Renaissance Sackville

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sackvilleLike most professionals, I have many facets to my life in addition to my business. For the most part I do not discuss these here on my blog. However, I mentioned my community work recently to Christian Renard, and he suggested that I write about it.

I have had the privilege of serving as Chairman of the Board of Renaissance Sackville (RS) for the past five years. This not-for-profit organization was created 20 years ago when our town faced economic uncertainty. Several large businesses had recently closed, such as a foundry and a grocery distribution centre, leaving Mount Allison University as the only major employer. RS started as a forum to increase economic activity, including tourism.

When I joined the board, our focus had changed a bit, due to changing circumstances and our previous successes. Our current mission is: to help Sackville become a vibrant, economically and environmentally responsible, aesthetically pleasing, caring, friendly and gracious community. We receive about $50,000 annually from the Town of Sackville and get special project funding from other sources, such as Heritage Canada for the town’s 250th anniversary celebrations in 2012.

RS acts mostly as a seed funding agency for small projects that test new ideas. For example, we provided some funds to Community Forests International, an organization active in Africa and Canada, and as a direct result they are now headquartered here in Sackville, generating more economic development. Other recent examples include a bike co-op, a car share program, and a video camp for teenagers. One key aspect of our funding is that we do not expect a direct return on our investments. We believe in seeding as many ideas as possible, knowing that some will flourish and some will not, but we can learn something from each of them.

For me, one great attribute of RS is our ability to pay our beneficiaries very quickly, sometimes in less than 24 hours. The board works very well together, and in addition to our monthly meetings, we have discussions and make decisions using web-based tools. For small projects, where quite often a young person has taken the initiative, we know they cannot afford to be out of pocket for any length of time. We will even hand-deliver the cheque!

The measure of success for RS is in its aggregate work, not any specific project. Over time, we have been involved in every aspect of our community. This enables the board to make very informed decisions. We know the applicants and what they have done in the community. We do not expect short-term success. We want to make Sackville, population 5,000, a better place to live, work, and play. In the past five years, I have not come across another organization like RS that works independent of politicians and town officials, yet stays closely connected to the entire community. As a volunteer, it has been a pleasure to serve on the board of RS.

I think our operating model can be adopted by other communities in order to distribute economic and community development decision-making. I will try to add some more details and stories about Renaissance Sackville here over time, and I invite any questions, especially from other small communities. I may not be able to provide all the answers but I really think this is a much better way to grow a more resilient community for less than the cost of one full-time municipal employee. Our independence, with transparent processes, ensures we stay agile and able to test out many new projects and programs.

Culture is our nature

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friday2Friday’s Finds:

WSJ: Drop the nature vs nurture debate

But new research has led biologists to a different view. We didn’t adapt to a particular Stone Age environment. We adapted to a newly unpredictable and variable world. And we did it by developing new abilities for cultural transmission and change. Each generation could learn new skills for coping with new environments and could pass those skills on to the next generation.

As the anthropologist Pascal Boyer points out in his answer, it’s tempting to talk about “the culture” of a group as if this is some mysterious force outside the biological individual or independent of evolution. But culture is a biological phenomenon. It’s a set of abilities and practices that allow members of one generation to learn and change and to pass the results of that learning on to the next generation. Culture is our nature, and the ability to learn and change is our most important and fundamental instinct.

freelancers are shaping the new economy – via @C4LPT

Freelancers often work independently, but being “on your own” doesn’t mean “going it alone.” Freelancing successfully means building a network to line up new gigs, passing assignments to others when things are busy, and getting referrals from friends when they’re not.

@JonHusband – Learning at the Speed of Links and Conversations

In the information-and-hyperlink saturated workplace social networks we now inhabit, clarification, confirmation, and collaboration are but a click or two away. It’s mission-critical for individuals, groups, and organizations to be able to discern what kind(s) of personal learning strategies are necessary to survive and thrive in our new world of permanent information whitewater.

There just isn’t any choice other than continuous learning because ongoing change—permanent whitewater—is our only remaining constant.

