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.
Reducing email
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
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
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.”
in an increasingly complex world
Robert Warwick – Following a comprehensive literature review, heavily influenced by complexity sciences, we came up with seven essential criteria that are important to consider in an increasingly complex world, these were:
- Go out of your way to make new connections.
- Adopt an open, enquiring mind-set, refusing to be constrained by current horizons.
- Embrace uncertainty and be positive about change – adopt an entrepreneurial attitude.
- Draw on as many different perspectives as possible; diversity is non-optional.
- Ensure leadership and decision-making are distributed throughout all levels and functions.
- Establish a compelling vision which is shared by all partners in the whole system.
- Promote the importance of values – invest as much energy into relationships and behaviours as into delivering tasks.
This is a good set of guidelines (via David Hodgson) and useful for conversations around organizational change.
Connections: develop an active PKM process, which is reviewed from time to time
Open & Enquiring: practice critical thinking, questioning all assumptions, including your own
Embrace uncertainty: think of all your work as in a state of perpetual Beta
Diversity: “Human systems thrive on variety and diversity. ~ Esko Kilpi”
Distribute Leadership: think of leadership as an emergent property of your networks and not a permanent position in a hierachy
Vision: shared vision comes through trusted networks, however a clear vision is necessary, but not sufficient
Values: transparent organizations are better at sharing values but the initial design influences everything
Skills 2.0 redux
We are now in the second week of our Summer Camp on informal and social learning. The first week’s assignment was to read and comment on an article I wrote in 2008. I wondered what had changed in the last four years and if these thoughts were still pertinent. Here’s what I asked:
- What has changed?
- What has not?
- Do you agree with the thoughts here?
- What do you think are Skills 2.0, or perhaps even Skills 3.0, for you, your colleagues and your fields of expertise?
One participant said that, “This article is as pertinent to 2012 as to 2008.” Another wrote: One of my favourite quotes from the article is “Being a learning professional is becoming more about your network than your current knowledge.”
I have noticed with my writing here over the past eight years that timing is very important. Some articles get little notice when originally posted and then are picked up by the network many years later. It’s one reason I never close commenting on my posts. You never know what might be of interest.
Here is the article, Skills 2.0 (PDF).
It’s not complicated, you see
When Bayer’s Material Sciences Division decided to become more collaborative, they realized that the main challenge in promoting knowledge-sharing across organizational boundaries is culture. They deployed the software platform (IBM Connections) without any formal training, saying that when the tool is simple to use, people focus on collaboration, not the software. Their solution was simple.
I know few enterprise software projects that go without a hitch. These are complicated tools and even after implementation most people only use a few functions from the wide array that are available. As complexity increases, and we keep adding new tools to the workplace, the simpler the tool, the easier it will be to implement, especially since the lifespan of our knowledge tools keeps getting shorter.
Complication is the industrial disease. Understanding the difference between complication and complexity is extremely important in today’s workplace. The Cynefin framework distinguishes between four domains to describe systems:
- Simple, in which the relationship between cause and effect is obvious to all, the approach is to Sense – Categorise – Respond and we can apply best practice.
- Complicated, in which the relationship between cause and effect requires analysis or some other form of investigation and/or the application of expert knowledge, the approach is to Sense – Analyze – Respond and we can apply good practice.
- Complex, in which the relationship between cause and effect can only be perceived in retrospect, but not in advance, the approach is to Probe – Sense – Respond and we can sense emergent practice.
- Chaotic, in which there is no relationship between cause and effect at systems level, the approach is to Act – Sense – Respond and we can discover novel practice.
Most of today’s larger companies have developed complicated structures. To enable growth and efficiencies, more and more processes have been put in place. Management schools aided and abetted this movement. New layers of control and supervision continue to appear, silos are created, and knowledge acquisition is formalized in an attempt to gain efficiency through specialization. To compensate for complicated processes, some enterprises have attempted to become learning organizations, putting significant effort into training (but not learning). But training design & development just got more complicated.
Complexity is the new normal. Because everything is interconnected by networked technologies today, systemic changes are sensed almost immediately. Reaction times and feedback loops have to get faster and more effective to deal with this. Formal training addresses a mere 5% of workplace learning, and our current models for managing people, training, and knowledge-sharing are insufficient for a workplace that demands emergent practices just to keep up. Knowledge workers today need to connect with others to co-solve problems, but complicated policies, procedures, and guidelines often stop them.
In a short interview, via Luis Suarez, Steve Jobs describes how Apple deals with complexity through simplified design. First of all, there are no committees. Secondly, only one person is responsible for each area (simplified leadership). Finally, teams communicate and collaborate with other teams on an ongoing basis. Jobs says that Apple is run like a start-up.
