Dealing with me can be a bit like taking a blow from a sledgehammer to the side of your head. I’m going to tell you what I think, and while I go to sometimes ridiculous and unneeded lengths to see every side of a story, once I get to “my place”, I dig in, and invite those around me into my foxhole.
It’s about control. We all want to be in charge of our stuff. The question is, how do you do it?
Sometimes, you rant. But if you’re looking to create business change and you choose the rant route, you’d better have an ultra-clear handle on what you’re ranting about or your business change will fall flat and you’ll look . . . well, foolish.
The position of social networking influencer is looking to me more and more like a pulpit for fools. And even very smart people are falling into the trap. Today, Henry Blodget of Business Insider went off on a rant about the way Gmail works. Notwithstanding the occasional gaffe, Henry’s a smart guy, and I have to admit that his complaint is one I’ve thought about a few times and have heard many people complain about.
But that was before social networking took the position it’s gained in the last couple of years, creating the beast that is Henry Blodget.
Henry’s complaint is about Gmail. Specifically, Henry doesn’t like the fact that that Gmail makes you look at your in-box as one big dumping ground without the ability to create folders to categorize and store your mail.
But Gmail has worked this way since day one. And since that day we’ve seen more and more tools that defy easy organization becomes parts of our every day lives. And you know what? They work better.
I’m about as organized as anyone, and if you were my client in the late eighties and early nineties and I was creating your systems integration environment at a time when almost nobody “got it” I hammered a “treat it like a filing cabinet” approach to computer document storage into your head. But e-mail doesn’t actually work very well when treated that way; you think you’re organizing things, but you’re really just hiding them.
It’s the reason that Google Wave is going to work. E-mail simply isn’t linear enough to treat as though it is. It’s the reason that so many people have now given up on e-mail entirely in favor of always communicating through their Twitter or Facebook social networking accounts. And with respect to the success he enjoyed on Wall Street, it’s the reason Henry Blodget matters to anyone today.
Business Change means accepting that change is . . . change. It means you go outside your comfort zone. Business Change means that you look at what’s changing and decide whether to adopt that change. And if you decide that a particular business change isn’t for you, you find another one.
But the way Gmail is is part of Google’s business strategy; it’s one in which we all use search all the time. It’s one where using search is the business change.
I’m disappointed in Henry Blodget. <<SLEDGEHAMMER BLAST>>
