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What's one piece of advice you'd give yourself:
1 year ago
5 years ago
10 years ago
___

I'd love to learn what you'd say if I were asking you these questions. I'll share my answers below, if you're curious. But first, I wanted to use this question as a way to refocus the conversation about Twitter.

If you use Twitter (and even if you don't, I'd wager) by now you've probably read or heard somewhere that Elon Musk has been very keen on taking over the microblogging social network. Will a favorite media channel go private? Maybe? "there’s no way of telling what’s really going to happen in the near future."

The fact that Elon Musk is willing to potentially spend $43 billion to buy Twitter is a strong signal. He's already spent $3 billion. Why would he do that? Twitter may be leaving money on the table, but its cultural significance is invaluable. "For politicians, business leaders, celebrities, and journalists, Twitter is a key platform for amplifying their messages and controlling their own narratives." (Vox.) Who should control such power? 

Of Musk's intention, Bob Lefsetz says, "This is what happens when belief in the American Dream runs amok." And by "this" he means "do we really want one guy in charge of an enterprise deciding what to do? it’s one thing if you built the company, it’s quite another if you go around buying and changing companies on a whim, because you’re so damn rich." Dave Pell calls the phenomenon by which wildly successful businesspeople feel shorted by the system "narcissistic victimhood." 

The fact that significant times and effort has gone to create armies of bots to sway public conversation is more evidence: intellectual and social capital have greater value to society than money. Given the track record with Facebook, Amazon, etc. and the current "flooding the zone" disinformation campaigns, would you trust those people with Twitter's value to society? 

I was probably the first person to write that "Twitter is the modern TV. It is increasingly the place where you watch what other people say they do. Some of them are paid at work to be there, others are sponsored." Culture creates value. As an engine of transformation, its energy through social capital is cumulative. That was advice Twitter didn't take about 12 years ago.

After waiting a respectable period of time to see if it would survive, I created my first account on Twitter at the beginning of October 2007. About 9 years ago, I summed up a few articles with advice for Twitter over its early years of installation. 

By then, I had experience running a popular Twitter chat, had made hundreds of experiments to understand distribution, which content works best, and building community. I told stories of connection through an eBook titled Twittertales, which Twitter itself copied a year or so later, but never acknowledged.  

Developers and people in all kinds of professional capacities wrote tons of articles with ideas about features they could use. Some even built those features into services (e.g., Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, etc.) that made Twitter better. But there's only so much cold shoulder (or takeovers) one can take before moving on to other apps. The very people Twitter needed most moved on to other social networks and apps. In moved those who game (or bot) Twitter for personal gain. A classic of the internet.

It always all comes down to money. But does it? The company had dozens of very smart people on its platform at any one time suggesting missing features they'd value. Yet, they ignored them/us in pursuit of social network parity with other social media. By doing that, they nearly destroyed the potential value connected with its cultural impact.  
 

Western culture has become very one-dimensional:
When it's all about the money,
all you get is mercenaries.


Tech analyst Ben Thompson says Twitter should instead go "Back to the Future," "go private and return to its pre-2012 approach of being a centralized service with third-party clients." One features he doesn't mention is the curation microservice list (for grouping users timelines according to specific focus.) The potential of lists is unrealized. (Here are mine, some which are new.) 

Anne Libby on lists, "They've really ruined that feature, in favor of 'engagement' sigh." A word, "engagement," that is easy to throw around, much harder to do coherently. Anne says, "Sometimes when I quickly look at the word 'engagement,' I see the word 'enragement,' which is of course the actual impact of Twitter on so many. Including me! and it's why I'm scarce here these days."

And that's because Twitter is trying to mimic other social networks, instead of imagining a model based on its own value. Thompson's idea about going private makes sense, given how The #cultural impact is the source of energy and value. Turn that into sole exchange value (just the money), and you've turned Twitter into all the other social networks that take and don't give back. 

We've covered where Twitter could have been 10 years ago. What about 5 years ago?

Think 2017 and the choices they could have made as a private company that would have kept news cycle on actual news. How about 1 year ago? That's when the company announced its plans to get into the subscription-based business. Investors were disappointed. A private company with the right culture could have experimented with business models more freely.


Which begs the question: what's Twitter's culture?


We have some insight in this company memo from November 25, 2014. Twitter executives: "We need to be focused on shipping." But the way they go about it: "We want to promote cross-functionality, and ownership." Have the cake, and eat it too is often a recipe for burnout.

This week, a few thoughts on value-add, a conversation around how autonomy is the new flexibility and the importance of environment, trust, but verify and virtuous cycle. I left the best business practice for last.

__

My advice to myself:

1 year ago: Take some structured time off to reset with a long, interesting trip.

5 years ago: Everyone has a hard time when striking out on their own. Develop a more diverse network of colleagues to create virtuous cycles of mutual trust and support. (Europe as a focus on long-term relationships vs. just transactions.)