Organizations need to embrace complexity, instead of treating it as mere complication. We know that innovation can abound in start-ups, but why not in larger organizations? One problem is that growth creates sustainable efficiencies, which get embedded and codified. These efficiencies can lead to greater market share, which companies become addicted to, not seeing that they are simultaneously becoming less innovative. A Probe-Sense-Respond approach, or perpetual Beta releases, is necessary to deal with complexity, through constant learning by doing. Continually probing via many new, small initiatives means that organizations have to abandon complicated command and control systems, trust workers, and give them the space to learn while working.
The challenge is to get the addicts (companies) to stop their lifelong destructive behaviours, which are now catching up with them. It won’t be easy, but it’s not complicated. It’s actually simple ;)
Marketing and learning are the same
When you learn with and from your customers, marketing and learning are the same. If companies are focused on their customers, why are learning resources not customer focused? Google’s power-searching course is an excellent example of marketing integrated with learning. As Jay Cross described:
This has to be one of the least expensive marketing campaigns ever devised. The only tools required are a video cam and the free Google suite of applications. Other out-of-pocket costs are employee time to design and create the course, and a little more time tending the Google+ sessions and answering questions.
Everything is connected to everything else
The big lesson of the 21st century thus far is that everything is connected to everything else. It’s all one big network, folks.
No corporation is an island. (Everything’s a node.) A corporation and its connections form an extended enterprise.
For Us to prosper, we have to be on the same wave length as our connections in the extended enterprise. Since the environment of our enterprise is forever changing and learning is the way we adapt to change, we all need to be learning together. Otherwise, someone will be falling behind, and our combined performance will suffer.
I’m going to call learning with other players in the extended enterprise co-learning. If I were an instructional designer in a moribund training department, I’d polish up my resume and head over to marketing. Co-learning can differentiate services, increase product usage, strengthen customer relationships, and reduce the cost of hand-holding. It’s cheaper and more useful than advertising.
Busy finds
Here are some of the observations and insights that were shared via Twitter this past week.
Supreme Court of Canada: copyright law should not stand in the way of technological progress – via @mgeist
Trust in the professionalism of your workforce is the only thing that scales across the entire org – by @nickcharney
The Unanticipated Benefits of Content Curation – by @kanter
Curation has nothing to do with personal expression or sharing nor with collecting links, tweets or blog posts that you may find interesting. Curation is all about helping your audience dive in and make sense of a specific topic, issue, event or news story. It is about collecting, but it is also about explaining, illustrating, bringing in different points of view and updating the view as it changes. It is also about sharing with your community – not passing along stuff that you have not read or contextualize or shooting out links. But engaging in dialogue to help them make sense.
Four ways social networking has forever changed the way we work – by @joemckendrick
Companies have means to better leverage the knowledge coursing through their corporate veins to turn around distressed lines of business.
Unlike the traditional model for outsourcing firms contracting out functions or processes to an outside firm individuals are starting to outsource their problem-solving and their own professional development.
The 9-to-5 rut had been withering on the vine for a number of years, and social networking is putting the final stakes in the industrialized, command-and-control model of management.
Close to seven out of ten respondents (69%) report that their companies have gained measurable business benefits [italics mine], including more innovative products and services, more effective marketing, better access to knowledge, lower cost of doing business, and higher revenues.
Why are we always so ‘busy’ without reflection time? via @jimbobtyer
Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day.
What, me, busy?
Marsh Wren by Simon Pierre Barrette
Flatter hierarchies require deeper skills
The writing is on the wall.
Most people manage themselves with great success: they manage to get out of bed in the morning, they manage to get dressed, they manage to get to the office on time.
Then, at the office, they meet the “manager” that will manage them until end of the day. That’s at best a paradox, at worst a devastating error. – Let the Managers Go
At this point, our entire company is flat. With no hierarchy, everyone leads within their areas of stewardship and responsibility. Many will have excess capacity and offer to help another teammate or even go to another department to ask how they can help. (Yes, this really happens—in some cases, it happens every day.) – The End of Middle Managers (And Why They’ll Never Be Missed)
In an interconnected work environment, people with only broad skills are no longer required. People with general management skills are becoming less valuable to the organization. Many of the coordination activities of managers are being replaced by software or circumvented by connected workers. Take a look at the new global powerhouses like Apple or Google. They have far fewer employees (and fewer managers) than 20th century titans like GM or Exxon. The trend to smaller companies, many with shorter life spans, only seems destined to continue for the near future.
I think this indicates major changes for any support function (including learning & development) in organizations. If support functions do not contribute to the company’s value creation, then they will likely be reduced, replaced, or just closed. For middle managers and support functions, this should be a warning. You need to have business skills in addition to general ones. For example, if you are a learning specialist for a software company, it might make sense if you could also do some graphic design, scripting or coding. Billable skills come in handy when the pressure is on.
The future manager, or support specialist, will have to have a T-shaped set of skills. Broad knowledge & skills in what was once their specialty, and deep knowledge & skills in a business area (preferably billable). These deep skills will differentiate the generalist from the person who gets hired and stays hired.