@DigitalTonto – Social media speed disruption

In the past, media provided a filter.  If something was on the front page or the evening news, it was considered important.  If not, it wasn’t.  Yet today, anyone can broadcast—whether it be a distraught mother or a crusading journalist.  Nobody needs to ask for permission, even in a corrupt, authoritarian country.

And that’s why social media is playing an increasing role in shaping events.  A small group of passionate people can influence others that are slightly more reticent, still others take notice and also join in.  Before you know it, a movement ensues …

@ActivateLearn – How do we enforce independence in workplace learning? – via @C4LPT

You have to wonder how the world got to where it is today where we have to FORCE people to be INDEPENDENT.  Two words that look weird together in a sentence.  It’s come to this – you have to force people to be independent? Isn’t that something that would create mistrust or curiosity in people?

Seek, Sense, Share in The Hague

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On Friday morning we left Delft and headed into The Hague by bicycle, the only practical way to travel in the Netherlands, as my hosts Sibrenne and Russell assured me. I would be facilitating a PKM master class, designed for people who already had some experience with using web technologies for personal professional development. The session was held at a wonderful location, in a 42-story modern office building. These co-work spaces are called seats 2 meet and also offer meeting rooms at a cost of €60 per person.

cycle commuting in The Hague
Cycle-commuting from The Hague to Delft

The day focused on the needs and objectives of the participants, with only a little information presentation on my part. All participants had watched my short PKM intro video and several had taken the web-based workshop, that finished on the same day. We spent time looking at how we used various technologies, our daily work routines, and also how to make decisions on how to connect with others. Russell made a point that my Seek > Sense > Share framework is a multi-layered model, that is very simple to understand, but difficult to master as one sees more and more aspects of it over time. I had taken this for granted and appreciated getting first-hand feedback from the group. An advantage of face to face sessions is that you can have more nuanced conversation. Of course we were working in most participants’ second language, so that was a bit of a barrier in discussing complex ideas.

I have decided to cease offering the online PKM workshops as they now exist, and have started on a new program, that should be ready in about forty days. In addition, I will further develop the on-site PKM master class, as well as another one focused on leadership in networks. I look forward to making some announcements in a month or two. In the meantime, I will only offer basic PKM workshops to groups of 10 or more.

I write this post as I ride the TGV to Paris. It’s been a while since I’ve been on a European train and staying connected makes for a more productive trip. Our world is changing but I think practices like PKM, and active sense-making, can help us individually and collectively.

Enterprise social technologies

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I am presenting on enterprise social technologies, learning and performance at the Learning Technologies conference in London today. Most large organizations have something like  Microsoft Sharepoint, an intranet, or perhaps a social tool such as Socialcast. But how can you tell if these tools are right for the job? How can these tools support a coherent social strategy across the enterprise?

7 facets ESN

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Social Learning Handbook

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This post is an excerpt from Jane Hart’s recently published  Social Learning Handbook 2014.

social learning handbook 2014It’s all about people.

Today’s digitally connected workplace demands a completely new set of skills. Our increasing interconnectedness is illuminating the complexity of our work environments. More connections create more possibilities, as well as more potential problems.

On the negative side, we are seeing that simple work keeps getting automated, like automatic bank machines. Complicated work, for which standardized processes can be developed, usually gets outsourced to the lowest cost of labor.

On the positive side, complex work can provide unique business advantages and creative work can help to identify new business opportunities. However, complex work is difficult to copy and creative work constantly changes.

But both complex and creative work require greater implicit knowledge. Implicit knowledge, unlike explicit knowledge, is difficult to codify and standardize. It is also difficult to transfer.

Implicit knowledge is best developed through conversations and social relationships. It requires trust before people willingly share their know-how. Social networks can enable better and faster knowledge feedback for people who trust each and share their knowledge. But hierarchies and work control structures constrain conversations. Few people want to share their ignorance with the boss who controls their pay cheque. But if we agree that complex and creative work are where long-term business value lies, then learning amongst ourselves is the real work in organizations today. In this emerging network era, social learning is how work gets done.

Becoming a successful social organization will require more than just the implementation of enterprise social technologies. Developing, supporting, and encouraging people to use a range of new social workplace skills will be just as important. Individual skills, in addition to new organizational support structures, are both required.

