Harold Jarche

Chance favours the Connected Company

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About 18 months ago I wrote in Embrace Chaos, that I think the outer edge will be where almost all high value work gets done in organizations. Core activities will be increasingly automated or outsourced and these will be managed by very few internal staff. Change and complexity will be the norm in our work and any work where complexity is not the norm will be of of diminishing value.

Riitta Raesmaa picked up on this in Embracing chaos with a little help from my friends: “Changes in the organizational culture, more open attitudes and behavior, together with social media tools and services, are altering the landscape of human connectedness and the ways of value creation.” Recently, Oscar Berg started experimenting with new ways of looking at value creation and openness. Oscar says that:

Without openness, the door is closed for anyone who wants to participate.
With openness but no or limited transparency, the number and quality of potential participants will be delimited.
With openness and (high) transparency, anyone anywhere can become aware of opportunities to participate and choose whether or not to actually participate.

Viewing this first from the perspective of what makes an effective knowledge-sharing network, I would say that in trusted networks, openness enables transparency, which in turn fosters a diversity of ideas. Supporting the creation of social networks can increase knowledge-sharing which can lead to more innovation, especially in networks built on trust.

From a value creation perspective, this can inform us how and where we should best get work done in the network era. Openness can help with internal task coordination, and transparency can improve collaboration amongst teams, while cooperation in diverse external networks can lead to improved innovation. In complex and changing markets, innovation has much higher business value than merely coordinating internal tasks. To paraphrase Steven B. Johnson in Where Good Ideas Come From who said “Chance favors the connected mind”, and inspired by Dave Gray’s The Connected Company, let me propose that Chance favours the Connected Company.

 

On Trojan Mice

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In Organizations don’t tweet, people do, Euan Semple talks about Trojan mice, an idea he got from Peter Fryer at trojanmice.com. These are small change initiatives, that do not require the coordinated effort of something like a Trojan horse:

Trojan mice, on the other hand, are small, well focused changes, which are introduced on an ongoing basis in an inconspicuous way. They are small enough to be understood and owned by all concerned but their effects can be far-reaching. Collectively a few Trojan mice will change more than one Trojan horse ever could.

There is an art to spotting a Trojan mouse — you need to develop a critically trained eye. Seeing things differently, and seeing different things, is a powerful experience. And once you do, you can set your Trojan mice free to create the results your business needs.

The idea is simple to grasp and perhaps easier than the Probe-Sense-Respond of the Cynefin framework regarding complexity.

Sometimes a better metaphor makes an idea easier to pass on. Here’s my image of how to use Trojan mice. Deploy several at a time, then observe what happens. Cajole and nudge them (as Euan advises) and then add or remove as needed. Many attempts will fail so there’s little use in reinforcing these. Then take another look at the entire field (company or ecosystem), and see where else you might deploy more mice. Repeat.


Send forth your mice!

Update —

Trojan Mice in 900 Seconds

Image: @whatsthepont

Principles of Networked Unmanagement

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Cooperation

Collaboration is working together for a common objective, while cooperation is openly sharing, without any quid pro quo. Cooperation is a necessary behaviour to be open to serendipity and to encourage experimentation. In networks, cooperation trumps collaboration. Collaboration happens around some kind of plan or structure, while cooperation presumes the freedom of individuals to join and participate. Cooperation is a driver of creativity.

As we shift to a networked economy, our organizational frameworks have to change. While collaboration inside the company and with partners may have worked in a market economy, cooperation amongst a greater variety of network actors is now necessary. We are seeing this with customers getting involved in product design and marketing becoming more “social”. Shifting our emphasis from collaboration, which still is required to get some work done, to cooperation, in order to thrive in a networked ecosystem, means reassessing some of our assumptions about work.

Cooperation in our work is needed so that we can continuously develop emergent practices demanded by increased complexity. What worked yesterday won’t work today. No one has the definitive answer any more but we can use the intelligence of our networks to make sense together and see how we can influence desired results. Cooperation is a foundational behaviour for effectively working in networks, and it’s in networks where most of us, and our children, will be working.  Cooperation is the future, which is already here, albeit unevenly distributed.

