative in communities so that people will not have to know anything about narrative to benefit from its use. Some possible outcomes are better understandings of opposing perspectives, a greater diversity of voices being heard, better consensus on tough choices, more problems dealt with before they get worse, safer streets, fewer footholds for extremism and paranoia, and greater common strength in times of crisis.

I’ve written in this blog, over and over, about the use of stories for knowledge sharing, learning, and creating insight. You’re probably tired of reading about it. But think about this: we should be using every tool at our disposal to help bring our communities together, to combat the “bowling alone” syndrome, and make our neighborhoods a better place to live. That’s what Rakontu can do, and I hope you’ll visit the Knight News Challenge site and support Cynthia’s application.

(Disclosure: I have worked with Cynthia on this grant and will be conducting community trials of the software if the grant is awarded. Therefore I have a vested interest in getting the grant approved.)

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AG Lafley on P&G’s innovation culture: "The consumer is boss"

Thursday, October 23rd, 2008

In the newest issue of Booz & Co’s “Strategy + Business,” A.G. Lafley describes the innovation culture at his company, Procter & Gamble.

Hearing insights from Lafley and P&G about innovation is becoming a cliche, but this quote struck me as apt:

So we expanded our mission to in­clude the idea that “the consumer is boss.” In other words, the people who buy and use P&G products are valued not just for their money, but as a rich source of in­formation and direction. If we can develop better ways of learning from them — by listening to them, observing them in their daily lives, and even living with them — then our mission is more likely to succeed.

This what I’m thinking about much of the time now. How to help companies listen to, and learn from, “the bosses.”

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Gathering customer product insight using Twitter

Thursday, October 23rd, 2008

Gathering and sorting through customer feedback is an overlooked part of the product manager’s toolbox. Currently-used methods are inadequate to the task: surveys are limiting and misleading (one man’s 4 is another man’s 3, and so forth). Focus groups are biased and prone to takeover by assertive voices.

Fine-grained, freeform feedback, such as is gathered in customer service calls (or, as I’m doing with one client, in open-ended interviews), provides a wide range of opinions from a diverse group, relatively untainted by outside influences, measurement bias and company hypotheses.

The new social applications offer a new and promising way to gather feedback cheaply and in real time. Twitter is one such application being put to use.

Dell and Comcast, for instance, troll Twitter looking for references to their products and services. If people are struggling, their Twitter users will reach out and try to solve the problem, or point them in the right direction to get help. It’s as if a call to tech support was being worked on in public. It’s highly responsive, and the users who get this kind of attention appreciate it, usually announcing their satisfaction in a Tweet.

Other times, Dell in particular responds quickly to critiques of their products (see an earlier post and a Dell comment). It’s done well–not pushing back on the commenters, but certainly getting the company message out in that forum. In other words, comments on Dell products are always responded to.

Both the above examples have obvious PR benefits and bring the Comcast and Dell folks who engage in these conversations closer to the real customer experience. All good.

What I’m talking about, in addition to that, is collecting dozens or hundreds of tweets on a particular product and looking at them all together. What do they say about the product? Are these issues that seem to crop up continually? Are people using the product in unexpected ways? Is something about the product really, really annoying people?

Note that gathering the data is easy. Sorting it out is the hard part, but using narrative analysis techniques can separate the wheat from the chaff and give you real, useable insights.

(Here’s an example of the Twitter conversation around the new Ford Flex. I hope Ford’s product marketers are listening! Here’s another conversation on the Flip video camera)

There are other ways to gather freeform customer feedback. Customer reviews on Amazon, for example. Blog posts. Companies should use all of them. Particularly as these technologies become more embedded, and more people start talking in these forums, the stories customers tell will be more and more vital to innovation and the product creation process.

(If you’d like a comprehensive look at how businesses can use social technologies to engage with the outside, read Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff)

Related posts:
Dell’s web2.0 efforts pay off
Is Google listening to the stories around Knol?
On “Groundswell”

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Is Google listening to the stories around Knol?

