don't blow your s.m.a.c. stack
DESCRIPTION
As a futurist I am obligated to attempt to identify inflection points — things that fundamentally disrupt the status quo, change the competitive dynamic, call into question existing practices and require a general cognitive reboot. I predict that four disruptive technologies, mnemonically labeled the “S.M.A.C. Stack” [Social, Mobile, Analytics/Big Data, and the Cloud] will shape the next competitive cycle. These technologies need to be understood, mastered and deployed to maximum effect.TRANSCRIPT
Thornton May Part 1
Don’t Blow Your S.M.A.C. Stack [2 April 2014]
[email protected] Twitter: @deanitla
www.linkedin.com/pub/thornton-may/0/4b2/a22/
I would like to begin…
…by saying “Thank You”
A Special Session
For a Special Audience
On a Critically Important Topic
At a Unique Moment in Economic History
Honored to be With You…
I was “here” last year…
Thank you for having me back
What do you Remember…
…from my remarks last year?
Here’s my “high level” plan
for this year’s “speech”
I Promise…
www.aiim.org/infochaos�
Do YOU understand the business challenge of the next 10 years?
This ebook from AIIM President John Mancini explains.
to speak more meaningfully
& memorably
I am a
Futurist!
2014+
Not just ANY Futurist…
I am an Empirical Futurist…
Francis Bacon [1561-1626]
I collect data…
I Collect Data…
…by listening to People…
I Collect Data…
…by observing what People do…
Workplace Ethnography
I juxtapose “What I Hear”
With “What I See”
My data “reeks
of human juices”
My Preferred Process…
For converting my research data into
YOUR actionable insights…
In a Perfect World…
Claude Lorrain, Landscape with Aeneas at Delos [1672]
Socratic Exchanges… Would be a Series of…
In that perfect world, we would…
Via a series of time-boxed exercises:
Collaboratively create local data
Compare local data with global research
Collectively ‘map’ the future world of information management
The Plan for our brief time together
Share with you the
Exercises designed to precipitate
Insights which embody the
Ideas which lead to the
Practices which will define information management excellence in the years to come
Shibe Park, akaConnie Mack Stadium,
in Philadelphia,
Today I Will Be Making
7 points…
Along the way there will be:
Take-‐Aways AcKon Items
Models/Frameworks Exercises Stories Lessons
& Sub-‐Points
What Happens to Many People
At Technology Lectures
Session Roadmap This is not a ‘lecture’.
Your immediate Future Involves Several Quick Exercises…
In two [2] minutes please discuss
and be prepared to list THE two [2]
greatest changes ImpacKng your career
in the next two [2] years ?
2 x 2 x 2 Exercise
[email protected] @deanitla
Report Backs
What Patterns/Trends [if any]
do you perceive in your responses?
What is the ‘big
picture’?
Emily Grenader Crowd Painting (Times Square) [2009] http://emilygrenader.com/crowds02.php
Everybody is talking
about “Change”
HBO Rome
But haven’t people always been talking about “Change”?
20th Century Fox Cleopatra [1963]
always been talking about “Change”?
But haven’t people
This is not our first “go” with change
Point One
Prometheus Ted Talk 2023 [28 February 2012] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpYUW0ekPSA
This is NOT Humanity’s First “Go” at
Fundamental Change
Fire. 100,000 B.C. – stone tools.
4,000 B.C. – the wheel.
20th century – the automobile, television, nuclear, spacecraft,
internet.
21st century – biotech, nanotech, fusion and fision and M-theory.
And that was just the first decade.
9th Century A.D. – gunpowder, bit of a game changer that one. 19th century – Eureka, the light bulb!
Speaking Historically…
There have been quite a few… “New Ages”
David ChrisKan divides the totality of history
Big History into eight threshold moments David Christian, Deep History [February 2011]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqc9zX04DXs
Threshold 1 Big Bang
Threshold 2 The Stars Light Up
Threshold 3 New Chemical Elements
Threshold 4 Earth & the Solar System
Threshold 5 Life on Earth
Threshold 6 Appearance of Our Species
Threshold 7 Agriculture
Threshold 8 The Modern Revolution
David ChrisKan divides the totality of history Big History
into eight threshold moments
David Christian, Deep History [February 2011] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqc9zX04DXs
Big History’s Eight “Threshold Moments”
http://www.csusmhistory.org/faulk006/thresholds/
What is the single most important
change management lesson you have learned
so far in your career? 3
Minute Exercise
Report Backs
What Patterns/Trends [if any]
do you perceive in your responses?
This is not our first
“New Age”
Point Two
3 minute exercise
What [if anything] is
REALLY different about THIS
“New Age”?
Deep Thinking
Report Backs
What Patterns/Trends [if any]
do you perceive in your responses?
Nobody Likes the Status Quo
Points of Agreement
Mental Models
The Mind of Society
Mental Models People seem sort of “angry”
32
Point Three
We are living in a
Confusing Time
For every age, there is a defining technology
Point Four
The Age we are entering has…
FOUR [4] Defining technologies
Point Five
41
The Major Waves of Disruptive Technology Change
People Agree on the General Shape of the Future
Analy&cs Big Data
Social Media
Mobility
Cloud
For the 1st Kme in a very long Kme…
“Social media's moment will pass – but when?,” New Scientist [18 February 2012]. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328523.300-social-medias-moment-will-pass--but-when.html
Technology of the Age
"WHEN it's steam engine time, people will invent steam engines.“
Major innovations occur
not when an inventor is struck by a bolt from the blue,
but when the scientific & social conditions are ripe.
