Tag: Communications and LL

Hamlet posted a provocative piece yesterday, broadly stating that the reason that Second Life’s survival is threatened because we, the user base, are resistant to change – so much so, that we actively prevent Linden Lab from implementing the changes that could very well save Second Life.

I’ve already responded to the piece once highlighting the fact that it is far more rooted in Hamlet’s own perceptions of precisely what form SL’s future should take (closer FB integration), than on any objective review of Second Life, Linden Lab and the user base as a whole. But in doing so, I didn’t really touch on his core assertion that it is the user community who threaten SL with oblivion because we’re unwilling to accept that Things Must Change.

Before I delve too deep, let me say from the outset that, in terms of facing up to change, Hamlet is right; we are all resistant to change. Any change that is forced upon us and moves us outside our comfort zones of relationships, environment, knowledge, culture and so on, is going to generate resistance; it’s human nature, no matter what the environment; home, corporate or digital.

But resistance to change isn’t the issue. It’s how that resistance is managed.

The Corporate Angle

A frequent issue that occurs within the sphere of corporate change is that of the “implementation dip”. This is literally a dip in performance and confidence when any innovation or change is encountered that requires the acquisition of new skills and new understandings.

People experiencing the implementation dip are actually experiencing two kinds of problem that are interwoven: the social-psychological fear of change (being taken out of their comfort zone), and the lack of technical understanding or skills to either make the change work, or to work within the requirements predicated by the change. As a result, they resist.

For change to succeed, the leadership must understand and be sensitive to the implementation dip. Those championing change need to be able to switch between various leadership roles: they must be clear on the reasons for change, the goals that will be achieved and so on – and must present them concisely and openly (authoritative leadership). At the same time they need to listen and understand concerns, doubts and fears as they are fed back to them (democratic leadership) and seek to build good relationships within the workforce, even with those resistant to the idea the changes being proposed (affiliative leadership).

Embracing any resistance to change is crucial if the change is to succeed; by forging relationships with those resistant to change, good leaders can gain a clearer, deeper understanding of the potential impact the changes they are championing are liable to have. Thus, they can work not so much to define a structure – something that is actually quite secondary to successful change implementation – but a rather a culture wherein people may not fully agree with the changes, but they can appreciate the reasons why they are necessary. Further, they can themselves become stakeholders in the process of change who can further guide and inform both sides of the equation – management and workforce – to ensure that the programme is implemented successfully and that needs and concerns are properly addressed.

Say whut?

So what, precisely, does all this have to do with Second Life, Linden Lab and the user community?

This. There are strong parallels between Second Life and the corporate environment when it comes to change. Linden Lab are the management; they ultimately hold sway over the future direction of the platform. And while I’ve always loathed the term resident when referring to Second Life users, the fact of the matter is, we are more than “just” users; we have an “investment” in Second Life in much the same way as an employee has an investment in the company they work for. This “investment” comes in many forms: creatively, emotionally, culturally – and in many instances, financially. We put hundreds of hours a month into the platform, we give it form and substance. We are very much the engine of Second Life, in much the same way as the workforce is the engine of a corporate entity. As such, we are potential stakeholders when it comes to the matter of changes to the Second Life environment.

It’s a unique symbiosis. No other fully viable, commercially-strong virtual environment has such an symbiosis between platform owner and platform user – not yet, at least. Yet it is one that has been increasingly overlooked by Linden Lab itself; this in particularly true of the period between early 2008 and mid-2009,  marked as it was by three core changes driven by Linden Lab that did much to undermine the unique company / user community symbiosis. These changes were:

• the Trademark Policy change
• the OpenSpace  simulator policy switch
• the Adult Policy changes and Zindra.

Each of these changes were handled almost entirely coercively: what the Lab says, the users will do. Period. Scant regard was given to the implementation dip. Consultative sessions, if held (and some were in the case of the latter two changes) were anything but. They were presided over either by the people who were given the task of implementing the changes specified more-or-less “as is”, or by employees who – with the greatest of respect – had little or no influence in matters. In the case of the former, there was an in-built inability to accept there being any issues with the plans they had developed; in the case of the latter, consultation was reduced to platitudes and promises to “get back” to people, a phrase that became synonymous with, “I’ve asked and the answer is ‘no'”.

