0 The Internet and the Social Economy

Local economies are our opportunity to build a truly social economy.  Their social dimension distinguishes local economies from neo-liberal economic practices.  These favour accumulation of wealth and power in remote places, beyond democratic accountability.

What Makes an Economy Local?

Ideally, local or social economies

Local businesses benefit more people than entrepreneurs and their immediate families.  It seems we live at a time when this is not generally understood.  Contrast the era of great industrial families, whose names are still found in buildings and parks around our cities.  They took pride in their cities.  This is not to say they were perfect, conditions in their factories were often appalling but their vision was wider than immediate family.

The characteristics listed are aspirations for many local businesses.  I would love to employ staff, pay taxes and invest locally but my business cannot support these at present.

This does not amount to a full description of the local economy.  Those elements not described as business are missing.  Community activity, sometimes called the core economy,  builds relationships and supports local businesses.

Much remains unchanged since the growth of the Internet.  Businesses and their customers still need to meet face-to-face and the networking and referral approaches that worked before the Internet, still do.

How the Internet Contributes

Here are some approaches, where the Internet supports the local economy:

How to Work Locally

What do we want to do locally and how can it be supported online?  Begin with the local, in-person dimension and ask how to support it online.

The big advantage of the local economy is its potential to develop in-person relationships.  Customers use local services because they know like and trust the owners.  These relationships are the bedrock of local economies.  When we trade with local businesses, we have a good idea where the economic benefit is going and as much as possible will circulate locally.

The Internet can support local economic activity but is not central to it.  The strength of the local economy is its capacity to build relationships that keep it going.  Relationships come first; when business comes first, it inevitably leads to burnout at best and dishonesty at worst.

Businesses are part of a web of relationships that can make business practice much easier.  Well-designed interventions, such as local currencies, build on existing community relationships.  They depend on trust, which is why they have no financial value outside of their community of origin.

What are the practical advantages to putting relationships first in business?

0 The Proposition Value Triangle

This post focuses on how to discuss the proposition value triangle with prospects.  Check out my recent post about the Value Triangle if you are not familiar with it.

It is important your prospect understands they can have two out of high-quality, low-cost and high-speed.  I tell my prospects that if they sign up with me they get a service tailored to their needs at a relatively low cost.  So, if they want a website I can offer them low-cost (about a tenth of the national average charge from a web developer of £10-15 000).  I offer quality in the sense that by working with me they will understand how their website works and how to use it to support their marketing strategy.  They sacrifice speed, as work on their website might take 6 months or longer.

If they are seeking speed, I recommend a web developer.  I might on occasion suggest they sign up for one of my packages so that I can help them prepare a brief for their web developer.

Note how I can explain the value triangle without mentioning it.  It is a model to have in mind and use to guide you in your conversation.

Another approach is to ask the prospect which two of the three criteria are most important to them.  You can then talk them through the implications, helping them find a good referral if you cannot meet their needs.

So, let’s look at each response the prospect can present:

High-Quality, Low-Cost

This is likely to be the most common response.  If the prospect presents this, you need to find out what they mean by high quality.  If they’re seeking a website, are they thinking about technical wizardry or a website that delivers for their enterprise?

Your aim is to clarify what the prospect means by high quality.  Sometimes, this will be a revelation to the prospect as much as it is to you.  It is vitally important you listen to the prospect because if your understanding of high quality is not what the prospect wants, you will disappoint them.

If you can provide the high quality product or service they need, make them an offer.  Otherwise you need to make a referral.  Your low-cost package will be an alternative to other suppliers.

The prospect at this stage needs to understand what you are offering.  “Yes, we can achieve the quality you want but as this is a low-cost offer, there are some things you won’t receive.”

For my offer, low speed may be an advantage.  The focus is on working alongside the prospect to help them learn how to market their business or organisation locally.  I am offering a consultancy, not a web developer service and this means the prospect does the work, with my support over 3 – 6 months.  The plan is by working with me, the prospect will walk away with greater understanding and able to carry the work forward.  This naturally takes time and if it is what the customer needs, it can be a good deal.

High-Speed, Low-Cost

This is the low quality option.  Why should anyone want low quality?

Well actually, low quality can be really useful.  There are industries that offer fast, adequate products online.  Examples are oDesk and Fiverr – Google them if you’re interested.

