Taking the time to cross the chasm

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I was asked by Ryan McClure, a regular reader of this blog, to “have a go at the fear of change by addressing it directly“. He was referring to situations where senior executives seem to be on a different plane of reality. For example:

  1. The CEO who doesn’t see the value of social networks and lumps them all into the “Facebook for fun” category.
  2. The successful business leader who is milking the current cash cow and sees the Internet as frivolous and of no interest to his customers.
  3. The President who gets others to handle his information needs without understanding the underlying technology infrastructure that is hampering knowledge-sharing and collaboration across the enterprise.

I addressed some of these issues in social media for senior managers, as Michael Cook had asked a similar question. I concluded that blocking social networks slows learning, reduces effectiveness and may in the end kill the organization. Senior managers need to understand social media in order to support learning in social networks which will enable practitioners to produce results.

But that’s probably not enough to change the status quo.

I work on these issues in two ways. One is by showing the big picture. These are patterns that, with any luck, are difficult to ignore. Most executives agree that their work and business environment is getting more complex. I try to show that we need to organize for complexity and diversity in new ways. A different corporate culture is required. Both of these will take some time, so it’s best to balance this message with specific practices that can be started right away.

I will demonstrate the benefits of networks in getting things done. Many times I have shown how simple tools, like social bookmarks, can make professional information gathering and sharing much more efficient. I explain how the organization should leverage collective knowledge from varied individual practices of personal knowledge management (PKM).

This is done by telling stories, showing examples and modelling behaviours, usually over a significant period of time. There is a lot of repetition. It’s also worth revising your message, based on feedback and observation. PKM made sense to my clients only once I had it boiled down to three alliterative words: Seek – Sense – Share. This took a few years to develop.

It takes time to cross the social business chasm.

Grist for the cognitive mill

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A book that influenced many of my opinions on education is Kieran Egan’s, The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape our Understanding. Egan says that Western education is based on three incompatible ideas:

  1. Education as Socialization (age cohorts, class groupings, team sports)
  2. Education as learning about Truth & Reality, based on Plato (varied subjects, academic material, connection to culture)
  3. Education as discovery of our nature, based on Rousseau (personal sense-making, teacher as facilitator)

One of these ideas may be dominant at any given time but no education system can foster all three at once. Therefore we keep trying to re-balance something that can never be balanced. It’s a constantly shifting three-legged stool. In addition, each one by itself is inadequate in a modern society, writes Egan.

Socialization to generally agreed norms and values that we have inherited is no longer straightforwardly viable in modern multicultural societies undergoing rapid technology-driven changes. The Platonic program comes with ideas about reaching a transcendent truth or privileged knowledge that is no longer credible. The conception of individual development we have inherited is based on a belief in some culture-neutral process that is no longer sustainable.

I think Egan’s recommendations for a different system make more sense than any other I have read over the years and it’s a shame his work has not been picked up by educators. However, my aim in this post is not to review these. I’m interested in a conversation Dave Cormier has initiated because this is what Egan has articulated in the first chapter of his book. Dave asks:

 The why of education should be the first question that we answer in any discussion in the field. The answer to the ‘why of education’ question should be debated, mulled and hammered, on and on, and be at the centre of the work that we do. Sadly, it seems to be very difficult to say anything about “what learning is” and “why we educate our children”.

I don’t think it can be adequately answered because our society has not gone beyond the initial three incompatible ideas. Until we address these, we will keep spinning in circles. Dave suggests a shift to a nomadic education model and this might work, but not without addressing the baggage of the three core ideas. Maybe we need three distinct school systems. Perhaps we can examine Egan’s model that breaks from the three core ideas and suggests one where there is no set curriculum and any subject is “grist for the cognitive mill”.

B.H. Liddell Hart, military historian, wrote that “The only thing harder than getting a new idea into the military mind is getting an old one out.” And so with the educator’s mind.