Collectively, these three events, more than anything else in SL’s tumultuous history, lead to the creation of the gulf that now exists between the user community and Linden Lab. As Botgirl Questi notes in her own review of the Trademark Policy change in particular, these evens marked a shift in emphasis in how Linden Lab viewed Second Life.

Up until the Trademark Policy change, the Lab had encouraged the user community to think in terms of Second Life as being a creative partnership between users and Lab, with a shared responsibility for growing the platform. This paradigm shifted with the release of the Trademark Policy; it sent out a message that the Lab now looked upon Second Life in an entirely proprietary manner, that is was their product to do with as they saw fit. It was a message reinforced through the handling of both the OpenSpace / Homestead sims situation and the Adult Changes.

It was also an attitude underscored by Board member Mitch Kapor’s keynote presentation at SL5B in 2008, in which he suggested that while great things had been achieved in the first five years of Second Life’s history, the “pioneer phase” was drawing to a close and it was time for the early adopters (the user community) to stand aside and make way for the “pragmatists” (aka “big business”).

As a result of all of these events the wider perception of Linden Lab became one of a company that resented its users, and would in fact be happy to see them go elsewhere. It is highly doubtful that this is what was actually intended. Neither the Board nor the management of Linden Lab are malicious; out of contact, yes; but not malicious.

But in business, as the cliché goes, perception is everything.

By taking a coercive approach to the changes in particularly, Linden Lab demonstrated poor strategic thinking. While coercive management might be useful for certain, limited situations, it is one of the two most negative forms of recognised leadership techniques an individual or organisation could adopt. As a result, the bond of trust between the user community and Linden Lab was severely damaged – and has remained damaged ever since.

Who To Listen To?

Of course, no company can ever succeed in implementing change if it has to listen to and address the concerns of each and every employee. Similarly, LL can hardly be expected to listen to each and every user when it comes to matters of improving or changing Second Life.  In fact there are times when listening to the users simply isn’t that good an idea.

There are also times when we don’t do ourselves any favours because – in fairness – we exhibit the same faults as Linden Lab; we look upon Second Life as our property and as such, we can be prone to rants rather than constructive dialogue. We become outraged to the point where the context of our concerns is overwhelmed by the aggressiveness we use when facing Linden Lab.

But that said, neither of the above is reason for the Lab to entirely stop listening.

Major changes to Second Life, be they technology or policy related impact both Linden Lab and the users. And whether either side like it or not, as far as sustaining Second Life as a viable entity, both are still joined at the hip. So where change is liable to impact a sector of the user community – no matter how “small” that sector may be perceived to be – the onus is on Linden Lab to adopt a more authoritative / diplomatic approach to handling the change, and demonstrate more engagement and moderation when facing the inevitable implementation dip. They have absolutely nothing to lose in doing so – and quite possibly everything to gain.

Closing the Circle

In his article, Hamlet makes the assertion that “Second Life’s community resists and fears changing Second Life, even to save it from its current trajectory, which inevitably ends in oblivion.”

This isn’t true. The issue is not about the user community resisting change, it is about how Linden Lab communicate change to the community; how they engage with the community through the entire end-to-end process of implementing change.

The bond of trust is strained; some might say broken. The fault for this does not lie within the user community itself. Despite all that has happened, the community remains committed to the platform. One might even say that far from being an encumbrance to growth and development as Mitch Kapor suggested in 2008 and Hamlet would have us believe now, the user community is potentially the greatest asset Linden Lab has.

But until the matter of trust is addressed, until the Lab show a willingness to change their own approach to the matter of change and how change is to be communicated and implemented, their ability to leverage that asset  and build upon its goodwill and experience will remain detrimentally hamstrung, and all of us will lose as a result.

Further Reading

• Business, Collaborate and Creative Growth
• Some Thoughts on Second Life
• Malicious, Lost or Out of Time?
• Rodvik’s Tough Future
• The Roots of the Rift between the SL Community and LL – Botgirl Questi
• Leadership that Gets Results – Daniel Goleman
• Mitch Kapor SL5B 2008

Well, it’s been less that 24 hours, and already the forums in the new Community Platform are heading towards an Epic Fail.