One of these services designed the three-dimensional cover for my ebook.  It cost me under £10 to get the design and have it converted to three-D.  It took a few hours.  They offered six options to choose from.

Now, it is not ideal.  But my ebook just needs something eye-catching and fairly professional looking.  It does the job.  May be something else would bring in more conversions but is it worth the time, effort and money to find out?

It would be if I receive a lot of online traffic, perhaps promoting the ebook via Adwords or Facebook.  But most of my sign-ups are local and they sign up for a variety of reasons usually following conversations with me.

High-speed, low-cost is useful for trying things out.  There is no point spending hours on something that is not going to work.  Sometimes a quick and dirty solution can result in enough information to refine things later.

High-Quality, High-Speed

And this of course is where the big money is!  If you can provide a high quality product or service at great speed, there will be people who can pay for it.  Often the person who pays for this type of offer values time.

They don’t want to commit their own time to developing this service or product, sometimes because it is too technical for them and taking time to learn it might cost more.  Also, simply because they want to deploy their time elsewhere.

Maybe they are launching something new and need online support for what they are doing quickly.  Whilst it is usually possible to plan ahead, sometimes an opportunity presents itself and the customer needs to purchase someone else’s time.

So, each of these three options represents reality and most people will use each from time to time.

How do you use the value triangle when discussing your proposition with a prospect?

0 Full Co-production Means Planning and Delivery

Last Friday, I posted about co-production.   The post shows how the core economy is fundamental to the marketplace but not always recognised as it is essentially non-financial.  Today I shall explore full co-production and its alternatives.

The table contrasts planning and delivery.  Professional and community organisations working together can carry out both activities.  Full co-production is where professional and community organisations plan and deliver together.

I’ll work through the table, defining terms as I go.

Planning

Planning is an activity integral to community development.  Whilst local residents may not be able to deliver services, they can always have a stake in planning them.

Professional Planning

When professionals make decisions, they can consult with residents either before they make a plan, eg using a questionnaire, or afterwards by consulting on their proposals.  Many people will be familiar with Arnstein’s Ladder of Participation and where professionals totally control planning, they’re working in the manipulation and tokenism parts of the ladder.

Traditional services assume professionals do the planning, perhaps with some consultation.  This is  legitimate where community organisations do not wish to be involved in all aspects of planning.  The work can be tedious and so long as the planning covers what it needs to cover, people are happy for the professionals to get on with it.  However, when things go wrong, professionals need to listen.  Professionals can resolve some issues by listening to complaints and responding, others may need a more systematic approach to planning together.

One essential, where planning is primarily led by professionals is a good complaints procedure.  Professionals need to be clear what a complaint is and how to manage them.  If the numbers or seriousness of complaints increase it may be worth considering co-planning.

Co-Planning

Community Planning is primarily a community activity, whilst co-planning or planning includes professionals.

Co-planning should be in the top section of Arnstein’s ladder, Citizen Power.  Partnership may be  most appropriate, when considering Co-Planning, as delegated power and citizen control implies some form of co-delivery.

Whilst a move towards Co-Planning may be the result of complaints, it is not always so.  The initiative might equally come from local residents who identify an issue and want to have a say in it.

Community Planning

The big advantage of community planning, is it enables neighbourhoods to work out their own priorities, independent of professional agendas.  Community planning has limitations.  A community plan may allow representatives of a community a place at the table with professionals but it is at that stage it is important to move the debate into the Co-Planning column.  To insist a community plan, has more validity than everyone else’s is likely to get short shrift.

Professionals will come to the table with their own plans, often responding to the needs of several neighbourhoods.  The challenge for local residents is finding they are competing for resources and services with other neighbourhoods.

Think of community plans as means to move a community organisation towards full co-production.  There are times when it is right for community organisations to take on delivery.  However, where collaboration with professional services is essential, the aim is collaboration in the central square in the table.

Delivery

Broadly professionals or professionalised community organisations, sometimes called social enterprises, achieve delivery.  There are advantages to delivery of mainstream services centrally.  They have the resources and skilled staff.  Voluntary organisations usually identify and fill gaps.  To what extent is it possible for professional organisations and community organisations to collaborate in delivery of services?

