Want to See what a Management 2.0 Big Data Bonanza looks like?

• Management 2.0             Innovation philosophy of management that stresses worker autonomy and responsibility and blends the best effective systems to support the missions and visions of organizations and the self-managed people who make them up.
• Big Data                                Big data usually includes data sets with sizes beyond the ability of commonly-used software tools to capture, curate, manage, and process the data within a tolerable elapsed time. Big data sizes are a constantly moving target, as of 2012 ranging from a few dozen terabytes to many petabytes of data in a single data set. With this difficulty, a new platform of "big data" tools has arisen to handle sense-making over large quantities of data.”
• Bonanza                               A source, usually sudden and unexpected, of luck or wealth.  Or it could be winning a really big, important, critical election resoundingly without others predicting so.

This is not about politics.  I read that in a blog article by Warren Bobrow where Warren begins in the same manner.  There is a great lesson in this election.  In fact it’s so huge I wish I were 20 again studying political science in college like I was doing 40 some years ago.  

Now this might hurt (OUCH) if you are a fanatical Republican but I have to get it out:  with all the talk about Mitt Romney being the management and businessman guru, Barack Obama may have outperformed the guru having selected the very best team to manage his election campaign and by applying Management 2.0 innovation and using some innovative community organizing techniques.  (Remember 'Hannity's America' examined the job Barack Obama says qualifies him for the nation's highest office “only thing he’s ever done is community organizing”?)  The campaign also demonstrated the real use of very Big Data, and of course, a realized and significant BONANZA that was the winning of reelection.  The Obama election campaign in Ohio will likely be studied for decades or more that’s how good it was. 

Both campaigns used BIG DOLLAR$ so consider that a “Citizen’s United” wash.  In fact, in terms of investment, Obama got much more bang for the buck than the Romney campaign.  Romney’s campaign was a more traditional political campaign and in Warren Bobrow’s blog article, there was an overabundance of “gut” calls and reliance on older polling techniques that turned out to be misleading. Take the Gallop Likely Voters Poll which was 7.2 % biased Republican and other polls which led the Romney Campaign Staff, the Republican Super PAC leaders like Karl Rove, Republican pundits and the Fox News organization itself down the slippery slope of wishful thinking instead of victory.  

So what was did the Management 2.0 Big Data Bonanza look like? 

• Barack Obama had a top notch team of dedicated and innovative campaign staff.  You don’t have that in an organization which traditionally relies on Management 1.0 command and control philosophy.
• The idea of Big Data is still floating around the internet information markets for IT, business, education, government circles while the Obama Campaign got it and invested heavily in infrastructure and staff to manage big data and get powerful, reliable, consistent, repeatable results from actions taken using the big data.  They really knew what was happening.  No theory any more.  For real.

Most people don’t know what Big Data is let alone use it to orchestrate things like “dinner with George Clooney” because it would appeal to a specific subset of age 40-49 female voters the Obama Campaign was targeting.  Now you say, some pundit might have thought of that, and you would be right!  And the Obama Campaign made sure every eligible voter who likes George Clooney saw the invitation to donate for a chance to have dinner with the President at George Clooney’s house.  That is an example of an idea around fund raising for the campaign and the Obama Campaign also used big data for getting out the vote in states like Ohio.  In fact, new voters from various ethnic groups probably made up the difference in the election and the Obama Campaign knew that, acted on it, and drove the results with real actions. 

Like an example out of Steve Blank’s Lean Launchpad Business Startup Course (Silicon Valley) where
“you get out of the building” and experiment with what works or not: this was reflected in Michael Scherer’s Time magazine article  Inside the Secret World of the Data Crunchers Who Helped Obama Win:

“Early on, for example, the campaign discovered that people who had unsubscribed from the 2008 campaign e-mail lists were top targets, among the easiest to pull back into the fold with some personal attention. The strategists fashioned tests for specific demographic groups, trying out message scripts that they could then apply. They tested how much better a call from a local volunteer would do than a call from a volunteer from a non–swing state like California. As Messina had promised, assumptions were rarely left in place without numbers to back them up.“

This was pretty amazing overall and if you can get past the first OUCH in my second paragraph, you will be amazed too.  I’m sure the academic professors who made up Obama’s volunteer dream team were proud and excited to see their work really significantly make a difference.  Imagine if we used that model of big data to understand the effectiveness and manage our social service entitlements and government services?  If Obama can do that for a campaign, he can do that for big government and trim the fat where the services are not needed, effective, or affordable and adjust tax rates and policies that provide the best solutions to our debt crises.  I’m thinking he can do that.  We shall see.

  

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

No goals, How's that work?

What is the first thing you think when you hear about people living, loving, succeeding and doing all of that without goals?  What?  Yep, living, loving, succeeding and doing all of that without goals.  You think some craziness is going on here.  And you might be right.  It's a form of enlightenment these people have.  Let's call them Zen Types for lack of any other name that comes to my mind this moment.  I am not referring to any religious notion.

Zen Types move forward in life with ease and generally do life without the filter of goals interfering with the experience.  They "succeed" in many ways that we define success and yet seem to have no goal system in place.  Let's peak at how it works.

Zen Types have a purpose in life.  They have it.  They aren't seeking it, they are living their purpose.  You might argue this is, in essence, a goal, and you might be right.  The point is They have it - a life purpose, however it was derived.  In having the purpose as the living intention, there is no need to establish goals.  There is just to live your purpose and let your greater self (perhaps the hand of God) guide you.  Your choices become part of that mission. 

Leo Babauta put it so great:

• It’s all good. No matter what path you find, no matter where you end up, it’s beautiful. There is no bad path, no bad destination. It’s only different, and different is wonderful. Don’t judge, but experience.

Some of you may be familiar with Leo Babauta who did fantastic work with Zen ideas and has a great article titled The Best Goal is No Goal where he outlines the practice.

As I see it, I still manage my schedules with Outlook, get reminders of events, things I promised others and this too could be seen as "goals" in some way and for me, it is not.  The reminders are part of my greater self guiding me on the path of my purpose like a good flashlight.  It is the journey and not the end  of game destination.  No goals puts you in the present where the action really is and moves you out of the past and future.

I am really enjoying the ease around having things happen on my behalf (my purpose).  My purpose is to have everyone experience greatness.  I'm thinkin' Zen Type.