Personal knowledge management (PKM) skills can help to make sense of, and learn from, the constant stream of information that workers encounter from social channels both inside and outside the organization. Keeping track of digital information flows and separating the signal from the noise is difficult. There is little time to make sense of it all. We may feel like we are just not able to stay current and make informed decisions. PKM gives a framework to develop a network of people and sources of information that one can draw from on a daily basis. PKM is a process of filtering, creating, and discerning, and it also helps manage individual professional development through continuous learning.

Collaboration skills can help workers to share knowledge so that people work and learn cooperatively in teams, communities of practice, and social networks. In order to support collaborative working and learning in the organization, it is important to experience what it means to work and learn collaboratively, and understand the new community and collaboration skills that are involved. “You can’t train someone to be social, only show them how to be social.” Practice is necessary.

The power of social networks, like electricity, will inevitably change almost every existing business model. Leaders need to understand the importance of organizational architecture. Working smarter in the future workplace starts by organizing to embrace networks, manage complexity, and build trust. The 21st century connected enterprise is a new world of work and learning.

For example, traditional training structures, based on institutions, programs, courses and classes, are changing. Probably the biggest change we are seeing is that the content delivery model is being replaced by more social and collaborative frameworks. This is due to almost universal Internet connectivity, especially with mobile devices, as well as a growing familiarity with online social networks.

Work is changing and so organizational learning must change. There is an urgent need for organizational support functions (HR, OD, KM, Training) to move beyond offering training services and toward supporting learning as it is happening in the digitally connected workplace. The connected enterprise will not wait for the training department to catch up.

Networked monkeys

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friday2@flowchainsensei – “Even when companies don’t pay peanuts, seems like they still mostly want monkeys. If I’m gonna be a monkey, at least it’ll be a Chaos Monkey.”

@hreingold – “In 5th grade, I tried to drop out. My teacher regarded me as a problem and I hated school. My parents moved me to a new school … On the first day of my new school, the new teacher praised my writing and asked me to interview the principal for the class newspaper … Is that why I became a writer? I don’t know. Obviously, it made an impression on me. The right word and the right time can go a long way.”

@eekim – The Real Importance of Networks: Understanding Power

Networks are not a rejection of hierarchy. Networks are a rejection of rigidity. A hierarchy is an efficient form of decision-making, as long as it’s the “right” hierarchy. Powerful networks allow the right hierarchies to emerge at the right time.

@smartco – Complexify yourself – and others

An obvious way to expand our range of responses is to develop our skills and capabilities, and to connect with others whose knowledge complements our own – as well as connecting to inspire and trigger-off new ideas together.

And this was Stafford Beer’s influence on me. He developed W. Ross Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety. He uses variety as another word for complexity. And Ashby said that “only variety absorbs variety.”

This is what I mean by complexify yourself and others. It’s about making sure that your skills and capabilities are up to the job of dealing with complex and uncertain situations. They need to be equal to the context – complex situations need diverse, agile, collective and creative thinking.

Automattic’s (not so) secrets: 1. allow experimentation 2. hire the right people 3. permit autonomy + measure output – via @folletto

Matt Mullenweg (of Automattic):

This is where open source gets really interesting: it’s not just about the legal wonkery around software licensing, but what effect open sourced software has on people using it. In the proprietary world, those people are typically called “users,” a strange term that connotes dependence and addiction. In the open source world, they’re more rightly called a community.

As a final note, here’s an image representing the impact of openness on innovation in society:

ideas to innovation

 

From the observed to the observers

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The other day, in our Change Agents Worldwide community forum, Susan Scrupski mentioned that she was taking an online course.

It floors me that the learned teachings of academia have come to the same conclusions on some of these matters involving networks of people that we have by actually doing it (vs. studying it).  The first series of videos talks about the “Tragedy of the Commons.” Reciprocity, the spirit of cooperation, and Trust are major themes.

Richard Martin responded with an experience of his.

I had a similar experience a few years ago when I started a course on information rights. As day-to-day practitioners, the students were at the cutting edge and knew far more than the theory-constrained academics. I dropped out after one semester as I was learning far more on the job and getting the opportunity to put that new knowledge into action.

