Time’s Person of the year is a tradition that dates back to 1927. It used to be individual mavericks who left their mark on history. Yet twice in recent years Time magazine named as person of the year a collective of individuals that influence bottom up their landscape out of different levels of civic indignation. User centricity and citizen centricity are the real honorees  of this manifestation of the central place of grassroots wisdom of the crowds and individuals’ power to reshape a collective future.

In 2006 You ( meaning us – each us of us) were chosen as Time Magazine’s person of the year “For seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, Time’s Person of the Year for 2006 is you .” It was a cornerstone in user centered influence, the era of the rise of web 2.0 user generated web content and was a reflection of the growing power of individuals and grassroots influence through uncontrolled exchange of ideas and peer based influence.

In 2011, the protestor is Time’s person of the year. From NY’s “occupy Wall Street” to Russia and to Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Lybia, Syria…where Arab world protests are reshaping the future of millions of Muslims, the world is witnessing  very different protests, perspectives and aspirations – and yet – there is one clear common denominator – we, citizens are rewriting the book of our civic future. Bottom up, masses of individuals are shaping history in new evolutions of notions that we, citizens, just as we, users, before, are the centers of the civic systems created for us and have the right and power to fight the disintegration of the regimes that do not deliver.

In the Arab world people got tired of dictators who held back the development of their countries and the hope for an affordable future and rioted to dethrone them. Bloodshed led to revolutions. No one knows what the future of the Arab spring will be, but the ordinary citizens could raise their heads and say We did it.

In the US, Europe, Israel, where there are no dictators, discontent from the economic and political systems erupted with no bloodshed,  yet with ardent calls to re-embrace long lost values, care for citizens with solidarity, social sensitivity and authentically minimize the gaps between rich and poor, providing an affordable future to all.

User centricity and citizen centricity are intertwined. Growing freedom and power of expression over the digital landscape, the rise of social networks and the growing power of consumers reflects on our relations with our civic providers. The same aversion we had as users from unilateral top-down dictation of providers who strove to keep us captive for their own ends, is now erupting in different forms in frustrated civic battle zones, calling for new civic ecology, based on more humane values and strategies.

In any case we, users, citizens, crowds, can no longer be put back into the bottle. We are out, writing our own story and landscape. The dialog balance is changing a paradigm.

Grassroots movements become the compasses for the new ecology.

The story of Kristen Christian who declared  a “bank transfer day” and called her 500 Facebook friends to transfer their bank accounts, after Bank of American announced a 5$monthly fee for  shopping with their debit card, snowballed a bottom up movement and forced the bank to withdraw from its plan,  is yet another example how we can all be shakers and movers.

True for issues regarding corporate abuse, true for issues regarding government or policy abuse – Occupy Wall street is yet another example. Thomas Friedman’s analysis of the current grassroots movements in America and India against corruption and excessive greed show the common denominator – the striving for a constitutive change.

Current bottom up protests, commercial or civic, do not stem just from external circumstances. These are the last straws that ignite bottom up spontaneous acts that spiral because they strike many cords.It is happening now mainly because when corporates and governing institutions are losing their ruling grip, whereas the state of mind of individuals has shifted to demand a new level of ecology from their providers and officers and recognize the entitled place of the people they serve .

The Icentered mindset stems from a natural sense of self induced empowerment that changes the basic approach to the place of the organizations  we interact with. Once users, people, dictate the perspective where providers of goods and services actually work for us,  serve us and accommodate our needs, bosses and colleagues at work are our clients, and our governing officers were elected as our representatives and as such are replaceable upon failure or distrust –  grassroots movements and connected conversations will provide the compass for  the new zeitgeist.

The very idea of sustainability implies a life line of validity, reliability and invokes trust and good reputation. Sustainability is about long term balance. Financial, operational, environmental. It’s about supplying needs and supporting from below.

It applies to corporates and governing bodies, to managers, providers, public officers and governors of sorts. On its face value it’s about solidifying approaches of businesses with and term goals.