Learning, changing and thinking

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Here are some of the observations and insights shared via Twitter this past week. 

In a Complex World, Continuous Learning & Simple Truths Prevail by @CharlesJennings

Despite the sophistication, the big brains and the resources available to the traders and executives in Lehmann Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and the rest, it appears they failed to see this simple truth. That no matter how smart you are, you still needed to carry on learning.

It also appears they were unaware of another simple truth – that continuous learning is the only sustainable asset in a world of constant change.

This study of 25,000 people across 19 countries debunks some assumptions about Gen Y work preferences – via @aaronsilvers

For example, we frequently hear that Gen Y are beating the drum for new working practices – demanding the freedom to work remotely, make use of stimuli such as social networks and to continually have the latest ‘must-have’ technologies.

But the study found that the reality is very different. In fact, younger staff expressed 15-20 per cent less desire than their older colleagues to choose their time and place of work – they actively seek out every opportunity to be in the office in the closest proximity to their boss.

Siri: the hole in the dam for natural language computing –  by @DonaldClark

1. Talking means better learning
E-learning usually puts something between the learner and content – a device. It can be a keyboard, mouse, touchscreen, joystick… whatever. This physical device requires cognitive effort and almost certainly distracts and diminishes the cognitive bandwidth available for attention and processing by the learner. Ideally, there would be no such device. Voice is, in fact, how most everyday communication takes place. We see and speak to each other without any interloper. You didn’t have to learn to speak and listen but you did have to spend years learning how to read, write and use computers. It’s good to talk as it’s how we learn.

Hans de Zwart: 1) Technology is not just a tool, it is not “neutral” 2) You can help change technology for the better – thoughtful presentation on digital civil rights:

 

P2K

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My blog acts as part of my outboard brain. It’s where I can rough out ideas. Narrating my work in public helps keep me connected to reality. I connect to my other web media from my blog. Bookmarks, photos and activity streams may change, but my blog is home base. I search my blog almost daily, looking for something I wrote during the past seven years, so that I can reflect on it, re-use it or modify it.

Regular blogging has sharpened my writing and thinking skills. Some of my blog posts have been expanded and turned into articles, published in a variety of venues. Most of my thoughts on complexity, organizational learning and technological change have been formed here. I have also expanded from a focus on learning, work & technology to leadership, networks and other areas.

I’ve met some close friends though my blog. Blogging connected me to Jay, my business partner at the Internet Time Alliance and subsequently to Clark, Jane, Charles and Paul. I met Jon Husband and was introduced to wirearchy through blogging. I now have people I would call friends on every continent. Contrary to what many social media pundits have said, blogging is not dead, at least not for me.

So why is this post called P2K? Because it’s number 2,000 [inspired by @cbmackay].

Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to comment and create another connection on my blog’s neural network!

Why do we need social business?

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The Dachis Group’s latest XPLANATiON of the attributes of a socially optimized business is a pretty good answer to the question, “What is social business?”

Looking just at the key differences in the info-graphic, I’d like to dig into “Why” these differences are necessary:

Greater acceptance of risks & failures: This is how complex problems are addressed, and all businesses are dealing with more complexity. As I mentioned in leadership emerges from network culture, a Probe-Sense-Respond approach is necessary. Dave Snowden underlines the fact that over half of your probes will fail and hence the need to have a culture where failure is an option. It’s what Dave calls “safe-fail”: “We conduct safe-fail experiments. We don’t do fail-safe design. If an experiment succeeds, we amplify it. If an experiment fails, we dampen it.” Failure is not just an option, it’s a common occurrence.

Clear guidelines allow everyone to speak openly on behalf of the company. That’s because hyperlinks have subverted hierarchy. Everyone is connected. In hierarchical organizations, workers are more connected when they go home than when they’re at work. This is a sure sign of the obsolescence of many management control systems.  The Internet has changed everything.

