The Cranky Middle Manager Show #312 The Future of the MBA Ken Starkey
Oprah understands web meetings better than the big consultancies…
Posted on 22. May, 2009 by Wayne in General
If you ever think big companies don’t seem to “get it” when it comes to helping their people communicate effectively I have seen an alternate future, and (as usual) it is Oprah.
Picture two visions of how we can communicate in the future- actually it’s possible this very second but let’s leave time for committee decision making.
The first is from one of the big, famous consultancies. They just invested millions of dollars in giant state-of-the-art video conferencing facilities in their main offices around the world. Very cool stuff, as you can see.
Killer high-definition, very classy and a marvel of IT engineering. I’m impressed, and as that great sage Jesse “The Body” Ventura always said, “I don’t impress easy, McMahon”.
There’s just one little snag. In order to access this electronic communication marvel you have to be in one of the offices that have the capability. I’ll let the idea of traveling somewhere to avoid travel expenses marinate.
On the other hand, over coffee this morning, Oprah was doing a whole show on Skype, and how it allows mere mortals to talk to each other anywhere in the world with perfectly functional video and sound for free. Let me repeat that: For. Free. Anywhere. Anytime.
For most of us, what we need is instant communication that allows us to connect to the people we’re talking to in all the ways that matter- verbal, vocal and visual communication. It doesn’t need to be state of the art, it doesn’t need to be impressive, it needs to be there.
There are all kinds of reasons to use the big facilities- scale, audience, branding, IT ego, and I’m not saying if you can afford it you shouldn’t use it. What I am saying is that while companies continue to look for hte biggest hammer they can find to fix a problem, there are plenty of other solutions out there that are cheap, easy and would allow managers to get on with the job.
It’s not just video conferencing, you can see the same things at work in knowledge capture (a giant inhouse networked system vs. Google docs) Social networking (Sharepoint vs. Ning) and pretty much everywhere you look individuals can find solutions to solve their communication challenges if the “experts” will just get the hell out of their way.
The major problem is that these low-tech, low-cost solutions are implemented at the individual level. Empowered managers and team leaders can use them immediately.. For reasons too numerous to mention, this gives IT people and the funders who love them fits.
Here’s the question at the heart of this debate: do you trust your people to do what they need to do to get the job done? Yes or no. It’s a closed ended question.
So while the CEO might beam with pride at their new system, Oprah is teaching housewives how to talk to anyone in the world from the comfort of their home for free. One of these is world changing.
Lucky us middle managers stuck in the middle on this one.
Grass-roots solutions are great…in theory. I’ve got a number of excel spreadsheets that we use internally that are simple and inexpensive, but are largely band-aids for systems that are already in place (or should be, pending budget constraints). Suddenly you’re trapped in a very limiting tool, or without the ability to leap-frog to a ‘proper system’.
I guess as middle managers, we have to decide what are closed-loop tasks that can work via grass-roots, and which ones we say, whoa, that needs a bigger hammer to fix.
That said, I’d go bonkers staring at my co-workers ‘sitting’ across from me in HD quality. Seems a little too creepy.
Well said! And the same mindset means that online training will continue to take place via WebX and GoToMeeting [fee based] and that these are somehow preferable to eduFire [absolutely free... up to 99 students!]
I’ve conducted online training via both WebX and eduFire and find that eduFire is a much easier, more flexible, and powerful interface. Better yet, without any middle men [or women] at all, I take charge of the platform and simply do the class. With WebX, there was so many fingers in the pot that we all got in each others’ way.
Finally, for those wishing to “sell” online classes, eduFire allows anyone to set up a class and (if you choose) charge people to attend. They painlessly collect the fees, take their 15% of the amount collected, and you get your 85%. But free or money-making, the entire eduFire experience is smooth and seamless.
Okay, Mike. I’m letting this one slide because some of what you say is absolutely true and a few of my listeners might want to know about edufire (which is a perfectly cool product under the right conditions). Try this kind of blatant ad again and I”ll go Medievel on your #$Q@%
GEEZZZ!!! I’ve USED eduFire. I’m not affiliated with them in any way, except as a sometimes teacher of freebie classes. And they have zillions of teachers. To date, in my one and only attempt eduFire class-for-a-fee, I cleared less than $60… The bottom line, however, is that I see it this way: eduFire is to large-group meetings and classes [a freebie, do-it yourself tool], what Skype is to one-on-one communications over the net. Sorry if it felt like a promo.
my apologies for getting, um, cranky- but if you don’t work for them you should! I know all about online classes and how hard they are to sell…. (place plug for the webinars here….)
Lucky us middle managers stuck in the middle on this one. Grass-roots solutions are great…in theory. I’ve got a number of excel spreadsheets that we use internally that are simple and inexpensive, but are largely band-aids for systems that are already in place (or should be, pending budget constraints). Suddenly you’re trapped in a very limiting tool, or without the ability to leap-frog to a ‘proper system’. I guess as middle managers, we have to decide what are closed-loop tasks that can work via grass-roots, and which ones we say, whoa, that needs a bigger hammer to fix. That said, I’d go bonkers staring at my co-workers ‘sitting’ across from me in HD quality. Seems a little too creepy.