With the web 2.0 and the winds of change that put users at the center and empower them with a natural sense of entitlement, sustainability should change with it and shift its gravity to harnesses the economic and business logic for the humane. That way it will become what is now essential for businesses that want to adapt –  a people centered long term strategy to management,  planning and corporate identity, one that takes into account the real implications for the users, environment and society, far above and beyond the profit lines and business goals of the corporate.

People discern essence from form. They no longer fall for slogans, marketing schmoozing and election speeches. The sustainability lens is measured by the trust that organizations and officers invoke, as perceived by people. It is about the level of involvement and commitment to socially aware activities, the authenticity with regard to bringing back the humane sides and social dimensions of projects and endeavors.

Trust is built bottom up, by connecting the dots of promises and deeds, everyday small steps that show real commitment, a language that is framed in a trust inspiring way.

Even if officers forget, users and citizens remember that sustainability and accountability go hand in hand. Therefore when providers, governors and corporate leaders treat their audience as equal partners to the process and truly see the people behind the users- their future is sustained.

It takes a high personal level of integrity and authenticity to become a sustainable leader – in the corporate, public or civic world. It demands a long term responsible vision that sees the greater good and exceeds short term tenure. It involves transparency, social solidarity, accountability and ethics.

It ensures a sustainable future for both givers and takers. The people.

In the corporate world customer is king, all the more so in the civil democratic systems where the citizen holds the scepter as the raison d’être of the state.  Elected representatives and governors that will not realize that the people have crowned  anew the people and its well being, are jeopardizing their political validity.  

In a very fragile world economy, where tectonic shifts threaten countries, activism and sympathy are not enough to draw the blueprint for citizen centered social justice and solidarity based . The process of dethroning and crowning may be two phased. Where first new political powers will emerge, based on anger and frustration and on the call for change. Stealth leaders with no central political backbone, lead the protests, while political leaders that were formerly trusted , are rapidly losing the faith of the public. Obama’s failure to solve the economic crisis is such a case.

New leaders may arise, mastering the language of civil ecology based on solidarity, social responsibility, but lacking the tools, skills and political craftsmanship needed for implementing it responsibly without throwing  the baby out with the bath water.

A real citizen centered governance culture will revive the original and natural increasing returns dynamics where the people elect representatives appointed to really take care of their needs and act on their behalf, those who truly prove to fulfill this, earn the constituents’ trust, will enjoy a greater “rating” (the equivalent to share owner’s value in the corporate world) and will thus ensure their future credibility and their central place in continuing and serving the people.

User centricity is primarily associated with marketing disciplines that put the user at the center. A cliché, cynicists may claim, devised by corporates to appease clients. A more evolved approach to user centricity truly makes the user a primary partner. As citizens we are users of systems created first and foremost to cater to our needs. Governing systems, just like commercial ones, need to be attentive to their users for their survivability and adapt accordingly.

In our life as citizens, user centricity is not always taken for granted as a primary consideration, and at times, not catered for at all. In many countries, very significant political, economic and social changes are fermenting or openly taking place at this very moment.

In non democratic regimes, such as the Arab states in the Middle East like Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Tunisia,  regimes, up to very recently, were  fear based. Till a moment came when the masses felt  they had nothing to lose.  A bottom up citizen based ripple effect swept the area and the people rebelled aggressively, no longer accepting the ruling dynasty paradigms of their dictators.

In the democratic western world – it’s fermenting in other ways. In some countries aggressive riots sprang – e.g Uk,  in others – non violent  protests, like in Israel, (where I come from), but not less powerful. All across Europe unrest is fermenting, as people, frustrated by the  economic unrest and the feeling  their current governing parties, delegates of the people, elected by the people and for the people, no longer attentively  cater for the interests of the people as their primarily consideration.

All are threatened by shifts and the unrest from the growing feeling of misuse of the credit and trust with which the prevailing parties were endowed. It’s already here or lurking behind the corner, and not just as a build up towards election day. The masses are losing faith in the thin closed circle  that brings time after time the same players in varied constellations and perpetuates solutions the citizens no longer trust.

