Work is learning. Learning is the work.
@MarietjeD66 [Member of European Parliament (D66/ALDE Group)] RT @carlbildt [Foreign Minister of Sweden since 2006] Tried to sort out 21st century statecraft at
#bf7 [Brussels Forum]. Hierarchies losing and networks gaining in a world of hyperconnectivity.
Here are some of the insights and observations that were shared via Twitter this past week.
Image: Mimi and Eunice
@ValaAfshar – “Stop chasing best practices, instead chase the best people.”
@counternotions “notion of a 3-5 yr technology road map is untenable & unrealistic outside of mainframes, ERP, retirement tracking & nuclear containment”
Thabo Mophiring, @Thabo99 posted this to me: @hjarche I just blogged for the first time and now finally understand your comment on blogging in the old days and social curation. [in response to my earlier comment that when blogs were one of the few available social media, the curation included much more commentary and required more work]
Why Britannica failed on paper by @dweinberger
Paper doesn’t scale.
Paper-based knowledge can’t scale.
The Net scales.
The Net scales knowledge.
IM vs KM by @JBordeaux
The difference between IM [information management] and KM [knowledge management] is the difference between a recipe and a chef, a map of London and a London cabbie, a book and its author. Information is in technology domain, and I include books (themselves a technology) in that description. Digitizing, subjecting to semantic analysis, etc., are things we do to information. It is folly to ever call it knowledge, because that is the domain of the brain. And knowledge is an emergent property of a decision maker – experiential, emotional framing of our mental patterns applied to circumstance and events. It propels us through decision and action, and is utterly individual, intimate and impossible to decompose because of the nature of cognitive processing. Of course, I speak here of individual knowledge.
Knowledge Inventories via @IsabelDeClercq
Unfortunately, every few years, the ‘knowledge inventory’ baloney pops up again. It is always proffered by arrogant and unfortunate Western rationalists. They think they can apply analytic reductionism to complex phenomena like knowledge, networks and value. They ALWAYS fail and eventually go away.
…
In summary, business productivity and knowledge inhabits complex networks. It CANNOT be broken down and reassembled. Rather, praxis and phronesis achieve social comprehension, knowledge cohesion, leadership maturity, new capabilities, productivity, growth, business prosperity and optimal outcomes overall.
@ibridazioni – Orangutans shed light on a key insight about Social Knowledge Management
The question was: why all the members of the first group were capable to share knowledge independently from the difference in ages, hierarchy or sex in the group members for generations, while in the second group new discoveries were owned by small groups of orangutans and then disappearing with them? What allowed the widespread of a knowledge inside the whole group and why new ideas did not disappear after inventor’s death but continue for generations?
How could the new knowledge become a group’s assets?In this exceptional natural scenario van Schaik discovered that this fact has a cultural cause!
The cultural difference in the group characterized by a shared culture was a physical and emotional code of proximity that allowed members of the group to approach and interact between them easily. We are in the knowledge’s economy and the cultural proximity code is the first secret to transform knowledge in a evolutive boost.
Cristina Milos recently tweeted that; “Curating is different from aggregating information. That is why I am not a fan of Paperli or Scoopit.” The curation craze has been assisted by an increasing number of web platforms that enable easy sharing (with emphasis on the word easy). But what value do they really provide, aside from another platform to sell user data or advertising?
During my online conversation (recording on YouTube) with Jane Hart yesterday, we discussed personal knowledge mastery (PKM) and one very important aspect, in my opinion, is the need for active sense-making. Merely seeking and sharing information does little other than create more noise online. The sense-making part takes effort. It’s why so few people keep at blogging for years, because it takes work.
But sense-making, or placing information into context, is where the real personal value of PKM lies. The knowledge gained from PKM is an emergent property of all its activities. Merely tagging an article does not create knowledge. The process of seeking out information sources, making sense of them through some actions, and then sharing with others to confirm or accelerate our knowledge are interlinked activities from which knowledge (often slowly) emerges.