Democratization of information: User-generated content is ubiquitous and much of it is very useful. Search engines give each worker more information and knowledge than any CEO had 10 years ago. Pervasive connectivity will change traditional power structures, though the full effects of this are not yet visible.

Leaders and experts can easily emerge: It takes different leadership, or leadership for networks, to do the important work in complex work environments, which is to increase collaboration and support social learning in the workplace. If the main point of the internet is to remove “barriers to socializing”, then shouldn’t leadership in a networked, social business strive for a similar objective?

Team-oriented, much flatter, exists beyond the org chart: This is another result of a networked society but I’m not sure if team is the best term for social business and I would use collaboration instead. This is the objective of Wirearchy: a dynamic multi-way flow of power and authority based on information, knowledge, trust and credibility, enabled by interconnected people and technology.

Greater business visibility, info flows vertically and horizontally: There are emerging patterns and dynamics related to interconnected people and interlinked information flows, which are bypassing established traditional structures and services. It’s part of wired work.

Comfortable with outward facing communication: Most of the action in business is moving to the edge and a greater percentage of the workforce will be customer-facing.

Leadership emerges from network culture

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Even five years ago it was not the norm to work at a distance. Employers wanted to keep workers on-site, when it made no sense, as this post from 2005 noted: virtual work, but we need you onsite. Virtual work is no longer limited to mostly free-agents, as many salaried employees today work at least part-time off-site. It’s becoming the norm and bringing change with it, even though that change may not be visible.

When people work at a distance, an implicit shift occurs. They have to be trusted to get the work done. Management also shifts from measuring time to measuring results. A new culture emerges. It becomes more trusting. Trust is the glue that holds creative organizations together, not rules and regulations.

Culture is an emergent property of people working together. Leadership is also an emergent property, I am becoming more convinced, as I recently wrote. This post received a lot of attention and Johnnie Moore referred me to an interesting, though rather expensive, book on Managing Without Leadership:

I propose that we consider the phenomenon of leadership in like manner, and conceive of it as part and parcel of organisational practice. In a naturalistic redescription of the phenomenon, we might view it as an emergent, self-organising property of complex systems. There would then be no need for engaging in more leadership studies: instead, we could redirect our attention to the study of the fine-grained properties of contextualised organisational practice.

Donald Clark also passed on a post he made a few years ago on Leadership Training:

Leadership Training: Complex behaviours and skills are reduced to simple geometric diagrams, a pyramid here, an interlocking circle here, a four quadrant typology there. Leadership training became a byword for contradictory theories and over-simplification. A few choice quotes are thrown in, preferably from historically famous leaders, some interactive exercises, straight out of traditional management courses and you’re off.

One way to look at leadership in our complex work world is through the lens of improvisation. In improv, nobody is in charge and leadership is shared. John Moore [not Johnnie] says that from improv, one can also learn how to:

  • be a passionate follower;
  • be a better listener and reactor;
  • make instinctive decisions and deal with the consequences;
  • trust others; and
  • make others look good

These all seem like good advice for organizational leadership as well. Everyone can practise improv skills and everyone can exert leadership in the organization. John Moore says that a major benefit of embracing improv skills for business is that failure is an option, which aligns with Dave Snowden’s Cynefin framework, that advises organizations to Probe-Sense-Respond in order to manage in complexity.

Dave also underlines the fact that over half of your probes will fail and hence the need to have a culture where failure is an option. It’s what Dave calls “safe-fail”: “We conduct safe-fail experiments. We don’t do fail-safe design. If an experiment succeeds, we amplify it. If an experiment fails, we dampen it.” Failure is not just an option, it’s a common occurrence.

As networked, distributed workplaces become the norm, trust will emerge from environments that are open, transparent and diverse. As a result of improved trust, leadership will be seen for what it is; an emergent property of a balanced network and not some special property available to only the select few. This shift may give us the real democracy our organizations need to realize their full creative human potential.

Networked Learning (PKM) Workshop in Toronto

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Note: this workshop has been postponed until – 30 March 2012.