All this unrest has a common denominator – the voice of the citizen. User centricity is not just about consumerism – it is about engagement, influencing and shaping the systems that serve us. Same goes for our identity as citizens, and our prerogative, or duty, if you wish, to  call out to put us, citizens, in our rightful place – as the center of the systems built by and for us.

The need for a new pact between the governing parties and their constituents is fermenting bottom – up. It’s a call for bringing back the human factor into the center of the equation. Sovereignty should be based on trust, Trust is enhanced by transparency. Both are  rare goods these days.

Citizen centered, Wecentered,  in the face of political, financial and corruption turmoil all across the world, is a paradigm that will  redefine the balance between politicians and us, citizens.

In a citizen centered state of mind it is not the governors who have an unlimited mandate because presumably they know best what the people should have and therefore a totally free hand to prioritize and dictate their worldview with blind oblivion to what we, the citizens, feel we should have.

Holding on to attitudes of   “though the dog may bark,  the caravan moves on”, blind to the growing and the shifting  power of  citizens,  blinds leaders from reading the writing on the wall. A state is a human grid. We are citizens and in democracies, the elected delegates should represent their citizens’ interests.

Citizen centered paradigms grow in dynamic movements through bottom up open systems, where citizens call for freedom,  better living conditions, hope, and in more affluent and democratic countries  a more just allocation of resources, and an affordable future.

The citizen centered paradigm demands a new lens for the relations  between the state and the citizens, for focusing on the citizens  and their well being. A state’s ecology is manifested by its social conscious, considering the human aspects of its officials’ operations and not losing the human touch in executing its policies.  The new citizen centered paradigm calls for transparency, culture and conduct that cater for the good of all, considers the well being of the citizens and exercises a reciprocal authentic pact with them.

In a user centered trust based culture, respecting users’ freedom, choices, set of values and their need for trust through transparent information, will bring a new spring to the dynamic power balance  in the relations between providers and users.

As we increasingly turn from citizens to engaged consumers of information, services and goods in many systems we interact with, providers need to become more attentive to the growing user centered culture. Once fighting over our attention is not enough – humility is called for: fighting over our trust demands adapting to the growing zeitgeist of more humane soft values: transparency, relinquishing control, accepting our state of mind and adapting to it.

Recent amendments to the Consumer Bill of Rights, originally articulated by Kennedy in 1960, suggested lately, reflect the shift and scope enlargement of consumers’ place in the food chains.  The growing user centered dignity emphasizes what consumers’ consciousness puts at center stage:

“to be protected against fraudulent, deceitful, or misleading information, advertising, labeling, or other practices, and to be given, by all goods and service providers, unrestricted access to the complete information needed to make an informed choice, including but not limited to ingredients, materials, origin, labor conditions, life cycle, and political activity.”

The original consumer bill of rights treated the basic consumers’

• The right to safety: to be protected against the marketing of products and services that are hazardous to health or to life.
• The right to be informed: to be protected against fraudulent, deceitful, or grossly misleading information, advertising, labeling, or other practices, and to be given the facts needed to make informed choices.
• The right to choose: to have available a variety of products and services at competitive prices.
• The right to be heard: to be assured that consumer interests will receive full and sympathetic consideration in making government policy, both through the laws passed by legislatures and through regulations passed by administrative bodies.
• The right to education: to have access to programs and information that help consumers make better marketplace decisions.
• The right to redress: to work with established mechanisms to have problems corrected and to receive compensation for poor service or for products which do not function properly.
• The right to service–the right to privacy, courtesy, and responsiveness to consumer problems and needs and all steps necessary to ensure that products and services meet the quality and performance levels claimed for them (Added by Clinton, 1994).