The nature of social science research may be shifting away from academia, who are losing the initiative as the rest of us become participating members and simultaneously researchers/observers in an enormous petri dish of over 2 billion connected world citizens. Like the scribes of old, replaced by a literate citizenry, today’s social scientists may soon be out of work. We are all social scientists now. A recently retired sociology professor, with whom I shared this idea, agreed.

I noted a similar case with a research dissertation that developed a theoretical model for PKM which was a fairly extensive literature review and corroborated what many practitioners already know. In addition, the dissertation was frozen in time by the nature of academic publishing, and while it cited my frameworks, it did not use my latest work at the time. In the creative economy, knowledge distribution in business is moving from academia to professional networks.

work is changing

Maybe it is not just business schools that will have their knowledge dissemination model disrupted but the social sciences as well. A networked citizenry no longer has to play only the role of the observed, but now can become the observer in education, sociology, and many other fields of human behaviour.

knowledge dissemination

Moving to the edges

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Innovation comes from the edge, almost never from the centre. Sometimes it’s cool to live on the edge but for the most part it’s hard work. Things keep breaking. The business models are not proven. The procedures aren’t fixed. The models and metaphors are not understood by everyone. It’s difficult to connect with the mainstream. This is life on the edges.

I have been living on the edges for over a decade and it has given me a unique perspective. Twenty years ago I saw the power of the internet and that it could have as great an impact on society and business as the printing press did. My graduate thesis discussed this and I have since examined in depth the world as it has changed into the global village that Marshall McLuhan saw. I chose to move to the edges of business and technology to explore the emerging network era, giving up mainstream employment in order to do so. I figured that to be a good teacher I would first need to be a good learner.

In the near future, the edges will be where almost all high-value work will be done in organizations. Change and complexity will be the norm in this work. Most people will work the edges, or not at all. Core activities will be increasingly automated or outsourced. This core will be managed by very few internal staff.

This is a sea change in organizational design. Some companies are already playing with new designs, tweaking their existing models. A few, mostly start-ups, are trying completely new models. Any work where complexity is not the norm will be of diminishing value. Freelancers and contractors, already increasing in number, will be needed to address continuously evolving markets. The future of work will be in understanding complexity and dealing with chaos.

A core organizational design challenge in this shift will be addressing our inherent tribal nature. People have a strong need to belong to something identifiable. But this need for a sense of belonging can detract from critical thinking and questioning the inherent assumptions of our existing structures. However, this questioning will be essential as organizations test out new work models. Unfortunately, anthropology does not scale as easily as technology does. While some organizations may have the software networks in place, most lack pervasive network thinking and social skills.

As organizations become more technologically networked, they also face skilled, motivated and intelligent workers who can now see systemic dysfunctions. But those who talk about these problems are often branded as rebels. Pitting tribes of rebels against tribes of incumbent power-holders only detracts from the serious organizational redesign that needs to be done. In addition, traditional external consultants will be of little help because trying to solve this challenge from the outside will only result in the problems being changed from the inside. Organizations will have to solve their own problems, and this takes time.

From my perspective on the edge, a new type of business relationship is needed. Change management has to be seen as a way of working, not a separate process, and not an event. It needs to involve all tribes. On the edges the answers may not be clear, but  they are less obscured than in the centre. A new business partnership is needed, between current management on the inside, workers moving to the edges, and others living beyond the organizational edges. Organizational development and change management need to move to the edges, and quickly.

This post is a follow-up to Rebels on the Edges.

live_on_the_edgesImage: @gapingvoid

Six roles of network management

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If helping the network make better decisions is a primary role of management in the emerging economy, how does one get there? I highlighted the six roles of management in the network era in my last post and I would like to build on these and show how this is being practiced at Change Agents Worldwide.

help network make better decisionsFirst of all, the founders set a good example of transparency and working out loud. Subsequent members have joined and continue to narrate their work. Also, the network does not have a marketing department, as everyone is responsible for connecting with our markets. Everyone must set an example because there is no one to defer work to. In this environment everyone is learning and everyone is teaching by example. As a result, work gets done very quickly, such as our first ebook, that would have taken months to complete by a central marketing department.