This was the 2000 Local Government Act’s vision.  Community plans were to result in collaboration between professionals and residents, planning and delivering services.  Local assemblies, based on local authority wards in the UK, were to be the platform where the council could make decisions relevant to local neighbourhoods.

Whilst this activity has declined, with changes to national government, the principles still exist, despite their political steer.

Professional Delivery

It still makes sense for local authorities to deliver services.  Their role has been eroded in recent years, not through collaboration with residents but through private companies.  Council services such as refuse collection or road maintenance have been outsourced, increasingly using Private Finance Initiatives that tie councils into long-term contracts, often with terms and conditions kept out of the sight of the electorate.

The real issue here is transparency and accountability to local residents.  When councils deliver services, if the problems become intractable, residents can vote them out or at least threaten to.  With a PFI, the same delivery arrangement persists whoever controls the council.

Co-Delivery

Whilst it is not too difficult to imagine circumstances where co-planning is helpful to all parties, it is harder to think of examples of co-delivery.  Perhaps one is Burngreave New Deal for Communities.  If you read these blog posts, you will get some idea of the difficulties of this type of collaborative approach.

It’s not just that local authorities and other professional bodies are juggernauts, likely to crush community organisations, it is also the changing political complexion of local authorities.  Adverse political change Good can rapidly wreck good working relationships.

Community Delivery

Social enterprises are one example of a professionalised community organisation that can plan and deliver services in a neighbourhood.  Social enterprises may be engaged in co-production but retain some independence from the big players.

Perhaps neighbourhoods with their own development trust or similar are better equipped to contribution to co-production, whilst building alternative or independent sources of funding.

Conclusion

It seems the main weakness of co-production, likely to undermine any full co-production arrangements is changing political fortunes.  A change in council leadership can undermine co-production.  Similarly, national government decisions can favour alternatives such as PFIs.

To work with professionals, community organisations need to professionalise to bring their independent contribution to the table.  As such they need to work out how they as professionals co-plan and co-deliver with their residents.

So, what do you think?  Can full co-production work?  I’ve filled in some of the squares on the table, can you think of practices that fill the remaining squares (or indeed better ideas than mine!)?

2 Four Reasons Social Media is Not as Brilliant as You Think It Is

Not so long ago, social media was fun!  I don’t normally approve of fun because I find it usually gets in the way of enjoying life.  But look, I joined Facebook to throw sheep at my friends!  That’s what we did!  It’s several years since I last threw a sheep at anyone or had one thrown at me!

Facebook these days is terribly stuffy.  It invites us to join groups where people share their interest in worthy causes.  A medium that was once at the cutting edge of young people happily throwing sheep, is now full of elderly people burdened with causes.

And as if that is not enough, there is the advertising.  Today Facebook thinks I need to know how to launch a business online, not a bad guess as I’m sure Facebook knows I’m interested in marketing.  Apparently I also need to drive a Nissan Pulsar, which appears to be some kind of car.

Facebook is now one of the most effective ways of advertising your business online.  Unlike Google AdWords, Facebook enables you to match your business to specific people who are likely to be in your market.  Grumpy old men drive Nissan Pulsars.

It’s not so long ago that the only social medium was the telephone.  It was fastened to the wall and so if we were expecting a call we had to hang around until it rang.  Other media such as televisions and newspapers were not social.  They communicated with us and if we wanted to communicate with them we had to write a letter.

What is Social Media Like?

Some say it is fast, instant even.  I say it is opaque.

It may be fast in the sense that what I write can be shared with hundreds of people instantly at the touch of a button.  But that does assume the hundreds of people are reading their social media.  Let’s face it most of the time I have no idea what is going on in social media because I don’t check it.  Occasionally, that is several times a day, some algorithm sends me a seemingly random sample of what I’ve been missing.  I could put them all on my mobile phone and check them when I have an idle moment.  The problem with that approach is I rarely have idle moments.

Social Media is essentially anonymous. 

When you’re talking to a human being they are there in front of you and you know who they are.  Even on the phone, you can check out the speaker’s identity.  On social media you don’t actually know who is communicating with you.  Mostly it is the named person but you can never be sure.  I’m in touch with loads of people I’ve never met or don’t remember meeting.  How do I know they are who they say they are?  I’m sure most of the time they are.  But what if one isn’t?  How do I know?

