Uh-oh! Is FI Space doomed?

A recent opinion-piece in Wired magazine is titled flatly: “Futurism is Dead.” The article condemns the field of futurism and the World Future Society in particular as failures because the record of predictions from professional futurists has been so bad. The great irony is that there has been no publication with as many articles over the past 10 to 15 years full of failed predictions as Wired. The most famous is their cover story seven or eight years ago that said adamantly than the Internet browsers like Netscape and Explorer were finished and that the future of the Internet was “push” technology. Couldn’t have been more wrong. And nobody did more to hype the notion of the so-called New Economy that would soar forever on constantly evolving technology than Wired.

Nevertheless, the idea of futuring is worth some discussion.

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Social networking targets the enterprise: December 15, 2003: By Ephraim Schwartz: Applications

Social networking targets the enterprise

Here’s a new gimmick that is CRM, Friendster and social software all rolled into one. And it seems pretty snoopy too.

Sometimes Success Begins at Failure

HBS Working Knowledge: Innovation: Sometimes Success Begins at Failure

I don’t know how many times the idea of building a knowledge base of failed efforts in order to learn from them has come up, but somehow nobody takes it seriously enough to do it. I understand, however, that the US Army has a department of Lessons Learned at some place like Ft. Knox. They’ve studied what went wrong in battle, and it’s paid off extremely well.

Are Your Employees Bowling Alone?

In a Harvard Business Review article (reprint available here) entitled “Are Your Employees Bowling Alone? How to Build a Trusting Organization,” author Douglas Smith appied Robert Putnam’s (Bowling Alone) concepts of social capital to business. Bowling alone was Putnam’s metaphor for the civic disengagement: in 15 years, the numbers of bowlers grew, but much fewer were bowling in leagues.

The article focuses on TRUST, and how crucial it is to organizational survival. The author details the five ‘identifying hallmarks’ of a trusting organization:

1. A clearly stated core ideology
2. effective communication
3. An environment in which employees like to come to work
4. Cooperation inside, competition outside
5. More than money *

* I continually find evidence that compensation is not one of the prime factors in employee motivation and committment.

Our Division has had a goal to become one of the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For. The primary determining factor is a Trust Index completed by employees. The Great Place to Work Institute which created and administers the Index will not accept a division’s application, so we have been trying to rally the entire ACS…

for “Handy’s Geography of Trust”…

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