Non Trivial availaibilty lessons for today's Thought Leaders.

Suppose I were a leader with a whole slew of followers. What does my day look like?. For some it looks like this: (confession: took the following 4 bullets from Chris Brogan's note this morning)

1. Reading what friends write.
   
2. Reading about the “new marketing” industry and the tech industry (fishbowl).
   
3. Reading what people recommend.
   
4. Reading off the wall stuff that inspires new thoughts (outside the bowl).
   

The purpose behind these 4 bullets, of course is to "make things" that the followers find useful. But what of availability?

There are two kinds: Trivial and non Trivial. For most thought leaders today, availability does not even enter into the picture. Why? because with Availability there is a sense of immediacy. And the plain and simple truth is most so called thought leaders cant be bothered by that. Remember the God Father? He presided over these sessions where his followers would come to him and he would grant them his wishes. Great availability story there. We all knew exactly where we stood and he was always available to this followers.

Okay I am going somewhere with this and it mostly has to do with Non-Trivial availability. Some time ago, I had a boss who was always available when challenges were Trivial, but the minute it got any where near non-Trivial, the man was no where to be found. He must have thought that if he stays away I will always find a way. So why come in between a good thing.

You see I work in IT operations and Availability is a huge yardstick for us. So this generated a lot of discussion with SELF!!. It made me want to be available for the guys even more. Every time there was a situation, the picture of this boss who was never available when needed most came to mind and I would over compensate. To the point where I had enough material to write a dissertation on the subject.

It all started not too long ago. I was in a Data Mining class, Professor Mobashar (one of the best in my opinon) dropped this idea in passing about mining for availability and why it is important to categorize it into two buckets. Of course that was in the context of machine availability at that time, but boy did it get me thinking. What a concept.

So circling back to our Thought Leaders and what availability means to them. What is YOUR availability to your followers?. What percentage is Trivial availability?. Are you in the availability business at all?

The Followers and Leaders, the Pew and the Pulpit.

After so many years of intellectual development what has changed?. Nothing in my opinion. We are still a global culture of Followers and Leaders, the Pew and the Pulpit, the Soap box and the on lookers. Need I continue.

The age of electronic media has changed how we follow or Lead perhaps. The Pulpit is no longer a physical object and the Soap box in Hyde park is no longer just that. But this article is not about leaders or the elite or the trickle down goodness that we have all faithfully condoned and accepted for so long. It is about the faithful, about the followers and the listeners in each of us and how potent the collective consciousness can be.

So what does this all mean? Can we get to a point where there are no leaders, no pulpit and no soap box?. Can the listeners and the followers and the innocent bystanders become a collective whole. How much more effective would we be if the Leaders were just Data Miners and Knowledge experts who provide us the message without imparting their subjective spin on the collective thoughts?. Leadership today is sustained by the power it brings them. Can we change this model. I would like to see our future leaders become leaders not for the power it brings them, but for total selflessness. If not get out of the business.

The Open source model starts out with this selfless concept, but then quickly gets swallowed up by how much power the concept of giving stuff away for free can bring us. So much so today we give away for free and when we have enough followers, we Sell out.

We have always been people centric. We adore and worship the person(s) who deliver the message and deliver it well. In short the message takes a secondary role to the messenger. So much so, even if the the message is bad, as long as it is delivered by our favorite messenger, all is well. We are okay with it. Conformational BIAS is what it all amounts to. But it is driven by our model of Leaders and Followers. Until we break away from that, we will forever be defined by our MESSENGERS and not the MESSAGE.

With that I end my Saturday morning Rant.