One strength of PKM is the “manual” nature of sense-making activities. The act of writing a blog post, a tweet, or an annotation on a social bookmark all force you to think a bit more than clicking once and filing it to an automated system. Other sense-making routines, like a weekly review of Twitter favourites and creating Friday’s Finds, encourages reflection and reinforces learning. Automating sense-making is antithetical to the rationale behind PKM.
It’s not PKM if there is no value created, and I’m not sure if it’s curation either.
I’ve been putting together a series of thoughts on slides to share my perspectives on work and learning in the network era. I’ve called these presentations visual calling cards. The words on these slides come from the posts I’ve written here over several years.
While discussing my latest slide series with my colleague Jane Hart, we wondered which format would be preferable: a slideshow controlled by the viewer, or slides set to music in a streaming video. Does the music and flow enhance or detract from the presentation?
In the spirit of learning by doing, I’ll let you decide. Feedback is always appreciated.
An artisan is a skilled manual worker in a particular craft, using specialized processes, tools and machinery. Artisans were the dominant producers of goods before the Industrial Revolution. Knowledge artisans of the post-industrial era are retrieving old world care and attention to detail, but using the latest tools and processes in an interconnected economy.
Artisans did not watch the clock and neither do knowledge artisans.
Next generation knowledge artisans are amplified versions of their pre-industrial counterparts. Equipped with and augmented by technology, they rely on their human capital and skill to solve complex problems and develop new ideas, products and services. Small groups of highly productive knowledge artisans are capable of producing goods and services that used to take substantially larger teams and resources. In addition to redefining how work is done, knowledge artisans are creating new organizational structures and business models. Knowledge artisans are retrieving the older artisanal model and re-integrating previously separate skills.
Knowledge Artisans not only design the work but can also do the work. It is not passed down an assembly line. Many integrate marketing, sales and customer service with their creations. To ensure that they stay current, they become members of various “Guilds”, known today as communities of practice or knowledge networks. One of the earliest knowledge guilds was the open source community which developed many of the communication tools and processes used by knowledge artisans today: distributed work; results-only work environments (your code speaks for you); RSS, blogs & wikis for sharing; agile programming; flattened hierarchies, etc.
It is hard to be a knowledge artisan in a hierarchical organization that tells you what to do and which tools to use. Today, we are seeing the more experienced and adventurous knowledge artisans leaving, while younger skilled artisans are not joining command & control organizations.
Are knowledge artisans the mainstay of the network era economy? If so, what does that mean for your organization or business?
A study of international alliances found that two-thirds of the alliances between equally matched partners were successful but where there was a significant imbalance of power almost 60% of alliances failed. Consequently in the case of a formal joint venture equal ownership is the most successful structure, 50-50 ownership being twice as likely to succeed as other ownership structures. ~ Managing Collaboration
When we created the Internet Time Alliance we were five independent consultants, all with many years working alone. We wanted to do something together but did not want to become a typical professional services company, with principals, junior staff and administrative support, all driven by sales & marketing.
Now the six of us continue to work as individuals but we are increasingly realizing the power of our alliance, which is driven by our almost daily narration of our professional work. Internally, we are completely transparent and it’s often quite amazing how quickly we can put something together, as we draw on our specific strengths and connections. More and more we are working together, sometimes in pairs, or even as a group.
People often ask, what does Internet Time Alliance really mean? Well first of all, we are all free-agents, with our individual professional practices, but we are also co-owners of our UK-based company. That means we have business presences in four countries. Jay calls internet time, the accelerated timeframe of the new economy brought on by eBusiness and the Internet. A year of Internet time may equal 7 years of calendar time. We think wikipedia’s definition of alliance aligns with our practice, “An agreement or friendship between two or more parties, made in order to advance common goals and to secure common interests“.
One of our common goals is the democratization of work and learning, as Jay discussed recently during his trip to India and I talked about in relation to social business.
Our interlaced networks are dominated by innovators and early adopters. Most of us are early adopters in that we put into practice much of what we recommend. For example, we were early to blogging and Twitter. When our clients are ready to cross the technology adoption chasm, we can be the pathfinders. We learn from our mistakes by talking about them. We’ve learned that solving problems together is becoming the real business imperative. Sharing and using knowledge is where emerging business value lies.
