investiledysfunction

In this day and age (saying that makes me seem old, eh?) of Second Life, avatars, the Sims, networked video games, etc, being actively involved in a virtual world is pretty common (or at least more common than it was 5 years ago). Sometimes, the virtual worlds are pretty exciting relative to the humdrum real world we live in and so we get enthralled/lost in these alter-worlds.

But let us remember one of the pitfalls of such worlds is that the friends and assets we accumulate in these pixelated alter-worlds can all go away if someone decides to turn the servers off. And at those times, we’re smacked with the reality that there is a reality and we just might have to deal with real people and not the idealized avatars that we interact with on the computer.

So where am I going with this? Well, it looks like the servers just went off in one of these virtual worlds and the denizens of this happy place are fighting mad. This group of folks (real ones) is upset with Disney for shuttering their Virtual Disneyland which Disney killed this past Wednesday. Basically, this online version of the theme park let people create avatars and explore the parks various attractions and given that there is a hardcore Disney follower demographic, a group of diehards started coming to the site and spending hours touring the virtual destination, accumulating points to buy virtual items, interacting with fellow diehards, etc.

Disney which built the site to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Disneyland contends the free site was never going to be around forever. And this makes sense. Disneyland cannot offer free services because people really like it. By contrast, Disney’s Club Penguin or Disney Fairies virtual worlds charge or plan to charge because there has to be a business model behind these types of ventures. Yes, it is the sad economic reality that we’re faced with in the real world.

And so my points (you still with me?) are two-fold. Disney made the right call and the people who are enamored with the free VirtualDisney probably just need to get over it. Free rarely lasts because someone has to pay for it.

This speaks to a bigger issue with lots of businesses being created today in what seems to be Bubble2.0. If your business is predicated on social networking, crowdsourcing and advertising leveraging web2.0 or some equally nebulous nonsesne, there is no real economic model behind it, and I suspect there maybe some problems no matter what people/venture capitalists maybe telling you. Yes, some of these cool tools and services will get bought by someone but the vast majority are likely to go the way of VirtualDisneyLand.

Given the vast amounts of unproductive complexity (UC) that resides within organizations, it is amazing how prone we are to believing silver-bullet strategies will transform the company and miraculously grow revenues, shareholder returns, profits, customer and employee satisfaction. 

When I talk about unproductive complexity, I’m talking about the absurd matrixed organization structures, transfer pricing issues, overly-detailed budget processes, steering committees, infighting due to silos, bizarre short-term oriented incentive structures and other ridiculous processes and practices organizations adopt.  Managers would have you believe that this complexity is an unfortunate consequence of being big and global or multinational, and to some extent, that is true.  But unproductive complexity is often a result of territorial and suboptimal behavior.  It’s end result is slow and often poor decision-making.  Unproductive complexity is the enemy of innovation.  It is good, however, at creating job security for a host of mediocre and incompetent people who can sneak by while they shuffle papers from left to right and churn out PowerPoint presentations and Excel spreadsheets.  And given their accomplices in the leadership ranks, this activity over accomplishment method becomes acceptable.  If you want to change organizational performance, focus on stamping out unproductive complexity.  This should be the focus on reengineering efforts - not knee jerk cost cutting and layoffs.

So with that rant about unproductive complexity out of the way, let me get back to the subject I wanted cover.  Given this UC, it perhaps makes sense that leaders are drawn to consultant, software, academic elixirs that are simple.  With all the day to day b.s. they have to put up with, it’s probably comforting to think that if they just do “this one great thing”, they’ll have changed company performance and arrived.  There is probably some psychological basis so I’ll just assume that there is some school of psychology that says “when people are overwhelmed, they take comfort in something that doesn’t overwhelm them.”

And as a result, consultants, academics and many software vendors who’ve realized this bring elixirs and other alchemy-in-a-box solutions to management and with great success, they sell them and make lots of money.  In fact, entire industries emerge around some of these practices.  This enables the leaders to not think too hard for a bit because the solution is just right in front of them.  It also often serves the dual purpose of making the leader seem bold, visionary, strategic, etc.  These are all nice appelations that we like.

Here are some of my favorite elixirs that appear to be hot these days.  Some actually have value but given everyone is hanging out their shingle and professing expertise in many of these areas, I worry that organizations will end up with a whole lot of nothing after investing in these efforts with these dubious experts.  

Here is my list which I hope to revisit over time and get input on.  The top elixirs, hot topics, etc are: business intelligence, IT portfolio management, innovation (always hot), corporate social responsibility, anything green, web2.0, social networking.