Gates has identified 12 rules for corporate digital survival based upon the use of digital capabilities. TCR believes these are also applicable to Community. The structure of this article is:
- The rules are based upon the book
- The Commentary is TCR’s description of how it can be applied to the Community, and
- The Challenges describe what the Community has to do to be able to fulfill the rules
Rule 1
Insist that Communication flow through e-mail
“E-mail “helps turn middle managers from information filters into “doers”. There’s no doubt that e-mail flattens the hierarchical structure of an organization. It encourages people to speak up. It encourages managers to listen.”
COMMENTARY
First, the community must define who is “middle management” for the community. Logic would suggest that the heads of all organizations would be included. Employers, churches, schools, all make decisions that effect the “product” that community collectively delivers. Second, the executive management team must be defined and third, all identified managers must have access to e-mail.
CHALLENGE:
- To ensure that everyone has access to the Internet complete with collaborative tools.
- To create a consensus that involvement will be beneficial to the individual organization as well as the community as a whole.
Rule 2
Study Sales Data On-line to share insights easily
“When figures are in an electronic form, knowledge workers can study them, annotate them, look at them in any amount of detail or in any view they want and pass them all around for collaborations. Going digital changes your business.”
COMMENTARY
Your competition is your surrounding communities. Unlike the business world, communities have never defined their “product” or how to measure its market success. A definition of those indicators- an index to a community’s Quality of Life”- that can be measured should lead to the development of a system that allows for the automatic collection and distribution of these numbers for analysis. Once you know the trends and the indicators, meaningful strategies can be developed.
CHALLENGE:
- Define a Community Index with prescribed data indicators as a standard
- Ensure that all “keepers of the data” have the tools to systemically integrate all key data into the Community Index
Rule 3
Shift knowledge workers to high-level thinking
“They need an immediate and constant flow and rich views of the right information…What I am describing here is a new level of information analysis that enables knowledge workers to turn passive data into active information-“
COMMENTARY
In order to achieve high level thinking a community must provide the tools and the training to develop the insights to produce relevant information and it must reward the out-of-the-box thinking that allows this to occur. Routine but stimulating electronic interaction is critical to institutionalizing these values within the community.
CHALLENGE:
- A commitment of time and resource to train participants in the concept of the Community Index
An inclusive visioning process to provide a common focus for participation
Rule 4
Use Digital Tools to create virtual teams
“A collaborative culture reinforced by information flow makes it possible for smart people all over a company to be in touch with each other. When you get a critical mass of high-IQ people working in concert, the energy level shoots way up…Your aim should be to enhance the way people work together, share ideas, sometime wrangle and build on one another’s ideas- and then act in concert for a common purpose.”
COMMENTARY
Moving beyond e-mail, the middle managers need to have access to a broader set of tools including video conferencing. They also must be allowed to participate in strategic processes within their own organizations as well as integrating those plans into a broader community vision. And implementation strategies must be monitored and renewed as a cyclical process.
CHALLENGE:
- Acquire, deploy strategic tools
Train the diverse and often low tech participants in the use of the tools
Rule 5
Convert every paper process to a digital process “Paper consumption was only a symptom of a much bigger problem, though: administrative processes that were too complicated and time-intensive.”
COMMENTARY
Electronic forms not only speed submissions and review efforts they also can be incredible time and travel savers. The cost benefits of these programs must be performed on a community basis and must be practical at the operator level and integrated at the Community Index level
CHALLENGE:
- Defining what to collect and where to find it based on Community Index requirements
- Integration of non-compatible systems; Integration on non-electronic data flows
Rule 6
Use Digital Tools to eliminate single task jobs
“One-dimensional repetitive work is exactly what computers, robots and other machines are best at and what human workers are poorly suited to and almost uniformly despise. In the digital age, you need to make knowledge workers out of every employee possible.”
COMMENTARY
A community wide effort here would raise the technical level of the workers, the productivity of the work force, and it should be a catalyst to achieving a high-tech strategy for community development. In the Community environment this probably would lead to integration of work plans and a more cooperative and integrated work force. A lot of data would be developed from non-office based workers.
CHALLENGE:
- Conduct a strategic assessment
Rule 7
Create a Digital Feedback Loop
“You need to be flexible in the face of evolving requirements. You should have a crisp decision process to evaluate change, including a provision for re-evaluating your original project goals.”
COMMENTARY
Be uniformly open and flexible.
CHALLENGE:
- Establish a reporting process to the community that is operationally effective, politically neutral and strategically helpful.
Rule 8
Use Digital Systems to route customer complaints immediately
- “Focus on your most unhappy customers.
- Use technology to gather rich information in their unhappy experiences with your product and to find out what they you to put into the product.
Use technology to drive the news to the right people in a hurry.”
COMMENTARY
The best feedback is that emanating from problems or criticisms. A universal goal must be to capture it wherever possible and route it to all that it impacts. Monitor the trends; report the lessons learned and the report the effectiveness of the response.
CHALLENGE:
- Integral to previously cited activities.
Rule 9
Use Digital communication to redefine the boundaries
“Revisit the areas of your company that aren’t directly involved in those (core) competencies, and consider whether web technologies can enable you to spin off those tasks. Let another company take over the management responsibilities for that work, and use modern communications technologies to work closely with the people- now partners instead of employees- doing the work.”
COMMENTARY
Re-engineering not just the processes but also the relationship of the workers that implement them can lead to consolidation and specialization as well as expanded relationships and new opportunities. It depends on how open the team is to the process.
CHALLENGE:
- Overcome potential regulatory constraints in these re-definitions.
Rule 10
Transform every business process into a just-in-time delivery, “Ultimately the most important “speed” issue for companies is cultural. It’s changing the perceptions within a company about the rapidity with which everybody has to move.”
COMMENTARY
An overall awareness of how information is used and the team-ship involved in producing it is key to understanding its relevance. Cultural change is resisted when it is perceived as change for change sake and embraced, or at least accepted, it the motivation is reasonable and relevant to all. A community that is on the move and working together is one that will understand and embrace change.
CHALLENGE:
- Integral to previously cited activities.
Rule 11
Use Digital Delivery to eliminate the middleman
“If you are a middleman, the Internet’s promise of cheaper prices and faster service can “disintermediate” you, eliminate your role of assisting the transaction between the producer and the consumer. If the Internet is about to “disintermediate” you, one tack is to use the Internet to back into the action.”
COMMENTARY
Seed the Internet’s search engines with those indicators at which your community excels…and go direct. Collaborate with your partners to enrich every “hit” on any web site within your community. Leverage your state and federal organization’s systems to ensure that you can access those areas of concern to you directly; expand the offerings by pooling resources and broadening the application of those services.
CHALLENGE:
- Establish an Intranet among all web sites in the community and those that serve the Community; develop sites for core areas currently without them.
Rule 12
Use Digital Tools to help customers solve problems for themselves
“Smart companies will combine Internet services and personal contact in programs that give their customers the benefits of both kinds of interaction. You want to move pure transactions to the Internet, use online communications for information sharing and routine communication, and reserve face-to-face interaction for the activities that add the most value.”
COMMENTARY
With digital technology, the community can integrate generic functions by pooling purchasing and development resources for “keyboard-to-keyboard” transactions, by centralizing the ear-to-ear transactions and thereby reducing the demand for face-to-face transactions. A community wide system that is both integrated and professional reinforces your image of a community on the move.
CHALLENGE:
- Once the core integration is complete, examine this next layer– a common, 24-hour community receptionist would be a beginning.