As I noted yesterday, the new Platform fails to include a General Discussion topic area, recalling what happened by when the JIVE environment first came along.

It seems that in LL’s case, history does repeat itself: threads requesting a GD area have been closed off, with a message from Amanda Linden:

“Hey all, I wanted to address the “General Discussion” Forum question that has come up. Our goal with the Forums is to keep them as focused and constructive as possible. Although General Discussion no longer exists, we’re always happy to create new Forums when the need comes up. That’s where the Forum Feedback section is critical. We’ll be watching it closely and adding new topic-specific Forums over time.”

Yes, history does repeat itself. What’s worse, it reads as fudged censorship.

Over and above that, it has led to the forums rapidly turning into a mess of threads and discussions all over the currently assigned topic groups.

As something that is supposed to invite and encourage communications, I’d say things are off to a rough start, with many already dismissing the new Platform as little more than a means to discourage open discourse / any negativity about Linden Lab.

In the last week we’ve had the announcement of new channels of communication Linden Lab are establishing. The aim of this, according to Amanda Linden is to help Linden Lab “do a better job of listening”.

Some of this announcement was good (User Groups); some of it wasn’t so good, some of it was downright shameful – no encouragement to actually log in to Second Life, no indication that LL would be using tools within and around the platform to communicate, and that rather, we should all toddle off to Facebook to get the latest scoop on what is going on.

The blog was followed by a lengthy comments list, much of which focused on changes to the JIRA which have upset a lot of people. What was surprising here wa that, despite Amanda’s attempts to stress the changes to communications were to (to repeat the quote) help Linden Lab “do a better job of listening”, user comments relating to the JIRA issue were rebuffed by Oz and Yoz Linden in the most peremptory, almost arrogant, manner – which Oz again unfortunately further demonstrated in comments posted in JIRA VWR 24746 – that did much to undermine the launch of this new attitude towards corporate / user communications within the lab.

In responding to the announcement I again questioned why the Lab could not enter into more in-world based meetings – say on a quarterly basis. However, there is an easier solution than that when it comes to fostering communications betwixt Lab and users – as ably demonstrated by the Phoenix team and their fortnightly Office Hours over on Rezzed TV.

During these one-hour slots, Jessica Lyons and members of the Phoenix team provide information on what is going on with their projects, what users can expect – and even field questions sent in ahead of the show, or even during the broadcast.

Now granted, I don’t expect everyone at Linden Lab to suddenly start producing fortnightly machinema updates for us to digest.

But are quarterly updates really that hard? Let’s face it, the technology is there for this to be done – Torley uses it all the time. What’s more, while it may be taking people “out” of Second Life to view such recordings a) They can be broadcast via the SL website; b) they still showcase the capabilities of the platform (Voice! Machinema!); c) where appropriate, they can promote locations within Second Life to the user base. Good grief, they could even be made available for in-world streaming using the much-vaunted (but seldom used?) media-on-a-prim!

The format would take a little time to work out, but it should be too hard, and once set in motion, it would be relatively easy to keep going and would promote the sense of company / user interaction LL appear to be trying to achieve: just make sure dates are published in advance and people have the opportunity to drop-in questions either in advance, or when “on air”.

 

The debate is getting heated. Following Amanda Linden’s blog on the new communications channels, people are making their feelings clear on one item in particular: the removal of voting from the JIRA.

Prokofy Neva has posted a constructive essay on the matter, and it is clear that people are getting very upset about things – and equally clear that, despite claims that the new channels are to help Linden Lab do a better job of listening and that as customers, your satisfaction and input is critical to the success of Second Life (quotes from Amanda’s post), it is abundantly clear that in the issue of JIRAs, the Lab has set its face on things and will not listen.

I have to admit, in my initial post on the new channels, I was somewhat flippant on the subject of JIRA voting being removed, which may have given the impression that I don’t care. Actually, I do. At the end of the day, it matters not whether votes are tallied and acted upon by Linden Lab, they are whichever way you look at it, a measure of gauging customer satisfaction – no matter how “small” a segment of the community they may appear to represent. What’s more, whether Linden Lab like it or not, they tend to represent the views of those who are the most passionate and caring when it comes to Second Life, and who want to see it succeed.

