Web history: middle of the beginning
The Web has only just begun to make its mark. As we approach 2008, we are only in the middle of the beginning of a revolution that is transforming humanity.
I often meet web professionals who are frustrated with their websites. This is quite understandable. Change can seem quite slow at times. I have even seen websites go backwards for a while.
However, the problem we have as web professionals is that we live every day in the center of the Web. We see the challenges all around us. We see the future clearly and want to get there as quickly as possible.
Sometimes we see the future too clearly. Sometimes we are too impatient. To move forward, sometimes we need to look backward, and upward.
We need to look backward to see all that we have done, because, let me tell you, an awful lot has been achieved in a very short period of time. Look back even 5 years. What was your website like then? What were management thinking about your website back then? You have made an awful lot of solid progress.
The Web is only about 10 years old. We are in the middle of the beginning. Something as big as the Web cannot be quickly understood by societies and organizations. In fact, I think societies are ahead of organizations because the Web delivers more benefits to societies than it does to organizations.
Organizations, particularly larger ones, take time to adapt to major new developments. This is quite normal. In fact, it could take a total of 30 years for most organizations to truly adapt. 30 years in the history of humankind is not a long time.
We need to look upward because the senior managers in our organizations are often the ones who find it hardest to adapt. They are far from the web natives. They didn’t succeed by building great intranets or public websites. In most cases, they don’t even use the intranet or public websites that much.
You need to subtly but consistently educate them as to what a proper website should do. You need to be constantly proving to them that your websites are delivering productivity improvements, efficiencies, and generating true value for the organization. Otherwise, you risk them having golf course conversations where they come up with some unrealistic understanding of what the Web is about.
If you are not already educating your senior managers and other important stakeholders, then you should make that a primary objective for 2008. But more importantly, you should stand back and take a bow. You have been part of a grand adventure; a pivotal shift in how we work, communicate and live.
The website you are involved with is giving your customers a faster and simpler way to do the things they need to do. That’s good for your customers. It is also good for your organization (whether it knows it yet or not), and it is certainly good for your long-term career. The future is customer-centric.
Neil McPherson says:
Added on December 17th, 2007 at 5:16 amDear Gerry,
It was not a great article really. But it had me out of bed after two sleepless hours this morning, at 6.00 am on a winter morning here in Germany. I realised (we use s here)you had undertaken something brave on this Yuletide: to try to produce and overarching statement about where the heck we are now, at the threshold of 2008…as far as the internet and us are concerned. For me, your passionate commitment to something came through. And that was good.
It put me in the mind of another Christmas eve when I stood on a street one cold morning like this in Los Angeles, listening to an Apollo astronaut (Bormann)read or recite an apropriate prayer as his spacecraft circled the earth. My little tranny was good enough to pick up the local relay of his broadcast that mromning. Tears escaped my eyes.
It was a life changeing event for me. I was a broadcaster, and now I am an inzternet man.
Time magazine caught it well, that feeling, in this article, which begins:
1968
Apollo Astronauts
FROM THE TIME ARCHIVE
Jan. 3, 1969
I undertook a new voyage to a new Heaven and World…
So it seemed to Christopher Columbus in 1500. In the closing days of 1968, all mankind could exult in the vision of a new universe. For all its upheavals and frustrations, the year would be remembered to the end of time for the dazzling skills and Promethean daring that sent mortals around the moon. It would be celebrated as the year in which men saw at first hand their little earth entire, a remote, blue-brown sphere hovering like a migrant bird in the hostile night of space.
