The Dominatrix and the Case of the Missing Tools
When I first heard about the BBC’s Sherlock, my heart sank. Talk about flogging a dead horse.
Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson’s adventures in 21st Century London. A thrilling, funny, fast-paced contemporary remake of the Arthur Conan Doyle classic.
Last night, I watched it for the first time. It was exceptionally good. Bursting with character and rapier dialogue. The problem was that no matter how engrossing the drama, I kept being jolted out of my suspension of disbelief by the tenuous clips dropped in to reiterate the plot.
There is a scene where Sherlock cracks the code to a particularly alluring dominatrix’s safe. The code we see him entering immediately explains how he does it (spoiler alert: it’s her vital measurements). However, just to make sure that every viewer gets it, the dialogue has to lapse from rapier into journeyman so the dominatrix can laboriously explain this to Dr Watson. Later on, they parachute in a remarkably artificial clip where Sherlock summarises the entire plot, for no reason whatsoever, to two henchmen driving him to the airport.
I mention this because it illustrates the difference between mass media and the web. (As with most years) it’s widely predicted that in 2012, TV and the Internet will really converge. We’ll have Dropbox logos on our flat screens and our iPad alongside the remote. TV that puts the user in control of what they watch and how they watch it. The joy of which is that viewers who get the plot first time round needn’t suffer the tedium of its reiteration.
What Kind of Authority Does Web Strategy Need?
I was fortunate to meet Jonathan Kahn last week. The first time I came across his agency Together London, I was electrified by the copy. Finally! Someone articulating what I had been trying to say:
It’s not 1999 any more. The web is the primary channel. Get a web strategy.
One of Kahn’s insights is that getting the web right requires a shift in focus:
A typical web or communications initiative happens at 20,000 feet (areas of focus), but the problems we’re talking about are at 30,000 or 40,000 feet (goals, vision). We need to gain some height.
This reminded me of Lucy Kimbell’s definition of service design:
User-centred design asks how can we design a better toaster. Designing for service explores what meaning and what value toast-making has.
What we’re seeing in both content / web strategy and service design is the need to go to the heart of the matter. To ask what we are trying to achieve, rather than just how to achieve it. As Khan points out, this puts you in management space:
You know the project is unlikely to achieve its objectives because of problems with strategy, governance, execution, or measurement. But that higher-level stuff is outside your official scope. What can you do about it?
One answer he pointed me towards, by Lisa Welchman, is to define web strategy at the very top of an organisation:
Formalization of Authority is the emplacement of high-level authority for Web Governance and Web Execution … In order to have power, it is an action that is best performed from a very senior level of the organization.
Now, I need to delve a little more into governance but this immediately rings alarm bells. The lessons from service design show that top-down authority will not deliver value. Web strategy needs to enshrine freedom from command and control.
