So, after my venting yesterday I determined that the only way to progress things was to connect with a real human being, and be treated as a valuable customer. So I went in to see my wonderful bank manager Gerard Stitt at the ANZ Bank in North Sydney.

With his usual calm and composure he made a couple of calls and resolved an issue which had been dragging on for the best part of 6 weeks. Within half and hour he dealt with my problems which we all had been told it would take yet another week.

And then this morning I get an email from Twitter to say that ANZ is “foll0wing” my tweets… they don’t seem to be doing anything about it, but they are “following” me… whoopee!

So, what to make of this?

Firstly, when it comes to the resolution of issues involving large, bureaucratic institutions one needs a guide and coach to get one though. This is not rocket science, nor a startling revelation, but I am convinced there is a business out there to coach people through life challenges (of which death is a major one) and would love to see someone do this. On a couple of fronts my solicitor told me “now, when you do this next time…” – hopefully there won’t be too many “next times”, but death, as with taxes, are a core element of life.

Secondly, that regardless of how much social media are touted, and the rhetoric of the marketeers about listening and monitoring and all the ROI they can chew, the reality is that my experience tells me that this is not worth much at all. In the end it was a real person whom I approached, I had to go and chase things up, and I was lucky enough to have a good manager who is a credit to his organisation and his profession.

I have a number of social media conferences and presentations coming up over the next six months and I will be using this episode as part of my presentations and teaching. It will be interesting to put it out there for debate and see how others in the room respond. I think it will also flush out the marketeers from the communicators.

When it comes to the “digital brand” – which is, of course, the focus of much of my research – as is so often the case there has been a total misalignment between the rhetoric and reality. What is said and what is done are not the same, and for the many people who don’t have a Mr Stitt to help and guide them, they would be stuck in the whirlpool of the underworld still. It really reinforces the argument about the value of advertising versus just training people in common sense and good manners.

Mr ANZ. If you are listening then perhaps you could utilise this, and the many other examples of this type, to really align how you act with how you work. Whichever bank (or other major institution intimately involved with the lives of its customers) actually “gets” this will be a winner in the end – not on interest and rates and loans conditions, but on sheer humanity.

Death is a stressful and trying time for anyone, and most particularly for those left behind.

I wrote about my mother’s death last year, and, for the last six months most of my waking hours have been spent dealing with the settling of her affairs. I have been supported by a wonderful team of legal, accounting and other people, who have gently guided me through the process, patiently answered my myriad of questions, and coached me through the necessary milestones.

One team that has severely let me down is my bank, the good old ANZ.

My mother and I have banked with the ANZ for literally decades, and my mother had a great team in the North Sydney branch who helped her with her affairs. Unfortunately when it comes to the stressful times – of which death is, apparently, right up there – you can’t deal with the people you know and trust, you have to descend into the corporate underworld to be treated like a rotting corpse who no longer has any value.

Since my mother’s death all I have experienced of the ANZ is their bureaucracy and ineptitude. Not only can you never speak to the same person twice but you are given an impersonal “file number” to refer to, and never treated like a real person, let alone one who is in the state of grief. Every time my legal people have called them they have been given a different answer, different advice, and then when there has been a problem there has been an uninformative letter which has appeared providing little advice, and slowing down the process.

The ANZ states in its advertising that “Barbara lives in bank world, but we live in your world” who have “the most satisfied customers of the big 4 banks”.  If people are satisfied with the type of treatment I’ve been given over the last six months then there is something seriously wrong with society, and the world that we all live in.

Given that banks sit on OUR money and utilise it for THEIR purposes, the nature of the contract should be two-way – it should be supportive and it should be human.

Mr ANZ – if you live in my world, then either I’m in the wrong world, or you are seriously pulling my leg!

Yesterday I had the very great privilege of partaking in the first ever “Poetry in the Cathedral Cave” presented as part of the Sydney Writers’ Festival 2012.  Readings in caves are probably as old as humanity itself, but this was a first for the Festival, and it certainly was quite something.

It began with a fairly challenging trek (at least for some) up the 240 odd stairs to the cave itself, to be greeted by fluted music and the most incredible “natural” architecture.  Once inside the official proceedings began with readings by noted poets David Brooks, David Malouf, Brenda Saunders, Judith Beveridge and Mark Tredinnick, who all recited their work in the Cathedral Cave at Jenolan Caves, Oberon, presented by Varuna, the Writer’s House.