Since cooperation presumes the freedom of individuals to join and participate, people in the network cannot be told what to do, only influenced. If they don’t like you, they won’t connect. That’s like being on Twitter with no followers and never getting “retweeted”. You will be a lone node and of little value to the network. In a hierarchy you only have to please your boss. In a network you have to be perceived as having some value by many others.

Teamwork

Most of us have seen those fancy teamwork motivational posters on workplace walls, and almost every job description includes teamwork as a critical competency. Teamwork is over-rated, as it can be a smoke screen for office bullies to coerce fellow workers. A big economic stick often hangs over the team; “be a team player or lose your job”.

Teams promote unity of purpose, not openness, transparency and diversity of ideas, essential for building trust in networks. Think of a football team, a common business metaphor in North America. There is only one coach and everybody has a specific job to do while “keeping their eye on the ball”. In today’s workplace, there’s more than one ball and the coach cannot see the entire field. The team, as a work vehicle, is outdated.

As much as organizations advertise for “team players”, what would be better are workers who can collaborate and cooperate by connecting to each other in a balanced manner. There are other ways of organizing work. Orchestras are not teams; neither are jazz ensembles. There may be teamwork on a theatre production but the cast is not a team. It is more like a social network. Teams are what we get when we use the blunt stick of economic consequences as the prime motivator. In a complex world, unity can be counter-productive.

Jobs

The high-value work today is in facing complexity, not in addressing problems that have already been solved and for which a formulaic or standardized response has been developed. Most workers are paid to do only one thing – solve problems. When dealing with work problems we can categorize them as either known or new. Known problems require access to the right information to solve them. This information can be mapped, and frameworks such as knowledge management help us to map it. We can also create tools, especially electronic performance support systems (EPSS) to do work and not have to learn all the background knowledge in order to accomplish the task. This is how simple and complicated knowledge gets automated.

Complex, new problems need tacit (implicit) knowledge to solve them. Furthermore, as more work becomes automated & outsourced, exception-handling becomes more important in the networked workplace. The system handles the routine stuff and people, usually working together, deal with the exceptions. As new exceptions get addressed, some or all of the solution gets automated, and so the process evolves. The 21st century workplace, with its growing complexity due to our interconnectivity, requires that we focus work on new problems and exception-handing. This increases the need for collaboration, working together on a problem; as well as cooperation, sharing without any specific objective.

One challenge for organizations will be getting people to realize that what they actually know, as detailed in a job description, has decreasing value. How to solve problems together is becoming the real business imperative. Sharing and using knowledge in new ways is where business value lies. With computer systems that can handle more and more of our known knowledge, the 21st century worker has to move to the complex and chaotic edge to get the valued and paid work done. There are many people who will need help with this challenge.

Networks

Workplace leaders everywhere need to help the current and upcoming workforce enter the 21st century network economy. Another change to manage will be getting people to work more transparently. Transparency is necessity for effective networks. For instance, a major benefit of using social media is increasing speed of access to knowledge. However, if the information is not shared by people, it will not be found. With greater transparency, information can flow horizontally as well as vertically. New patterns and dynamics can then emerge from interconnected people and interlinked information flows, and these will bypass established structures and services. Working transparently and cooperatively is much less controllable than many managers will be comfortable with. But in this network era that we are entering, the increase in complex work, and rise of networks as the primary organizing framework, will create an even greater need for cooperation.

“In the long term, +N [network] dynamics should enable government, business, and civil-society leaders to create new mechanisms for mutual consultation, coordination, and cooperation spanning all levels of governance. Aging contentions that “the government” or “the market” is the solution to particular public-policy issues will eventually give way to new ideas that “the network” is the optimal solution.” — Ronfeldt

We, collectively, are the solution to our problems. We just have not figured out how to get optimally organized. Network theory can provide many of the answers. The first step is seeing that we have a problem and that our current work models are inadequate. Doing the same things better will not help. Looking outward, beyond our organizations, can enable cooperative behaviour. Casting off old management models, like jobs and organization charts, is another step. Shifting to a networked economy is going to take cooperation, and that only happens when we let go of control, just the opposite of Taylor’s principles of scientific management* which have informed us for the past century. Here are my introductory Principles of Networked Unmanagement:

It is only through innovative and contextual methods, the self-selection of the most appropriate tools and work conditions, and willing cooperation that more productive work can be assured. The duty of being transparent in our work and sharing our knowledge rests with all workers, including management.

