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e-bay: a peer-to-peer reputation management system

Conall McDevitt has an interesting post up about CEO reputations:

“Communicating frequently with their employees. Certainly with their customers too, but not to forget their employees. At a time of uncertainty employees are hungry for information. CEOs need to take responsibility. Apologize if they are wrong. If they don’t know the answer, say they don’t know. We are just starting to see CEOs really being the face of the company.”

The CEOs of the Big 3 Auto Companies get a mention:

“They are being very transparent and accessible whether on social media, or in the general media, giving interviews, etc.. You see a lot stepping up and coming up with solutions. GM has done a good job with their FastLane blog where they have different executives go on. They’re pretty straightforward. They’re out there. I expect tech companies to make the best use of social media, but when you see manufacturers making use of it, that is different……. there is a lot of anger and lack of trust about CEO compensation and I think also there’s a sense that CEOs in some sectors were not prepared and looking for the early warning signs they should have, the signs that could have helped prevent this financial crisis. So many employees have lost their jobs, so many families affected.”

‘Reputation management‘ is one of those issues that has been gamechanged by the internet and social media (the system used by e-bay is arguably the company’s greatest asset).

How it will impact upon elected politicians and their relationships with senior permananent management is anyone’s guess, but it’s interesting how highly engaged interlocutors – in this case, employees – can determine the reputation of a CEO – and presumably, by extension, a politician. Reputation – in this instance – can be the aggregate result of micro-judgements on daily conduct, civility, and honesty.

But anyone who has ever sat in a crowded livingroom watching the news knows what every TV anchor knows: Sometimes, wearing a stupid tie can drown out the most serious story.

Being seen to be highly interactive, open and honest in the way you deal with people will undoubtedly become more important than it was. Surely, for senior decision-makers, it’s as important a question as involving people in the details of your decisions?

Either way, if I were working at the TUC, I’d be looking at the way that employee’s hostility towards poor employers could be harnessed in a damaging way. And – having worked around politicians in the past – I’m pretty sure that some of the more privately unpleasant MPs could be damanged by the people who work for them.

I’m looking for local government communications staff that have had any experience or thoughts about the changing relationships with the local media – and particularly issues around the politics of this.

I don’t mean the left/right/Lib/Lab/Con politics, I mean questions like….

• the politics of neutrality and incumbency – if local government communications staff aren’t going through the filter of professional journalists, will this cause problems from a democratic point of view?
• are local on-line communities – often very effective ways of communicating – suitable mediums to use to interact with people? Are such groups an effective substitute for traditional communications through the local press? Are they, perhaps, simply havens for unrepresentative sub-groups of local society?
• is there a way for councils to use social media to improve the quality of local democracy – or is it a minefield that is best avoided? And would an unwillingness to engage create a vacuum of any kind?
• how far are the local government rules on political communications being applied in an inflexible way? Does the uncertainly around this result in local government – particularly councillors – being unusually inactive in this space? And how can local authorities provide a leadership role in on-line communications without becoming de facto political press-officers?
• the politics of decentralisation: The changing relationship between local government and the mass media may provide scope for councils to change the way they communicate and reassert the primacy of local government in addressing local problems. Is there a political opportunity to promote the ‘decentralisation’ that all of the political parties claim to want?
• getting the obstacles out of the way. How can we remove the barriers that stop institutions from interacting?

These sessions have already attracted some great participants – the interest has gone well beyond my expectations with some real innovators putting their hands up to participate as well as a smattering of interest from prominent local and national politicians as well as mainstream-media journalists.

The schedule is still being finalised at the moment, but I’d be really interested in hearing from anyone with practical experience, or with considered views on any of these subjects – particularly from councillors or people working in local government communications / democratic services / electoral services?

If you have any ideas for sessions at this strand of Reboot Britain, please visit the PICamp site, register and let’s hear them?

I’ve been finding it hugely useful in recent weeks and have noted how one can enter into dialogue with politicians of other parties as well as with journalists and bloggers of all persuasions, who are quite happy to ‘follow’ one on Twitter, but who might not wish to ask or accept to be one’s Facebook ‘friend’, in case that were seen to be some kind of endorsement. And the same is true in the other direction! Moreover, the 140-character limit, while being constraining, is actually a very useful discipline…

There are far too many ministers, all of whom think it is their job to generate initiatives; ideas are allowed to be developed and launched without any reference to those at the front line; change management and the time it takes is not treated seriously; there is complete lack of realism about how far the centre’s intended messages actually reach; civil servants fail to see or warn (or be allowed to warn) their masters that every new target or piece of guidance had an adverse impact on all these existing targets and instructions (not to mention local morale).