Image via Wikipedia
Because our work is often on the complex and chaotic edge, our business will not grow like a traditional company. There is no formula to bottle and sell. An alliance is a business model suited for a networked world and we think it’s a good one to try out. While there is no template to follow, a good starting point is to develop a network culture.
Build trust over time by doing things together. Nurture the good things that emerge and bypass the negative things. There is no need to dwell on your weaknesses. Focus on your strengths. No contract, mission statement or charter is going to create a working alliance. We had the advantage that many of us had worked together or had known each other for a long time prior to creating the alliance.
Our own business model stays in perpetual Beta and we are often trying new “probes” to see what happens. Everything is filtered through our online conversations, often in our private activity stream, but sometimes in public, like this post. If you want to create an alliance, start with openness, transparency and diversity; but trust is what will keep you together.
Here are some of the insights and observations that were shared via Twitter this past week.
@JenniferSertl – “Your competitive advantage is not where you work or what you do. It is the accuracy & articulation of your observations & life experiences.”
@mbauwens – ‘Occupy’ as a business model: The emerging open-source civilisation – via @jerrymichalski @petervan
In commons-oriented peer production (first theorised by Yochai Benkler in his The Wealth of Networks, a “p2p” updating of Adam Smith), core value creation occurs through contributors to a shared innovation pool, a commons of knowledge, software or design. The contributors may be volunteers or paid employees. Importantly, even paid contributors add to the common pool. Why?
Because shared innovation makes an enormous difference in costs (give a brick, get a house), and it is also hyper-competitive. A recent study by the makers of the Open Governance Index, which measures the openness of software projects, confirms that more open projects do much better in the long-run than more closed projects. In other words, it makes sound business sense: open businesses tend to drive out business models based on proprietary IP. So it doesn’t matter whether you are a “commonist” free software developer, or a capitalist shareholder of IBM. Both sides benefit and they outcompete or “outcooperate” traditional proprietary competitors.
@hansdezwart – Welcome to the Chaos: The Distributed Workspace
Lori McLeese is the HR lead of Automattic (she is the only HR person at the company of about hundred people now). Nikolay Bachiyski is a developer. The company is 100% distributed and has been like that from day one. They are located in 24 countries and 79 cities. In only 7 cities do they have more than one “Automatician” living and working. They do not have offices and no set working time. Most people work on a single big project: wordpress.com
One thing that they’ve found is that it is hard to build personal relationships. They test new staff in a trial project to see if they are a fit for the culture of the company. The trial can last for a few weeks or even a few months. Once you finish it successfully you are “welcomed to the chaos” and will have to do your first three weeks working in “happiness” which is their customer support team. This helps you learn in a safe environment and teaches you to respect the happiness engineers. You are also learning that it is always ok to ask questions, to bug people and to over-communicate.
@oscarberg – enterprise software significantly hampers knowledge work
Did you know that user-centric organizations achieve 23% higher revenue per employee than those that are technology-centric? And did you know that productivity has dropped 17% the last years in enterprise software usage? If this doesn’t make you think twice about how you approach new IT investments, then someone – probably the owners of your organization – should be really worried.
@margaretatwood – Atwood in the Twittersphere – via @JudithELS
But despite their sometimes strange appearances, I’m well pleased with my followers—I have a number of techno-geeks and bio-geeks, as well as many book fans. They’re a playful but also a helpful group. If you ask them for advice, it’s immediately forthcoming: thanks to them, I learned how to make a Twitpic photo appear as if by magic, and how to shorten a URL using bit.ly or tinyurl. They’ve sent me many interesting items pertaining to artificially-grown pig flesh, unusual slugs, and the like. (They deduce my interests.) Some of them have appeared at tour events bearing small packages of organic shade-grown fair-trade coffee. I’ve even had a special badge made by a follower, just for me: “The ‘call me a visionary, because I do a pretty convincing science dystopia’ badge.”