While voting shouldn’t be the single criteria for action on any given JIRA, that the people who live, breath and work Second Life take the time and effort to raise issues, track issues, and vote for them frankly, should account for something.

And this is where I find the excuses LL roll out around the concept of voting laughable: “voting can be gamed”; adding a “vote against” option alongside the current “vote for” won’t work because they will still be “unrepresentative” of the “larger population”; “watching” is easier because people will be more willing to register an interest than take a vote.

Taking the latter points first: Linden Lab has a long history of “listening” to minorities in order to justify an action. Most recent case in point: the changes to the Adult Policy and creation of Zindra. LL stated this was because “residents” wanted the change. I’m sure some did – but compared to the massive outcry against the move, those that were in favour had to have been in a minority.

The same to, with the case for establishing a G-rated continent. LL set their face against it, because it was “not what residents” wanted, when again, there was overwhelming support from all sectors of the community.

And as to the idea that the JIRA is gamed – one has to ask precisely who has been doing the gaming? Lets face it, JIRA voting has been absolutely fine and dandy with LL when it has suited their agenda. They’ve actively encouraged people to go vote on this, that and the other regardless of how many / few have lined up and voted – and often trumpeted it afterwards.

Yet when it is something they are unwilling to face – again, the Adult Changes – then a high vote count doesn’t matter because of the relative insignificance of even high vote counts compared to the size of the user base overall [Yoz Linden]. In short, it is easy to come to the conclusion that LL are themselves guilty of gaming the system as much as anyone else.

Watching is supposedly the preferable means of gauging interest – but the problem here is that Watching inevitably leads to a veritable snowstorm of e-mails. This was a major cause of angst when the JIRA system first came in, and nothing has been done to solve it – and Oz Linden himself admits people are liable to be inundated.

This being the case, it is hard to see how “Watching” is going to be a better measure, because a lot of the people who are aware of the e-mail problem aren’t going to sign-up, because they are not going to want to have to face the influx, even with spam filters running. The same goes for many who come to the JIRA for the first time: they’ll register with one or two cases, get hit by the flood and think, “Sod this for a game of soldiers!”

So Watching, in and of itself, is hardly a more “telling” means of weighing the relative merits of JIRA X against JIRA Y and voting for one or the other…or both…

I also don’t hold this Oz’s view that watching is more valid that voting because people get to read comments. So what? The chances of getting more people engaged in the discussion as a result are slim; so again, it’s hard to understand the logic / justification here. Certainly, I don’t follow that abolishing voting in favour of watching will  put a premium on thoughtful commentary as Oz asserts – because I don’t have to comment in order to watch. Period.

A further argument against Watching over voting is that watching doesn’t imply support for. I’m deeply interested in politics. During the run-up to the General Election, I watch all of the major parties at both a national and local level. I receive their bumpf I even read it. But that doesn’t mean I necessarily support any or all of them. That doesn’t happen until I actually come to vote. And its the same with JIRAs: I may watch, but that’s not indicating anything beyond (potentially mild) curiosity – but when I vote on a JIRA, I’m making a clear statement.

Given JIRA voting does account for so little in the LL scheme of things, I fail to see why the system – as Ciaran Laval suggests – remain, but with “vote for” being replaced by “show interest”. It would achieve the same result, it would encourage participation, and it would avoid the headache of spam.

And anyway, is abolishing voting in favour of watching really making things more relevant? All it is actually doing is moving people listed in Column A into Column B and nothing more. So whether you call it “voting” or “watching”, the more cynical among us might say that a high count on any JIRA is still meaningless because of the relative insignificance of even high counts compared to the size of the user base overall – to paraphrase Yoz somewhat.

Thus, the whole thing comes down to a game of semantics and little more.

As it stands, it is more than a little ironic that in a blog post that is supposedly aimed towards ensuring Linden Lab does a better job of listening, and to provide a means by which we can all have a more productive dialogue there is very little evidence of any form of dialogue coming from LL on this matter, other than “this is the way it’s going to be, so there!” And that is hardly an encouraging start to things.