Harold Jarche

Shifting responsibility by taking responsibility

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About 10 years ago a fictional video, EPIC 2014, forecast the future domination of web media companies like Google and Amazon. The video spread rapidly, with an updated version, EPIC 2015 made as a sequel. The videos describe a future corporation that controls most news on the web; namely Googlezon and its platform called EPIC (Evolving Personalized Information Construct).

EPIC stores and categorizes not only news, but the demographics, political beliefs, and consumption habits of every user. At its best, EPIC is “a summary of the world—deeper, broader and more nuanced than anything ever available before … but at its worst, and for too many, EPIC is merely a collection of trivia, much of it untrue.” EPIC is so popular that it triggers the downfall of the New York Times, which goes offline and becomes “a print newsletter for the elite and the elderly. —Wikipedia

This week, it became public that Hell had indeed frozen over, with Google now selling Facebook advertising. We seem to be moving closer to what is described in EPIC 2014/2015. But diversity of information is necessary for a functioning democracy and I would say just as important for social businesses. In early America, “… news was considered crucial to an informed electorate, the first major postal law, passed in 1792, allowed newspaper printers to send each other newspapers for free, facilitating the spread of national and foreign news outward from the seat of government.” (Universal Service and the Postal Monopoly: A Brief History PDF). Both news and its distribution have changed and today the US Postal Service is under threat of privatization. While newspapers did not guarantee freedom of the press, the emerging power of web media companies makes newspaper barons look like amateurs.  With the age of print almost over, it is ironic that we may get even less diversity of news and opinions in the age of networks. Hyperlinks cannot subvert hierarchy, as the Cluetrain claimed, when those hyperlinks are controlled by only a few corporations.

With the consolidation of web media companies, where many, and soon, most of us will be getting our information, it will be increasingly important to build diversity into our own personal and professional learning networks. This may get difficult as more mainstream sites amalgamate their feeds and sources into something similar to Googlezon. Therefore, in this emerging network era, we will need to connect to other people, not centralized information sources, for our own sense-making. Diversity of people in our networks will ensure diversity of thought. This is something that even web media companies cannot control, as long as we maintain control over who we connect to.

Knowledge workers collectively make the relationship capital that creates value in the network era. They need to be not just knowledgeable, but creative as well. How can they do so when information sources are getting more concentrated? Where will the diversity of ideas needed to drive innovation come from?

Knowledge workers need to take control of their networked learning. As corporate Push gets stronger, then social Pull has to counteract it. But there has to be something of quality to pull, and that comes from each and every one of us. We need to build our own knowledge networks; seeking out others, sense-making, and sharing.

effective networks are openSense-making, in the growing surround of advertising-sponsored trivia, will become ever more important to maintain democracy and civil society. I think that the principles of PKM can be the foundation for an aggressively intelligent citizenry that manages its own media.

To a great extent PKM [personal knowledge management] is about shifting responsibility for learning and knowledge sharing from a company to individuals and this is the greatest challenge for both sides. —Lilia Efimova 2004

You see, Organizations Don’t Tweet, People Do. Organizations don’t create or manage knowledge either, people do. But people first need the skills and then a cooperative environment to practice these.

The weakness of large-scale knowledge management (KM) as a field is that it is practiced only by a small group of professionals and is controlled by management. It is an enterprise practice. KM is difficult to scale to the masses. PKM, on the other hand, is for everyone.

PKM, in its aggregate and practiced by many, cannot be controlled. It is a technology-neutral framework to promote common understanding through ongoing conversations. PKM is based on mostly manual (mental) practices that are independent from “black-box” technologies like the fictional EPIC 2015. This is PKM’s strength. It is a simple framework that needs experimentation and practice to master, but mostly it requires sharing. Practicing PKM means taking responsibility for knowledge-sharing, one person at a time.

If you are interested in getting an assisted start, see my PKM workshops with an international group of participants. PKM Share

 

A keen subversive

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I’ve been described as “a keen subversive of the last century’s management and education models”. Here are some of my past words on this site that may help to reinforce this description ;)

JOB is a four-letter word.

Knowledge workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your managers.

Creative workers don’t need managers, they need executive assistants. It’s time to reverse the relationship between contributors and coordinators.

Process improvement is bad for innovation. It makes you myopic.

It’s not a question of what keeps managers awake at night, it’s what can we do to make sure they are awake to their networks during the day.

In complex networks, current management approaches are no longer adequate.

Management is the problem and management is also the solution, if you change it.

Organizations don’t need heroes, they need learners.

