Platforms, not programs

John Hagel’s Keynote presentation at FastForward has a vital message for general managers. This high-quality video makes the case for shifting the basic business model from push to pull.

The USER REVOLUTION is in full sway.

The way out of the squeeze is to move from programs to platforms. He’s not talking about media. Rather, programs are push, content, and structured (as with software). Platforms are frameworks, networks, flexible, and loosely coupled. It won’t be an easy transition; many companies will die along the way. (The lifespan of an S+P company is already down to 15 years, an 80% drop from historical levels.)

Hagel suggests three pragmatic, future-oriented metrics:

ROA. return on attention. What’s your profitability by customer segment? How do you encourage serendipity? How easy do you make it?

ROI. return on interest. gather profile information from experiences to deepen relationships. this goes for customer and supplier. what’s the ratio of hassle to value?

ROS. return on skills. this gets tougher to measure as platform customers DIY and co-create.

Hagel is talking about corporations but the processes he describes are like fractals, the patterns are the same if you zoom in a level or zoom out.

Learning organizations need to be working the same metrics, for they face the same squeeze. The fight for attention and the development of talent are hardly new to CLOs. However, effective CLOs will spot a silver lining in the coming revolution: the opportunity to get out of the training business and into the talent development sphere.