In reading "Driven" and "Made to Stick" I stumbled across an incredibly interesting idea. It's called Information Gap Theory. Dr. George Lowenstien wrote a paper about it in 1994 and it works like this: when we come across something new that is not explained by our previous knowledge or experiences, an information gap is formed. If you are a designer, creator or communicator, understanding how to use this gap will have great rewards.
Transcript: In our last post we promised a follow up for making your contribution social media ready. We have a few basic principles that if followed can help your content avoid being ignored and capture the attention of your second and third circles.
The first of these principles is to lead with passion. Find something you are passionate about and pursue it. We see so many people using social media just for the sake of using the technology or for shameless self promotion. If you aren't passionate about your work it will show in the quality. If you want your contribution to capture attention, put your heart and time into it, there are no shortcuts.
Social media and networking have fooled a lot of people and companies into thinking they are rockstars. Unfortunately the ease of access and near zero cost of distribution have created an internet that sounds a lot like this. (bad music playing) The abundance of fake rockstars have created an audience that is willing to be your friend, but not willing to listen to what you have to say, buy your product, or help you get a job.
In my Gamble model post I argued that the military, like most large organizations is incredibly inert to change. I made the case that most organizations are unable to change because of an entrenched culture. Individuals that try to enter the organization with different thoughts and views usually get frustrated, leave, or quit because reward structures are rarely set up for innovation. The individuals that do move up share the values and beliefs of the current leadership and are promoted. This self perpetuating cycle doesn't allow for the needed influx of innovation to keep up with environmental change and the organization usually dies.
Don Sull has come up with another concept to explain why most large organizations go bad. He calls the concept "active inertia". In it's most simple form, active inertia is described as a company that is facing a disruptive shift in the market and instead of adapting to the change, the organization simply accelerates the activities that succeeded in the past. What is interesting is that Don argues that the things that made the organization successful in the past, actually create the pitfalls after the market disruption. Take an organization built like GM. GM was so focused on competing with Ford and Chrysler that they failed to see the signs that Toyota was causing a disruptive shift in the market. The way they framed the their "competition" blinded from the market shift and their real competitor.
One of the most basic problems I see in business today is the misalignment of the organizational structure. The process of moving an organization toward a goal in a timely manner seems simple enough, yet I see so many business go lopsided and fall short of their goal.
I have been asked by a few people to provide a short write up on the process I used to create "The Gamble" model. I think the above video does a better job getting into some of the details, but if I were to explain the process in 4 steps it would like this:
1. Build the model
2. Export the model to a .mov format
3. Import your movie into movie editing software to add voiceover and adjust playback speed to pace with voiceover
4. Post to YouTube
I will be building more videos to explain the more complex animations. I have a model brewing about the instability in Iraq. Stay tuned.