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* Here are F.W. Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management (1911)

It is only through enforced standardization of methods, enforced adoption of the best implements and working conditions, and enforced cooperation that this faster work can be assured. And the duty of enforcing the adoption of standards and enforcing this cooperation rests with management alone.

It's Friday again

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Here are some of the observations and insights that were shared via social media during the past two weeks.

@snowded – “[I have] Yet to see a list of core competences produced by a committee which could not have been done by any practitioner on the back of an envelope.”

@euan – “Been asked to talk about social media metrics – not sure if bloody good conversations with interesting people is what they’re looking for!”

@jurgenappelo – “You should not celebrate failure, you should celebrate learning. If you fail all the time, there’s a chance you’re not learning.”

@C4LPT – “Organisational training is going to become a sideshow; people’s real learning will take place in other places in order to keep themselves up to date.”

@TheCR – Complexity, Simplicity and Why Community Is Difficult for Organizations – by @RHappe

  1. Initially what you are doing may land on deaf ears. For a long time. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it will not succeed and it certainly doesn’t mean it is not worthwhile. It just means that it needs low grade care and feeding while people get comfortable with it and understand it.
  2. Early success is in changing people’s patterns and behaviors, not in financial gain or cost avoidance.
  3. Communities require a lot of individual action to be successful so it is critical that actions be meaningful and small initially.
  4. The impact of hundreds of small actions on economic output can be significant.
  5. The impact of the collective action would not have been possible with a traditional business plan or model. There are huge opportunities for those individuals and organizations that can cede control and not insist on consolidating 100% of the output.

The Atlantic: The Case for Abolishing Patents (Yes, All of Them) – via @TimKastelle

In plain-speak, the authors are arguing that, yes, the evidence suggests that having a limited amount of patent protection makes countries slightly more innovative, presumably by encouraging inventors to cash in on their great ideas without fear of being ripped off. But patent protections never stay small and tidy. Instead, entrenched players like intellectual property lawyers who make their living filing lawsuits and old, established corporations that want to keep new players out of their markets lobby to expand the breadth of patent rights. And as patent rights get stronger, they take a serious toll on the economy, including our ability to innovate.

The revolution starts within

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Do you work in an organization that is slow to adapt? Do you feel constrained by inept IT and HR policies? Are there deep impenetrable departmental silos within a non-collaborative culture? Is innovation and change painfully slow? If you answered yes to any of these, what can you really do from the inside?

Cartoon by Hugh Macleod @gapingvoid

Euan Semple writes about this in The blindingly, bloody, obvious:

It occurred to me the other day while working with a client that one of the challenges of enticing their colleagues to join in with their social networks is how obvious the benefits are once you have experienced them are – but how obscure they are until you have. Sometimes disparagingly called “not getting it” this is one of the biggest problems to overcome. You can spend a fortune on technology but unless you find a way to help people to “get it”, to understand the benefits to them of getting their hands dirty and taking part, you might as well not have bothered.

Timing is everything. An idea that is too early for its time will often get killed, especially if it gets referred to a committee. If you are convinced that your future workplace should look more like a Wirearchy, (a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority based on, knowledge, trust, credibility, a focus on results; enabled by interconnected people and technology) then the best thing you can do now is prepare.

  • Prepare yourself to be a continuous learner.
  • Prepare yourself and your team/department to work collaboratively.
  • Start narrating your work.
  • Become a knowledge curator and share widely.
  • Engage in professional social networks and communities of practice.
  • Model the behaviours you would like to see in others.

Finally, watch for moments of need, when the organization has a problem or crisis and then be ready with the tools and skills to help. It’s like being your own upstart company, developing asymmetrical skills under the radar, inside your organization. If nothing else, you will be preparing yourself to work in a wirearchy, whether it is your current employer or a future one. The network era revolution starts within each of us. Start walking the talk.

"They don’t want to train people on the job anymore"

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In a recent Atlantic article, Zvika Kriefer talks to Elli Sharef, who runs HireArt, a recruiting agency, focused on the tech sector.

