Harold Jarche

Idea management requires shared power

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Nancy Dixon discusses The Three Eras of Knowledge Management, an excellent read on how lead organizations are using idea management. This post confirms, in my mind, the three principles of net work, or how work gets done in the network era. The description of convening  is similar to openness, though in the explanation below, it is a more deliberate process than what might be thought of as a community of practice. .

The NASA example illustrates the three enablers of the third era, 1) convening, 2) cognitive diversity and 3) transparency.

1. Convening
Convening is the skill and practice of bringing groups together to develop understanding of complex issues, create new knowledge and spur innovation. It is about:
• designing meetings as conversations rather than presentations
• identifying who needs to be in the conversation, including those who do the work and are impacted by it
• framing the question in a way that opens thinking
• arranging the space to facilitate conversation
• using small groups as the unit of learning
I have written about convening and the role of the leader in The Power of the Conversation Architect to Address Complex, Adaptive Challenges

Cognitive Diversity
Cognitive diversity is the deliberate use of difference to bring new understanding to an issue. When faced with complex issues our inclination is to collect more data, survey, or assign a task force to conduct interviews; when what is needed is a new way to frame the issue. Cognitive diversity brings people trained in different heuristics, problem solving strategies, interpretations, and perspectives into the room. Cognitive diversity can be found in different parts of the organization (e.g. marketing, finance, engineering), in different disciplines (e.g. biology, neuroscience, archeology), or outside the organization (e.g. suppliers, customers, consultants, academicians, alliances).

Transparency
Transparency includes the willingness of management to say, “I don’t know” and therefore to employ the organization’s collective knowledge. It is also about management providing all the available information and data on an issue so that those convened have what they need to do the work of sensemaking. Organizational members also have a role in transparency, that is, to be open about what is happening at their level, rather than hiding or discounting bad news to appease management – to bring the best available knowledge to bear on organizational issues

What I find implicit in the notion of idea management though, is shared power. Just doing idea management, like narration of work, is not enough. If the high-value work today is in facing complexity, not in addressing problems for which a formulaic or standardized responses have been developed, then learning and solving problems together is a real business advantage. If idea management requires those in control to say, “I don’t know”, then there are many organizations where this will not happen. If idea management requires  employees “being open about what is happening at their level”, then personal knowledge management skills need to be widespread (something I have yet to see in most organizations).  Command & control remain the major stumbling blocks in effective idea management. However, it is great to see that there are lead organizations, like NASA,  setting the example.

Negotiating between chaos and project deadlines

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I watched Dave Snowden talk about tacit knowledge, and many other things, at the State of the Net Conference. Several comments are worth repeating, in my opinion:

If we don’t understand the why of things, we can never scale the how.

Management science regularly confuses correlation with causation.

We will always know more than we can say. We will always say more than we can write down.

Fallacy: If you give the right information, to the right people, at the right time, they will act accordingly. As “pattern-seekers” we may not even “see” the data when it is presented.

Human knowledge requires mediation.

Resilience comes from early detection, fast recovery & fast exploitation of the opportunities presented, which then becomes a new paradigm. We need to architect organizations based on an assumption of failure, not an assumption of success.

As I reflected on Dave’s comments I thought about my previous presentation on coherent communities and how it is important to connect people in the most appropriate way for the problem at hand. It seems that chaos abounds on the Internet, with a flood of ideas  and nobody really knows what is causation and what is correlation. However, there may be something to be learned here, hence the value of disparate social networks. Communities of practice have the openness and flexibility to deal with complex problems as people can share freely but are in a constrained problem space, so that over time we can share more than what we say or write down. Meanwhile, getting work done inside the organization has to be further constrained, and focused on projects where we can see the relationships between cause and effect.

For the knowledge worker, and for networked organizations, the challenge is in negotiating, and understanding, all three spaces. It is necessary to know where failure is optimal (early) and how to mediate knowledge from the chaotic edge to the work bench. Work needs to be simultaneously informal & structured and balanced between both goals & opportunities. Constantly negotiated boundaries (as Dave says, it’s like raising teenagers) can help organizations become more resilient. Identifying the boundaries is a good start.