Tuesday, August 5th, 2008

I talk a lot in this blog about how listening to stories can help companies take the pulse of users. When a new product is released, people try it out, and provide all sorts of information that’s critical to the future evolution of the product. They don’t provide this information in statistics, but in stories. If you can make sense of the stories, it can give you insight that you can use to make adjustments in functionality, customer service, technical support, pricing, and strategy (as discussed in the section on emergent strategy in “The Innovator’s Guide to Growth”).

Here’s an example of what I mean. On July 23rd, Google released Knol, a product that collects and organizes “authoritative article[s] about a specific topic,” according to the company.

Here are some blog stories that emerged after the launch:

knol: content w/out context, collaboration, capital, or coruscation
…We’re quite a few months into the Knol experiment. What I find particularly fascinating is that most of the knols that they promote on their front page are health-related, primarily by people who claim to have health-related expertise (doctors, nurses, professors) who appear to be copying/pasting from other places. Why health? What’s motivating these people to contribute? (And why are they too lazy to fix the formatting when they copy/paste from elsewhere?)

Frankly, from my POV, Knol looks like an abysmal failure. There’s no life to the content. Already articles are being forgotten and left to rot, along with a lot of other web content. There’s no common format or standards and there’s a lot more crap than gems. The incentives are all wrong and what content is emerging is limited. The expert-centric elitism is intimidating to knowledgeable folks without letters after their names and there is little reason for those of us with letters to contribute. While I don’t believe in the wisdom of a crowd of idiots, I do believe that collective creations tend to result in much better content than that which is created by an individual hermit. (Case in point: my *$#! dissertation vs. any article I’ve co-authored.)

What makes me most annoyed about Knol though is that it feels a bit icky. Wikipedia is a non-profit focused on creating a public good. Google is a for-profit entity with a lot of power in controlling where on the web people go. Knol content is produced by volunteers who contribute content for free so that Google can make money directly from ads and indirectly from search traffic. In return for ?… (full post here)

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Knol for Google: It Is Not Evil, It Is Business
Google is a smart company – smart enough for many people to be surprised after they witness this or that move or an acquisition, surprised enough to say “Why has not anyone thought of that move earlier?” And now it seems that Google has finally realized that it sends way too much traffic from its search results pages to websites that do not contribute to Google’s business. What would be the correct move for a business when faced by such a discovery? Find a way to make money by sending traffic to your own properties.

And this is exactly what Google needs Knol for: Google must be tired of being the major source of traffic for Wikipedia and many other independent publishers and now it looks for new ways to further monetize its own business. And for that it simply needed to have a platform of its own to be able to bring tons of content to internet users easily – and displace competitors from the search results. In this particular case Google serves as a full-cycle company: it provides the platform (Knol itself), the revenue (AdSense) and, finally, the distribution (search).

Sure, we hear lots of complaints about Knol already. It is quite obvious that from the day 1 of Knol launch we should have expected voices pointing at spam on Knol created in order to get revenue by building a page on a popular term. It was so obvious that it is almost ridiculous to complain about it now. The explanation here is that no matter what service people use they invariably are motivated by something. And often the motivation offered by the service determines exactly what type of users it will attract eventually… (full post here)

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Knol – from Google blog
There is a debate about whether Knol is an attempt at competing with Wikipedia. In academic use, its unclear where exacly it fits – for example, much of what you would think of writing a “knol” about seems better placed in a standard journal article review or scholarly dictionary. Does this offer a replacement for those? Scholarpedia is another potential candidate for competing with standard academic review formats. At the moment, there is not much incentive for individual academics to produce these types of documents but is it, more generally, a more logical way of reviewing fields that are very fast-moving?… (full post here)

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A Unit of What?
A knol, Knol says, is a “unit of knowledge”. I don’t think so. But I do think Knol is already becoming a den of spam.

My cursory research, at that link, suggests that the answer is yes. “Anemia“? No results. “Hair“? 12, including several (supposedly) by the top guy at the Beauty Network. “Cancer“? 38, so far, inncluding three in the first page of results for the biggest spam giveaway, Mesothelioma. Search for anything. Watch the results.