I also asked Sharef if she had any insights on the broader employment picture, since she spends most of her day trying to match employers with employees. The most striking trend she sees is that having a strong, well-rounded resume is no longer good enough. Employers are increasingly looking for specific skills sets that match their needs.

“They don’t want to train people on the job anymore,” she says, marking a shift away from the apprenticeship model that defined many sectors in the economy before the recession. “There are just too many people looking for work for companies to waste time on someone who can’t start, ready to go, on the first day. Candidates are left to fend for themselves.”

What could this mean?

For individuals, it’s getting obvious they have to start taking their professional development into their own hands. Also, as more work becomes contractual or part-time, workers have to take up the slack where company training used to offer some professional development. It also means that those buying any professional development are going to be more discerning and price-sensitive. The tide is shifting to supporting individuals through communities, separate from companies, as organizational lifespans continue to decrease. The popularity of the PKM Workshop also indicates that people want to take control of their professional development and only need a safe place to start. Participants this year have commented that the workshops have changed how they think:

“This program has made me think differently about my professional practice.”

“I’ve had more ‘conversations’ and been exposed to many points of view that I would not have encountered any other way.”

The Seek-Sense-Share framework of PKM has proven to be useful for many participants:

“Reducing my seeking and spending more time sensing (converting things into high quality content) is my most important goal for the next few months.”

“I need to increase the proportional amount of time I spend in “Sense.” I read a lot, I share quite a bit…yet when it comes to making sense of patterns and other “stuff” in the whole, I don’t always make time to do it.”

“I very much appreciate the simpleness of the Seek Sense Share model and the fact that together they lead to Serendipity (enhanced Serendipity to be sure). S/S/S = S.”

Staying in touch with participants has given additional feedback that the workshop participants’ practices are changing:

“Without any coherent strategy I often was not persistent in my undertakings. This course gave me an excellent opportunity to evaluate my position and to work out an appropriate approach.

My take-aways:
1. Take risks & engage,
2. Focus on who, not what,
3. Less is more,
4. Ritualize and organize to make time to reflect,
5. Trust the process.
6. Have fun.”

But what about training (L&D) departments?

If organizations are engaging job-ready workers, then training has to move away from course delivery and focus on performance and collaboration. But it is difficult to move a traditional training organization directly to a social learning focus. It is easier to start with performance consulting and then expand to social and collaborative learning, as I wrote in from training to performance to social. Nancy Slawski picked up on this on How to Live Social in the L&D Trenches:

“Kermit the Frog’s rendition of ‘It’s not Easy Being Green’ could be the theme song for L&D folk who are trying to push against the grain of workplace cultures that are heavily siloed , that define learning in terms of content heavy learning events and who see social learning and social media as one in the same.

On top of these internal challenges, learning professionals also have external pressures of learning and industry. We are reminded daily that unless L&D can morph ourselves into social, informal, collaborative gurus who have their fingers on the pulse of talent and performance , our days are numbered. (is that a DoDo bird I see?)”

The workshops provide only one possible way to start the shift in workplace learning support from Push to Pull, with an emphasis on Flow over Stock. There are many other options. But we think it’s very important to understand how work is changing, as every day there are indicators of the shift. When work is learning and learning is the work, none of us can just sit back and see what gets pushed to us. As knowledge workers, it’s essential to note that anything that can be reduced to a flowchart will be automated. In such a world, it’s best not to leave everything to centralized planning and control, whether as an individual or in supporting workplace learning.

Do not underestimate the power of audio

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I once wrote a paper on educational radio programming on the CBC during the 1930’s and 1940’s. The achievements of early radio have similarities with web-based social learning. Two of the more popular programmes on early CBC radio were the Citizens’ Forum and the Farm Radio Forum.

“Farm Radio Forum, 1941-65, was a national rural listening-discussion group project sponsored by the Canadian Association for Adult Education, the Canadian Federation of Agriculture and CBC. Up to 27 000 persons met in neighbourhood groups Monday nights, November through March, using half-hour radio broadcasts, printed background material and pretested questions as aids to discussion of social and economic problems.