Two things struck me as I sat trying not to wriggle in my seat as people struggled to hear (unfortunately the acoustics were a little challenging).

Firstly, that all those years ago when I was  on the personal staff of Hon. Peter Collins as NSW Arts Minister, little did I think that our work towards supporting the NSW Writer’s Community with both Varuna and the NSW Writers’ Centre in Rozelle, would lead to such a wonderful Festival and celebration of the craft of writing.  It’s funny how things come around.

Secondly, I thought about the allegory of Plato’s Cave (from “The Republic”).  For those who may not know this story here is a simple overview.

Imagine there is a group of people who have been imprisoned in a cave chained to a wall since birth, unable to move except to look at a blank wall in front of them upon which are shadows.  Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway upon which people walk carrying things on their heads “including figures of men and animals made of wood, stone and other materials”.  The prisoners cannot see the people, they can only hear their sounds and see their shadows, and, knowing nothing else, they believe that these shadows are, in fact, the people themselves.

One of the prisoners is then freed, and allowed to stand up, to see the fire and the people, and eventually allowed to go outside of the cave to see the sun.  After the initial shock his eyes would gradually adjust and he would realise that there is a world of “reality” beyond the darkness of the cave.  He is then allowed to return and wants to explain his adventures to his fellow prisoners, but unfortunately, they cannot imagine the sun, nor can they relate to anything that he tells them, and they may perceive him to have gone insane.  For his part, having been outside his eyes are no longer adjusted to the shadows and he no longer sees them as he did before.  They now live in two worlds.

As I listened to these wonderful poets recite their verse and sat inside the glorious cave around me I thought about how easy it could be to be divorced from reality, and, that perhaps much of the attraction of the online world is a little like being in Plato’s cave.  So much of what we witness within the digital environment is like a reflection of life, either described through social media or gathered though data visualisation, but it is not life itself.  Life itself remains in the physical world, and in the world of sunlight.

Whilst the Allegory of the Cave has many layers of meaning it is also a marvellously simple metaphor for how philosophers – amongst them writers and poets – struggle to reflect back to us some of the stark realities of life, and are often dismissed or ignored.  Having come from a family of poets and writers myself the world of words is something I find both alluring and yet also daunting, and a challenge that continually beckons.

One thing the digital world seems to be doing is to bring back the craft of writing, no matter in what form, and that craft is taking new twists and turns, melding with other forms of expression to enable the written word to be truly liberated.  But the other thing it does is allow people to hide behind those words, and to at times express themselves in ways that are neither appropriate nor respectful.  They can be cowards.

This is something that a poet, or writer, or stage actor or presenter simply cannot do.  As they stand before a group of people who have travelled for miles (and perhaps trekked up into a cave) to hear them, they are exposed and vulnerable.  They bear themselves and their craft and are at the mercy of that audience who perceive that this is reality.  For me this is true bravery, and something I think we need more of in our society.

Last weekend I attended the fourth of Julian Doogan’s “Living Myths” lectures in which he focused on the theme of “The Goddess and the Bull” throughout history.

Doogan suggested that the persistence of these interacting images of the female goddess and the male “Bull” throughout human civilisation were as much a reflection of the increasing complexity of human societal organisation as they are an expression of the tension between the female and male sides of the human spirit.  He also suggested that as human living states moved from small bands of hunter-gatherers to our now “ant-like” swarms of large cities and multi-storey buildings, the issue of control is becoming more and more important.  Early humans learned to control the life cycle of plants and animals, and now we strive towards being able to control life (through IVF, cloning and bio-technology) and even eventually the aging process and death itself.

One striking image for me was that of Europa and the Minotaur which echo in much of the art around the early twentieth century as it responds to the madness of potential Armageddon, Fascism, Nazism, and Communism.  This was indeed a time  where reason fled in the face of irrationality, and what emerged in the post-war period was the ultimate expression of “Europa” in the form of the European Union.

In his book “Why Europe will run the Twenty First Century” Mark Leonard suggests that it will be networks and communities of countries and nations that will lead the way in coping with the increasing complexity of the modern world.  He believes that whilst Europe might look fragile there is a robust model where the central core draws others to it and quietly builds a solid base from which to both export its culture but also to deal with the inter-cultural complexities and tensions that result from numerous tribes all sharing the same land mass.  In fact, Leonard suggests that the very nature of European bureaucracy is deliberately designed to slow down the decision making process and enable a more sane and considered approach to policy and decision making.