In just over a month’s time, I’ll be facilitating another one-day workshop on Networked Learning (PKM) at the University of Toronto’s iSchool Institute on Friday, 18 November 2011. The cost for the day is $250.

My consulting work this past year has shown a great need for two aspects of knowledge-sharing in organizations: 1) systems & processes to enable better collaboration & sharing, and 2) individual skills in narrating work and learning in networks. This workshop is focused on the latter.

PKM is an individual, disciplined process by which we make sense of information, observations and ideas. In the past it may have been keeping a journal, writing letters or having conversations. These are still valid, but with digital media we can add context by categorizing, commenting or even remixing it. We can also store digital media for easy retrieval. However, PKM is of little value unless the results are shared by connecting to others and contributing to meaningful conversations. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts as we build on the knowledge of others. As knowledge workers or citizens, PKM is our part of the social learning contract.

Let’s face it, it’s becoming more difficult to make sense of the world by ourselves. Understanding issues that affect our lives takes significant time and effort, whether it be public education, health care or climate change. Even the selection of a mobile phone plan requires more than mere numeracy and literacy.  We need context to understand complex issues and this can come from those we are connected to. The reach and depth of our connections become critical in helping us make sense of our environment and to solve problems. Problem-solving is what most people actually do for a living, so doing it better can have widespread effects. With social learning, everyone contributes to collective knowledge and this in turn can make  organizations and society more effective in dealing with problems. PKM is one of the foundations of social learning because we each need to make sense of the signals coming from our networks, while simultaneously reducing the ever-increasing noise.

If you’re in the Toronto area, this may be the workshop for you or your colleagues.

experience-sharing vs information-sharing

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Interesting finds that were shared on Twitter this past week include:

“You are what you repeatedly do. Excellence is not an event it is a habit.” ~Aristotle – via @simpletonbill

“Innovation – a definition: (in a holistic sense) – the realization of new ideas that contribute to sustainable changes” @JonHusband

“If innovation means we are temporarily incompetent because it’s new, then continuous innovation means continuous incompetence.” @Downes

“the single most important management skill to develop is a tolerance for ambiguity” ~ @TimKastelle

How does the traditional world view of knowledge management fit in the world of social business? by @sumeet_moghe

Useful content doesn’t come up by magic. Content also doesn’t come up as a result of an imposed structure. Content arrives on platforms because some people feel a strong ownership for it and believe that there’s value in sharing it. Over a period of time they use metadata such as tags, ratings and comments to provide a layer of information and commentary to the content. Given a reasonable amount of time, the structure for all the content on the platform starts to emerge. Tag clouds help create a map for users so they can browse through the content. Search engines start throwing intelligent results for searches. User commentary, ratings and flags provide a layer of quality control over the content, helping all members of the community find the best content for the purpose.

Knowledge Management = experience-sharing NOT information-sharing – Knoco Stories

In most of the training courses I run, I ask the question “where does knowledge come from?”
Always, every time, I get the answer “Experience – Knowledge comes from Experience”. Never does anyone answer “Knowledge comes from Information”.
Never
If you don’t believe me, try it yourself. Ask people “where does knowledge come from”? and see what they say.

General McChrystal “we had a frighteningly simplistic view of recent history”

We didn’t know enough and we still don’t know enough,” McChrystal said. “Most of us, me included, had a very superficial understanding of the situation and history, and we had a frighteningly simplistic view of recent history, the last 50 years.”

Is leadership an emergent property?

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Note: this post is in early Beta.

Is leadership an emergent property of people working together (social capital) or is it something delivered, in a top-down fashion by an individual? I was asked about this recently, and immediately thought about the Apache nation that had only situational leaders, Nantans, who were in charge as long as warriors were willing to follow them. Because of this decentralization, they were able to fight the Spanish for a long time, regrouping as necessary, ultimately destroyed by a “benevolent” United States.