Social Media is an intimate medium; it can hurt.

We hear a lot about young people being victimised.  This actually plays to social media strengths – it does support local relationships.  Sounds like good news unless your local relationships are bad news.

Some argue you need to use social media to communicate with young people.  But that assumes young people want to communicate with old people.  At one time, young people used Facebook.  Then middle-aged Methodists moved in and young people moved to Twitter.  Quick as a flash the oldies moved to Twitter.  Rumour has it young people are currently hiding on Instagram, whatever that is.  They seek spaces where they can communicate unprovoked by concerned parents and professionals.

I’m sure social media will be a lot more congenial once grandparents run it.  It currently lacks the atmosphere of the tea dance, although some would say Facebook is shaping up nicely.

Social Media are communication tools and so have a certain utility.  They have transformed the way information passes around and particularly the way we consume news.  They have, with reservations, transformed the way we do business, share information and make contact with like-minded people.

But it is a bit like treading grapes in Wellingtons or shaking hands wearing rubber gloves.

Effective but somehow lacking the immediacy of real life conversations.  For housebound people it may be a way to keep in touch and play a part in the world.  For younger people it helps support social life but does not replace it.

In time I think it will enhance older peoples’ lives far more than younger people’s.  Social media will become the preserve of older people as the computer generation grows older.  Younger people will maintain their privacy by meeting in real life.

Using Social Media

Social media’s purpose is to enhance human connections.  It’s sometimes misused but primarily because it is not understood.  There is massive distinction between understanding how social media works and understanding what it does.  Most of these media have been around for very few years and so it will take time before they are fully absorbed into society.

An important question to ask is: what are my real life priorities and how can social media support them?  This implies understanding their limitations, so that you can use these media properly.

When we don’t do that, we view relationships as things to be manipulated.  We won’t so much enjoy others’ presence as demand rights of access to them.  Because we don’t encounter the person directly, the danger is we will take an instrumental view of them.  The danger is not so much that machines become conscious as we dehumanise other people.

Social Media has its dangers but as a society we have adjusted to many forms of media.  It is hard to imagine anything having the impact on society television has had.

The word “social” implies community.  Our challenge is to work out how these new media can support the building of human community in our neighbourhoods.

If you have read this post through Social Media, do tell me about it – I’ll be delighted!

0 How to Help Prospects Understand the Value of Purchasing Support

In my previous post in this circuit questionnaire sequence, about the Proposition, I suggested organisations need constant developmental change to be successful.  Most organisations need help to think about change strategically.  Whatever you are selling, you need to be aware of this.  Is your prospect aware of the need for change or clinging to the false comfort of business as usual?  Do they understand the value of purchasing support?

The hardest point developing a consultancy relationship is the gap between someone expressing interest and committing to a purchase.

The issue is not the quality of your offer but their lack of conviction it is right for them.  They may be keen to sign up. However, if there is an unavoidable period between this decision and payment, their initial ardour can cool.  Often this delay is because they need to consult with a management committee or family member.

If the decision-making period becomes too long, the first enthusiasm is bound to wane and your prospect, who is your advocate with others you almost certainly have not met, needs to maintain their enthusiasm to see it through.

It seems there are two issues here: their enthusiasm and the length of the delay.

At the outset some delay can be positive, eg it may be helpful to have a cooling-off period.  If the prospect is still enthusiastic after a short period of reflection, it may be a good thing.  Where delivery depends on the positive attitude of the prospect, they need to be certain they’ve signed up to the right thing.

Some Approaches to Mitigating the Delay

So, here are a few thoughts:

A Couple More Issues to Consider

The circuit questionnaire suggests two other things it may be possible to do:

Offer a Bit Extra

For the single person enterprise, this can be daunting.  But the big advantage of any small operation is the ability to offer that bit extra.  For example, I am currently putting a lot of effort into networking in the business and community sectors.  This means I have a lot of valuable information and contacts I can make available to my local clients.  This experience may also be of value for clients in other parts of the country, where I can help them make similar contacts in their area.