 

Narration is only the first step

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I think that narration is one of the key principles of an effective networked workplace, or social business. Narration is making one’s tacit knowledge (what one feels) more explicit (what one is doing with that knowledge). Narrating work is a powerful behaviour changer, as long-term bloggers can attest. In an organization, narration can take many forms. It could be a regular blog; sharing day-to-day happenings in activity streams; taking pictures and videos; or just having regular discussions. Developing good narration skills, like adding value to information, takes time and practice. Narrating work also means taking ownership of mistakes.

Jane Bozarth discusses the nuts and bolts of narrating our work in this Learning Solutions Magazine article:

By sharing what we are doing and how we are learning, we distribute the tacit knowledge otherwise so hard to capture; invite feedback and encouragement from others; invite others to learn with us; document our work and learning for future use; and tie our learning to the efforts of others. Here’s a true story about physical rehab turned learning turned hobby turned community of practice turned two successful businesses, all via informal, social means. And all within six months.

The story that Jane tells happens outside the walls of an organization. I think this is important to note, because one of my other principles for an effective networked workplace is shared power. Shared power enables faster reaction times so those closest to the situation can take action. In complex situations there is no time to write a detailed assessment. Those best able to address the situation have marinated in it for some time. They couldn’t sufficiently explain it to someone removed from the problem if they wanted to anyway. This shared power is enabled by trust. Power in knowledge-based organizations must be distributed in order to nurture trust.

But sharing power is really difficult. In the video Dare to Disagree, via Jim Hays, Margaret Heffernan describes how people inside organizations, and professional communities, are afraid to challenge conventional wisdom, even when the data are overwhelming. The power structure exerts great pressure to conform. Only organizations that share power and encourage conflict can advance different ideas. As she says, “openness alone can’t drive change”.

Power-sharing decreases the fear of conflict. When those at the top hold most, or all, of the power, then  those near the bottom will try to avoid conflict. But conflict is essential for learning. As Heffernan describes in the video, only in trusted relationships can conflict for learning happen. Sharing power creates trust.

Unfortunately, power is addictive. For example, simulations reveal that when there are no levels of hierarchy, everyone shares in the rewards of the system. When only one level level is added, then those at the top get 89% while those only one level down have to share the remaining 11%. No wonder hierarchies are so appealing. Power, and its effects on organizational performance, are holding us back. This is why we need to experiment with new and much flatter work structures.

As Heffernan says, the truth will not set us free until we have the courage to use it. Our organizational structures, and their power systems, are a major part of the problem. Command and control are the barriers to an effective networked workplace. I have written that Enterprise 2.0 and social business are hollow shells without democracy because without power sharing, narration of work & transparency are a useless two-legged stool.

 

Complex is the new normal

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“Change becomes chaotic when employees see and hear two or more different change methods and messages“, writes Jay Deragon in managing on the edge of chaos. Jay has an image that shows that ordered organizations need to empower their employees to deal with more complexity, while those in chaos need to gain alignment in order to get out of chaos. Complexity is becoming the “normal” state, and it can be dealt with, but not with traditional management methods.

I have combined Jay’s image with the Dave Snowden’s Cynefin framework, and some added arrows, here:

Complex is the new normal. However, it requires more than just discarding some of our traditional ways of dealing with change. It also means staying out of disorder:

The fifth domain is Disorder, which is the state of not knowing what type of causality exists, in which state people will revert to their own comfort zone in making a decision. ~ Wikipedia

Not knowing whether you are in a chaotic or complicated state is a large part of the problem with organizational change initiatives. Thinking you can manage your way through the change assumes a complicated state, where you can sense & analyze before responding. Assuming a chaotic state means acting before sensing, and often getting it wrong. If the situation facing the organization is indeed complex, then neither approach is suitable. The approach is to Probe, Sense & Respond.

To shift to a complex reality, the seven essential criteria for an increasingly complex world would be a good starting point for most organizations, something I rarely see in action. More detail is provided in a guide to complexity and organizations. Managing organizations on the edge of chaos needs an understanding of complexity. Most organizations and institutions have a long way to go, and I am sure that employees will continue hearing two or more conflicting messages about change, as their leaders flounder for control.

Education and, of course, the Net

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Here are some of the observations and insights that were shared via Twitter this past week. 

