Day: 9 August 2006

Dennis Howlett raised a question after my post on Pip Coburn’s book. [BTW it was by no means an attempt to critique the book, I haven’t even finished reading it yet.]

Let me try and put my point forward differently, see if it makes sense to you.

A change function has to bridge two or more different states.

TPPA, in the Coburn definition, is part of this function.

So far so good. And while some of it may seem “obvious” I have no problem with “obvious”, give me more.

I was then musing about the different states, the before and after.

And I came to this realisation.

Before Generation M, the before state and the after state were both “within the organisation”. So TPPA looked at what one used to do within the organisation as part of the basis for determining pain of adoption.

With Generation M, the before state is at home and the after state is at work. And with consumerisation and increased mobility, multitasking support and use of multimedia, with social software and opensource, the whole adoption model for Generation M is different. Where the before state is outside the firm and generational, TPPA is very high. This is not an issue of training. Generation M will resist what doesn’t make sense to them and vote with their feet and their fingers.

Does that help?

I’ve been reading the Change Function by Pip Coburn. Well worth a read.

Pip defines change as a function of the perceived crisis versus the total perceived pain of adoption, which he calls TPPA.

I find TPPA fascinating. Not because of what it means to fogeys like me, but because of its importance to Generation M.

TPPA is by definition relative to current installed software and the alternate version sought to be implemented.

Generation M will have high TPPA in the context of traditional enterprise architectures, tools and techniques. High TPPA in the context of current enterprise monocultures. Low TPPA in the context of social software and Web 2.0.

This time around, it is the enterprise that has to adjust itself in order to reduce TPA, whereas until now the onus of relieving TPA has been borne by the new entrant.

Interesting times.

I’ve always enjoyed the Francis Bacon quotation:

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.

It seems to mean more to me as I grow older. Odd, that.

And it was with this quotation in mind that I resonated with Doc Searls’s statement that blogs are essentially provisional in nature, and I try and behave that way.

So you can imagine how I felt when I read in Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography:
….And as the chief ends of conversation are to inform or to be informed, to please or to persuade, I wish well-meaning and sensible men would not lessen their power of doing good by a positive assuming manner that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and to defeat most of those purposes for which speech was given to us.

In fact, if you wish to instruct others, a positive dogmatical manner in advancing your sentiments may occasion opposition and prevent a candid attention.

If you desire instruction and improvement from others, you should not at the same time express yourself fixed in your present opinions. Modest and sensible men, who do not love disputation, will  leave you undisturbed in the possession of your errors. In adopting such a manner, you can seldom expect to please hearers or obtain the concurrence you desire.

Pope judiciously observes: Men must be taught as if you taught them not, and things unknown proposed as things forgot.

Interesting sentiments. And how pleasant to be able to quote them without having to worry about copyright, I think even retrospective Son-of-Mickey-Mouse Acts will leave Benjamin Franklin alone. But maybe I’m wrong.