Cooperation and networks at Innotribe

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Stowe Boyd & I are opening the presentation on corporate culture this morning, here in Toronto at Sibos. We will be looking at how organizational frameworks and models have changed. Stowe will talk about the architecture of cooperation:

The new architecture of work is now emerging, after decades of transition. White collar work became knowledge work which has now become creative work. The transition from process to networks is not just a recasting, not just a different style of communication. The work is styled as information sharing through social relationships, and where ‘following’ takes the place of ‘invitation’. People coordinate efforts, but work on a wide variety of activities, which are not necessarily co-aligned with others’ work, and which are not necessarily even known in a general way. A new degree of privacy and autonomy animates cooperative work, in comparison to collaborative work. Individuals cooperating hand off information or take on tasks in a fashion that is like businesses cooperating: they see the benefit in cooperating, and don’t have to share a common core set of strategic goals to do so: they don’t need the alignment of goals that defines old style business employment.

I will discuss the TIMN model, which I learned about via John Robb. I will overlay it with a look at dominant communications media and talk about some of the organizational changes we are seeing and may see in the near future.

We may see more of the following.

Wirearchy: a dynamic multi-way flow of power and authority based on information, knowledge, trust and credibility, enabled by interconnected people and technology.

Heterarchies are networks of elements in which each element shares the same “horizontal” position of power and authority, each playing a theoretically equal role [wikipedia].

Chaordic refers to a system of governance that blends characteristics of chaos and order. The term was coined by Dee Hock the founder and former CEO of the VISA credit card association [wikipedia].

And I’ll ask these and some some other questions:

Do networks obsolesce hierarchies? Can they co-exist?

What happens when your customers are more connected than your organization?

How does the transparency that networks enable change your organizational model?

Innotribe at Sibos Toronto

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This morning I’m heading to Toronto to participate in the Innotribe stream for the Sibos conference. Peter Vander Auwera invited me and I’m really looking forward to what is already a most interesting conference, as I read the tweets and posts. I’m presenting on organizational models over time with Stowe Boyd and the session is moderated by the always-interesting Mark Dowds.

Peter’s blog has been covering many of the themes that will be discussed – Digital Identity; the new physics of big data; and new economies for example.

Some comments via Twitter so far:

@petervan – Decrease the bank’s AND the customer’s risk should be one of the principles

@dsearls – Has anybody ever drowned in a Deep Dive? Just wondering. :-) Corollary to last tweet: I have been rained out in a brainstorm.

@marovdan – # innotribe  has grown and matured into something very important. The future course of finance is being debated and decided. Here.

There should be lots to learn and much to write about, which of course I’ll share here. Hugh Macleod is the official cartoonist for the event, so that should be a real treat!

We are (still) the solution to the problem

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In 2008 (just before the financial crisis), Jay Cross noted many dysfunctional workplace practices in a survey of 237 respondents worldwide. Is this still the state of the workplace?

  • a lack of cooperation;
  • no time for reflection;
  • no ability to create DIY [do it yourself] tools for work;
  • no communities of practice for support;
  • lack of professional development;
  • poor training; and
  • working in organizations that are slow to change.

Does this resemble an organization you work for, or work with?

Michele Martin commented in 2008 that:

What strikes me is the fundamental sense of disempowerment in the workplace that suggests that people are essentially at the mercy of the companies they work for. While obviously there’s some truth to this, especially in an economic downturn, I still believe that people have far more control over these issues than they believe. One of my main goals in working with people on integrating social media and professional development is to point out how empowering it is to take control of your own learning by starting a blog and pursuing DIY professional development. If the will is there, the means certainly exist …

Unlike people in poverty, our power to move into another less dysfunctional system of work is still within our grasp, especially if we take a DIY approach to professional development. Systems, after all, are created by people, so we also need to be working on changing ourselves so that we’re in a better position to change the system. It’s not an either/or as much as an AND situation – change people AND change systems.

If these are still issues (and I see them in many organizations) then we need to remember that we are the solution to the problem. However, that situation may not last forever. As the saying goes, the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second-best time is today.

Not your average consultancy

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When we got together as the Internet Time Alliance it was rather obvious that we were not going to be your usual consulting company. We are five principals and one associate, spread across nine time zones, who share a passion for our work. Status quo and cookie cutter solutions are not our business. Jay likens us to a group of artists who share the same gallery. That’s not a bad metaphor. We communicate pretty much every day, using all types of what are now called social media, but we remember the days of computer supported collaborative work (CSCW) and many other terms that have been cast aside. There are a couple hundred years of experience at the Internet Time Alliance.

One thing that differentiates us is our approach to wired work. 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. We tried out that new blogging thing a long time ago. We’ve been on Twitter for several years. When we suggest ways to work smarter, we’ve done them. When clients are ready to cross the technology adoption chasm, we’re the pathfinders. That means we’ve failed several times already. We’ve learned from those mistakes. We don’t wait until the early majority is ready and then launch packaged services for that market. We’re already on to the next challenge, staying ahead and testing the waters.