The Technology Landscape is Changing
John Martin, The Great Day of His Wrath (1851-53).
EVERY organization has to progress through a “wilderness moment”
Regarding The SMAC
Stack
“When you know what you’re doing
is not the right thing
AND
You don’t know
what the right thing to do is yet H. James Dallas. COO Medtronics
[6 November 2013]
A Wilderness Moment is…
Leaders Acknowledge “Uncertainty”
March 9, 2012 GE's Immelt: Global Economy In 'New Era' Of Instability
An era of great head scratching….
Things may be “blurry” but not “unforecastable”
While the “future” may not be “Knowable”
with decimal-point-precision
It is forecastable to the extent that Directionally-non-toxic preparations
can be begun
Hypothesis
Some Change Is Forecastable
Point Six
x
Does Anyone Recognize
this PainKng?
At Eternity’s Gate May 1890
Hint: A Complicated Dutchman
x
Vincent Van Gogh, The Outskirts of Paris [1886].
Some Change is Forecastable
Alan Wurtzel, son of the founder, 20 year employee,
CEO & Board Member of Circuit City
defines strategy as:
“The art & science of harmonizing the resources, strengths, and capaciKes
of the organizaKon to the external environment.
From 1983 to 1993 Circuit City was…
the best performing Fortune 500 Services company stock on the NYSE
In 2008 the company filed for bankruptcy.
In early 2009 creditors liquidated all assets.
Circuit City
What happened?
Did Senior Management Become Stupid?
A Rich & Deep Set of Scholarship Abributes Enterprise Demise to Management Incompetence
resources, strengths,
& capacities of the
organization
Strategic Success requires
Two KNOWs
Deep & brutally honest understanding of the
external environment.”
If YOU were asked to choose the movie, TV show or work of literature
which comes closest to capturing the
Essence of the external environment
facing your enterprise today
What movie/TV show/book would you pick?
90 Second exercise
Report Backs
What Patterns/Trends [if any]
do you perceive in your responses?
The Picture in Our Heads There is an island in the ocean where in 1914 a few Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Germans lived. No cable reaches that island, and the British mail steamer
comes in but once in sixty days.
In September it had not yet come, and the islanders were still talking about the
latest newspaper which told about the approaching trial of Madame Caillaux
for the shooting of Gaston Calmette.
It was, therefore, with more than usual eagerness that the whole colony assembled at the quay
on a day in mid-September to hear from the captain what the verdict had been.
The Picture in Our Heads
Public Opinion [1922]
They learned that for over six weeks now
those of them who were English and those of them who were
French had been fighting on behalf of the sanctity of treaties against
those of them who were Germans.
For six strange weeks they had acted as if they were friends,
when in fact they were enemies.
The Picture in Our Heads
There was a moment when the picture of Europe
on which men were conducting their business
as usual,
did not in any way correspond to the Europe which was about to
make a jumble of their lives.
did not in any way
correspond to the Europe which was about to
make a jumble of their lives.
The Picture in Our Heads
There was a time for each man when he was still adjusted
to an environment that no longer existed.
SMAC STACK Mastery is Achievable
Point Seven
[2] Wisdom begins by knowing that you don’t know
[3] Excellence (ἀρετή- arete)
is teachable & learnable
Observation
A subset of institutions
are on the path to S.M.A.C. Stack Mastery
Howard Payne [Dennis Hopper ] in Speed [1994]
“What do you do? What do you do?”
taunting police officer Jack Travern [Keanu Reeves]
hbp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug2hLQv6WeY
Patterns of Behavior of Institutions well along the “Path to Mastery”
Q4 2013/Q1 014 Research
Thornton May, Computerworld [10 February 2014] http://goo.gl/OZXHpk
Step 1: Decide to do something. Step 2: Craft a narrative. Step 3: Access Type 1 smartness. Step 4: Inventory S.M.A.C. resources. Step 5: Assess readiness. Step 6: Centrally manage S.M.A.C. resources. Step 7: Create S.M.A.C. capability. Step 8: Obtain the support of senior management. Step 9: Act on insight. Step 10: Link to behavior.
ObservaKon
Your Choice
Success is a matter of will. The first step to greatness is to decide to be great.
Napoleon
William Dietrich, Napoleon’s Pyramids [NY: HarperCollins, 2007], 131.
82
How an organization thinks about S.M.A.C.… Critical Finding
…will materially impact the value an organization extracts from S.M.A.C.
Remember "light bulb" jokes? My favorite was, "How many shrinks does it take to change a light bulb?” “One, but the light bulb must want to change."
See things as they are
and act appropriately
Aristotle’s “Golden Mean”
AcKon Item
Don’t try to control what you
can’t control.
Seek to be in control only
of what you are able.
Stoic Philosopher Epictetus
AcKon Item
This is Not our 1st “Go” with Change This is not our 1st “New Age” We are living in a Confusing Time Every age has a defining technology Our Age has 4 Defining Technologies Some change is forecastable S.M.A.C. Stack Mastery is achievable
To Recap…
Seven Points
2 x 2 x 2 Change Exercise Change Management Lessons Exercise Essence of External Environment Exercise Stories Exercises
To Recap…
Four Exercises
President Nixon: ‘You dress kind of strange, don’t you?’
White House Oval Office December 21, 1970
Elvis: ‘You have your show and I have mine.’