Posts By John Bordeaux

Friends with Agendas (FWA)

Why don’t companies “get” social? Why do consultants have such a hard time helping clients to leverage social networks and tools for business value? Perhaps it is because in ‘doing social,’ (rather than being social), you become the FWA. The “friends with benefits” is a well-understood concept, which I will not describe further; but I’dRead… Read more »

Waking Up.

I think we are waking up. From my limited perch, it appears sudden clarity is emerging in businesses. The past months I have been privileged to work with clients who get it. The rebels deep within their walls are being heeded, funded, and presented with the intractable questions. Having tried everything in the MBA kitRead… Read more »

The Death of Mystery?

A view of the Arctic ice in August 2012 Actor Bruce Dern was on a show recently where he mused about his first days in Hollywood rubbing shoulders with the giants of the entertainment industry. “They were larger than life,” he told the host, “because no one knew what they were doing after school.” HeRead… Read more »

Trusting the Terrain

This picture does not indicate a non-stop train. One would think, if one did not speak Dutch, that you boarded the train at Tilburg, and de-trained at Den Haag Centraal. (My actual origin point was Eindhoven a few hours earlier, but that’s part of the story.) To expand. If one grew up on New York’sRead… Read more »

Return to Menlo Park

Sigh… I’ve been wrong about Facebook 1.5 times so far. The first time, with the advent of Google+, I predicted that a social network that begins with circles would triumph over one that seeks to make everything you say or do available to all of humanity. I said Google+ would kill Facebook. Yes I did.Read… Read more »

The Expertise Strikes Back

Tom Nichols writes of the death of expertise in a recent, well-received blog. When he first tweeted a reference to the topic, as he was writing it, I immediately thought he was referring to Cognitive Resource Theory (CRT) – the finding that expertise is essential in high-stress decision environments, but less so in low-stress decisionRead… Read more »

“Complicated” vs. “Complex”

Someone asked for comment, I offered it. The background: A gentleman who makes a living “reducing complexity” for IT systems keeps running into some of us on Twitter who study complexity. You can imagine the entertaining exchanges, which led to his posting these observations on his LinkedIn group. The ask: There is a group ofRead… Read more »

The Guru Problem

Years back, I had the good fortune to talk with David Gilmour, back when he was deeply involved in the Tacit Knowledge System. The software, since absorbed and disappeared by Oracle (hoping my Oracle friends can correct me here), simply allowed you to find expertise. You ask a question, and the system decided who couldRead… Read more »

Social Media Centers of Excellence? Really?

My morning Twitter feed led to me to an article released in July of this year, an intriguing if baffling idea from Dion Hinchcliffe here I put my tea down. Hard. Here’s my issue with the thoughtful piece linked above: it treats ‘social media’ as just another enterprise skill that needs to be accommodated withRead… Read more »