It is a narrow path.  You want to sign up the right prospects who understand and value your offer.  You can lose valuable prospects or win prospects who turn out to be the wrong clients.  The latter is potentially more damaging.  It is far better for the latter group to connect them with a business better suited to their needs.

Have you had experiences where you have lost potentially valuable clients or signed up the wrong person?  What did you learn from these experiences?

1 What is Co-Production?

Co-production relates to many of this blog’s themes, such as the local economy, mutuality and community assets.  I’m grateful to Mark Woodhead for introducing me to co-production.  The New Economics Foundation has published a free ebook “Co-production: A Manifesto for growing the core economy“.  If you want to know more about co-production, this paper is a good place to start.

The Core Economy

My aim is to explore co-production’s relationship with some of my key themes and particularly the local economy.  You will note the term “core economy” in the subtitle to the NEF paper and this is a good place to start.  Edgar Cahn, in the forward to the ebook, writes:

Alvin Tofler reminds us of the obvious in his question to Fortune 500 executives: “How productive would your work force be if they were not toilet trained?”

Although the core economy is the foundation for all economies, people often take it for granted.  The relationships between people and families in a locality generate the assets underpinning other economies.  The core economy is essentially mutual.  In an ideal world, people find a role where they can offer and receive support to and from others.

The non-toilet trained workforce may be an amusing picture but it effectively illustrates the value of contributions to the economy we don’t value because we don’t see them.  When we meet someone in the marketplace we don’t have to ask ourselves whether they have been toilet trained.

Who Contributes?

It clearly has a feminist dimension because women provide much of the core economy.  However, it is certainly not restricted to women because everyone contributes in some way to the core economy.  Older people, particularly after retirement, make significant contributions.

People undervalue the core economy, the primary source of economic value, in comparison with the local marketplace where financial transactions take place. Even more so when compared with the activities of the corporate executives we hear so much about; those captains of industry to whom we owe so much.

The core economy is the source of many community assets but these assets are infrequently measured in financial terms and usually not at all.  Where the core economy is weak, communities might experience higher crime rates, for example.  They have a weaker local marketplace because a thriving neighbourhood marketplace depends upon the core economy.

Page 12 of the NEF document mentions three central factors that account for the failure of the delivery of public services.  These perhaps illustrate how a strong core economy supports local economic activity, including but not restricted to financial transactions.

Relationships Deliver Public Services

Relationships deliver just about everything.  They are fundamental to the marketplace but the market cannot do everything.  Neither can centralised bureaucracies.  The more people know like and trust one another, the greater the chances are they will look out for one another.  The marketplace can deliver goods and services but these do not include the core goods and services delivered by the core economy.

The story was the public sector provides the welfare safety net; the voluntary sector identifies holes in the net and fills them.  Co-production suggests the core economy provides the safety net and public services make a massive mistake when they attempt to replace local relationships with bureaucratic solutions.

Relationships Between Professionals and Their Clients are Mutual

Of course, too often professional-client relationships become dependency relationships. The teacher needs her pupils as much as they need her.  When her pupils are autonomous learners, she benefits from being a part of a dynamic learning environment.

When my doctor told me I needed to lose weight, he depended on me to collaborate with the health service for my benefit.  The next step might be for me to share my experience of losing weight with others, so that they too can lose weight.  No-one’s ever asked me to do that!  But think of the benefits to the health service if patients shared in support for other patients.  The NEF document provides several examples of exactly this type of thing.

Social Networks Make Change Possible

Centralised bureaucratic models of service provision, where professionals plan and deliver services, erode relationships within communities.  The same social change that has led to the loss of local marketplaces have also eroded essential social networks.

The aim is not withdrawal of public services so much as remodelling them on mutual lines.  Just as the retail co-operative movement transformed local economies between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, so mutual approaches can transform health and social services, policing, education and just about everything.

So, that’s a brief introduction to co-production.  What do you think?  How can we learn to make best use of the core economy to support local people and build a marketplace?

0 Digital Communication

Last Wednesday I discussed artificial intelligence and suggested personality emerges as we interact as conscious beings.  One major impact of the Internet is digital communication, which has enlarged our circles; we can chat daily with people from all over the planet.

I remember studying computer science in the mid-1970s, a few years before silicon chips were announced.  There was talk of the coming merging of computing and communications.  Computers at the time were huge machines and terminals communicated directly with them.  There were a few midi and microcomputers, using solid state transistors.  These were usually boxes used to drive other equipment.  Screen monitors were rare.