One of the reasons (not the only one) behind our Net Work Literacy programme [and PKMastery] is to prepare people for a digital economy, much of which is blocked by organizational firewalls. It is difficult to be a connected and networked person when you can only communicate with people inside your organization. As I wrote in Net Work Skills: Imagine if we limited our conversations to only those in the same office. We would miss out on so many learning opportunities. Well it seems some people are still missing out. Today, people with larger and more diverse networks have an advantage as professionals and in dealing with change. They are engaged in a constant flow of sense-making through multiple conversations.
Our programme is designed to be a starting point for anyone relatively new to developing professional learning networks, as these are a core part of the distributed, digital workplaces that are slowly replacing hierarchical organizations. The pace of change will quicken though, so it’s best to be prepared.
On Twitter, I asked: “Did you have an unexpected career change recently? What advice would you have given yourself 1 year earlier if you had known? #NWL” [The #NWL is for Net Work Literacy]
Initial responses so far:
@MsNair09 – be comfortable with being uncomfortable.
@DonaldHTaylor – My advice: always foster your whole network and give as well as take. Don’t wait until you need them. I always say “Never let your first message to someone be a demand for help.”
@theCMEguy – Don’t wait another year to make the change…
@learnwonder – If I’d have known 1 year earlier, I would tell myself not to bother going to those boring and pointless corporate ‘away days’
@nassimlewis – From teacher to Ed tech industry. When multiple perspectives coexist, ‘tell a story’ to create common ground.
Preparing your own Business 2.0 (good comments)
The network era workplace requires collaboration and cooperation because complex problems cannot be solved alone. Tacit knowledge, that which cannot be codified or put into a database, needs to flow. Social learning, developed through many conversations, enables this flow of tacit knowledge. This is not ‘nonsense chat’, as traditional management might view it, but essential for creating stronger bonds in professional social networks. Companies have to foster richer and deeper connections which can only be built over time through meaningful conversations. This is why social learning in the workplace is necessary for business.
Worker autonomy is a foundation stone for effective social learning. It is also the lubricant for an agile organization, where initiative, creativity and passion are encouraged. Individual autonomy in turn fosters group diversity.
As traditional core business activities get automated or outsourced, almost all high value work will be done at the outer edge of organizations. Life is complex and even chaotic on this fuzzy edge. Here, where things are less homogeneous, there is more diversity and there are more opportunities for innovation. Individuals, project teams, and companies have to move operations to the edge to stay current. Business models today need to be more open, networked, and cooperative to stay competitive in the hyper-connected economy.
Change and complexity are becoming the norm in our work. We already see this with increasing numbers of freelancers and contractors. Any work where complexity is not the norm will be of diminishing value.
Embracing complexity is where the future of work lies.
Working online is different. Few traditional jobs prepare anyone for this. How can you develop a professional network that is not dependent on a job or an employer?
For people who have been working in the same job for 10 years or more, when they step out they will see that it’s a different world today. Almost everything is online and connected and there’s no social media policy regulating it all. For many people, including potential employers, if you’re not on the Web, you don’t exist. Now that’s a change from a decade ago.
Social media for marketing is just the tip of the iceberg. The real power of social media is for getting things done. They facilitate learning and working; which are now joined at the hip in the creative, complex workplace that’s 24/7 in multiple time zones and always-on.
Networked working habits and practices take a while to develop and may not come easily to everyone. This is where to start – by developing net work literacy, where work is learning and learning is the work.
Join us for the Net Work Literacy programme – 26 March to 6 April 2012
Hosted by Harold Jarche and Jane Hart of the Internet Time Alliance
This onine programme on adapting to the networked economy includes tools, tips & techniques from people who have been connecting, communicating and collaborating online for over fifteen years. The programme is for anyone who has spent the last decade or more inside an organisation and is now looking to branch out and connect with the digital reality of the connected economy. Whether you are considering freelancing, working as an alliance or just connecting beyond the corporate walls, this programme is designed to give you a head start.