Month: January 2010

Business models looking back and forward

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Everybody’s making predictions at this time of year, but I want to look back a bit. In 2004 Seth Godin made these predictions (and others) for 2009, and asked, and what then?

  1. Hard drive space is free
  2. Wifi like connections are everywhere
  3. Everyone has a digital camera & everyone carries a device that is sort of like a laptop, but cheap and tiny
  4. The retirement age will be five years higher than it is now
  5. Your current profession will either be gone or totally different

Given all those future predictions we read each year, it’s good to see that someone got it right.

In 2007 I examined these predictions from the perspective of business planning and made these recommendations:

  1. Don’t try to build another #$%* portal, because people have lots of places to put their stuff and they are getting information from a whole bunch of sources. Think small pieces, loosely joined.
  2. Anywhere can be a hotspot so adding wi-fi just might get some interesting people to gather around you and that’s what’s really important.
  3. All of those digital pictures are looking for a place to be shared. They might even improve your organisation’s learning about itself and its environment.
  4. Remember those folks that you thought would leave with all their knowledge? Well, they’re not leaving, or they’re probably interested in a new relationship, so get them while you can.
  5. Job? What’s a job?

In early 2010 it is pretty obvious that nobody needs an other Web portal. Even the project for the Pan-Canadian Online Learning Portal that I was working on in 2006 was finally canceled. Wireless is becoming ubiquitous though it’s still too expensive in too many places. Of course, almost everybody has a digital camera, usually combined with a phone or other smart mobile device. So, would your business have made different decisions five years ago if these predictions were heeded?

I find the last two points most interesting today because we’re just starting to see their impact. The recession and financial crisis pushed many retirements back several years, if not decades. Mandatory retirement ages have been successfully challenged in courts in several countries. There is a real business opportunity in older adults who are not fully retired, still have money and have time. It’s also becoming evident that new jobs are being created just as older ones are obsolesced.

How’s your business model for the next five years? Which predictions and trends are you following? Of course, I’m staying out of the prediction business ;-)

Sharing tacit knowledge

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H.L. Mencken, American satirist, wrote that, “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” That pretty much sums up the problems we are facing today in our organizations and institutions. We are using tools that assume simple, or at most complicated, problems when many are actually complex. A mechanistic approach to problem solving is inadequate in complex adaptive environments. Global networks have made all of our work, and all of our problems, interconnected. We live in one big, unfathomable complex adaptive system.

Managing in complex systems is more about influencing possibilities rather than trying to determine any predictability. This requires tacit knowledge, or ways of thinking that cannot be codified and written up as best practices. It’s a continuous process of trying things out, sensing what happens and developing emergent practices. This is the great potential of web social media. Social networking supports emergent work practices.  The true value of social networking is in sharing tacit knowledge.

What hinders the adoption of social media is that hierarchical leaders (those in power by virtue of their position, not their knowledge or ability) are not able to function when ideas and knowledge flow laterally as well as vertically. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy. Social media bypass the organization’s information gatekeepers and render hierarchical leadership useless.

Over the past century, large organizations have simplified and codified their processes in order to get economies of scale. They have also centralized as many functions as possible, including anything related to learning and performance. This is the modern institution and corporation. The problem is that this will not work any more. Biological, technological, environmental and societal change are accelerating. Moore’s Law states that computational power doubles every 18 months while human knowledge doubles every year.

Our current models for managing people, training and knowledge-sharing are insufficient for a workplace that demands emergent practices just to keep up. Formal training has only ever addressed 20% of workplace learning and this was acceptable when the work environment was merely complicated. Knowledge workers today need to connect with others to co-solve problems. Sharing tacit knowledge through conversations (the only way to do this) is an essential component of knowledge work. Social media enable adaptation (the development of emergent practices) through conversations.

In the 21st century, conversation is learning and learning is work.

complexity

Social learning in the enterprise

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This past year, my Internet Time Alliance colleague Jane Hart changed her title to Social Learning Consultant. Why?

Whereas early e-learning was all about delivering content, primarily in the form of online courses, produced by experts and managed via learning management systems, Social Learning is about creating and sharing information and knowledge with other people using (often free) social media tools that support a collaborative approach to learning.

Social Learning is fast becoming recognised as a valuable way of supporting formal learning and enabling informal learning within an organisation (something that has been overlooked for far too long). The use of online communities and networks, where employees are encouraged to co-create content, collaborate, share knowledge and fully participate in their own learning, is helping to create far more enduring learning experiences.