As Europe goes through its current economic and political machinations of change it is useful to reflect on how to create the systems and processes which enable a heterogeneous and diverse group of people to live together peacefully, express themselves as individuals and yet band together for the common good when required.

One thing that struck me was that as we enter the digital age this is manifesting within our social media environments, and is something that will be worth watching as we gradually learn to live both virtually and physically together.  We now live in as crowded a virtual space as the physical space, and our continual and ubiquitous connections on a global scale mean that we are “always on”.  Thus the importance of understanding each other, and of potentially learning from each other is probably more explicit and transparent than it has ever been.

In his classic book on aging called “Aging Well” social researcher George Valiant states that:

“Without the young there would be no progress; without the old there would be no culture.”

There is much to learn from each age and stage, just as there is much to learn from each culture and creed.

Valiant proposes six stages of human development, modified from those of earlier observers including Jung, Erikson and others.

These are:

1.     Identity – a sense of one’s own self, a sense that one’s values, politics, passions are one’s own and not someone else’s

2.     Intimacy – the task of living with another person in an interdependent, reciprocal, committed and contented fashion for a decade or more

3.     Career consolidation – expanding one’s personal identity to assume a social identity within the world of work

4.     Generativity – a clear capacity to unselfishly guide the next generation

5.     Keeper of the Meaning – conservation and preservation of the collective products of mankind rather than on just the development of its children

6.     Integrity – the acceptance of one’s one and only life cycle as something that had to be and that, by necessity, permitted of no substitutions.

Each of these stages plays out as we mature and each is now being influenced by the digital social systems within which most of us (within the Western world particularly) now operate.  As the complexity arises so does the need for tolerance, and the getting of wisdom.

“Wisdom as the tolerance of ambiguity and paradox”.  (George Valiant)

In her TEDxWomen talk in December 2011 the Director of the Stanford Centre on Longevity, Laura Carstensen, commented that older people

• take less notice of trivial matters
• are more appreciative of the little things in life
• are more open to reconciliation
• invest in the more emotional parts of life and
• believe that life gets better as they go on.

They are, however, less tolerant of injustice, and far more liable to speak their minds, particularly when they have a channel or opportunity to do so.

In essence Carstensen suggested that as societies become more top heavy with older people there is the opportunity for them to become more tolerant.  In fact,

“we could have better societies than we have ever known, get the old folks to save us all!”

This is as much about inclusivity as it is about aging.  It is about embracing the diversity within both ourselves and our communities combined with the means at our disposal to both express opinions, share debate and work towards collaborative solutions.

It is as much about embracing the feminine aspects of all men and women (whilst recognising the tension) as it is about celebrating life at every age and stage.

As we begin to understand digital sociology we need to draw on and recall these ancient myths and memes which persist throughout history, and heed the teachings of our forefathers and foremothers within are buried deep within our psyche.

It is a very exciting time to be alive.

On a sunny Sydney morning I sat watching the ladies run around the Domain as part of the Sydney triathlon. As I observed these athletic creatures pound the pavements and their support teams cheer them on (ever mindful of their various national allegiances and individual heroines) I couldn’t help thinking what an essentially “physical” species we are.  We are of the earth, on the earth and to the earth we return. Despite the sophistication of our technologies we are forever working with and against physical forces. We witness our bodies age and decay; we are forever repairing things damaged by physical use, and we are constantly guarding against the ravages of the natural forces which surround us.

We touch, we feel and we hurt.

So much of our very existence has been developed over aeons to cope with the physical world, and our rules of engaging with each other and our surrounds are based on these essentially physical constructs.

So, what happens when the world within which we interact changes at a quite literally atomic level and the physical ether becomes the electronic space?

This is what is driving so much change being brought about by information technologies, and is what Zuboff addressed in her 1988 book “The Age of the Smart Machine”. In this insightful work Zuboff investigates the evolving process as the skills developed to understand and integrate physical information become redundant within a computer-mediated environment, and new ways of interacting with information begin to emerge.  She cites examples from engineering, medicine and office work and her work is prescient of the world in which we find ourselves only thirty years on.

This is the new world that we need to learn to navigate, and nowhere more urgently than in how our governments operate and attempt to “serve” the people.  This is also what underpins much of my own work and in particular a new initiative we are developing with ANZSOG.