Tele-printers could link to one another but it was all rather laborious.

Over the following decades IT morphed into ICT and today there are many ways we can communicate with people all over the world.  There is no need to list all the methods available to us.  I want to ask what differences enhanced communications have made.

Enhanced Understanding

Low cost communication systems mean people can stay in touch with families and friends with greater ease then they could in the past.  With the right equipment, they can speak to and see each other every day if they choose.

It is possible to make friends with people you have never met in the flesh.  This must enhance understanding between nations.

How much of a person’s real presence can camera and sound alone communicate?  Actors have been doing this for years.  But actors usually project fictional personas, so to what extent do we truly know them?

My experience suggests it is possible to maintain online relationships and those relationships can include a great deal of what we experience through in-person contact.  As so much can be shared, it is worth having these relationships in our lives.

But it is like seeing people on a stage – there is always so much we cannot possibly see or experience.  We capture a glimpse of a room but maybe never see the other side of it.  We don’t see their communities, their streets, their parks.  Or if we do we see only what they choose for us to see.

We see both more and less of a person when we know them online.  I’d hesitate to say it’s better if we have at least met them.  These relationships are different and need to be accepted for what they are.

They are not precursors of the science fiction world where we all live in bubbles and communicate solely with images of our friends.

Pocket-Sized Computers

Mobile phones enhance communications with people we meet in-person.  Whilst people can use them to communicate with people elsewhere in the world who they never meet in-person, the mobile primarily enhances personal contact.

Perhaps their greatest value is in arranging meetings.  It is easy to send text reminders and if someone doesn’t turn up, phone and ask them what’s happened.  It is hard to remember how we organised meetings without mobiles in the recent past!

Mobiles support local economies.  There may be more we can do, apps yet to be invented or even conceived.  But imagine taking a bus across town and being able to find a café to your liking.  These applications are close if not already with us.  The aim is to get beyond advertising and simply get information about what is there.

It is miniaturisation that allows us to carry so much computing power around in our pockets.  Most of us take for granted computing power far more than what was on the moon rockets in the 1960s, instantly available at the press of a button.

Erosion of Professions

You may have spotted I am avoiding the downside of these changes.  The cyber-bullying, frustration when having to step around so many people who are not looking where they are going.  These problems are likely to be with us for a long time.  We need to understand the consequences if we were to sacrifice our access to this computing power because of its misuse.

However, not all the downsides are a result of misuse.  For many, computers undermine professions as they place more power into the hands of amateurs.  There are many examples.  Most phones carry a video camera.  Most of us could quickly teach ourselves how to make a watchable video.  It doesn’t need to be brilliant.

Professionals in the video industry are perhaps not challenged so far.  It still takes time and effort to produce a really good video.  Whilst a poor but watchable video may have some worth, it is not always the best vehicle for businesses and other organisations.

Professional video producers offer the human side of the equation.  They know how to produce a video that powerfully conveys our message.  Most people do not know how to produce such a good film.  To do so requires human interaction.  Perhaps most organisations don’t need many such videos but most would benefit from at least one.

Perhaps enhanced technological power implies greater human interaction when they produce quality products and services.  The question is whether the net numbers of livelihoods will increase or decrease at the relentless development of new computing power.

What do you think are the advantages of ICT?  How have human relationships developed with these new technologies?

0 Using the Yes No Matrix

Last time I asked how do you prove the benefits you claim for your offer can be delivered?  Assuming your approach is effective, the yes no matrix can help you anticipate objections and respond to them.

It works like this:

The table helps the vendor marshal their arguments.  Work through the four central cells for your own offer.  Your answers in all four cells can inform your marketing of your offer by helping you anticipate objections and so work out how to respond to them.

Each of the quarters in this table can be turned to your advantage.  I’ll illustrate this with notes I made some time ago for my business.  My business has moved on so I can comment on these notes as if they were someone else!

Advantages of Saying Yes

At the time, I saw benefits for a client’s organisation and for their website.  I wouldn’t break things down in the same way now but it is interesting to see what I identified at the time:

Organisation

To some degree these benefits miss the mark; they don’t quite express the benefits.  Let’s work on this business and see how its benefits can be better expressed.  This is a useful exercise for you.  Write down your benefits, leave them for a few weeks and then revisit and improve them.

