Folks Hating Folks

It’s sad how everyone is always fighting about everything.

And hating on each other…

Someone told a funny story the other day about this:

“She don’t like her.
He don’t like him.
And the supervisor says, I don’t like none of y’all, now get back to work!”

At the end of the day, we’re all different, and we’re all sort of the same. 

Maybe we have to look past the petty stuff, and learn to get along and get things done! 

At the end of the day, we’re all better off loving and getting it reciprocated–and so on and so on. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Kiss One Another Day

So with all the divisiveness and hate in this country (and the world) lately…

I thought we need a day to celebrate, accept, and love each other.

Let’s call it: 

National Kiss Day!

Liberals and Democrats – give each other a kiss.

Christians, Jews, and Muslims – give each other a kiss. 

Men and women – give each other a kiss. 

Straight and LGBTQ – give each other a kiss.

Old, middle age, and young – give each other a kiss. 

White, black, yellow, and brown – give each other a kiss. 

Races and nationalities of all kinds – give each other a kiss.

Those with and without illnesses and disabilities – give each other a kiss. 

We are all G-d’s children, so it’s time to stop the crazy hate and fighting.

Love each other, work together to advance the world for everyone, and give each other a big, fat, heartfelt kiss – and maybe we can make the day into a lifetime!

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Platforms – Open or Closed

Ever since the battles of Windows versus Linux, there have been two strong competing philosophies on systems architecture.

Many have touted the benefits of open architecture–where system specifications are open to the public to view and to update.

Open sourced systems provide for the power of crowdsourcing to innovate, add-on, and make the systems better as well as provides less vendor lock-in and lower costs.

Open Source —–> Innovation, Choice, and Cost-Savings

While Microsoft–with it’s Windows and Office products–was long the poster child for closed or proprietary systems and has a history of success with these, they have also come to be viewed, as TechRepublic(July 2011) points out as having an “evil, monopolistic nature.”

However, with Apple’s rise to the position of the World’s most valuable company, closed solutions have made a strong philosophical comeback.

Apple has a closed architecture, where they develop and strictly control the entire ecosystem of their products.

Closed systems provides for a planned, predictable, and quality-controlled architecture, where the the whole ecosystem–hardware, software and customer experience can be taken into account and controlled in a structured way.

Closed Systems —–> Planning, Integration, and Quality Control

However, even though has a closed solutions architecture for it’s products, Apple does open up development of the Apps to other developers (for use on the iPhone and iPad). This enables Apple to partner with others and win mind share, but still they can retain control of what ends-up getting approved for sale at the App Store.

I think what Apple has done particularly well then is to balance the use of open and closed systems–by controlling their products and making them great, but also opening up to others to build Apps–now numbering over 500,000–that can leverage their high-performance products.

Additionally, the variety and number of free and 99 cent apps for example, show that even closed systems, by opening up parts of their vertical model to partners, can achieve cost-savings to their customers.

In short, Apple has found that “sweet spot”–of a hybrid closed-open architecture–where they can design and build quality and highly desirable products, but at the same time, be partners with the larger development community.

Apple builds a solid and magnificent foundation with their “iProducts,” but then they let customers customize them with everything from the “skins” or cases on the outside to the Apps that run on them on the inside.

Closed-Open Systems —–> Planned, Integrated, and Quality PLUS Innovation, Choice, and Cost-Savings

Closed-Open Systems represent a powerful third model for companies to choose from in developing products, and which benefits include those from both open and closed systems.

>Optimizing Culture For Performance

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Strategy + Business (Spring 2011) has an interview with Edgar Schein, the MIT sage of organizational culture.

In it, he describes why it is so hard to change this.

In my experience, organizational culture is key to success.

Why do we want to change organizational culture to begin with?

Sometimes it becomes dysfunctional and can get in the way of performance.

Sometimes, leaders think they can simply change a culture, but Schein disagrees. He says that you cannot simply introduce a new culture and tell people to follow it–“that will never work.”

“Instead you have to…solve business problems by introducing new behaviors.”

However, you cannot solve problems or even raise concerns where “in most organizations the norms are to punish it.”

Schein states that “the people with the most authority…must make the others feel safe”—to speak up, contribute, and even make mistakes.

Schein goes on to call for people “to work with one another as equal partners“–breaking down the traditional organizational boundaries–so that we stop telling people, so to speak, that “you’re in my lane” or “that’s above your pay grade.”

He goes a step further, stating that the healthiest work cultures are interdependent, meaning that people actively try to help one another solve problems.

What an enormously powerful idea, that everyone has something valuable to contribute. Every opinion contributes to the dialogue–and all employees are worthwhile.

That is my definition of a healthy culture, for the organization and its people.

>Civic Commons-A Lesson In Sharing

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Love this concept on Civic Commons that was presented at the Gov 2.0 Summit (2010) and is now becoming a reality.

Presented by Bryan Sivak the CTO for DC–Civic Commons is about governments collaborating and building technology once and reusing multiple times, rather than reinventing the wheel over and over again–a critical enterprise architecture principle.

Governments have similar needs and can share common solutions–products and projects–for these.

A number of successful examples:

1) DC and San Francisco building Open 311 (which I wrote about in a prior blog).

2) Minnesota building a $50 Million Unemployment Insurance System and then sharing it with Iowa who implemented it at less than 1/2 that.

Some initial products that have been committed:

1) White House IT Federal Dashboard

2) Track DC (Operational Dashboard)

3) San Francisco Master Address Database Geocoder

4) New York Senate’s Open Legislation Application

And more will be coming…all of which can be used and improved upon.

It is great to see so many state governments collaborating–across the Nation–from Seattle to LA, Boston, San Francisco, NY, and Chicago. Moreover, they are coordinating with the Federal Government, as well as with supporting organizations, such as OpenPlans, Code For America, O’Reilly Media, and more that are helping with coordination, facilitation, and support.

This is another great step in breaking down the silos that separate us and becoming more efficient in working together and learning to share what can benefit many.