Last week we had a planning session prior our forthcoming workshop to be held on 20th April, 2012, around the concepts of “Government as a digital platform”. As we considered the changing context of information management it became obvious to me that in order to understand what new capabilities are required, and how best to teach them, we need to go back to basics.

So much of education – in strategy, marketing, finance and organisational systems – has been developed for the physical world, the world where people interact with systems and each other in human time and space.  What new media and digital interaction technologies are doing is changing those interactions to both computer time and electronic space, and we – as humans – are struggling to cope.  The more we develop systems to help us the worse it gets; the more tools we have to save us time the busier we become; and the more we rely on technologies to make us more efficient the more over-loaded, and I would suggest, less efficient we get. We focus most of our attention on just getting through and far less on actually creating true value to the extent where it is creating not just stress, but a “culture of fear” (as Dana Boyd suggests in this excellent talk).

The digital world, where end users are as technologically empowered (sometimes more) as people within organisations, is different. These end users – which is all of us as private citizens regardless of professional identity – are driving the change. We are demanding new ways of interacting, and determining to do so through the medium of conversations conducted on a global scale.  However, regardless of the technologies employed we are still humans and we behave as humans do.  It is the environment which is different and something we have not experienced before, except perhaps in our dreams.

So, how do we develop new capabilities to live in the digital space?

For a start we go back to first principles on every level.  Basic strategy is still strategy; basic marketing is still marketing and basic HR is still HR.  We need to peel away all of the levels of over-complication and complexity that have evolved as a result of the last fifty years of management education and go back to the basic ideas which drive everything in terms of the fundamental rules of our societies, facilitated by commerce, managed by good governance (according to our values and morals) and enabled by people who behave according to the accepted cultural norms.

We need to harness and utilise the basic principles learned through philosophy, anthropology, ethnography, theology, sociology and psychology, and the skills and knowledge contained within these disciplines are now urgently required.

What Zuboff observed as her “smart machine” is now getting smarter by the minute, developing new skills and capabilities that are far beyond those of its creator on one hand, and on the other still inferior.  Smart algorithms help us find unprecedented amounts of information and capture and store mind-boggling amounts of data; they help us lift heavy loads and cope with complex logistical problems and they are redefining everything from surgery to spelling.  But they cannot yet run or swim or cycle in a triathlon.  It is the perfect human machine which excels here.

As we have learnt to master the physical world so we must learn to master the digital world, but ever-mindful of our essential humanity and of the fact that there are some things we do well and other things we don’t, just as with the technologies we create.

After I watched the triathlon I went to hear the third “Living Myths” seminar in which Julian Doogan suggested that recent archaeological discoveries such as Göbekli Tepe might actually prove that instead of complex societies creating complex technologies it may be the other way around, and the technologies may in fact be as much of a cause of the complexity than a result.

If this is true and we are looking to our technologies to simplify our lives then we are looking in the wrong place and we are applying the wrong thinking.  Our technologies should, in theory serve us, but instead we seem to be party to, and witnessing, the opposite.

In order to regain the upper hand we need to more fully understand ourselves and then we can apply that thinking to the technological environment which surrounds us.

]]> http://intersticia.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=609 0 http://intersticia.com/blog/?p=580 http://intersticia.com/blog/?p=580#comments Fri, 06 Apr 2012 03:35:04 +0000 anni http://intersticia.com/blog/?p=580 Continue reading →]]>

“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”  (Oscar Wilde)

Last week I chaired the Social Media Monitoring and ROI forum for IBRC Conferences.  The two day event was much like most others in this space with a collection of participants eager to learn more about social media and, hopefully, to find that “magic bullet” and sliver of insight which would enable them to tame the beast which the Web 2.0 world has unleashed.

As I’ve learned from these gatherings, and from the numerous conversations I’ve been having over the past few years, Social Media presents a powerful new way to communicate but is fraught with danger precisely because digital interaction technologies have redistributed the throughout the communications value network and empowered the end user.  This is what Zuboff predicted and what I still think that ‘marketeers’ don’t understand.

Whilst there were numerous statements about “engaging in conversations” and “developing customer insights” the language that I continue to hear from those proselytizing social media is still very much about product.  It still focused on how best to “push” their message, in theory made more relevant because better “customers insights” can be gained through “active listening”, but driven by push nonetheless.

