euan semple muses today about what to call our new way(s) of doing social-media-powered business. He suggests the term “literate business.” my response:
my dad used to work in public relations for ford motor company. along the way he wrote things like the marker at henry ford’s birthplace and materials that went out to every ford shareholder, sometimes speeches, too, i think. when i was learning to write in grade school, he told me “the last thing you do when you write, is write.” think, feel, sense… sort… write.
literate doesn’t fit for me. i always go back to the dictionary on these things, to have a look at the old shape of these things. literate: scholarly, learned. but what you’ve actually described seems more reflective than literate. then i wondered about articulated, annotated, and examined. the unexamined business is not worth…?
and then i come back to the stuff i started working on 10+ years ago, this story of “inviting organization.” perhaps what you’re talking about is “inviting business.” (see InvitingOrganizationEmerges for the full story.) in essence, these new tools and practices you’re talking about are for actively inviting new business, and simultaneously require the thinking, feeling, sensing, and reflecting that must inform our actually being inviting, connecting people.
for me, “inviting business” captures all of the inner, subjective, and aspirational AND all of the outer, objective, and technically practical (practice-able) dimensions of personal practice, collaborative work, and business organization today.
InterestIng post Michael. My dictionary defines literate as able to read and write and this was what I meant. Refining our ability to articulate how and why we do what we do.
ah… i should have said i go back to the dictionary for the etymology of these words, the old shape.
I like iterative business, business that integrates lessons from out into itself and rolls out refreshed and renewed. Social media makes me happy to think that business and governments could find a way to actually reinvent themselves.