on understanding media

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

@EskoKilpi – “The Internet is the first communication environment that decentralises the financial capital requirements of production”

@goonth – “The web hasn’t been democratized, contrary to popular belief. But it is definitely heading in that direction, albeit with quite a fight.”

@skinny – “There is no authority without responsibility. There is no responsibility without authority.”

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organizational transformation through pkm

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“Those of us who work in organizational development and change management need to move to the edge, and quickly. You have been warned.” – Helen Bevan

Five Seismic Shifts are changing the world of work:

  1. Disruptive change is becoming the norm
  2. Digital connection is revolutionizing communications
  3. Work complexity is increasing
  4. Hierarchical power is diminishing
  5. Change is coming from the edges of the organization

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democracy at work

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“It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” – Winston Churchill

Our society has tried many ways to organize work over the years, yet real democracy is a form that few have attempted. The need to control people runs deep in our work cultures. Managers have ‘direct reports’ and humans are regarded as ‘resources’. The need for command and control stems from inadequate means to effectively communicate. But in the past decade we finally have the circumstances where almost anyone can communicate with almost everyone. Hyperlinks have truly subverted hierarchy, even though institutional and market hierarchies are doing their utmost to prevent or control this. Oligopolies control most of our communications media, even democratic states run surveillance operations on their citizens, and many workplaces monitor all mediated communications. These are reactionary attempts to stop what has the potential to be the inevitable spread of democracy.

Why do we need democracy? It is the only way humans will be able to organize in order to deal with the complex problems facing us. Our intangible marketplaces, like the app economy, will continue to be highly volatile. Climate change and environmental degradation cannot be addressed by any existing institution. New approaches to solving wicked problems are required if humanity is to thrive or even survive into the next century.

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innovation means learning at work

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“So it is important to understand that there is no one-size-fits-all philosophy in terms of successful innovation. The one constant is that you have to be open to change and new points of view. Innovation is continuous.

Successful innovators and entrepreneurs all embrace change and the risks that they pose. In fact, innovation is the poster child of the mantra that there are no rules. Only by trying out new things, by failing, by discovering what works and what doesn’t, do you gain answers to the innovation question.” —Shaun Coffey

This is a continuation of my last post, where I said that innovation and personal knowledge mastery were interconnected. Innovation has been described as a combination of observing, questioning, experimenting, and networking. This correlates with the Seek > Sense > Share framework in PKM.

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my pkm story

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It has been over 10 years that I have examined, practiced, and developed models for personal knowledge management/mastery. Here are some reflections on how my thoughts have evolved over that decade.

PKM shifts responsibility

I started down the path of personal knowledge mastery in 2004, inspired by Dave Pollard, Denham Gray, and others.

“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. Companies should recognise that their employees are not “human resources”, but investors who bring their expertise into a company. As any investors they want to participate in decision-making and can easily withdraw if their “return on investment” is not compelling. Creativity, learning or desire to help others cannot be controlled, so knowledge workers need to be intrinsically motivated to deliver quality results. In this case “command and control” management methods are not likely to work.

Taking responsibility for own work and learning is a challenge for knowledge workers as well. Taking these responsibilities requires attitude shift and initiative, as well as developing personal KM knowledge and skills. In a sense personal KM is very entrepreneurial, there are more rewards and more risks in taking responsibility for developing own expertise.” —Lilia Efimova

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digital workforce skills

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“Are there new ways to think about our digital workplace skills that allows us to take our thinking up to a new plane, the next meta-level of thinking and working where we have much higher leverage, can manage change that is an order of magnitude or greater in volume than today, work in fundamentally better and smarter new ways — and perhaps even work a bit less — yet produce much more value?”

Dion Hinchcliffe asks What Are the Required Skills for Today’s Digital Workforce? and provides an image that addresses a good spectrum of skills for the network era.

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economics for our time

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

@johnrobb – “If you don’t own bots, bots will own you. Bots (software and hardware) are the capital & labor of the future in one package.”

@goonth – “If people don’t know how to communicate, relate and interact, then tools are just tools. Businesses & markets depend on human competencies.”

@Nynetjer-Maat-AtenRa – “If I plant seeds in the earth and get vegetables, did I create those veggies or the earth?“

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adapting to perpetual beta

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  • There is no such thing as a social business strategy.
  • There are only business strategies that understand networks.
  • Cooperative and distributed work is becoming the norm in the network era.
  • Social learning is how work gets done in networks.
  • Sharing power, enabling conversations, and ensuring transparency are some of the values of networked business.
  • Trust emerges when these principles are put in practice.
  • Learning is part of work, not separate from it.

What follows is a summary of what I believe are some of the most important issues facing organizational design today.

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our future of work

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Henry Demarest Lloyd wrote in March 1881, that “When monopolies succeed, the people fail …“, in his piece denouncing the practices of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. Capitalism does not have to be corporatism. There is little doubt today about the extent of corporate power and influence of monopolies, especially in their newest form: platform capitalism. In 1967, John Kenneth Galbraith warned of the dangers of blindly having faith in our corporate systems.

“The greater danger is in the subordination of belief to the needs of the modern industrial system … These are that technology is always good; that economic growth is always good; that firms must always expand; that consumption of goods is the principal source of happiness; that idleness is wicked; and that nothing should interfere with the priority we accord to technology, growth, and increased consumption.”

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