What I am not hearing, except from a precious few, is a genuine respect for, and deferment to, the customer in terms of more fully undersanding what they really want on their terms.  It is the end customer, after all, who makes the choice of whether to part with hard-earned resources (cash and other) in order to procure goods and services, and much of traditional marketing is about influencing that choice.  What I heard was quite a bit of discussion about social media being used as a “predictor of intent”, of being able to read signals that the customer is “ripe” for the picking, and therefore the marketeers being able to pounce and target communications to them.  To my mind this is not about serving the customer, it is about serving the organisation and the marketing machine.  And as long as this is the case then whatever metrics are put in place to measure ROI or engagement or whatever, will be those that reflect the organisation’s needs (to sell) and not those of the customers (which will vary with each and every person).

As far as I can see most social media activity by organisations is being driven by the traditional paradigm of “marketing to” rather than the Web 2.0 paradigm of “communicating with”.

One person who does truly “get it” is Karen Ganschow, now at Westpac, who has long been acknowledged as one of the leaders in understanding how to utilise digital technologies to better engage.  This is precisely because Karen brings both common sense and good manners to her work and in her presentation she alluded to what she described as the new “Kodak moment”, the fact that those who are not at least experimenting in the digital social space, will struggle to survive.  Despite all of the clever technologies marketing is still based on the principles of “Marketing 101” enhanced by the fact that

in the digital world it is vital to understand the three elements of “Online + Mobile + Social”.

What intrigued me most about what Karen had to say was how Telstra has engaged with the technical community through Whirlpool recognising that it is both a resource for technology ideas and critique, but also a potential advocacy group if engaged with on an authentic and respectful basis.  From what I heard it seems that Telstra acknowledges that Whirlpool is the community’s space (and not the domain of marketers) and therefore any measure of its effectiveness as a communications mechanism must be through the conversations which can lead to positive outcomes for all concerned, whether it be improvements to products and services, or other measures of success.

My own experience in using social media is that while some people will engage within the digital space many often acknowledge a post or comment that I have made directly to me either face to face, or by email.  This also highlights the superficial aspect of the “Facebook Like” which only takes the click of a mouse, whereas those who are genuinely interested will go to the trouble of engaging more directly via email or even that quaint old-fashioned technology, the telephone.

I often have corridor conversations or side chats about issues I have raised, but these are not measured by any social media metrics or tools.  People who engage this way rarely post themselves but are happy to ‘lurk’ and learn on their own terms.  They are also wary of some of the behaviours that may occur within social media environments, and whilst the Louise Denver and Simon Townsend from Deloitte gave an excellent overview of their very successful utilisation of Yammer, I am wary of those who say that online self-monitoring actually works.  What Deloitte have done brilliantly is to use the power of visualisation to show the power of social media connections, and be able to explain the concept in very simple terms.

Which brings me to something that has totally reinforced to me precisely who is in control of social media platforms and environments.

I recently had an email from LinkedIn which told me that the image I had up on my profile was inappropriate, despite the fact that it has been there for over a year, and is my own image reflecting how I want to be seen in the professional space.  The image I have is my logo, and I have it there for one main reason – privacy.  I actually don’t want to post a photograph of myself online so that intelligent bots can match it and market to me, and, as LinkedIn is in theory a “professional” network, I am making a choice to engage with it through this image.  Without going into the arguments about company logos etc the thing that most annoyed me was that there was no attempt to engage or have a conversation with me, LinkedIn just took my image down and informed me it was inappropriate.  This was not about me as a part of that community, it was about LinkedIn and their own marketing needs.  Whatever are their measures of engagement and success are clearly not in sync with mine.

For any who question the data ownership on social media platforms this episode reinforced that fact that it is LinkedIn who owns the data, who determines what can and can’t be put up, and who will communicate on their terms and not mine.  This is the main reason that I host my own blog, and aim to have as much of my own personal information on my own site over which I have control.  As Douglas Ruskhoff said

“if it’s free then you and your data are the product”. 

The day will come when LinkedIn’s dominance is on the wane and instead of courting potential share-traders it may genuinely respect its community, but by that time I will probably have joined another network or the next phase in communications will have taken over.

How does this relate to the conference?  The only person who even mentioned the ownership of data was Peter Witts of Agenda Public Relations, but even he saw it from the marketeer’s perspective asking which department owned the data.  No one even thought of mentioning the fact that the end users themselves might actually want to own information about themselves, let alone control it.  This, of course, is the promise of the “personal data locker”, about which no one had heard.

All of this merely reinforced my own feelings that within the digital media world these are still very early days, and, as Marshall Sponder commented, “there is no best practice as yet”.  We are still playing, we are still trying to justify the time and effort we put in, and we have a long way to go.