10 years ago: Find a young technical pro for mutual mentoring and potential partnership down the line. 

It's never too late. I intend to treasure that advice, and plans are under way for all of the above.

Try "what advice would you give yourself" in your conversations. It's a great conversation tool, and it can help you reframe how you think about what you do and the choices you make. 
 


1
VALUE ADD

Adding value: “Human nature is to a significant degree the product of human design. If we design workplaces that permit people to do work they value, we will be designing a human nature that values work. If we design workplaces that permit people to find meaning in their work, we will be designing a human nature that values work.” Incorrect Ideas About ‘Why We Work’ Warp Our Organizations … And Our Views of Human Nature (Behavioral Scientist.)

+ At work: "When new hires first walk into The Washington Post, they are often told about the newspaper’s storied legacy as a family-owned company, an institution known not only for its prestigious journalism but also for its sense of community. They’re told The Post is a place where they can grow, lead and succeed. Yet over time, many talented members of The Post’s staff end up feeling short-changed, stuck and, in some cases, pushed out of a workplace that was once their dream destination. Too often, these employees are people of color." Pay, Diversity and Retention at The Post (The Washington Post.)

++ From the Why do people leave? Because they look for "positions that would grant them not only a promotion in title and salary but also a greater sense of agency and resources to pursue and lead projects." See #2 for more on autonomy as the new flexibility.

+ In tech: "Internal tech industry emails that surface in public records." @TechEmails
 

2
AUTONOMY, THE NEW FLEXIBILITY

"Employees want the autonomy to make decisions about how, when, and where they work. This is what makes 100% remote, 3-2-2, and the 4-day workweek all potentially terrible ideas if your goal is to create flexibility for your employees. One-size-fits-all approaches are all too often just new ways of controlling when and where employees work. Telling an employee they must come into the office every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday doesn’t sound very flexible. Neither does requiring four 10-hour days to have every Friday off." Why Most Companies Aren’t Ready for a 4-Day Work Week (Working Human.)

+ If this is common sense, I invite you to reflect over how common sense is not that common anymore. That's because compared to rocket science, human dynamics are harder to figure out. The Myth of Common Sense

+ The other part of the problem is the issue of trust. What do we do About Trust?
 

3
ENVIRONMENT

"If we think that burnout happens because of weaknesses or vulnerabilities of an individual worker, then we are less likely to assess work environments and work cultures that cultivate burnout as a logical outcome to poor working environments, hostile work cultures for those with marginalized identities, unreasonable work expectations, ineffective leadership, and problematic work values. We are less likely to investigate the ways workplace policies and economic resources may contribute toward burnout environments." Self-Care is Not the Solution for Burnout

++ That’s because it’s easier to blame the person than to fix the #culture — which arises from an unimaginative system of incentives that make it harder and harder to uphold values. Addressing the problem starts with a clear understanding of who (and what) really controls the system. This works also for climate and circular economy,
 
Buy me a Dragon

4
TRUST, BUT VERIFY

Trust in media: "Most Americans overall place trust in an organization that rarely covers domestic politics: the Weather Channel (52% of Americans trust it). The Weather Channel is trailed by the U.K. news outlet, BBC (39%), the national public broadcaster, PBS (41%), and The Wall Street Journal (37%)." Trust in Media 2022: Where Americans get their news and who they trust for information (YouGov.) 

Setting the record straight: "What is an OpenMind story? 'An open mind story is fundamentally about ways that people misperceive or don’t perceive important science issues in the world. Our canvas is things that are misreported or misunderstood in popular culture, on science issues that matter. This is the magazine that sets things straight.'" A new magazine delves into the ways that people consume wrong information (NiemanLab.)

 

5
VIRTUOUS CIRCLE

"We mostly only close materials loops when it’s ‘economically viable’ to do so. By and large, what that means is that it takes less energy to recycle the material than it does to create it in the first place, which is true for aluminum, steel, and glass, but not for materials like plastics or concrete. But the promise of access to renewable energy is that it changes this equation, putting processes that are intrinsically energy-intensive, like recovering the carbon from plastics for reuse or desalinating seawater to make it potable, on the table. It doesn't matter how much energy a process needs if it is inexpensive, doesn’t limit the energy available to others for their use, and is non-polluting." Metafoundry 75 on Resilience, Abundance, Decentralization.

 

 
6
BETTER BUSINESS PRACTICE


“If all you offer is money, all you get are mercenaries.” Does the Wold Need New Storytelling?

+ The science of networks pervades everything we do ― nothing happens in isolation, most occurrences and developments are connected, caused by, and interacting with a large number of other pieces of a complex puzzle. Added with culture, we have the potential for exponential combinations and variations in our interactions. It's a miracle we connect at all, but there is a silver lining ― our ability to be present to each other. Networking as a Practice.
 

++ This week I worked on a business plan for a new platform, and a plan to help a small company scale-up. Find out how you can work with me.
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