Many of these things seem obvious today, although the recent amendments reflect, more than anything else, the spirit of users’ consciousness, based not only on awareness of the quality of goods and services consumed, but to what they stand for, our understanding that manufacturing conditions  of goods and our judgment of  corporate identity of the provider.

We expect from our providers engagement that exceeds CRM discourse and corporate oriented revenue making policies. We expect transparency and a more humanizing culture. Therefore this bill goes as far as the political intricacies that corporates employ – such is the level of consumer scrutiny of their providers.

As we, users, increasingly see ourselves as equal partners in the process and are aware of our power, the shifting balance calls for a new level of ecology, for paradigm change that will flow with the openness, freedom and central place, that we, conscious consumers, have today.

Providers that will accept the evolution of consumerism, sign this bill and adapt to its spirit, will prevail in the shifting user centered paradigm.

“We will become the yeast that makes the bread rise”

Stephanne Hessel, Indignez vous.

User centricity is not just about consumers’ approach to marketing   and relations between providers and users, sellers and buyers.

It is also not just about the user experience, user friendliness and design adaptability.

It is obviously about the active roles of users – and beyond.

User centricity is about the active place of users in systems that are there to serve users in the first place.

In the digital world, where user accessibility, user voice  and  user participation are easily enabled – user centricity is about the active role of users, not just in using systems, but in actively engaging, influencing and shaping them in order to become truly reflective of what’s best for the users, and not for whoever stands behind these systems – be it commercial entities, organizations and even governments.

It is not just our prerogative, it is our duty. We don’t live in a vacuum. Systems that we are part of, have been originally built by people who were motivated by visions, ideals, social rights  and a need for better life.

The countries we live in, for example. It is natural for us, in the western world, to believe that oppressed people in non democratic countries, have the right to go out to the streets, dethrone dictators and corrupt regimes and reclaim by force basic rights and a quality of life.

But are we, wherever we are in the western world, satisfied with the way our countries are run? In the US, Europe,…..  Democratic states are primarily for us, citizens. E government systems are parts of efforts to bring citizens closer to the governing bodies, in operational and technical matters, and also in involvement in the policy making – as a means to gain our trust that our representatives and governing bodies are indeed acting for our best interests.

Stephane Hessel, a 93 years old French former diplomat, fought during world war II in the French resistance. He has recently published a manifesto Indignez Vous , or its English version Time for Outrage – a call to the French youth to   re-embrace the values of the resistance in France and to actively assume our role as users of the system and make sure that it is properly run – in the spirit and according to its original purpose.  It became an amazing publishing  phenomenon when upon its appearance, this short “new red book” sold over 1.5 million copies during a very short time  in France and Britain,

Time for Rage is about more than engagement. It’s about the central place of the individual in shaping the systems. When we, citizens, stop accepting passively what governing bodies do to us and our country, and start active engagement, systems will have to adapt to become truly user centered – for us, users.

“When something outrages you, as Nazism did me, that is when you become a militant, strong and engaged,” he writes. “You join the movement of history, and the great current of history continues to flow only thanks to each and every one of us.”

E-patients, is another example of a very influencing user centricity role in the medical world. It is a health consumer organization that envisions health care as an equal partnership between e-patients and health professionals and systems that support them.

Created bottom-up by patients who wanted better information and learning from others’ experience, it empowers  patient engagement and active role in the treatment of their medical conditions, relating  to individuals who are equipped, enabled, empowered and engaged in their health and health care decisions.

It resulted in a change of relations between patients and doctors because patients/users’ accessibility to better health information that influenced and changed doctors’ attitude and even knowledge and data bases, once users collectively take an active approach to their medical dialogs.

These  two examples amplify the scope and meaning of user centered – a true user centric view puts the user at the center – not just as a lip service. It’s up to us, users, to put ourselves in the center of systems with which we engage and engage and influence to help shape it so it really accommodates us.

Transparency empowers trust.

The internet is one of the most significant catalysts of transparency. Users own conversations, foster diversity, choices and openness.  The internet, information technologies, social media and users’ engagement have cultivated a culture of open sharing.  They keep providers, leaders, corporates and governments under a glass menagerie,  evangelize virtues and broadcast any misbehavior.

