The CX Blog

Here’s a great read: A Perfect Mess by Eric Abrahamson and David Freedman. In it you’ll find plenty of reasons for letting that pile on your desk self-organize, those books and CDs find their own way, and that kitchen table with all the papers, mail, and stuff–just let it be.

Lest any neatniks out there forget:  most of our Nobel glitterati were incredibly messy. In fact, nature itself loves a good mess! Compost, thy name is mess.

In the chapter on Mess and Organizations, the authors discuss a subject near and dear to my heart: how open source has freed the energy and brains of millions:

“It may seem unlikely that customers are eager to take on tasks for which even well-paid employees may not always show great enthusiasm, but that’s the big surprise revealed by the community-driven, rather than company-driven, world of open-source software: what might be drudge work to an employee will be a thrilling challenge to some civilian out there. ‘Companies spent the ’90s in a race for talent, and paid whatever it took to retain the best people, but never ended up getting most of their energy,” says Steven Weber, a University of California at Berkeley professor researching how open-source principles apply to burinsesses and goverrment. ‘Open-source project get about twice as much energy from people.’”

It’s the Cathedral and the Bazaar all over again. When people are free to participate, to jam, to share, about things they care about, little can stop them. And how do the authors suggest applying this theory to customers? Think Amazon, think Google, think eBay–all companies that invite the customer inside to help guide and even invent right along with them:

“Teasing out innovations from customers may only require providing them with the right tool and instruction.”

Dell, after dissing the blogosphere for too long, has finally embraced it with good results; yes, there’s a lot of marketing in there but that’s true for lots of company blogs. Plus, they now have a community channel to begin capturing customer feedback that will help them do their business better. It’s a big step for a lean, mean company to let the messiness of communities in–it’s good to see them embrace the mess!