Organisation

These are not final statements for any business but they illustrate how you can target the advantages of your offer to meet the needs of your potential customers.

Costs of Saying Yes

Here are my historic answers:

The point to be made here is to be upfront about the costs of saying yes.

Advantages of Saying No

This is a poor answer.  This last quarter in the matrix is about reinforcing the value of the offer to the customer.  You are offering a benefit of great value to them and so they lose out if they say no.

One major issue for a lot of organisations is the status quo appears to be comfortable.  It is possible to continue bumbling along until the money runs out, never taking up the challenge to reach your full potential.

The Moribund Organisation

These two bullets illustrate the typical practices of a moribund organisation.  Carrying on as you are with no innovative change is a recipe for catastrophic failure.  The alternatives any organisation faces is to grow or to fail.  Ultimately, you may be discerning whether your particular offer is right for the potential customer but they need to understand that if they choose ‘no’, they must go to an alternative offer with a better fit.  Sometimes you may be able to help them find that better fit.

Any marketing is a skill in helping the potential customer express what they need and then finding a good match for them.  They are seeking help and must not simply decide to abide in the status quo, which has never worked.  Without vision organisations perish.

How can you help organisations understand they need constant developmental change?

0 The Difference Between Outputs and Outcomes Features and Benefits

This post is a response to a comment concerning outputs and outcomes features and benefits.  In Monday’s post, How Do I Demonstrate Benefits? Mark Woodhead wrote:

“It seems to me that there are some interesting parallels between demonstrating benefits and demonstrating outcomes and impacts. Not quite the same, but it might be instructive to compare the two.”

This was my reply:

“Thanks Mark, there probably is a close parallel between outputs and features; outcomes and benefits. It is easy to focus solely on features or outputs; usually these are not terribly interesting. You might offer support to several hundred job seekers a year but the interest is in how their lives have changed as a result of your intervention.”

So, let’s compare these four terms:

Outputs and Outcomes

These terms are usually applied to grant applications and so they are familiar in voluntary and community organisations.  Sometimes it feels as if a grant is actually purchasing outputs.  So, the deal may be to help 100 people over a given period with job opportunities.  Of these the expectation might be 20 to training courses, 20 to job interviews and 5 into jobs.  (I’ve made up these figures, to illustrate the principle.)

The outcomes will be the stories of people who actually benefitted from the service.  The incentive to go to an interview might be the need to earn more money to support their family or to have a good time.  Does it matter which?

Outcomes are important because people who successfully experienced the service may have other reasons for their appreciation.  Increased income is not the only motivation to work. Have people’s lives been enhanced by the work itself, apart from the money they earn?  It is the study of outcomes that enables an organisation to understand what works for its customers.  An over-reliance on measuring outputs will mean this valuable information is not collected or overlooked.

There is an expectation that good outputs will lead to positive outcomes although sometimes the focus is so much on achieving outputs that outcomes are forgotten.  If good output records are leading to poor outcomes, the chances are you’re doing the wrong thing!

Features and Benefits

These words are usually used in a business context.  Again features are usually quantifiable and there is a temptation to focus on them at the expense of benefits.  However, most business people are aware of the need to focus on benefits because benefits sell.

Businesses operate in the market place and so they need real benefits.  Customer satisfaction is central to a successful business.  Whilst it is not hard to find businesses who promote on features, successful businesses always promote benefits.

It often feels like outputs sell grant applications and so it is interesting to see there is a different feel to these pairs.

Outputs and Features

So, what do these have in common?

They are quantifiable and so measurable.  They are evidence based.  If you claim an output or a feature it is not unreasonable to expect evidence for their existence.

The reason outputs are so important in grant related cultures is because very often outputs are pushed down the chain.  Some government department has to meet a target of so many people on training courses and so pays a voluntary organisation to supply said training courses.

Whilst anyone would see the virtue in looking closely at outcomes, the reality is it is not necessary.  Courses held and the people who participated is often all the evidence a funding body requires.  Outcomes may be more important to the supplier, based in a community where the courses are happening but they still must collect outputs if they wish to maintain their funding.

