seeking perpetual beta

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New! Purchase all five e-books, ‘seeking perpetual beta’ – ‘finding perpetual beta’ – ‘adapting to perpetual beta’ – ‘working in perpetual beta’ ‘life in perpetual beta’- for €29.

After 10 years of blogging here, I have compiled my best posts into an ebook. It’s called Seeking perpetual Beta: a guidebook for the network era. Instead of digging through over 2,500 posts on this site, now you can read a cohesive narrative that covers learning, working, and managing in the emerging network era. This ebook is the result of a decade of seeking, sense-making, and sharing knowledge on the Web.

“the best $25 you’ll ever spend on yourself” – Susan Scrupski

“One of the best purchases you’ll do this year!” – Luis Suarez

“masterful synthesis of 10 years of blogging about networks” – Jon Husband

“Harold knows just how to harness the power of equal, open collaboration in the networked economy.” – Ian Chew

Scroll down to read the introduction and table of contents.

Back on sale by popular demand, seeking perpetual beta is available for $20.

Introduction

The following essays are abridged and updated posts as well as combinations of posts made over the course of a decade. When I started my blog, I had three categories: learning; work; and technology. Today there are many others, as my professional interests have expanded and changed. My perspective on work and learning has been one of perpetual Beta, which also could be called strong beliefs, loosely held. Alpha is a mindset of pumping out flavour of the month drivel. Beta is more than Alpha, as you have to affirm to principles and actually commit to something, while remaining open to change. I have been observing the signs and indicators of the shift to the network era for the past decade. These articles have stood the test of time, and have been refined and discussed many times in order to be suitable for Beta.

The Network Era

The fundamental nature of work is changing as we transition into the network era. Creative work is beginning to dominate industrial work as we shift to a post- job economy. The major driver of this change is the automation of routine work, especially through software, but increasingly with robots. Valued work is in handling exceptions, dealing with complex problems, and doing customized tasks.

The products of this work are often intangible and not physical. As a result, our industrial work structures need to change. Organizations have to become more networked, not just with information technology, but in how workers create, use, and share knowledge.

The workplace of the network era requires a different type of leadership; one that emerges from the network as required. Effective leadership in networks is negotiated and temporary, according to need. Giving up control will be a major challenge for anyone used to the old ways of managing. An important part of leadership will be to ensure that knowledge is shared throughout the network.

Learning is a critical part of working in a creative economy. Being able to continuously learn, and share that new knowledge, will be as important as showing up on time was in the industrial economy. Continuous learning will also disrupt established hierarchies as no longer will a management position imply greater knowledge or skills. Command and control will be replaced by influence and respect, in order to retain creative talent. Management in networks means influencing possibilities rather than striving for predictability. We will have to accept that no one has definitive answers anymore, but we can use the intelligence of our networks to make sense together.

The shift to the network era will not be easy for many people and most organizations. Common assumptions about how work gets done will have to be discarded. Established ways of earning education credentials will be abandoned for more flexible and meaningful methods. Connections between disciplines and professions are growing and artificial boundaries will continue to crack. Systemic changes to business and education will happen. There will be disruption on a societal level, but we can create new work and learning models to help us deal with this next phase in human civilization. The statistician George Box wrote that, “essentially all models are wrong, but some are useful”. We will never know unless we try them out.

Table of Contents

(65 pages for tablet version)

Introduction

1. THE NETWORK ERA
The Changing Nature of Work
Complication: The Industrial Disease
A Networked Market Knows More
Job is a Four-letter Word
Knowledge Artisans
Working Socially
Figure 1 The Connected Enterprise
Tapping the Creative Surplus

2. WORK IS LEARNING & LEARNING IS THE WORK
PKM and the Seek > Sense > Share Framework
Figure 2 PKM = Seek > Sense > Share
PKM and Competitive Intelligence
PKM and Innovation
Managing Organizational Knowledge
Training and Complex Work
Narrating Our Work
Collaborate to Solve Complex Problems

3. LEADING & MANAGING IN NETWORKS
Network Thinking
Figure 3 Trust Emerges Through Openness and Transparency
The Connected Enterprise
The Knowledge Sharing Paradox
Managing Automation
Flip the Office
Connected Leadership
Figure 4 Connected Leadership

4. THE GLOBAL VILLAGE
Figure 5 Organizing Characteristics
Figure 6 TIMN (David Ronfeldt)
Figure 7 Tetrad of a Networked Society

Colophon

Layout and design by Tantramar Interactive

Medicine, Mistakes and the Reptilian Brain

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Pasteur said that discovery favoured the prepared mind. A diagnosis, also a discovery, must favour the prepared mind. Yet medical schools have been inattentive to preparing the mind to meet the patient, inattentive to errors, inattentive to attention, inattentive to inattention, and inattentive to the study of the self which is to be inattentive to the minefield within. —JMM

medicine mistakes reptilian brainDr. John Mary Meagher has over 40 years experience as an emergency physician. In Medicine, Mistakes and the Reptilian Brain, he combines lessons from health care, aviation, and some of the greatest thinkers in history to examine why mistakes are made and how to develop methods to overcome the reptile within all of us. While focused on physicians, there are many lessons that anyone can take from this book.