Farm Forum innovations included a regional report-back system, whereby group conclusions were collected centrally and broadcast regularly across Canada, occasionally being sent to appropriate governments. In addition, discussion – leading to self-help – resulted in diverse community “action projects” such as co-operatives, new forums and folk schools. Farm and community leaders claimed that the give-and-take of these discussions provided useful training for later public life. In 1952, UNESCO commissioned research into Farm Forum techniques. Its report was published in 1954, and consequently India, Ghana and France began using Canadian Farm Forum models in their programs.”

Radio is a one-way medium but innovations such as programme guides by mail one week in advance, local discussion groups and national feedback on individual responses, kept people actively involved. Imagine a group of farmers gathering at a neighbour’s house, bringing food for a communal supper, and then discussing issues of great social relevance,  like the possibility of medicare. This was real public radio, not just commercial-free airwaves. Today, the CBC produces programmes such as Cross-Country Checkup and the Radio Noon Phone-Ins for similar purposes.

Donald Clark has looked at the medium as well, in Radio Education: huge and hugely underestimated and provides a view of the further potential of this medium in the Internet era.

Radio and new media
Podcasting is the true heir to radio. To timeshift an audio experience and put it in the hands of the learner, gives them is convenience and control. Internet radio has given many access to distant radio stations and led to growth in stations with a very specific focus. Far from being a dead or dying medium it is finding new purposes and new channels.

Conclusion
Radio is scalable, in the broadcasting sense. It’s low cost and reach have seen widespread use, not only in the developing world but in developed countries like the UK, where radio has long been respected as a source of high quality educational content. Video is very far from killing the radio star.

Sometimes it’s good to go back and revisit what we have collectively learned. We should not underestimate the power of audio, whether it be as podcasts or live radio.

our crude knowledge capture tools

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Earlier this week I commented that while of course, you cannot capture knowledge in the literal sense, people in organizations need to share their knowledge-making experiences. The aim of knowledge-sharing in an organization is to help make tacit knowledge more explicit, not some type of fictional Vulcan mind meld. I have quoted Dave Jonassen on knowledge transfer several times here, “Every amateur epistemologist knows that knowledge cannot be managed. Education has always assumed that knowledge can be transferred and that we can carefully control the process through education. That is a grand illusion.” I also noted in networked sharing that it is very important to understand that organizations and cultures that do not share what they know, are doomed.

It is important to keep in mind that what we loosely call knowledge, when using terms like knowledge-sharing or knowledge capture,  is just our approximation of it so we can share it with others. As Dave Snowden says, we are not very good at articulating our knowledge.

We always know more than we can say, and we will always say more than we can write down. This is probably the most important. The process of taking things from our heads, to our mouths (speaking it) to our hands (writing it down) involves loss of content and context. It is always less than it could have been as it is increasingly codified.

When we use our knowledge to describe some data, such as what we remember from an experience or our summary of a book, we convey our knowledge by creating information, and as Dave notes, writing it down is not very effective.

But that does not mean that we shouldn’t even try. The cumulative pieces of information, or knowledge artifacts, that we create and share can help us have better conversations and gain some shared understanding. Our individual sense-making can be shared and from it can emerge better organizational knowledge. It’s not a linear process, as in from data we get information, which when aggregated becomes knowledge, and over time becomes wisdom (DIKW).

I think of wisdom as something that can only be partially shared over time. Hence the reason why masters can only have a limited number of apprentices. But when writing, and later books, came along, we had a new technology that could more widely distribute information created by the wise, and the not so wise. Neither the wisdom nor the knowledge actually get transferred, but the information can be helpful to those who wish to learn.

Mass communication has not been without its detractors, perhaps Socrates being the first.  He is reported to have said that the advent of written language, and books, would result in men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, who will be a burden to their fellows (Plato’s Phaedrus). How times change.

The lesson I take from this is that we cannot become complacent with knowledge. It must be shared amongst people who know that they are only seeing a fragment of others’ knowledge. Because it is so difficult to represent our knowledge to others, we have to make every effort to keep sharing it. For example, narrating one’s work does not get knowledge transferred, but it provides a better medium to gain more understanding. Knowledge shared in flows over time enables us to create better mental pictures than a single piece of knowledge stock.

