Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Wow I must be famous

the other day I wrote an internal blog post inside the company after trying lots of other avenues to say that I am not overly happy with the recognition that I am getting from the company versus the external recognition the company gets from what I have done in virtual worlds and metaverses.
The post got 'leaked' ah shock horror. A "tina Bell" who took a dislike to my tone on terra nova has decided to plaster it all over the web. Well thanks.
It shows several things.
1. I still care deeply enough about my collegues that I am willing to carry on leading the way despite having lots of ways I could just said "s*d it" and pull the plug. My direct managers have been listening and trying, but have to work within a system. So, as in the post, I have a lot of respect and time for them and their efforts.
2. That inside and outside of the company we do have free speech. I have not breached any guidelines in the way I have communicated this, but I was able to communicate it. We are able to have a free and frank conversation, albeit inside the firewall.
3. The language used and the approach differs on the audience. Same persona, same belief system but just adjusted.

It also brings in an element of trust, the dissapointing thing is that a "collegue" should choose to "leak" something that is actually pretty well known.

It does not show anything other that how corporations do not really exist, that people do, politics is people.

So. to be clear.
Yes I am not happy at quite a few things. The pace of change in management systems has not been as fast as the pace of social change and technology change. However I still have hope. Otherwise I would have just left ages ago, enticed by a fantastic offer.
The things that I talk about and the direction we are going are all still true, they are all still happening. Just I am not getting the internal recognition that I was hoping would come over time.

So this could go a couple of ways.
My company could step up and say oh sorry, sort things out and then I will be writing glowing "see you do get recognized" posts as I already have for some collegues (which diud nto get leaked of course)
Or my family now gets to starve.
Or well its always the thing you dont think of isnt it.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Having been in IBM for a long time, but recently 'freed', I think you do have to realize that IBM is like a mid-sized urban city and change happens, but there is such a diversity and such bureaucracy that it just takes a long time. We know that companies will eventually organize themselves around concepts coming from the Web 2.0 field, but face it, there are some people in IBM who don't know a blog from a slug and it will take time.

As to internal recognition, you need to 'show value'. This should have been easy in your case, but you are not in the PR department so you are probably expected to show value in different ways. I left IBM Research because it was becoming impossible to 'show value' in any reasonable way. While getting paid is nice, on itself it is not very rewarding.

Wishing you all the best!

epredator said...

@sifu yes the balance of job satisfaction and in my case a huge ego boost from all the success is a trade off.
I did not want to have to escape, just being greedy I guess. I think I have also shown value to so many people in so many ways that it may be the scale of it that is a bit much to take in.
I am also sorry we lost you !

Anonymous said...

@epredator it is pretty annoying to see one's stuff all over the press and trotted out at every possible opportunity, but then getting asked "what did you contribute?" --- my take: i'm doing exciting stuff, my employer is missing out on fantastic opportunities: i tried --- and will keep trying.

@sifu i'm fighting, seem to have won that last battle...

Anonymous said...

hey man- we love you. eightbar rocks the house.

Catherine said...

I sincerely hope you find out who did it. If you want any creative ideas on pranks, you know where to find me. ;-)

epredator said...

Thanks dr scofield, monkchips and helzerman.
I am not really in the business of tracking this.
However someone has breached something somewhere and I am sure that that causes some other actions to swing into place.
Not with the poster but with the leaker.
We shall see :-)

HorizonWatching said...

As we say on this side of the pond "Don't let one bad apple spoil the whole bunch."

Also, keep the faith. No one ever said being an evangelist was easy. We all value what you have done, even if the execs don't really get it (yet).

epc said...

You need to have several advocates with enough juice and power to promote you internally. No disrespect intended to you or your management team, but if you're not getting the recognition you feel you deserve, either they're not the right advocates for you, or your contributions aren't as significant as you may believe.

I found that no matter all of the neat, cool, innovative, market-shifting, etc activities you promote or participate in, inside IBM it only will help you if they have a significant measureable impact on the business, and you have strong advocates for you and your career.

epredator said...

This looks like a nice and balanced response and really sums up the fact that this discussion is able to happen.

Anonymous said...

In the knowledge market place of innovative ideation, your contribution and execution of 'your' value is undeniable at least to those who know something of the history of innovation. Those who need quantifiable evidence to evaluate, should reference the problem economists and statisticians admit exists with industrial management models and accounting methods outlined in "Unmasking the Economy" http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_07/b3971001.htm Although some dispute the existence of a 'knowledge economy', or the best method of accounting for R&D ROI ... etc...there is no disputing that the 'accounting approach and model', thus evaluation is clearly flawed, even Greenspan concurs. (Listen the the podcast). I worked at IBM on two occasion, most recently after Gerstner started the transformation and remember the shocking R&D: $5B black hole, duplication etc...and many who fought it. It still sounds like technology innovation cascading into social innovation, is waiting for innovation management and organizational design. These discontinuties will continue to abound. You just hope they understand that answers to these intangible new ideas (to use an accounting term) are discovering how they 'will' operate and work in practise and ultimately become tangibles which are then transacted.

epredator said...

@spacetraveler thanks for the link and the reference to the podcast. It is certainly something I have said (though with no economist traingin background) that much of what we measure, not just in business but in government targets etc seems to be flawed in that the measurements are usually placed on the easy things to count. Sometimes the multitude of things counted seem to interoperate in a way that makes no sense as a whole. It is a large problem I think, but people may not have the energy or willingness to change it.