Roger Schank: the on line education revolution: its all about the design

Learning by doing is really how we learn: Teaching others to do this is the next step in the education revolution

@aronsolomon – Generation Why

We had two sources of information: adults in our limited networks and the few books in the public library. We learned painfully passively and tentatively. We were pre-pre-digital, Generation Why is post-digital. They have eclipsed the foundation of their digital native-ness to make information work for them. Done well, it’s an art form of depth and texture.

@CathyNDavidson – Standardizing Human Ability – via @quinnovator

And in the first burst of Fordist assembly line labor, educators took the apparatus of scientific labor management and turned it into scientific learning management. Virtually all of the protocols now in place for measuring academic success are based on Taylorist principles. Not on ages’ old traditions of learning, but on a system of reducing human qualities to measurable, standardized productivity designed for the assembly line.

@S4pattern – @jerrymichalski Education as Embracing Agency

This caught my attention: “What we really want is for kids to have again a sense of agency.” He variously describes agency as: permission; the ability to do something, to act on something; a sense that it’s ok to go out and change your world, to try to make a difference; a responsibility for the task at hand.

@dweinberger – Louis C.K. and the Decent Net, or How Louis won the Internet

The Internet is a calamity of norms. Too many cultures, too many localities, too many communities, each with its own norms. And there’s no global agreement on principles that will sort things out for us. In fact, people who disagree based on principles often feel entitled to demonize their opponents because they differ on principles. The only hope for living together morally on the Net is to try not to be dicks to one another. I’m not saying it’s obvious how to apply that rule. And I’m certainly not saying that we’ll succeed at it. But now that we’ve been thrown together without any prior agreement on norms or principles, what else can we do except try to treat each other with trust and a touch of sympathy?

Coherent communities

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Jay Cross has initiated an online conversation about the Coherent Organization/Enterprise:

At the Internet Time Alliance, we’re big fans of narrating our work. We encourage clients to get their people to narrate their work, through blogs or other sharing media, for a number of reasons.

If you are a blogger, you know how blogging makes you reflect on your experience and draw conclusions. What’s more, if you are transparent about what you’re doing, your colleagues and acquaintances will know when and how to lend you a hand. Sharing your discoveries adds to the value of the networked Commons; I think of it as a requirement of good network citizenship.

In the last ten days, Harold Jarche, Clark Quinn, and I have been building on one another’s thoughts in public. We’re each teasing out the meaning of what we call the Coherent Organization with models.

Let me narrate my work so far.

I am interested in the role of communities of practice in knowledge sharing. I have been looking at how communities of practice can bridge our social networks with our work teams, helping us get the job done while being open to innovative ideas. This presentation is a work in progress but I think it is ready to go public and get your feedback. Here is my logic:

  1. Sharing complex knowledge requires strong social ties, but only working with our peers may blind us to outside ideas.
  2. Networks with diverse and weak ties are the best places to get new ideas, yet these are often unstructured and difficult to manage.
  3. Communities of practice, which share strong & weak social ties and have some purpose & structure, can bridge the gap between getting the job done and innovating.
  4. Therefore, encouraging and supporting communities of practice is essential for the knowledge-based enterprise.

Effective, or coherent, knowledge-sharing requires not just collaboration, but also cooperation and especially connections (communities).

PKM starts new workshop series

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So far in 2012, I have hosted three online workshops on personal knowledge mastery (PKM), as well as a Summer Camp that included one week on the topic. Over 125 people have participated in these online sessions, compared with about a dozen who came to the on-site classroom course that I offered through the University of Toronto’s iSchool Institute for the past two years. I’ll let the numbers speak for themselves.

Read more

Reducing email

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I noted last year that workers waste a lot of time doing useless activities, like managing unwanted communications, and suggested that the cause of the problem, digital overload, was also the potential solution: social media. The ROI for social media in business is quite obvious: reducing wasted time. That’s how we can also find the time for networked learning.

The Atlantic Monthly reports a similar study that shows workers spend 28% of their time managing email. They also spend another 33% of their week managing communications and gathering knowledge, which can probably be done more effectively and efficiently, if my observations are indicative of most businesses. Without becoming industrial-era efficiency experts or doing detailed time & motion studies, we can still look at redundant work tools and habits and find ways to replace them.