The internet allows visibility that we can’t control. Visibility on people, actions – from Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, articles, comments…. It makes us vulnerable, because we can’t control people’s reactions to what we do or say –voluntarily through the likes of  Facebook and up to bully disclosures of  Wikileaks – we are more exposed as people, employees, managers, officials, politicians…

This leads to greater personal accountability. Once we understand the inevitable power of the  exposure  of our actions, for better or worse, it leads to greater awareness to who we are, and accountability as to why we do what we do. The internet allows us to harness, share, cooperate, engage, become more sensitive to our surroundings – human, social, environmental.

Transparency becomes a key to authenticity.  In our personal life, transparency of social networks, a sharing state of mind and web culture support and empower our authenticity. It makes it natural for us to expect it from the brands, services and systems we interact with. We grow to demand the same accountability from our employers, providers, leaders.

Traditional conservativism cherishes playing one’s cards close to the chest, having full control and disclosing as little as possible, as a means of manipulating reality for corporate, sector, government and even personal interests.  Once organizations cannot control the ripple effects of their doings, gates, walls and a unilateral  top down control become a non applicable paradigm in an age of being under the constant microscope of user monitoring.

Embracing a state of mind of transparency spells a new paradigm – one that transcends regulations and is based on openness, disclosure, accountability, open systems as an organizational culture.  It requires relinquishing control in favor of direct connections, letting others decide. It’s a window to who corporates, institutions and individuals really are, what they stand for.

Therefore it becomes a cultural imperative for brands, corporates, organizations and governments.

Authenticity is a key to trust building.

The internet is more than just a global system of interconnected computer networks. It’s about us, people, and not just about technological platforms and apps, bits and bytes.  It is key in establishing transparency, authenticity and trust mechanisms and  plays a cultural and ethical role that transcends its material, practical and functional aspects.  Therefore the soft values that we users embrace as part of a web culture, will drive changes that will ensure a trustworthy, transparent, empathic way of life, that corporates and institutions will have to embrace to reach us.

Trust based relations are the new green – the key to a clean web ecology.  This fabric is what matters now – a new ecological culture of transparency, trust and engagement that individuals, corporates and institutions alike must embrace.

]]> http://www.icentered.com/trust-is-the-new-green/feed 0 http://www.icentered.com/the-feminine-management-archetype-for-21st-century-competitive-edge-2 http://www.icentered.com/the-feminine-management-archetype-for-21st-century-competitive-edge-2#comments Thu, 13 Jan 2011 05:50:27 +0000 Ayala http://www.icentered.com/?p=568

Adapting to 21st century emerging business culture means embracing softer attitudes that evoke trust, authenticity and humanization of corporate identity – feminine qualities. This observation is not a feminist declaration or an editorial in an Elle edition.  The new reality is that the business world needs to reframe its discourse to a softer, more fluid one, that usually is not associated with traditional masculine management archetypes.  

The internet is forcing a new marketing discourse. As users increasingly own conversations and the death of customer loyalty is a click away, companies need to replace transaction based policies and devise a deeper relationship with their clients, have to be more attentive, flexible and open.   It means embracing ethical accelerators: transparency, openness, and accountability. It requires a change of mindset to softer more collaborative, conversational, attentive, trust building mechanisms.

Men and women speak different languages and symbolize different archetypes. Men need all the assessments tangible before they start building business processes based on top down hierarchical trees of conditions, risks, time lines and  effort invested,  men like single tasking or defined parallel tasking.  

John Hagel, in a Ted Bay area speech  talked about differentiating between male and female management archetypes. He claims that technology has opened up opportunities but created an increasing competitive pressure that demanded a hard, closed fist management style, semantics of war,  based on  masculine metaphors , rational analysis, aggressive and ruthless conquering of markets, with no room for any vulnerability. As long as this mindset prevailed, there was no room for an alternative semantic discourse.