No disrespect to Matthew, but this is a very technocratic argument. The idea that there should be fewer ministers is perhaps not a bad one – though it needs to happen alongside a more powerful and independent Commons and a reformed Lords. No matter how many Ministers there are, however, they will still be put on a spot on the Today programme and asked to make a commitment that “[bad thing] will never be allowed to happen again.”

There are certainly real opportunities for reform in the fiscal squeeze that’s ahead. The barrier to transformation, though, is not hyperactive Ministers who don’t let technocrats manage, it’s an immature political dialogue in which the media and the public create and feed off outrage and disgust, while politicians sit on top of the bureaucracy and try to placate the beast.

This is a local government problem as much as a national government one. Anyone who has seen parents protesting about school places or attended a controversial meeting of the planning committee will understand that.

If the spending cuts to come are not to create more disaffection and anger, they can’t be done behind closed doors. They need to be discussed openly, in public, and real choices have to be set out clearly, not decided and then ‘consulted upon’.

People should have the chance to see the books, and have intermediaries more trusted than journalists to explain to them what the choices are. They then need to be able to express an opinion more nuanced than ‘I want everything for free’.

Creating the circumstances in which this can happen is part of a widening and deepening of active citizenship that is essential if the political world is to catch up with what today’s citizens expect.

I’m not so naive as to think that this level of openness will appear in the twelve months before a general election, although it would be nice to think that it could. Afterwards, though, if Labour or the Conservatives are really serious about localism and democratic reform, a big conversation, not a Big Conversation, needs to be created.

There’s a parallel, I believe, with the push to create new participatory spaces. Like broadband, the assumption that we all want it, will all invest in working out how to use it, to game it, to let it become another one of the weapons in the armoury that we use to take on the world – is an unexamined assumption.

And then think where that leaves those people? Many of the ‘wired adults’ are using online tools without ever taking an interest in politics, democracy, or the participative options that exist to tackle the issues around them.

Shopping, chatting, watching missed TV programmes, gambling and other activities all trump ‘engagement’. Others (such as Kevin, for instance) can quantify just how little most people want to be oppressed by demands to engage, to participate, and to have your say, but the one conclusion that can safely be reached is this: Those who lionise the notion of active citizenship, and promote a more participatory politics massively over-estimate the appetite for it.

Have those ‘unwired’ adults ever told you that they’re happy to let the wired-up interfering busy-body do-gooders have a disproportionatly strong voice in the big decisions that effect their lives? I ask because I’ve never seen any evidence that such consent has been given.

And if it hasn’t, why is so much energy being put into encouraging people to participate in decision-making processes that effect us all?

‘Simon’ is an avatar for good decision-making processes and the collective wisdom of the site’s users. It’s designed to ensure that users go through all of the processes in addressing difficult decisions (ones that often get put off because it’s easier to postpone something when you don’t know how to do it). It aims to offer a 360-degree view of problems and to remove the emotional biases wherever possible.

Another example of how we can play a constructive role contributing to decision-making processes at any level.

(Via Read Write Web)

I’m hoping that the event will cover a wide range of themes, ranging from 

• how we can take Tim Davies ’50 hurdles’ idea and look at ways that public organisations of all kinds can be encouraged to address them
• what will policymaking look like in the future?
• how ‘hyperlocal’ communities work – how local government can interface with them and whether they are always a good thing in the first place
• defending inactive citizens from the activists
• reinstating the claim of local government to be the main agent in solving local problems

Nothing is final yet, and all of these (and more) will be fleshed out in the coming weeks over on the PICamp site.

In the meantime, make sure you don’t miss out. Tickets are here.

“Gordon Brown’s central problem is that he conveys endless moralism, duty and calling, while failing entirely to communicate who he is. The civic deficit, on the other hand, is that people aspire to optimal identities, tastes and fashions, but only rarely gauge themselves in terms of ‘the good life’. The politician measures worth in ethical terms while the citizen does so in aesthetic terms.”