Outliers. I'd say, Identifying Ingredients of Success

It's been like a month since i finished reading this book, and couldn't come with an original satisfactory idea about it since now. The first post impression is that it's a success recipe book, that tell you how to fix your life, and persuades you that you actually can, but that approach is completely wrong.

Let's try a quick exercises to try to reproduce what Outliers does... Think in a sweet apple pie in your preferred crust type. At the perfect temperature and with the perfect smell, it hasn't been long since it was baked. Nobody can say that this is not a success, but what was the recipe, or more specific, the key ingredients in that success?

Well, we used apples... but there's a citric flavor there, it was green apples... it doesn't matter how perfect the apples were, but were green ones... same with every other ingredient, it just need to be good enough to fit in the recipe's needing. But when baking, that's other story... you need the perfect temperature to control humidity, ripeness of the fruit and crunchiness. Also you need the right time to take the flavor out of the cinnamon and other spices, and so on.

What I'm trying to say here, is that every success story had a recipe behind, but the success itself doesn't come from the recipe itself, but from the conditions that made that recipe a winner. This paradigm shift is what Malcom Gladwell is trying to do here with several real life examples, showing you what ingredients were important into certain degree (they needed to be present but only above a certain level), and what ingredientes were ky to the success.

At the end, one comes with the conclusion that being extremely skilled or intelligent, or tall or whatever is not as important as being at the right place, in the right time and with the right recipe, and be able to take advantage of the situation... some people will never have such opportunity, but you need your arsenal of skills ready every time to shoot when you spot that very unique opportunity.

Definitely a must read that make you change the way you see the life. Sepcially tailored for those who (like the former me) think that they can do everything with just proposing it and no mountain is too high to be climbed... that's certainly true, but nobody will climb it alone.

Like what you just read? Twitt it:
Brief review of Malcom Gladwell's Outliers: The story of success http://twurl.nl/gbrgvc

Or Retweet it:
RT @edavaria: Brief review of Malcom Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success http://twurl.nl/gbrgvc

Eduardo Avaria
www.thesocialpartner.com
www.twitter.com/edavaria

Comments on the ECM Maturity Model, towards a Social Maturity Model.

Just received this article in the context of the work I'm (probably) about to start on Social Maturity Model. This work is called ECM3, or to be more precise:

ECM3 Maturity Model: Taming Enterprise Content Management Challenges

It's a exactly what i want to develop for the "Socialness" of a company, of course addressing different characteristics, but is a neat 40 pages long document with enough information to fill 400 pages, but perfectly organized to transmit the message and allowing the decision makers of the companies to evaluate the current status of their ECM and plan the next steps accordingly, what is kindly suggested into the paper, towards the next level in each area.

The only issue i can find is that the objective for ECM software are defined and measuring them is easier than the Socialness of a company, also, ECM is almost alwats strictly additive. Is hard to harm a dimension improving the other doing things well, but with the Social Behaviour, is almost sure that you will have knockbacks while trying to improve something. I guess that this issues can be addressed with more analogies than formal definitions, so people can adjust it to their own reality. Something like transmitting the intent instead of giving the recipe.

The Social Maturity Model sounds every day better, the final word has not bein said, but it's closer.

Like what you just read? Twitt it:
Comments on the ECM Maturity Model, towards a Social Maturity Model, or ECM3 http://twurl.nl/s4nxk7

Or Twitt it in RT mode:
RT @edavaria: New Blog Post - Comments on the ECM Maturity Model, towards a Social Maturity Model http://twurl.nl/s4nxk7

Eduardo Avaria
www.thesocialpartner.com
www.twitter.com/edavaria

Great story for stickyness.

Yesterday, in a (real) social meeting, while some were playing Guitar Hero: Metallica, we were having some chit chat, and i was trying to explain a little about stickiness. This was my fire trial, since i was trying to communicate the idea to people that don't know, in an ambient far from the ideal. Addig some alcohol, could be a hard task. Short story, after a while, when i was trying to make an example of sticky story, this story from 8 months ago came to my mind.

Any story that survives 8 months should be sticky. For those who are intrigued (i know you all clicked the link :P, that information gap surely was too painfull to not click), is the Michael Phel's eating routine story. How he eats like Manuel Uribe having munchies and still have a perfect body and managed to get several gold medals at the last olympic games ( dopping story set aside).

The story is just sticky. It breaks your schema of eating and being healthy, it makes you want to know exactly what he eats, it can't be more concrete, and of course, is simple enough to be recalled with a few words. It's definitely about a hero, and have a lot of emotions involved, specially if you are american. It makes you wish to be like Phelps. The credibility may be an issue, but coming from NY Times it can't be false.