As Jon Husband says, “everyone in almost all enterprises is using the Internet all day long, participating in exchanges and flows of information”. This is networked business reality. If the learning/training department remains focused on content delivery it will miss the greatest opportunity for organizational performance – social learning.

I’ve put together a short slide presentation that covers some of the factors driving us towards social learning in the enterprise.

1. This is inspired by a year of discussions and conversations, especially with my Internet Time Alliance colleagues, with whom I’m grateful to collaborate and learn.

2. I start with McLuhan’s Laws of Media because this lens has proved useful over the years. For more information, read McLuhan for Managers.

3. We are only starting to see the enormous impact of the Internet on how we work. It is changing everything. I have yet to be swayed from this opinion.

4. We are seeing a shift in how we view knowledge, as Charles Jennings wrote on Social Learning:

We are moving to the world of the sons of Socrates, where dialogue and guidance are key competencies. It is a world where the capability to find information and turn it into knowledge at the point-of-need provides the key competitive advantage, where knowing the right people to ask the right questions of is more likely to lead to success than any amount of internally-held knowledge and skill.

5. Jay Cross has riffed on the changing nature of work, based on Thomas Malone’s The Future of Work.

6. Our current work structures are based on last century’s models of scientific management, sparked by F.W. Taylor.

7. Networks are draining the organizational pyramid, as the Cluetrain highlighted a decade ago.

8. We need to look at work differently and the nature of the job has fundamentally changed as passion & initiative replace diligence & obedience in the creative economy.  Wirearchy is a new framework for work in this economy.

9. None of this is new, it is part of our continuing need to adapt to change.

10. We need to look at learning as a core part of our work, and Jane Hart describes how workplace learning is more than just formal training.

11. When we need help at work, we turn to our friends and trusted colleagues with whom we’ve shared experiences. However, our closest friends may not be our best source of knowledge. We need to grow our trusted networks by sharing our work experiences so that we have more people to learn from when the need arises.

12. Social learning is critical for networked organizational effectiveness.

Enterprise Social Learning

View more documents from Harold Jarche.

Choose with care in 2010

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This is the first Friday’s Finds post of 2010, highlighting some of the things I learned on Twitter this past week. It follows 32 continuous weeks of Twitter summaries for 2009. I’ve decided to stop numbering these posts and will provide a title that highlights each week. Friday’s Finds posts will remain in the same category and I’ll keep on trying to post something each week.

Thanks to all of the readers who have added to the conversations here, either by writing their own blog posts, commenting, or tweeting. I now get as many visitors from Twitter as I do from Google searches. Friday’s finds have become part of my personal knowledge management system and this week I even found something on PKM:

60+ resources for Personal Knowledge Management. via @SteveBarth [add that to my PKM Bookmarks and you have a comprehensive resource list]

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Dr. Brian Arthur, in the book, The Nature of Technology, says that “… everything emerges out of technology. It’s technology that gives rise to both modern science and the economy, and we tend to think of it in reverse — that science gives rise to technology and the economy gives rise to technology. But technology is more fundamental than either one.” via @jaycross

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My next job in HR explains:

I could spend my time building an HR empire or I could do meaningful work so that an organization could function without me and without a bloated HR infrastructure. I don’t do bloat.

via @punkrockHR [This is the same approach I’ve recommended for learning & development professionals. You should constantly be trying to put yourself out of work. Maintaining a steady state in a complex environment is the same as going backwards. Teaching self-sufficiency in one area and then finding the next area that needs to be addressed is the only way to really support the organization].

Isn’t the preceeding approach better than this? “Just got e-mail advertisement for audio conference for HR/managers on “enforcing dress codes”. And y’all want to know what’s wrong with training?” @JaneBozarth

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(How) Would you use this critical thinking video? – “I’d suggest there is an inability of many teachers to reject the bias of their culture and upbringing in their own thinking, let alone to help students. In short, producing critical thinkers from classrooms is an impossible challenge with so many teachers lacking critical thinking.” @courosa in conversation with @cburell

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Aviation security: “Once a society starts circumventing its own laws, the risks to its future stability are much greater than terrorism”. via @afroginthevalley

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From “Inherit The Wind“, the loneliest feeling in the world. via @nomad411

Reminds me of this GapingVoid cartoon:

wolves sheep

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