Feminine archetypes are based on notions of long term, sustained relationships, not transactions, on story like communications style, around expressiveness, images, telling and learning. A style that is not analytic by nature, but based on emotions, vulnerability, and sharing.  Women tend to flourish in chaotic situations; their chaotic patterns and intuitive thinking frame an archetype much more suitable for the conversational nature of the web and the mindset of the social web. Women build their assessments on aggregated information gathering patterns in all sorts of informal distributed ways. Such adaptivity has become a redefining business strategy trait.

Therefore, as environments became more dynamic, siloed rigid attitudes are being reshaped by adaptivity, agility, crowdsourcing, grssrooting, coopetition…. These new  business world dynamics call for a different set of archetypes, more fluid and adaptive.

Blurring gender defined arenas exceeds management skills archetypes and becomes a dominant trend that will influence and reshape many gender based dichotomies.  Faith Popcorn, the trend predictions futurist, predicts a new revolution for 2011-  the end of gender –En-Gen. EnGen era which is neither male nor female. Women are becoming more influential and men are turning more sensitive. Mars and Venus are coming closer. Emotional needs, gender based values and stereotypical behaviors are becoming more blurred. This will influence all levels of interactions, brand building and marketing discourse.

Therefore as businesses are required to adapt to new business cultures that  foster corporate ecology of open, more transparent, authentic  and humane business practices to assure a 21^st century competitive edge, the  feminine archetype will prevail as part of the semiotics of a reshaping business new world.

Mydex,  a community interest company, has just launched in the UK a personal data store,  a user side personal information management service where individuals can keep a universal user-centered account of their personal information – records of their personal data, purchases, credit, health, insurance, home related information so they can track it as needed.

The service is currently on trials with the U.K. Department for Work and Pensions, and three local councils; London Borough of Brent, London Borough of Croydon, Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. They present it as a free market solution to a privacy management issue  by reversing the paradigm of  the private information that companies and governments store about us, where the individual  builds a personal data store and empowers, at will,  companies and governments to access, after signing an agreement.

Additionally, organizations, government and providers  can find and share information regarding individuals, but in a reversed balance scale – they have to approach individuals, sign an agreement.

A white paper explores in depth what is the concept of the personal data store.

Alan Mitchell and  William Heath are the people heading  this initiative.

It is a very interesting early-bird attempt to explore aspects of empowering a user-centered approach and shifting power to users, by giving them control over their data. This project deals with hard core personal functional  documents that we need to share with institutions in the functional areas.

 This trial does not touch at all, at least at this stage, the very complex issue of monitoring personal data in our web based communications, searches for contextual exploitation by marketers for relevant ads and offerings, and touches only partially on commercial activities, it is very valuable as it makes several important statements in regard to personal information empowerment:

• It shows that institutions can agree to the reversal of balance and that it can be implemented in providers’ culture. Commercial institutions will follow the steps of organizations in order to become part of the emerging ecosystems.

• A good example of  running trust based user side intermediary services for data management. It should definitely not be run  by a corporate whose business model relies on income from  3^rd party ( advertising) but should be based on direct user based business models, like a bank.
• It is a building block towards a new mindset for a reversal of power between providers and users. It will open people and organizations to realize that traditional corporate based paradigms will have to gradually adjust to user centered initiatives that will require a new kind of dialog between providers and users.
• The new paradigm that sees the individual at the center where providers negotiate directly with the user permission to pull from the users’ side information and reward it accordingly will open up new business models around personal data usage in a permission based, mutual reward.

• The efficiency demonstrated in such a trial in cost savings for multiple data saving schemes may eventually enhance corporates’ realization that the huge sums they invest in building client data bases in their siloed companies, can be replaced  by a coopetition model where, even if they have to relinquish power, still – all parties will gain.

I hope that together with initiatives like the project VRM - a vendor relationship managemnet intiative, will serve as catalysts to build a mindshare towards a user centered web.