Don't Compromise!

I’m not the first to observe that we live in an increasingly observed and monitored world. As we leave for work, CCTV follows our journey – for many of us to the office door. Swipe cards and key codes then follow us round our buildings, tracking our location and our movements. (In a sense that brings home just what ‘too much information’ can mean, that last item can even be taken very literally: I’m struck by the number of buildings that require a key code to get from a desk to a lavatory: there’s a poor joke about emergency evacuation procedures there somewhere, but let’s carry on …). Further systems track our access: what we’ve opened, actioned, read, sent, received (and when and for how long). They say that in any Internet forum, it’s only a matter of time before someone mentions Hitler or Stalin, but these are levels of observation that put twentieth century totalitarians to shame. (I’m disconcerted that this blog has now mentioned Hitler on five occasions, and that one of the pioneers of the digital age will make some interesting points on totalitarianism in a few paragraphs time.)

Neither am I the first to comment on the level of chatter about privacy running in parallel with a world in which many of us happily update our Facebook pages with things we might regret if we thought just a little harder (or were the regretful type). Those who need the following advice most won’t be reading, but remember that HR and recruitment personnel now spend working time reading your Facebook pages as well as your cv (and, presumably, log this in timesheet systems for quantitative analysis as they do so).

All which left me feeling a bit ‘hang on a minute’, even if I was unclear which cost code to assign the minute to. It struck this wasn’t so much “‘Both/And’ vs ‘Either/Or’” (a wonderful idea from Sharlyn Lauby, which we’ve previously responded to), as “possible vs desirable” (which we’ve also commented on before). I wasn’t purely thinking in terms of data capture vs privacy either, although I can’t be the only person to either wonder who ever looks at the incredible amount of information that’s being compiled on just about everything, or to feel uneasy that what’s being gathered is actually data that’s being subjected to numerical rather than qualitative analysis. We can capture all this ‘data’, so we do. But even the most accurate headcount of our chickens and eggs won’t tell us which came first.

(The technology makes it possible for the technology to provide ‘answers’ too, but the interpretation can be only the one it’s been programmed to make: too many of us are blindsided by technology to the extent that we don’t ask ourselves how loaded the questions might have been when we’re presented with a set of ‘answers’. “Lies, damned lies, and statistics, as they say …”).

What got me thinking was a different word altogether: anonymity. Which, to me, may be related to privacy, but is not the same thing. (I can do something at a private level while making it clear the actions or words were mine; doing something more publicly but withholding my identity is fundamentally different.) It’s a concept with a tradition behind it – voting in most countries, for example, or journalistic sources – but it’s one that current practices are increasingly wiping out.

Yet anonymity has positive and constructive applications that can be (in)valuable. Consider, for example, 360 degree feedback questionnaires or psychometric or diagnostic tools used in group or team settings. Feedback is both aggregated and anonymised: the purpose if not to identify ‘X thinks Y should try doing Z more often/less belligerently/more diligently/quicker/elsewhere’. The point is to identify what Y might modify about their behaviour that would benefit X, Y and the rest of the alphabet. After all, if X and Y were otherwise able to resolve this, there’s a chance they might already have done so.

It was a point that Richard Donkin also made in his book “The Future of Work” (which we reviewed recently) in highlighting the potential benefits of anonymised voting systems:

Mary Meaney, a partner specializing in performance transformation in the London offices of McKinsey & Co opted to use audience response technology among senior executives at a company she was advising during a change program.

Asked whether the company had a clear and consistent strategy for the business, the answer was a unanimous “yes”. However, when asked, using the confidential voting technology to agree or disagree with various different descriptions of the strategy, the executives were divided with an even distribution over six different responses. “The CEO exploded,” says Meaney, “but it brought out into the open what had previously been hidden under the surface: no one had any clear idea of what the strategy was. The next step was to sit down with the senior team and create a new strategy.”

Donkin is an optimist on the potential future of these technologies – where organisations apply them with care and discretion and can overcome the possibility that ‘The boss probably wouldn’t allow it’. (Our earlier post, Streams of unconsciousness – the problem with habits, looked at the self-defence strategies that increase in parallel with personal power: like any potentially valuable change, a use of anonymity that might lead to the uncovering of a need to change tack will face opposition). He sees the future expansion of the use of the Internet as diminishing the significance of face-to-face encounters in the workplace. He draws the following conclusion:

The winners in this new world will be those who understand the strength of their ideas but who might not be able to express themselves so well in the debating chamber atmosphere of a business meeting. The meek really are about to inherit the earth.”

