finding people who know

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Jane McConnell published her 9th annual report on The Organization in the Digital Age last month. Jane recently posted 10 key findings from the nearly 300 organizations surveyed.

“4. Finding People “Who Know” Is Winning Over Finding “The Information I Need”

Enterprise search is stuck at a low level of satisfaction with results. Organizations are prioritizing their efforts between finding information or finding people and the latter is the more frequent choice.

Lack of good information management practices is a concern because the high performers in the learning, customer and knowledge scenarios cite information management as a key success factor.”

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the literacy of the 21st century

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Work is learning, and learning is the work. I have repeated this hundreds of times over the past six years and I know some people may think it is a trite statement. But the fact that learning is usually supported by an organizational department that has less influence than sales, marketing, operations, or information technology, shows that learning is not a priority in most enterprises. It’s often bolted on after the major decisions have been made. Several times on consulting engagements I have been perceived as ‘the learning guy’ dealing with a minor aspect of the ‘real’ project.

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learning for the long term

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The Tribal form of society was premised on kinship, which added the Institutional form based on hierarchical position, and later the Market form based on competitive advantage. The current Market form of society is a myopic creature, extracting short-term value from the entire ecosystem and redistributing it to a priesthood of investors. Every quarter companies must pay tribute to the gods of the market. Even our governments are run like markets, with slightly longer payback periods. The US House of Representatives gets market feedback every two years, the Australian government every three years, Canadian parliamentarians every four years, and lucky US Senators every six years. The focus on short-term results is the hallmark of the market era.

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the keystone of the intelligent organization

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This is a summary of my closing keynote for the workplace learning & VET stream at EduTECH15 in Brisbane on 3 June 2015.

The intelligent enterprise [l’entreprise intelligente] has to be founded first and foremost on intelligent communication, which in the network era is much more than just passing information. It is actively engaging in conversations to continuously make sense of the changing environment. As it was necessary to be literate in order to work in the industrial era, it is now a basic work requirement to be able to communicate effectively. This means adding value to knowledge, in various mediated forms (video, audio, written, oral). Being able to read and write is not enough. Intelligent communication requires seeking out knowledge in social networks, making sense by creating new communications, and being cognizant of the appropriate times and ways to share that knowledge.

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preparing for 2020

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This is a synopsis of my opening keynote for the workplace learning & VET stream at EduTECH15 in Brisbane today.

We cannot look at the 2020 workplace merely from the perspective of what will be different from today, as if these five years will pass in splendid isolation. How we think of work has changed over the millennia and one major factor has been our communications technologies. When communication changes, work does too, as well as our understanding of what is knowledge, and what it means to be knowledgeable.

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build your own edge

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Every one of the major challenges facing us is complex. But our organizations are not designed for complexity. Our workplace training does not factor in complexity. While not all of our problems are complex, the simpler issues are being dealt with, especially through software and automation. Understanding complexity means working in it together and using our collective intelligence.

One example of using the collective wisdom of an organization is to map a path forward. Robert Paterson worked with US public radio, NPR, in 2005 to help determine how to adapt to the industry-wide changes wrought by social media. Six years later, Rob noted this report from The New York Times, “Amid all that creative destruction, there was a one large traditional news organization that added audience, reporters and revenue. That unlikely juggernaut was NPR.”

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leading beyond automation

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As we enter the network era, we see that leadership is an emergent property of a network in balance and not some special property available to only the select few. Effective knowledge networks require leadership from everyone – an aggressively intelligent and engaged workforce, learning with each other. Positional leadership, by the authority of some hierarchy, is giving way to reputational leadership, as determined by the myriad feedback loops of the network. To lead in a network, is to learn in a network, as relationships and conditions change. Anyone can show leadership, not just managers or those with ‘high potential’.

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technology, change, and us

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Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

Innovation vs. (social) copying [without innovators to copy, none of us can learn socially]

Another attribute of the most successful strategies is that they are parasitic. This is the essence of social learning – somebody has to do the hard graft to find out how to do things before other people can copy them, so it only pays to learn socially when there are some innovators around. Indeed, in contests where (the winning) agents were able to invade the entire population, they actually ended up with a lower average pay-off than they did in contests where the conditions allowed some agents with more innovative strategies to survive, so providing new behaviours to copy – New Scientist

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social learning is personal

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Social learning is the process by which groups of people cooperate to learn with and from each other. The network era is creating a historic reversal of education, as discourse replaces institutions, and social learning in knowledge networks obsolesces many aspects of organizational training. It is as if Socrates has come back to put Plato’s academy in its place, but this time the public agora is global.

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