Features are important once a potential customer understands benefits.  The customer has already decided when they look at the features.  They want the benefits and they look at features to establish whether the benefits offered are credible.

Outcomes and Benefits

These are usually qualitative measures, often best conveyed through stories.  They are not so easy to measure and evidence will be anecdotal.

So, expect testimonials in the place of hard evidence.  Perhaps we’re less inclined to accept this type of evidence but the reality is we do need to know whether an offer is worth it.

A problem with many offers is they do not gather the soft evidence of benefits or outcomes over a long enough period.  It is not unreasonable to ask about the benefits of a training course 1 year or even 5 years after the end.  How many courses do you remember 5 years or more after they took place?  It is not impossible to remember courses many years after they’re completed and still draw on insights from them.

The business person cannot afford to forget about benefits.  They need to gather evidence of benefits.  They depend upon changes in the market.  An offer that worked well six months ago may be less effective as the market moves on.  Good businesses are able to manage these subtle changes.  Features are easy in comparison – they’re always there and mostly unchanging.  The contrast with the voluntary sector fixation on outputs could not be more stark.

Have I captured the contrasting contexts of these two sets of attributes?  Please share your experiences, especially if they don’t agree with what I’ve written here.

2 Artificial Intelligence

Have you noticed the term “artificial intelligence” is oxymoronic?  Artificial flowers are not flowers.  If intelligence is artificial it is not intelligence.  If something intelligent emerged from a machine, it would not be artificial.  Although different from human intelligence, it would be the real thing.

Clever but Not Intelligent

First, we must distinguish cleverness from intelligence.  We can develop machines that are not just clever but cleverer than we are.  However, these are still computing machines, machines that help us work things out.  These machines can be dangerous.  There is nothing to stop us programming them to kill.  I have every confidence the military have that under control or they will have until someone nicks one and works out how to control it.

But note however clever these machines may be they are still controlled by human beings.

In science fiction the autonomous machine has a long-term pedigree.  I suppose the earliest was the Golem, programmed by a scroll of scripture and so subject to human control.

Isaac Asimov’s robot series is perhaps one of the more sophisticated approaches to the genre.  His three laws of robotics are still influential.

So, is a fully autonomous artificial being possible?  I don’t doubt it is possible to build a machine that replicates autonomy.  The Turing test was designed to demonstrate this.  Turing argued that if we can’t tell the difference between a machine and a human, when we don’t know which is communicating, then we have the real deal.

Personality

I have my doubts.  Human consciousness is the product of living in community.  A machine would need to live among us to develop its own personality.  It is hard to imagine what true autonomy would be like without personality.  Such a being would raise issues such as whether switching off the machine would be murder.

A human child’s personality emerges over several years and their personality continues to grow as it accumulates experiences throughout their life.  A parent, looking back can discern the seeds of the adult child in the baby.  Could a machine evolve its personality faster?  Maybe but it would still need others to interact with and this interaction would set the pace at which the machine became conscious.

Does AI Already Exist?

I doubt anyone really knows what they are trying to program to make a machine autonomous.  Most people think it is some function of complexity.  But the Internet is complex and there is no way it could ever become conscious.

There is a great deal of human experience that cannot be digitised; our perception of colour, for example.  A machine can recognise the colour red from its wavelength but does not experience red as we do.  These experiences are sometimes called qualia and they are one thing that distinguishes conscious beings from machines.  It seems many animals experience qualia but machines so far cannot.  But how would we know?

If AI is possible, how do we know we don’t have it already?  In science fiction it is usually associated with a humanoid body.  This is something still far from reality.  Perhaps the machine needs a body of some sort to become conscious but if AI is possible why not any hardware format?

If AI is possible it may exist already in a box in someone’s lab.  How would they know it was autonomous?  It would be terribly clever and might be able to work out how to propagate itself but how would we know?

Perhaps the most useful aspect of this debate is the insight it gives us into our own consciousness.  What is it that makes us human and unique?  Maybe we’re the product of a unique accident or perhaps there are others like us aware of their own mortality.  And perhaps it is our mortality that forms our consciousness and makes us unique.

What do you think about AI?  Why do you think it is or is not in principle practical?  If it is, do you think it may already exist?