Any discussion about “Social Media Metrics or Monitoring or ROI” will continue to be speculative until the person who is genuinely being served is the end customer, and any metrics of success are as much determined by them and for them, and not just the organisations seeking to listen in and subtly influence the conversations.

Last week I gave a presentation at the “Social Media for Government” conference in Melbourne.

For any who are interested my presentation is here.

The conference was very well attended and there were a range of people from all walks of government life, and a lot from local government, which I found particularly heartening.

With so much current scepticism around government at the minute it is these wonderful people who keep our basic services going that fulfil the charter of government most keenly, and for whom social media may well provide the most benefits.

If we define “government” as being about “governing” then “governance” is the consistent management, cohesive policies, guidance, processes and decision-rights for a given area of responsibility and involves the physical exercise of management power and policy.

The World Bank defines it as being

“the exercise of political authority and the use of institutional resources to manage society’s problems and affairs”.

Thus, at the heart of governance is the relationship between the “government” and those who are “governed”, which is why having so many people from local government interested in social media augurs well.

As with so many of the events, at which I either speak or observe, the challenges for communicators, and particularly those who work in government agencies, are:

• the evolving interplay between the physical (analogue) and digital (data) worlds that requires a whole new approach to information and communications management;
• the growing tension between technology, society and ‘the polity’ or governing institutions which is resulting in unprecedented amounts of data and the access to and transparency of that data and information;
• new organisational forms and systems which are evolving as this unprecedented connectivity, collaboration and knowledge increases; and
• the changing requirements and roles of leadership.

At the conference I spoke of both the semantic web and the ‘digital brand’, and, whilst there were some in the audience whose level of knowledge was very basic (“what is a Facebook ‘like’?”) there were others who were quite well-versed in using social media technologies to augment their communications activities, sought to learn from the activities of others, and were very interested in the whole discussion around measurement and “ROI”.  I will speak more on that anon as I am chairing a conference on “Social Media Monitoring and Metrics” this week.

My presentation was part of the session entitled “Managing the Risks and Rewards of Social Media” and I was preceded by Tracey Sen, Director Corporate Communication, Department of Education an Training (NSW), and Mark Pearson, Professor of Journalism, Bond University.  Both Tracey and Mark highlighted some of the practical challenges of social media, and reinforced the message that the whole thing about ‘social’ media is that they are ‘social’, they are driven by the people for the people and about the people.

As we gauged the level of the audience there were a number of things that surprised me:

1. most people knew something about metadata;
2. many were seeking metrics and tools to measure the effectiveness of social media, and to demonstrate its effectiveness; and
3. it felt very much like a new frontier within which people were prepared to share and learn, there was a collegial spirit, and spirit of innovation.

When it comes to the tools I am still to be convinced that there are any metrics that can be translated on to the bottom line.  If “social media” are about people then surely the measures of engagement, which are now more transparent than ever, should be based upon the conversations that are held within context, and thus any measure of success will be based on individual needs, from all participants.  I’m not sure you can measure this unless you ask all of those people, and one thing that a number of speakers talked about was that there are many who participate in social media but don’t necessarily engage directly, they “lurk”.  This is certainly my experience when it comes to the Fuji Xerox “Yammer” community, and others that I have observed.  Often people have commented to me directly about my blog or Yammer posts, but they don’t do it online, so it seems that for them the ROI is merely having the information there in the first place.

This is not a bad thing, and the sense of frustration within the audience of how to entice people to engage I think was entirely misdirected.  When it comes to group dynamics there are always those who will talk and those who will observe, and the power of silence is palpable.  This brings in the concept of “energy” and at the recent ANZSOG Master Class I met John Benington, Professor at Warwick University who told me about his thoughts of governance as an “energy system”.

As I ponder my own PhD research around the inter-relationship between governance and trust, the role of digital interaction technologies and the digital brand, and basic human behaviours, I felt that he was absolutely on to something.  When we link this to the study of archetypes, stories and myth a more complex, but holistic picture emerges, and one that begins to make more sense about where things might be headed.

For public sector communicators who are at the centre of all of these conversations – held across all media – this is a time to be embracing the new tools, experimenting with new approaches, assessing and evaluating any potential measures of success, but most of all being open to new ideas and approaches.

This is a time of great innovation and public sector communicators can be at the forefront.  I would urge you to seize this opportunity with both hands.