Dr. Meagher identifies three core tendencies that increase errors in medical practice:

  1. Apathy
  2. Haste
  3. Egoism

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Three elements of digital transformation

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Altimeter released a new report yesterday, called Digital Transformation: Why and How Companies are Investing in New Business Models to Lead Digital Customer Experiences.

For those of us in this field or related ones, much is not new, but confirmatory.

  • Benefits:
    • Leadership and employees feel empowered through education.
    • Decision-making and processes become more efficient across departments.
  • We found that businesses often remodel or bolt on mobile, social, and digital functionality to an aging offline/online infrastructure that is counterintuitive to customer behavior.
  • Team members want to feel empowered to do the work that’s necessary while feeling a sense of ownership in the process.
  • In its own way, digital transformation is making businesses more human.

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Enterprise knowledge sharing requires trusted relationships

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As the economy gets more networked, open organizations are becoming a necessity. Businesses are increasingly dependent on complex social interactions. Products are becoming services, as we can see with web apps, software, and even books. Trading intangible goods and services today requires trusted relationships, and often across distances. Internally, work teams that need to share complex knowledge require tighter social bonds. These are developed through time, with experience, and most often informally. Trust is a human quality. But the major barrier to encouraging informal social relationships at work often comes down to a question of control.

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Move the hierarchy to the rear

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In an environment where everyone is a leader, some other mechanism needs to be put in place to ensure that everyone can maintain and optimize the tenets of fairness, trust and transparency so the entire organization can move forward. —Harrison Monarth: HBR

The foundation for this ‘other mechanism’ is the wirearchy framework: a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority based on knowledge, trust, credibility and a focus on results, enabled by interconnected people and technology.” But what is the mechanism and why is it important to have an environment where everyone can be a leader? After all, most leaders are quite comfortable where they are. They worked hard to get there, didn’t they?

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A beacon of light

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“Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.” —Anne Lamott

When Christopher Mackay and I started talking about my new website design we first discussed what my business means. I mentioned that clarity was important to my clients and that often I engage them when they are in a chaotic state where it is not certain what the outcomes will be.

I have learned over the years to be comfortable in not knowing what will happen and not having all the answers at the onset. As Chris and I talked, the idea of the lighthouse emerged. It is not just a beacon of light but a landmark and a place of departure. Living in Atlantic Canada, the lighthouse is a common, though vanishing, symbol of the region.

The lighthouse in my new website design is local. It is at Cape Jourimain, not far from where I live and work. In this new network era of perpetual Beta, it is good to stay grounded. Ken Homer has described this blog as “a beacon of light in the dark landscape of organizational learning”, so it just seemed fitting.

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From SSM to SLE

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I mentioned on Twitter that talking to people inside large corporate bodies only confirms that most are soul-sucking machines (SSM). John Bordeaux replied that skunkworks may be one way to alleviate this organizational tendency. He also said there was a need to clarify the steps necessary for community to be the central organizing principle in order to create a soul-liberating enterprise (SLE).

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Engaging the creative workforce

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Collaboration happens around some kind of plan or structure, while cooperation presumes the freedom of individuals to join and participate. As a free-agent, much of my time is spent cooperating. When I cooperate, I give freely, but no one tells me what to do. On the other hand, collaboration is required to get things done. This is when we have milestones, deadlines, and deliverables. I collaborate on the projects and work I commit to do.

The social contract for independent creative workers is relatively simple. For much of my day, I work on what I want to. I do a lot for free. This is on my terms. I write my blog and share ideas with the world. I license these for easy sharing. Many people and companies use these ideas. This is fine, as I get to decide what and when I want to share.

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The CEO will be the next CLO

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Chief Learning Officers will be the next CEO’s say John Hagel and John Seely Brown, in this short video from Deloitte. I disagree, because I do not see business leadership coming from Organizational Development, Human Resources, or Training & Development. I think it will be much easier, and more important, for business leaders to understand the significance of learning in the workplace. Even Adidas has adopted my adage that today, work is learning and learning is the work.

A well-rounded CEO can more easily become the CLO than vice versa. In addition, the generalists are already in charge. Often, the learning professionals are not core to the business. So where will learning leadership come from? I think it will come from business, and that is where I am focusing my efforts, helping business understand workplace learning, not helping learning professionals understand business.

If business is waking up to the fact that learning is now mission critical, will executives continue to allow learning policy to reside in a separate department? Will they will let learning professionals maintain sole control? I doubt it.

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