Courses are artifacts of a time when information was scarce and connections were few.

Sense-making in the network era is connecting to people, not merely accessing information sources.

Social media are new languages and the only way to learn a new language is through practice.

Once you realize that you live in a glass house, you start thinking differently.

There is no normal anymore.

retour ala normale

Sense-making for success

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networks-n-nodesimage by @gapingvoid

Once upon a time …

By the second decade of the 21st century, the nature of work had changed. Even so-called knowledge workers were being regularly downsized, as the corporations called it.  A lot of work was getting automated but a few creative, and lucky, people became almost overnight successes. Many others were able to carve out new niches in this connected economy by getting rid of the middlemen and going straight to their customers, who were now all over the world. Work was getting more complex.  But how could people make sense of it all? Part of the answer was in taking control of their learning and professional development, once the sole purview of institutions. Another part of the answer was in connecting with other, like-minded, and interested professionals. Those who succeeded were able to seek and build new networks in order to make sense of the changing environment, and then share with their new peers, scattered across the globe.

Whether you call yourself a knowledge artisan or are just trying to keep up with your profession, you have to take charge of your own learning and development. I have created an updated 15-minute video overview of PKM, the seek-sense-share framework, and some ideas on how to do-it-yourself, with the help of your network.

Online Personal Knowledge Mastery Workshops are scheduled throughout the year.

Complexity, swiss cheese and failure

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friday2Friday’s Finds:

@TomGram1 – “Resources not courses”. A new mantra.

“5% of interactions account for 90% of misery” – Rob Cross on how energy spreads across an organization. – via @ActivateN

@austinkleon – Why I make no distinction between Big Writing (books) and little writing (tweets): Twitter as a machine for book invention

In my experience, stock is best made by collecting, organizing, and expanding upon flow. You gather your bits, combine them, and then turn them into something new. But this process requires being able to get at your flow.

For some of our most-read findings, see 20 facts from Pew Research Center – via @zecool

65% of Americans say news organizations focus on unimportant stories rather than on important ones (28%).
Nearly one-third—31%—of people say they have deserted a particular news outlet because it no longer provides the news and information they had grown accustomed to.

How Complex Systems Fail [PDF] Complexity, swiss cheese and failure. The classic 1998 article by Richard Cook – via @commutiny

Complex systems contain changing mixtures of failures latent within them.
Hindsight biases post-accident assessments of human performance.
Human operators have dual roles: as producers & as defenders against failure.
All practitioner actions are gambles.
Human practitioners are the adaptable element of complex systems.
Human expertise in complex systems is constantly changing.

 

Future of work is complex, implicit and intangible

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The relationship between intangibles and tangibles reminds me of the implicit/explicit knowledge continuum. The explicit/tangible side is easier to measure, so that is where most management methods have concentrated their efforts. But as organizations, markets, and society become networked, intangibles create more of our value and this is much more difficult to measure. With the increasing complexity that networks bring, implicit knowledge-sharing becomes more important as well, but this is often ignored by both training and knowledge management programs.

Today, intangible assets are over 80% of current market value. Because intangible assets do not have to be shipped and stored like real assets do, they increase the volatility of the marketplace, with larger and more frequent fluctuations over perceived value. Unlike tangible assets, intangible assets can be lost and gained quite quickly. At the same time, we are witnessing that company lifespans are decreasing, which also increases market volatility.

Smarter Companies offers methods to look at intangible asset calculations. I recently spoke with Jay Deragon at Smarter Comanies about intangibles and the influence of technology on learning. A recent example of an intangible asset calculation is Mary Adams’ summary of Twitter’s valuation.

“Human Capital: 2,000 employees. No clear leader. No woman in senior leadership
Relationship Capital: +100 million Daily Active Users, +Advertisers, 3 million websites that integrate Twitter, 6 million Registered Twitter Apps.
Structural Capital: 6 patents, the platform, and related data about use of the platform
Strategic Capital: 85% revenue on advertising; 5% sale of data. Model still isn’t profitable.”

Mary Adams concludes that Twitter is most dependent on its relationship capital, which could be lost if investors try to extract too much tangible value that detracts from it. Another perspective on intangible, or intellectual capital is from Jay Cross, who says that; “Intellectual capital is largely a matter of mind and relationships”.

“Intellectual capital comes in several forms. Human Capital is the know-how and abilities of an organization’s people; Relational Capital is personal and business links to customers, partners, and suppliers; and Structural Capital is the infrastructure, processes, culture, and intellectual property that define how the organization operates.”