Looking at my outboard brain (my blog) I’ve reviewed some thoughts on leadership, which has not really been my focus, but is perhaps more of an emergent property after almost eight years. These are some of the ideas that still resonate with me.

Let me begin with this quote from Peter Levesque, which I picked up in 2004, showing how digital  interconnectedness may change our view leadership:

I suggest that the leaders will be found among the aggressively intelligent citizenry, liberated from many tasks and obligations by technology freely shared; using data, information and knowledge acquired from open source databases, produced from the multiples of billions of dollars of public money invested through research councils, universities, social agencies, and public institutions.

But an aggressively intelligent citizenry needs access to its own ideas. This in an ongoing battle with the established powers. Open information and access to our common knowledge assets seems to be a required part of any new leadership model.

Leaders may be required in hierarchies but are they necessary in wirearchies? The great work of our time may be to design, build and test new organizational models that reflect our democratic values and can function in an interconnected world. Leadership today may be more of an architectural task, or one of setting up the right systems.

We’re now at the stage where we have some new ideas for work (wirearchy, natural enterprises, workplace democracy) and some new technologies (social, nano-bio-techno-cogno). The next step in this evolution is for a new organizational model and that conversation has already started. The ideology will come later.

Ideas lead technology. Technology leads organizations. Organizations lead institutions. Then ideology brings up the rear, lagging all the rest—that’s when things really get set in concrete.

Does ridiculously-easy group forming mean that leadership can now emerge when people get together for collective action? What kind of leadership is there in mass, decentralized, social movements, like the Arab Spring or Occupy Wall Street movements?

Warren Bennis wrote that hierarchy is a prosthesis for trust. With open systems, trust emerges.

Knowledge workers, collaborate, you have nothing to lose but your managers. This is a statement I made a bit in jest on Twitter, but the truth behind it is that management is less useful to the interconnected, professional, concept worker. With fewer managers and hyperlinks subverting hierarchy, will a different breed of leadership emerge?

It takes different leadership, or leadership for networks, to do the important work in complex work environments, which, in my opinion, is to increase collaboration and support social learning in the workplace.

I haven’t really answered my own question whether leadership is an emergent property of net work, but I have little doubt that we need different kinds of leadership (more open, transparent & diverse) and people with these attributes may emerge as their peers allow them to lead; for the time being.

Spreading social capitalism

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I had the pleasure of meeting Dan Robles at Innotribe and his recent post on It is Time to Evolve, got me thinking and making some connections. Dan starts with the big picture:

How the world really works

The Internet and social media have shifted the factors of production away from land, labor, and capital to a higher order of human organization.  This is what we need to be talking about.  People today produce things with knowledge – social, creative, and intellectual knowledge.  These are the factors of production for that 99% of the value that exists on Earth.

Dan goes on to say:

How can we expect to create any type of fair and rational economy from a bunch of invisible stuff milling around the parks?  There is no escape from Market Capitalism and no path to Social Capitalism without a Knowledge Inventory, period.

The knowledge inventory link above takes you to a video which discusses the three factors of production in social capitalism:

  1. Intellectual Capital (ability to collect, retain & share information
  2. Social Capital (ability  of people to work together)
  3. Creative Capital (ability  to combine diverse ideas)

These reminded me of the Law of the Few and how ideas get connected in communities.

knowledge inventory

Generally, Mavens exhibit the greatest intellectual capital; Connectors have the most diverse (creative) networks and Salespeople get things done (action). I wonder if this metaphor/model would help to get social capitalism “across the chasm”. Identify sufficient Mavens, Connectors & Salespeople (you need all three) and then build up to the 10% critical mass necessary to effectively spread ideas:

“When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. It would literally take the amount of time comparable to the age of the universe for this size group to reach the majority,” said SCNARC Director Boleslaw Szymanski, the Claire and Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor at Rensselaer. “Once that number grows above 10 percent, the idea spreads like flame.”