Leadership through Innovative and Responsible Solutions

On a recent flight to Phoenix I finished “Here Comes Everybody” by Clay Shirky.  It had been recommended to me by a business associate a couple of months ago.

The book discusses group action, and how new social technology tools (Twitter, Facebook, Meetup, etc.) are changing the way we interact by enabling group conversation, contribution, and action on a scale not previously possible.

Early in the book the author states, “Group action gives human society its particular character, and anything that changes the way groups get things done will affect society as a whole…For any given organization, the important questions are ‘When will the change happen?’ and ‘What will change?’  The only two answers we can rule out are never, and nothing.

Construction is an industry resistant to change, and as a subset of that, slow to adopt new technology.  We don’t generally use services like Twitter, and our business tends to produce a tangible, physical end-product that is difficult to deliver electronically.  We tend to judge these technologies by the inane uses we hear about on the news.

Never the less, this revolution will change our business.  Perhaps we will simply use these tools to foster cooperation within our company.  Perhaps entire projects will use them to help create a collaborative environment.

As the author states, it will be the people who take these new technologies for granted that use them to change our business.  I’d encourage you to read the book, and think about how your life might change.