If this is about a fight with Wikipedia, I’d say it’s no contest. But it’s not. It’s about the corrupting influence of pure scammy ambition. Even if Google doesn’t have that, it plays host to plenty. And Knol (born on 23 July) was barely out of the womb before it got infected with it. (full post here)

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The Invidious Knol
My third post on the subject and potentially the most worrying. This blog suggests that Google are tipping the search balance so that knols come above the Wikipedia on search. Its also got a good quote from Nick Carr I’m guessing that serving as the front door for a vast ad-less info-moshpit outfitted with open source search tools is not exactly the future that Google has in mind for itself. Enter Knol.

Now the evidence here is anecdotal, but it will be interesting to see if others carry out more scientific and controlled tests. If it is true then Google’s famous Do Good, already tarnished for its willing to compromise its principles in China would be finally shot. It would be an interesting new form of monopoly and a major issue of trust. Any other evidence out there? (full post here)

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Twitter is also a neat place for Knol micro-stories. Here are some:

I would suggest Google Knol. It is a combination of Squidoo and Wikipedia. Plus, it is SEO-ready.

admiring my knol, and blogging about Intranet Week and my new gig at J&J

the geekosphere hating knol out of gate only makes me that much more bullish on it longer term…

I love that the wikipedia article for Knol ranks above Knol itself. I wonder how long that will last?

google knol has boobies. Goodbye wikipedia!

Ready to pronounce knol a failure already? I think we’ll see over time. Life is not *all* wisdom of crowds.

it’s pretty cool that Google can afford to have full on projects that are pointless – and it doesn’t really hurt – Knol, I’m looking at you

If I am Google, I am collecting every story I can find like this, and reading them all (including, and perhaps especially, the ones that are critical). There will be some randomness and noise, but with enough volume there will also be themes that emerge. Some that came out of my reading were:

- there’s a feeling that Google will favor Knols in its search rankings, and that’s a risk not only to the success of Knol, but also to AdSense, one of Google’s cash cows.

- the commercial model for Knol, and the perception of can encourage spammers and risk degrading the content available via Knols, tarnishing all of them.

- the perception that Google is taking on Wikipedia (or “commercializing” it) is clashing with Google’s “do no evil” mantra.

The Google team may find different patterns. Or they may not care to do anything about them. But they should at minimum understand them. Hopefully they’re doing so. The changes that come in Knol over the next few months should provide some insight.

(To see the links for thirty-five stories found on the web about Knol, both blogs and tweets, click here.)

Related post:
Review of “The Innovator’s Guide to Growth”
What in hell do stories have to do with innovation?

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What in hell do stories have to do with innovation?

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008

Regular readers may be tiring of the constant barrage of story-related posts, or at minimum be trying to figure out how they relate to the title of this blog. Here are some words that I hope tie it together.

More and more products are launched and evolve in an iterative fashion. Version 1 does this, version 2 does that, and version 3 finally hits the mark and becomes the standard (exhibit A: Windows). Those iteration windows are becoming tighter, so good information as a basis of planning product changes is invaluable. Google in particular has turned this approach into an art form.

There are more and more ways to get feedback directly from users. Forums, call centers, social networks, Twitter, etc., etc., allow users to communicate their likes and dislikes about a product.

Now, to storytelling. Most business applications of storytelling focus on communicating outward–developing a story that helps communicate the essence or benefits of your product or company. Steve Denning, in his recent book “The Secret Language of Leadership” calls these indirect stories–stories that inspire stories in the mind of the reader or listener. Indirect stories are necessarily incomplete–they are not meant to immerse the listener in an experience (like, say, Harry Potter does). They are meant to create empathy and consensus.

What I’m talking about (as are Shawn Callahan & Mark Schenck of Anecdote, Dave Snowden of Cognitive Edge and others) is inverting that model.

In addition to crafting stories and sending them out toward customers, staff, etc., what if we listen to the indirect stories coming from them? They are also necessarily incomplete–mere anecdotes–but if you gather a few dozen, a few hundred, or a few thousand, common themes and threads will become evident. To invert Denning’s language, there’s the possibility of inspiring stories in the mind of the company.