We are all knowledge managers at CAWW, sharing as we work transparently. Some, like myself, share blog posts at appropriate moments. Others share tools, techniques, and experiences. The organizational knowledge base, much of it captured in a large wiki, constantly grows. There is no central management for our knowledge.

It is important to know why we are creating this not-for-profit “collaborative sharing economy model for consulting services”. We constantly discuss the Why of our work, and ensure we stay focused and do not chase every new opportunity. Our Why is to change how work gets done in large organizations. As a result, we have a very diverse group of change agents, from various disciplines, countries, and industries.

It is interesting to see how our discussions focus on improving insights and we are not overly focused on merely improving internal processes and procedures. We leave that to people doing the work, as change agents are independent and can choose their own tools and techniques, like true knowledge artisans.

With hundreds of years of experience, an open discussion environment, and people who have worked as internal and external consultants, there is no shortage of learning opportunities. Change agents can freely join project teams and try something new. CAWW is one big learning experience for everyone, and the speed of learning is amazing.

These ‘management’ roles apply to all members, for in a network, everyone is a manager, and everyone can play a leadership role. The principles of openness, transparency, and diversity provide a solid foundation for these roles to be practiced. I think this model will help to create a new way of approaching workplace change. Large, hierarchical consultancies are no longer sufficient to help organizations adapt to the network era. As Donald Clark says, “Dinosaurs don’t give birth to gazelles.”

Helping the network make better decisions is the primary job of every change agent. It should be the job of every person in every organization. Perhaps some day it will be.

Management in Networks

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In networks, cooperation is more important than collaboration. Collaboration is working together toward a common objective. This is what most workplaces are focused on. It is also what most managers focus on. Implicit in many workplaces is that if you are not focused on the objective at hand, you are not doing any real work. This emphasis on collaboration blinds managers. They cannot see the potential of social networks for enabling sense-making and knowledge-sharing. Many managers do not understand the value of cooperation, or sharing freely without direct reciprocity. Cooperation sounds too much like wasting time on Facebook or Twitter. Most management practices today still focus on 20th century models, such as Henri Fayol’s six functions of management [look familiar?].

  1. forecasting
  2. planning
  3. organizing
  4. commanding
  5. coordinating
  6. controlling

I heard these same functions discussed by a workplace issues consultant on the radio as recently as yesterday morning. Notice that there is no function for enhancing serendipity, or increasing innovation, or inspiring people. The core of management practice today has not changed since the days of Fayol, who died ninety years ago.

But the new reality is that networks are the new companies. The company no longer offers the stability it once did as innovative disruption comes from all corners. Economic value is getting redistributed to creative workers and then diffused through networks. Knowledge networks differ from company hierarchies. One major difference is that cooperation, not collaboration, is the optimal behaviour in a knowledge network. In networks, cooperation trumps collaboration.

So what are the functions of management in the network era?

managing network era

Improve insights – Too often, management only focuses on reducing errors, but it is insight that drives innovation. Managers must loosen the filters through which information and knowledge pass in the organization and increase the organizational willpower to act on these insights.

Provide Learning Experiences – As Charles Jennings notes, managers are vital for workers’ performance improvement, but only if they provide opportunities for experiential learning with constructive feedback, new projects, and new skills.

Focus on the “Why” of Work – Current compensation systems ignore the data on human motivation. Extrinsic rewards only work for simple physical tasks and increased monetary rewards can actually be detrimental to performance, especially with knowledge work. The keys to motivation at work are for each person to have a sense of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. This is a network management responsibility.

Help the Network Make Better Decisions – Managers should see themselves as servant leaders. Managers must actively listen, continuously question the changing work context, help to see patterns and make sense of them, and then suggest new practices and build consensus with networked workers.

Be Knowledge Managers – Managers need to practice and encourage personal knowledge management throughout the network.

Be an Example – Social networks shine a spotlight on dysfunctional managers. Cooperative behaviours require an example and that example must come from those in management positions. While there may be a role for good managers in networks, there likely will not be much of a future for bosses.