That's simply a story that is here to stay, and is an awesome tool for making points. Just letting you know that here is a very powerful story to be used in the future. This was just an excerside for me, hope I can spot the next Phelp's story as soon as I see it. Good hunting spotters :)

Like what you just read? Twitt it:
Sticky story to add into your stories arsenal http://twurl.nl/7gxuc8

or Twit it in RT mode:
RT @edavaria: Just spotted a nice story... from 8 months ago, but stickier enough to survive http://twurl.nl/7gxuc8

Eduardo Avaria
www.thesocialpartner.com
www.twitter.com/edavaria

Where to spend 600 hours of work in the newst few months?

Time is running out and need to define my graduate work. Of course it wil be in the social web area, opting for the Civil Informatics Engineer (feedback on how this is called in english would be nice. It's a 6 year career, obtaining the bachelor on 4th) title. I have 2 good options, and need to set up my mind for one that helps me best on my Web Strategist begining career, and of course, what wouls have more interesting feedback on this blog.

The 1st theme is the design and developing a comunity for the Tutelkan Project, which is a process optimization rig for people to share experiences and help others implementing good processes and practices aiming towards certifications, including ISO and CMM. It is oriented to the software development area, and includes a full already in late development system for the actual process tracking and improvement. What needs to be built is the comunity system and the interaction with the available social tools to make the project actually being used and take it into the socialverse.

The 2nd project, is a little less systemic since I'll have to start from the scratch, what makes it a little less interesting projecting it into the future, but it's also worthwhile as i see it. The idea is to develop a Social Maturity Model using checklists, aiming to evaluate small, medium and big companies according their social practices, aiming on marketting and customer feedback, but including internal practices. This is to be applied in Chilean enterpises trying to make them realize how the world is spinning without them

Would be really nice to have comments on what project to take. The develop time is about 600 hours and the results are completely open, as well as I will be posting any major advance here. Please, very please comment on your view.

Also would be nice retweeting it:

RT @edavaria: What project seems more interesting? please write your honest opinion. http://twurl.nl/4xhbdq

Eduardo Avaria
www.thesocialpartner.com
www.twitter.com/edavaria

What's the next shape of the world?

According to Malcom Gladwell's Outliers, the world changes and only the people who is at the right time, in the right place, and with the correct competences have the opportunity to truly shine. The case of Bill Gates and many others.

Seems that the so called Social Revolution already got their shiners, from Obama to tinyurl.com, and from now, only guest stars are invited to the party, and of course, there will be a lot of casualties, from the already hurt newspaper business to the Universities as don Tapscott kindly predicts it here.

[ What kind of technology is about to be discovered is certainly not known, but there's a little light on what could be researched...]

A little self thinking made me think that the next shape of the world is definitively the physics. Over the past 60 years there has been only theoretical physics, and almost zero empirical results. That cause humans don't have the technology or the energy to take their theories to the real world, but with cloud computing and the huge facilities that are already built and in process of building, is a matter of time to have the firsts results and start a new revolution, just when the semiconductors were discovered leading us to the world as we know it in the area of computers.

What kind of technology is about to be discovered is certainly not known, but there's a little light on what could be researched... It has to do with time/space traveling, developing work without energy, transmitting energy without using physical mediums or maybe a new way of computing or networking that let everything we know obsolete... just like the transistor let the tube in the past being better in every single aspect (not every single but in 99.99%).

It's hard to say if we can prepare for this change... we could since we can have enough time to get our 10k hours in, but what's the proficiencies required? maybe the shiners will not be physicists but people that actually work with the results. Just like Sony did in his early stages doing the 1st "pocketable radio" in their words, when a radio was a piece of furniture.

[No matter what shape the world takes, we have to be shining in our areas and hope that it turn our way]

So being prepared for the next change is almost impossible. It comes to a "right place at the right time" situation where mostly luck is involved, but certainly there's only a few pieces of the pie, and taking one will be only for the best prepared and fast reacters... so, no matter what shape the world takes, we have to be shining in our areas and hope that it turn our way.

Like what you just read? Twitt it:
Are you prepared for the (not so) brave new world? http://twurl.nl/dkcwct

Or Twitt it in RT mode:
RT @edavaria: Are you prepared for the (not so) brave new world? comment please http://twurl.nl/dkcwct
--
Eduardo Avaria
www.thesocialpartner.com
www.twitter.com/edavaria