From an operational perspective, we can see that improving relationship capital is important for companies that offer intangible services. These types of companies need to invest in structuring work so that implicit knowledge can flow, not just between employees, but throughout the ecosystem. If most goods and services are intangible, the only way to stay current with their true value is to remain connected to those who influence relationship capital. These are employees, customers, suppliers, and partners.

To do this effectively, all support systems (OD, HR, Finance, Sales, Marketing, IT) need to understand how to support the implicit knowledge-sharing that is essential in creating the intangible value. Almost all valued work today is customized. We have seen this shift over the past three decades, as middle-skill jobs have disappeared. Low-skill (standardized work) jobs still exist where the work cannot be automated, but these are jobs with little advancement. High-skill (customized work) jobs have also increased and it is from these workers that much intangible value is derived. The new workplace of intangible assets is a complex environment, and one where traditional analytical methods no longer work. The future of work is complex, implicit, and intangible.

complex implicit intangible

PKM Workshop 2013

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There are a few ways to develop skills to be an effective sharer of knowledge in a networked enterprise. You can start, as I did, by researching sense-making and online cooperation in knowledge networks, try out different methods, and then develop your own. My own journey with personal knowledge management began in 2004. You could also get coaching and mentoring from people who have developed good professional network learning skills.

Or you could take a workshop to kick-start your learning. That’s what I have been offering for a few years, and once again, due to several requests, a PKM Workshop (sign up at link) from 28 October to 22 November 2013 is scheduled. It will be online, asynchronous, and self-paced, with just enough structure to help motivated participants learn on their own or cooperate together.

I recently wrote why PKM is important, so if you have never participated in one of these workshops, join the hundreds who have benefited from four weeks of seeking, sense-making, and sharing together. Discounted rates are available to the first 20 participants, so sign up early.

You may also be interested in Jane Hart’s online workshop on collaborative working & learning, beginning on 25 November.

 

Lateral Organizations

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Hierarchical organizational forms have been the norm through much of history, especially the last 2,000 years. Lateral organizations, or more egalitarian structures, have been the exception. In the endless allure of non-hierarchical organizations, David Creelman notes that both forms have their flaws, but says it’s best to thoroughly understand the history of the field.

I once asked Dr. Ed Lawler, an expert on the high-involvement form [lateral organization], why it had not become the dominant type of organization. He speculated that it was a fragile form. It needs trust and a strong culture to work. Any crisis can knock a lateral high-involvement firm back into hierarchical mode. Lateral may be better, but if it is inherently unstable we cannot expect it to become the norm.

Trust is something we don’t see a lot of in our current organizational forms, with many examples cited in the hard costs of low trust:

According to The Economist Intelligence Unit (2010), 84% of senior leaders say disengaged employees are considered one of the biggest threats facing their business. However, only 12% of them reported doing anything about this problem.

Jon Husband’s wirearchy framework has influenced me over the years and I think the game-changer today is the Internet. It brings back the intimacy and connections we had in earlier organizational forms. For example, hunter-gatherer societies were relatively small, and many actively practiced ways of deflating egos and bullies, which enabled trust and a stronger egalitarian culture. They could control this culture within their geographic bounds. This became more difficult in larger societies.

If you observe organizations from a TIMN (Tribal, Institutional, Market, Network) perspective, then looking back at the dominant structures in a T+I+M society, which we have had for many years, may not give much insight. If we are heading toward a quadriform T+I+M+N society, then we may want to adjust our assumptions of what can work and what is now practical. Here is  a quick overview of David Ronfeldt’s TIMN framework:

According to my review of history and theory, four forms of organization — and evidently only four — lie behind the governance and evolution of all societies across the ages:

  • The tribal form was the first to emerge and mature, beginning thousands of years ago. Its main dynamic is kinship, which gives people a distinct sense of identity and belonging — the basic elements of culture, as manifested still today in matters ranging from nationalism to fan clubs.

  • The institutional form was the second to emerge. Emphasizing hierarchy, it led to the development of the state and the military, as epitomized initially by the Roman Empire, not to mention the Catholic papacy and other corporate enterprises.

  • The market form, the third form of organization to take hold, enables people to excel at openly competitive, free, and fair economic exchanges. Although present in ancient times, it did not gain sway until the 19th century, at first mainly in England.

  • The network form, the fourth to mature, serves to connect dispersed groups and individuals so that they may coordinate and act conjointly. Enabled by the digital information-technology revolution, this form is only now coming into its own, so far strengthening civil society more than other realms.