Pick a Year2001:Rudy Giuliani2000:G. W. Bush1999:Jeff Bezos1998:Clinton/Starr1997:Andy Grove1996:Dr. David Ho1995:Newt Gingrich1994:John Paul II1993:Peacemakers1992:Bill Clinton1991:Ted Turner1990:George Bush1989:Gorbachev1988:Earth1987:Gorbachev1986:Corazon Aquino1985:Deng Xiaoping1984:Peter Ueberroth1983:Ronald Reagan/Yuri Andropov1982:The Computer1981:Lech Walesa1980:Ronald Reagan1979:Khomeini1978:Hsiao P’ing1977:Anwar Sadat1976:Jimmy Carter1975:U.S. Women1974:King Faisal1973:Judge Sirica1972:Nixon/Kissinger1971:Richard Nixon1970:Willy Brandt1969:Middle Class1968:U.S. Astronauts1967:Lyndon Johnson1966:Young People1965:Westmoreland1964:Lyndon Johnson1963:ML King Jr.1962:John XXIII1961:J. F. Kennedy1960:U.S. Scientists1959:Eisenhower1958:De Gaulle1957:Khrushchev1956:Freedom Fighter1955:Harlow Curtice1954:John Dulles1953:Adenauer1952:Elizabeth II1951:Mossadegh1950:Fighting-Man1949:Churchill1948:Harry Truman1947:George Marshall1946:James F. Byrnes1945:Harry Truman1944:Eisenhower1943:George Marshall1942:Joseph Stalin1941:F. D. Roosevelt1940:Churchill1939:Joseph Stalin1938:Adolf Hitler1937:C. Kai-Shek1936:Mrs. W. Simpson1935:Haile Selassie1934:F. D. Roosevelt1933:Hugh S. Johnson1932:F. D. Roosevelt1931:Pierre Laval1930:Gandhi1929:Owen D. Young1928:Chrysler1927:LindberghComplete List
The year’s transcendent legacy may well be that in Christmas week 1968, the human race glimpsed not a new continent or a new colony, but a new age, one that will inevitably reshape man’s view of himself and his destiny. For what must be surely rank as one of the greatest physical adventures in history was, unlike the immortal explorations of the past, infinitely more than a reconnaissance of geography or unknown elements. It was a journey into man’s future, a hopeful but urgent summons, in Poet Archibald MacLeish’s words, “to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold—brothers who know now that they are truly brothers.”
That is where my current adventure began its turnings that bring me to this place now…
Cheers and Merry Christmas,
Neil
sorry about the early-morning typos. It’s 6.15
Katie Pearse says:
Added on December 17th, 2007 at 8:58 pmThanks for this one, Gerry. It is important for us to take a breath sometimes and put it all into perspective, as you have so eloquently done here.
It IS frustrating as a web manager because I do know what needs to be done, yet don’t have all the power to make it happen. (I am sure most don’t!) You are right about senior staff not being particularly web-savvy simply because it really is a new revolution.
As a young person new to her career, it helps to read this so I can understand the perspective of the senior managers more clearly. Communicating to them intelligently will go a long way in helping my websites succeed.
Allan Tanner says:
Added on December 19th, 2007 at 10:38 amI’d echo what Katie says above. My organisation knows that its website is a powerful tool but it doesn’t exploit that or back it up by giving us the means or authority to develop it to the extent that we could.
Part of that is down to a lack of understanding about what the web can do and what its different aspects offer. There’s an awful lot of ill-informed noise around - the current spotlight on social networking sites is a good example - so I can understand why senior managers might choose to stick their head in the sand when it comes to the web. But we should chip away at management, and one method might be to pose them the question ‘what would happen if we didn’t have the website?’.
Thanks for a positive & motivating article. You’re right - we’ve come a long way, and we should draw satisfaction from that.
Clint Neilsen says:
Added on December 31st, 2007 at 1:16 amDue to the festive season I am a little late in this post.
I don’t think the disconnect sits entirely with Snr Management. I tend to concur with Jim Sterne in his book “Customer Service on the Internet”
Senior level management didn’t get there by being dumb. They’ve read the in-flight magazines and they know something important is happening. They know there’s got to be a way to take advantage of all this Web stuff. They just don’t know what to do about it. So they turn to your boss and ask. Your boss forms committees and focus groups and task forces and has reports written and benchmarking studies commissioned and spins his wheels (emphasis on the “his”)
Of course I don’t have all of the answers, however I believe most of the mistrust & negative attitude for the online space stems from previous technical projects driven by IT (without business cases) falling over.
As online professionals we need to obtain data & represent it in terms of $$$ values, this is the language that Snr Management understands. In-fact the above Sterne quote comes from the chapter on metrics.
Unfortunately the forums for online professionals have categories for “eMarketing”, “eCommerce” & “Web Project Management”, is there a good online forum/community regarding the day to day issues in getting buy-in from above?
This is such a relevant & important topic that we should collaborate on.
Brian Anderson says:
Added on January 11th, 2008 at 6:19 amThe website needs to be integrated as part of the marketing (promotion and customer service) department and be open to all input from everyone in the company, especially those that deal directly with the customer.
Far too many executives think in a compartmentalized fashion. Every decision they make affecting current or future customers should include how the company website can facilitate it, even in minor ways. That teaches the public that the company is plugged into now - and into the younger generations who will shortly become their customers. They’re still stuck in the paradigm of thinking about short term, quarterly results instead of long-term viability.