What will business life be like in the future?

I wanted to start this post with a flow diagram that resonated with me so much that I immediately sent it to my Mother. I’ve been doing ‘tech support’ for my family for years, and for Geoff and, and, and. I expect you’ve been doing it too.

But although funny, truthful and nicely wry, the diagram got me thinking about what web 2.0 really means in real life. How does it change some of the things we consider to be ‘normal’ now and what will a different future really be like?

There are lots of ways that I forsee
1. Self-help – go and find it out for yourself
2. Basic computer skills like editing documents, highlighting, linking
3. Collaboration skills becoming more important
4. Blending your private and business life

The cartoon illustrates the self-help trend. I am marginally better than you at finding stuff online and so you call me to assist your search for a solution. What’s important about this is not that I try to teach you how to do it yourself, but that I don’t mind that you call me. This is a link into the third point. We will need to un-learn self-direction and move more into collaboration with virtual teams who come together and split apart without formalised enablement. The ThinkingPharma team is like this. We find each other and new skills when our business demands it.

Point two is a possible huge divider between the digitally enabled and those who are cut off from this new world. This really matters – but isn’t something for today’s post.

The private:public blend is something I personally will have a lot of issue with. I dislike having to socialise with work and taking my private life into the office is not what I choose to do. And yet I notice that Facebook has some helpful groups for my work and LinkedIn (which I thought to be business-only) now has a great group for my hobby.

We will all have to un-learn a lot of the habits business has taught us.

Then I read David Armano’s latest slide set about ‘social business by design’. His organisation, Dachis Corp, have been working on a management consulting template for enterprise. They cleverly figured that the only people who will pay top dollar for social media advice are big companies and the only way to get them to do this is using change management or business model improvement. Both huge consulting gigs.

Way to go, David!

Last week I undertook my first social media training event in which I spent an afternoon with a group of bright people and endeavoured to teach them how to use social media for business development. They were all business development professionals so it was a task to explain new ways of working to do the same old job. Rather like “what web 2.0 will mean for business” as I said earlier.

I learnt a lot from that session.

And now I feel better informed and ready to work with another company who is interested in teaching themselves, using computer skills and collaboration to work differently in future.
Is that you?