As with much else in Donkin’s thought-provoking book, I wanted to shout (or maybe type) ‘But …!’. Leaving aside the suitability or readiness of the meek to inherit control, they will need to brush up their online debating skills too. Computer-mediated communication has its own skills and foibles to master, and in-house systems with personal accounts and user tracking might not encourage the publically unspeakable to be said anymore readily online. The increasing addition of video might make things complex too (or provide an unexpected boost to the balaclava industry.)

There are issues with anonymity, of course. The best and most valuable online forums tend to have either attentive human moderators or an agreed social protocol that discourages those keen to accuse each other of fascism or Stalinism merely for disagreeing. (Donkin doesn’t comment on how comfortable the meek might be with that: even braver novice forum users might blanch.) I know, for example, of one forum for carers of dementia sufferers. It has moderators, but its real strength lies in a resource that probably sees itself as anything but strong: ordinary people caring and coping as best they can, who are encouraged to remain anonymous. They often rant with anger, frustration, or grief – but that, in a way, is the point. Post on any issue that is causing you stress and you will get a stream of answers. It doesn’t matter if you forget your manners, fail to fill in Form B, or that you ‘bad mouth’ official support agencies: someone who has been through your crisis will listen and offer you help. [They will also offer what ‘the official channels’ can so often fail to give you – emotional support.] To other users, you’re merely a random user name – Scared Joan and Little Bear or whatever: the relative anonymity allows everyone to focus on getting or receiving help (and hugely extends the value provided by the sponsoring charity along the way).

But there are less happy – or valuable – virtual worlds, and even some of those that were proudly part of ‘the digerati’ a mere decade ago are beginning to comment. Considering the following extract from a New York Times article, The Madness of Crowds and an Internet Delusion:

In the 1990s, Jaron Lanier was one of the digital pioneers hailing the wonderful possibilities that would be realized once the Internet allowed musicians, artists, scientists and engineers around the world to instantly share their work. Now, like a lot of us, he is having second thoughts.

Mr. Lanier, a musician and avant-garde computer scientist — he popularized the term “virtual reality” — wonders if the Web’s structure and ideology are fostering nasty group dynamics and mediocre collaborations. His new book, “You Are Not a Gadget,” is a manifesto against “hive thinking” and “digital Maoism,” by which he means the glorification of open-source software, free information and collective work at the expense of individual creativity.

He blames the Web’s tradition of “drive-by anonymity” for fostering vicious pack behavior on blogs, forums and social networks. He acknowledges the examples of generous collaboration, like Wikipedia, but argues that the mantras of “open culture” and “information wants to be free” have produced a destructive new social contract.”

It reminds me of two books, both published in 1997, that in hindsight seem prescient. (Or just neglected, as they swam at an unconventional angle to the prevailing tide.) David Shenk’s “Data Smog” and Paul Gilster’s “Digital Literacy” offered valuable comments on responding to a glut of ‘information’ (there’s a separate issue about the difference between that and ‘data’, but this article would become a book itself) and importance of applying your own human filter to what you find online in assessing not just its quality, but its veracity. Anonymity can be a cover under which much that’s undesirable can be perpetrated, even if it’s only defacing Britney Spears’ Wikipedia entry rather than publishing potentially more damaging dis- or mis-information.

There’s much more that could be explored here (or even merely pontificated upon in the hope others will draw brighter conclusions from it), but I’ve managed to come to two interim conclusions:

• Our use of technology in the workplace – especially if we are to head to message from a recent Work Foundation report that outstanding leaders achieve success ‘through people’ (an unduly glib summary: much fuller information is online here) – needs more and better thought than we give it: Sharlyn Lauby’s comments about computer and people working together (‘both/and’) do matter, but the nature of the relationship is vital. David Shenk, interestingly, was a signatory to the statement underlying the Technorealism project (there’s a legacy website at http://www.technorealism.org/) that as long ago as 1998 questioned the mantra’s Jarod Lenier is now pondering: discussion of what ‘technorealism and the workplace’ might mean seems an overdue and much need project)
• Anonymity as a tool needs careful handling, but it is a valuable part of our arsenal as human beings in the modern age. But it’s not a matter of an extra button on an interface, or a different login: it’s a matter of knowing when a prevailing culture, an over-riding voice or just plain old-fashioned bullying are standing in the way of something valuable by making ‘dissenting’ comment unwelcome, too self-damaging to contemplate or even literally impossible. At which point, it seems right to quote Peter Drucker, in a context that makes his words read as much as a warning as good advice:

One does not “manage” people. The task is to lead people.”

 

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