These stories might say things like:

  • People find our product really hard to use.
  • Feature X of our product is proving more valuable than we expected.
  • A group of people are using our product in an interesting way that we didn’t anticipate.

As a product manager, the above stories are very important to me. They help orient me toward things I should do to improve product packaging, add or delete features, alter its marketing message or improve its customer service or technical support. Also, the user stories are pre-hypothesis, meaning that they are free of bias that can come via hypothesis-based approaches such as surveys. They are not adulterated by groupthink, as can happen with focus groups. They are the voice of the customer.

None of the individual anecdotes may send clear messages about where innovation is working and where it isn’t. But the accrual of them can do so.

Companies don’t use this resource to improve innovation. They should.

And that’s what I’m talking about.

(For a powerful example of the accrual of “indirect” stories to create a compelling, nuanced, overall story, please refer to this earlier post on Haruki Murakami’s “Underground.”)

Related Post:
Stories that people tell about products are invaluable

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Stories that people tell about products are invaluable

Friday, June 13th, 2008

I was listening to a Dave Snowden talk today, and this bit jumped out:

We’re capturing 150,000 stories a week from people as they consume a product. Because the stories that people tell as they have an experience are far more significant than customer satisfaction surveys.

Also this:

What people love… is numbers backed up by stories–numbers on their own, stories on their own have deficiencies. But numbers backed up by stories is quite powerful.

This idea–capturing & sorting stories from users to see how products are doing and how they can be improved–is something I’ve been messing with a bit, and it’s good to hear that this isn’t brand-new.

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An important definition of sensemaking

Saturday, June 7th, 2008

In trying to talk to companies about using narrative techniques and other ways to mine the non-quantitative data they have but never make use of, especially for strategy and innovation, this post from Dave Snowden will be a significant asset.

Sensemaking is the alchemical step where the mess is sorted through and the themes, threads and weak signals are detected and clarified. From there, people can make decisions and act.

In other words, it’s the most important step.

Related post:
HBR article demonstrates that leaders need to manage complexity

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Everyday stories hold great insight

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

If you’ve visited this space at all before, you’ll know that I believe the stories we tell of our lives hold vast riches of information–and that information can be used to inform decisions on strategy, management & leadership, among other areas.

Today, the invaluable Harvard Business School Working Knowledge website features an article by Julia Hanna discussing creativity in the workplace and its place in innovation. The whole article is wonderful and worth reading in full. But I was fascinated by this passage regarding the research of Harvard professor Theresa Amabile:

As a way to delve deeper into the link between motivation and creativity, Amabile and her husband, psychologist Steven J. Kramer, conducted a three-year study of 238 professionals from seven companies in the high-tech, consumer products, and chemicals industries. Without revealing the focus of their study, they asked the subjects (all of whom were working on projects requiring creative effort) to fill out a daily electronic diary form that required numerical answers to questions about their work that day, as well as their emotions, motivation, and work environment. They were also asked to describe what they’d done that day and to include a brief description of one event at work that stood out in their minds [emphasis mine]. (Participants were asked to refrain from discussing the diary content with colleagues.) By the end of the study, Amabile and Kramer had collected nearly 12,000 entries, what she describes as a “wonderful treasure trove of data.”

“We have a window into how concrete events affected knowledge workers’ thoughts, perceptions, emotions, and motivations,” Amabile says. “We call this ‘inner work life,’ and we found that it directly influences creativity and other aspects of performance.”

The mundane, quotidian stories (the events the subjects documented) were an integral part of the study data. By leveraging these, Amabile and Kramer were able to evaluate a trait–creativity–far more deeply than could have been done by numerical analysis alone. I’m convinced that capturing and sorting through stories can add incalculable wisdom to the business world. We’ve only begun to scratch the surface of the possibilities.

On a side note, I’ve been thinking about how Twitter and like tools will be involved in this arena. What are all those tweets telling us about ourselves?

But that’s a topic for another post.

(Photo: “Old Diary” by Race_Eend via stock.xchng)

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