Yesterday during a regular pass-through of a favourite blog, I ran across this mention of Clive Thompson’s "The See-Through CEO", an article in Wired from March 2007.
I clicked through the link in Euan’s blog post, read the Wired article, appreciated it (with my usual thought about the ubiquity of Don Tapscott’s marketing efforts – tho’ props where props are due: Don has been researching and writing interesting and useful information about things digital for a very long time) and then went on about my day.
Today whilst swimming and just before finalizing my preparations for a presentation I am giving tomorrow, I wondered if I could find an interesting quote or example from the article. As I continued to think about that, something began to gnaw at me … where had I seen the material or that article before ?
Aha ! Here it is … an excerpt of my comments on the article from March, 2007.
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Radical Transparency – Why Exposing Yourself Is The Future of Business
The saucy, irreverent hyperbole cited above is the front-cover message on the most recent Wired Magazine. The article that addresses the promise on the front cover is titled The See-Through CEO, by Clive Thompson.
Here’s the first paragraph:
Pretend for a second that you’re a CEO. Would you reveal your deepest., darkest secrets online ? Would you confess that you’re an indecisive weakling, that your colleagues are inept, that you’re not really sure if you can meet payroll ?
Sounds crazy, right ?
After all, Coke doesn’t tell Pepsi what’s in the formula. Nobody sane strips down naked in front of their peers. But that’s exactly what Glenn Kelman did. And he thinks it saved his business.
The Wired article on radical transparency chronicles the arrival of widespread awareness of how clickable hyperlinks and networked-based relationships are having an impact on the corporate world. The article contains all the usual suspects … stories and examples from the blogosphere that are now tired and shopworn.
I’d have to admit I expected to learn more and I am surprised that Wired has published what I consider to be somewhat of a puff piece (see my rant-and-whine disclosure at the end of this blog post).
Additional rant context … many other bloggers, writers and theorists (Malone, Davis, Shirky, Boyd, Weinberger, Searls, Locke, Sessum, de Castells, Turkle, Semple, Mardle, McGee, Paterson, Barefoot, Scoble, Tapscott, Israel, Anderson, Ratcliffe, Ito , Blaser, Funch … on and on) have offered their takes on this emerging awareness … so I am really taking the Wired article as a signal that the early weak indicators have settled into place.
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