New Technologies as a Medium for Feedback and for Inventing New Futures

Earlier this year Business Week had a very interesting article with the provocative title, Social Media Will Change Your Business. Most of us are beginning to get the extent to which information is much more available and from so many sources - sources many in the c-suite are either unaware of, or are not using to the extent they could, to get feedback from customers, employees, users, opinion formers - in fact any number of sources.

One reaction is overwhelm as we deal with, or try to control, what I have hear called infotensity. Well get over it, the days of control are over. The genie is out of the bottle and there is no putting it back in. So we have to master how we manage, and lead, and change, and create new futures in a world where access to information, and the means of distributing it, is in the hands of just about everyone - and we cannot control them.

We are becoming familiar with the notion of citizen journalists and the extent to which their journalism and accompanying You Tube videos change attitudes and outcomes very quickly - just ask George Allen about is macaca moment. Yet how many c-suite execs have used the notion of citizen journalists - the access to information and the means to distribute it - as a way of getting feedback and generating ideas for improvements, or even another input to chart new directions?

I wrote yesterday about 360 feedback instruments. Are we keeping up with new technologies, with things like wikis, blogs, IM, Twitter and so on as ways of getting real time feedback?

Or the possibility of using Second Life as a medium to create an ideal culture, or a new strategy for the future, or to role play how to surface and deal with conflict, or how to coach a colleague?

One possibility for c-suite execs to consider is having a board of advisers on emerging technologies. No, not the tech industry gray beards but pre-teen and early teenagers. The "kids" who are following, or being sucked into, the latest developments like location based games using GPS phones. Who knows, they may even propose that execs use games and fun to get key ideas communicated and/or to shape new behaviors.

OK, I know, I got it, I've gone too far - games and fun, and kids, in business! What was I thinking?