TIMN by David RonfeldtThere are growing examples of new organizational forms testing themselves in the network (TIMN) era (e.g. Automattic; Occupy Movement; Arab Spring). I think there is a lot more testing to do, but we should keep on trying. If not, we will have sub-optimal structures for the challenges that face us as a networked society.

Warren Bennis wrote that hierarchy is a prosthesis for trust. With more lateral organizational structures, trust can emerge.

effective networks are open

Learning is the work

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continued from Why do I need KM? …

Work is learning and learning is the work.

Why?

Because the nature of work is changing. For example, automation is replacing most routine work. That leaves customized work, which requires initiative, creativity and passion. Valued work, and the environments in which it takes place, is becoming more complex. Professionals today are doing work that cannot be easily standardized.

In complexity, we can determine the relationship between cause and effect only in retrospect. Think about that. It puts into question most of our management frameworks that require detailed analysis before we take action. It also shows that identifying and copying best practices is pretty well useless.

In complex work environments, the optimal way to do work is to constantly probe the environment and test emergent practices. This requires an engaged and empowered workforce. Emergent practices are dependent on the cooperation of all workers (and management) as well as the free flow of knowledge.

future jobs work valueWork in complex situations requires a greater percentage of implicit knowledge, which cannot be easily codified. Research shows that sharing complex knowledge requires strong interpersonal relationships. But discovering innovative ideas usually comes through loose social ties. Organizations need both, and communities of practice can help to connect tight work teams with loose social networks. Communities of practice can provide a safe space for professionals to challenge each other at the cutting edge of their expertise.

Effective organizational knowledge-sharing for this new world of work needs individuals who are adept at sense-making. One framework for this is personal knowledge management.

PKM is a set of processes, individually constructed, to help each of us make sense of our world, and work more effectively.

Personal = according to one’s abilities, interests & motivation
(not directed by external forces).

Knowledge = connecting information to experience
(know what, know who, know how).

Mastery = getting things done
(not being managed).

PKM connects work and learning, guided by three principles:

  • Seek playfully to connect.
  • Make sense and be empowered through learning.
  • Share to inspire through your work.

PKM is individuals sense-making and sharing their knowledge.

curation to socialThe future of work is customized, complex, and intangible. In this environment, sense-making and knowledge-sharing become critical skills. This will be in our teams, communities, and networks; but mostly it will be individual workers engaged in all three at once.

The most effective learning in the new world of work will be when engaged individuals, working out loud, share their knowledge. Training and education will remain inputs, but minor ones. One concrete result of this sense-making and knowledge-sharing should be performance support. As people work out loud, they can identify and develop tools and techniques to support emergent practices. In the 70:20:10 Framework, Charles Jennings describes workplace learning as based on four key activities:

  1. Exposure to new and rich experiences.
  2. The opportunity to practice.
  3. Engaging in conversation and exchanges with each other.
  4. Making time to reflect on new observations, information, experiences, etc.

This is where learning is the work.

70-20-10

Why do I need KM?

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In response to my post on relevance, my long-time friend Ralph Mercer asked, “Why do I need KM at an institutional level when information is ambient at a global level and personal at a hyper local level?” This illuminates an observation made by Thierry deBaillon, which I have often quoted, “The basic unit of social business technology is personal knowledge management, not collaborative workspaces.” We are surrounded by information and have many ways to collaborate, but unless each person has effective sense-making processes, social business networks are mostly noise amplification.

Collaborative knowledge work must be coupled with cooperative knowledge sharing. Cooperation, or sharing without any quid pro quo, is the foundation of personal knowledge mastery. PKM is based on playfully seeking knowledge, not task-driven searching. It is also about sharing to inspire, not because you have to. The results of PKM can then be used in collaborative work.

pkm connects work learningPersonal knowledge management is the only solid foundation of organizational knowledge management (KM). Without PKM, there is no KM, just databases of (mostly) unused information. Only individual knowledge workers can transcend the divisions between work teams, communities of practice, and social networks. Individuals connect these entities through their participation in them.

PKM is the active process of being cognizant of our networks and engaged in our communities, while still working with our teams. These teams, and the organizations they work in, have an opportunity to harvest some of the PKM knowledge artifacts of their members. However, individuals have to retain control of their own PKM processes, due to the knowledge-sharing paradox.

individuals enable knowledge flowThe gap I see in many collaboration initiatives, enterprise social network software implementations, and other social business projects, is a failure to help develop PKM skills. A course is not the answer. Allowing time to develop skills, and providing feedback, is a much better approach. Developing PKM skills is probably one of the best investments any knowledge-intensive organization can make.