Reducing email seems to be a very good place to start, as Luis Suarez has described in a world without email.

A guide to complexity and organizations

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Via Jay Cross is this amazing synthesis – Organize for Complexity – of how complexity affects our work and the ways in which we can change our organizational structures to account for complexity, instead or adding more complication. If you know nothing about complexity, read this. If you know a lot on the subject, keep it as a job aid or use it to help others.

I like the depiction of market dynamics, to which I have added the upper image. It shows the fundamental shift we are going through as the network era unfolds.

The definition of complex systems is quite useful:

Complex systems have presence or participation of living creatures. They are living systems – that’s why they may change at any moment. Such systems are only externally observable – not controllable.

A complex system’s behavior is non-predictable. Here, it’s natural that there is a level of error, uncertainty and illusion that is much higher than in complicated systems.
A complex system may possess elements that can operate in standardized ways, but their interaction would be constantly changing, in discontinuous ways.

The paper includes design principles as well as “how-to” implementation suggestions. Start with, “Design principle ‘Beta’: Self-regulation within the team. Control through peer pressure and transparency. Principles and shared responsibility.” This is a comprehensive, but not heavy, read. I am sure I will turn to it often.

I must say that I agree with pretty much everything in this paper, so I strongly recommend it.

Friday’s curation

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Here are some of the observations and insights that were shared via Twitter this past week.

@mikeridell62 – “Just as the industrial age ended slave labour the information age is likely to end mass-wage labour.”

@tom_peters – “Winners: Thrive on chaos-ambiguity. Sense of humor. Live by: Try-something-right-now. Celebrate failures. Resilience. Relationships nut.”

@jhagel – Finite Games as Probes in complexity – via @timekord

As I noted above, Carse insightfully points out that boundaries are necessary for finite games while infinite game players seek to undermine all boundaries.  Given my preoccupation with the importance of edges, this might appear to be a contradiction.  To be clear, I am drawn to edges (what Carse labels as horizons) precisely because they generate possibility, not because they define limits.  Edges are fertile ground for an infinite game that draws out potential and possibility in part because finite game players tend to avoid them and they attract those who are more excited by infinite games.

@crumphelen – “an experiment to narrate my work/learning for one day” [good example of PKM]

Tame, Wicked and Critical Problems: An introduction to the Cuckoo Clock Syndrome – via @commutiny

Elegant solutions do not work for Wicked problems because they sit across various difficult cultures and institutions. Not everyone responds well to punitive hierarchical measures. Nor is everyone affected equally by the incentives and support offered by individualists. Rather, what is required when approaching Wicked problems are ‘Clumsy’ solutions; those that broach and draw upon different cultural understandings. Here, Grint emphasises the importance of implementing ‘experimental’ approaches “because we cannot know whether the approach we adopt will eventually work; if we did it would be a Tame or Critical problem.” The key is for policymakers and leaders to act as ‘bricoleurs’ and ‘experimental pragmatists’, eschewing nicely framed Elegant responses which are the preserve of many policymakers.

Yes, government researchers really did invent the Internet [in response to a WSJ op-ed]

In truth, no private company would have been capable of developing a project like the Internet, which required years of R&D efforts spread out over scores of far-flung agencies, and which began to take off only after decades of investment. Visionary infrastructure projects such as this are part of what has allowed our economy to grow so much in the past century. Today’s op-ed is just one sad indicator of how we seem to be losing our appetite for this kind of ambition.

NYT: “Pinterest, Tumblr and the Trouble with ‘Curation.’ Sehnsucht: German for “addictive yearning.” That about nails it.” @CharlesHGreen

Here’s The Awl’s co-editor, Choire Sicha, for instance, on the subject of rebloggers who fancy themselves curators: “As a former actual curator, of like, actual art and whatnot, I think I’m fairly well positioned to say that you folks with your blog and your Tumblr and your whatever are not actually engaged in a practice of curation. Call it what you like: aggregating? Blogging? Choosing? Copyright infringing sometimes? But it’s not actually curation, or anything like it. . . .” To which a commenter added: “My Tumblr isn’t so much curated space as it is a symptom of deeper pathologies made manifest.”