One way of capturing knowledge is to create knowledge collections, as described by Steve Denning, in Can knowledge be collected?

Why has the promise of knowledge collections not been realized? Evidence-based medicine suggests that the answer may lie in distinguishing between precision knowledge, intuitive knowledge, and behavior-change knowledge.

[snip] In assessing the potential value of knowledge collections in economics, management or development, it’s important to recognize that most of the relevant knowledge is not precision knowledge. It’s not like “when you have a strep throat, take an antibiotic.” It’s more like the treatment of cancer or hypertension. It needs trained professionals to solve problems through intuitive experimentation and pattern recognition, and then behavioral change knowledge to provide support and involvement in continued monitoring and experimentation.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, capturing knowledge (as crudely as we do) is only the first step. We also need to enable sharing, take action, and empower people. But I cannot see how we can do this if we don’t try to capture some of what we know in order to get a level of common understanding. Exactly what I have been trying to do on this blog, over many years.

Do you know when it’s time to let go?

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According to my colleague Jay Cross, Morgan McCall, Robert Eichinger and Michael Lombardo originated the 70:20:10 framework at the Center for Creative Leadership in North Carolina. Their 1996 book, The Career Architect, stated that lessons learned by successful managers came roughly:

  • 70% from real life and on-the-job experiences, tasks, and problem solving
  • 20% from feedback, and working with and observing role models
  • 10% from courses and reading

Research also shows that most workplace learning is informal. But when do you move from formal instruction to informal learning? An interesting article on management coaching  uses the metaphor of riding a bike. When is it time for the parent to let go of the bicycle and let the child ride alone?

Jesse Lyn Stoner says:

How do you recognize that moment – that it is time to let go? I consider these four questions:

Do they have the skills and knowledge they need?
Have they demonstrated their ability to do this in other settings or similar ways?
Do they want to do it?
Do they have the resources they need to do the job?

These are the types of questions that training departments and HR professionals should be asking. When is it time to let go? Are they looking for indicators, or are they just wed to their preferred methods of control. I think it’s a great question to ask: When do you let your employees ride on their own? If there is no clear answer, perhaps most workers are still encumbered with training wheels.

If the organization has no methods in place to mark the time that employees can ride on their own, then they may be treating their workforce like children. At what point can someone make decisions to spend a few hundred, or even a few thousand, dollars to address an issue that is important to get work done? With metaphorical training wheels, nobody falls, but the riders never achieve full speed either. Are these the kinds of employees you want? Give them a chance to really ride.

[This post was written after a great 70 KM bike ride on a fall day in the middle of the week]

It starts with capturing knowledge

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In the Altimeter Group’s Report on Enterprise Social Networks, four areas of business value were identified:

  1. Encourage Sharing
  2. Capture Knowledge
  3. Enable Action
  4. Empower People

I would suggest an order of difficulty and business value for these four components.

Capturing knowledge is the foundation, and drives value up the chain, enabling sharing of  knowledge and the ability to take action on that knowledge. All three can then drive empowered people (if the organizational structure allows this, and if it doesn’t, consider the resulting frustration).

As Dave Gray wrote in The Connected Company, capturing tacit knowledge is tough:

“The learning challenge for the company comes from the dynamic relationship between the two forms of knowledge. Tacit knowledge is where the action is, and in most cases, it’s the people with the tacit knowledge that deliver the results. But the only way tacit knowledge can be broadly shared is by translating it into explicit knowledge — a very difficult task that very few companies have mastered.”

If capturing knowledge, or making tacit knowledge more explicit, is the core challenge for social businesses, what should we do?

For the organization: Make it easy to share

For teams and groups: Narrate your Work

For individuals: Practice personal knowledge mastery

For learning & development (training) professionals:

  • Be a lurker or a passive participant in relevant work-related communities (could be the lunch room) and LISTEN to what is being said.
  • Communicate what you observe to people around you, solicit their feedback and engage in meaningful conversations.
  • Continuously collect feedback from the workplace, not just after courses.
  • Make it easy to share information by simplifying & synthesizing issues that are important and relevant to fellow workers.

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