Our networks are an essential part of our business.

“What the Internet Time Alliance brought to the table in our engagement was not only their extensive experience but their networks as well. While we in our organization have networks of our own, the quality and extensiveness of the ITA network added a value that we would not have been able to tap alone, and led us to a superior solution that will better serve our customers.” (Corporate University Manager within Fortune 500 Health Insurance company)

 

Idiots, Networks and Patterns

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Here are some interesting things that were shared via Twitter this past week.

@SebPaquet ~ “Make something idiot-proof and somebody will make a better idiot.”

@CharlesJennings ~ “we deliver milk. we facilitate learning. we transfer funds. we help build knowledge.” [on ‘learning transfer’]

@StevenBJohnson ~”you can’t have an epiphany with only three neurons” – Where Good Ideas Come From [innovation is about networks]

Marc Benioff [CEO Salesforce.com]: We learned that the key to success with social collaboration is integrating social into workflow. Collaboration is not an island. – via @JayCross

The Physics of Finance: The more chaotic our environment & less control we have, the more we see non-existent simple patterns, or as Valdis Krebs pointed out, seeing fictitious patterns in random data is called “apophenia”

This is interesting in this limited context of discrimination and how the orderliness of physical environments might influence it, but the effect described seems in fact to be far more general — it reflects a human longing for order and simplicity whenever faced with too much uncertainty.

People Are Close to Revolt (James Fallows, The Atlantic) via @SteveBrant

All of the people I know who are capable of rational thought also understand that the combination of (we’re rural so pretty much everyone gets climate change) climate change and energy issues, lack of jobs, and the refusal of government to provide us with basic services means that a new revolutionary social movement is needed. Food prices are soaring, gas prices are making it hard for people to get to low paying jobs, and the amount of suffering because of lack of access to medical care is dire. [US Midwest University Librarian]

Situated Technologies: interesting future-oriented reads HT @JonHusband

The Internet of People for a Post-Oil World [available as free PDF]
Spring 2011 – Christian Nold and Rob van Kranenburg

The authors articulate the foundations of a future manifesto for an Internet of Things in the public interest. Nold and Kranenburg propose tangible design interventions that challenge an internet dominated by commercial tools and systems, emphasizing that people from all walks of life have to be at the table when we talk about alternate possibilities for ubiquitous computing. Through horizontally scaling grass roots efforts along with establishing social standards for governments and companies to allow cooperation, Nold and Kranenberg argue for transforming the Internet of Things into an Internet of People.

Will you soon be able to make Amazon’s Kindle at Home? by @SteveDenning [reminds me of Cory Doctorow’s book, Makers]

Igoe and Mota point out that digital manufacturing is beginning to do to manufacturing what the Internet has done to information-based goods and services. Just as video went from a handful of broadcast networks to millions of producers on YouTube within a decade, a massive transition from centralized production to a “maker culture” of dispersed manufacturing innovation is under way today.

 

Informal learning is a business imperative

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In Part 2 of Social Learning doesn’t mean what you think it does, my colleague Jane Hart  uses a very helpful diagram created by a previous colleague of mine, Tom Gram:

Tom Gram’s diagram [reproduced below] shows that “most work requires a combination of knowledge work and routine work. These characteristics of jobs and work environments call for different approaches to training and development.” [see  Mapping informal and formal learning strategies to real work], so the work of the L&D department will be very different in different organisations, depending on the type of workers and work done.

I connected this to the whole notion of simpler work getting automated and outsourced usingTom’s framework.

I then created my own graphic and looked at what happens to work if this is true.

Supporting informal learning and helping connect tacit knowledge in the enterprise are now business imperatives, not just something extra. The valued work in the enterprise is increasing in variety and decreasing in standardization. It is moving to the edge. Organizations that do not optimize informal learning may themselves get automated and outsourced.

Social networks drive Innovation

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I’m always looking for simple ways to explain how networks change business and how social media help to increase openness, driving transparency and increasing innovation.

Does this graphic stand on its own, or is there more explanation required?

Updated:

With significant feedback via Google+, here is the next, but not last, version.

Version 3 (thanks to Dan Pontefract & Simon Fowler and many others on Google Plus)

Learning and economies

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

@SteveDenning “If you’re not hearing laughter, it’s a sign you’re still in the land of traditional management.” via @JurgenAppelo

@HildyGottlieb ” When we plant seeds of moral outrage, we eliminate the possibility for action on what we have in common.”

Learning Organizations Then and Now – by @Driessen

The learning organization sees companies as communities (organisms). A very interesting statement is made towards the end of the book [The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook]:

The lifeblood of the organization as community is dialogue, not only within teams but in the whole organization. If intellectual capital is the most important production factor than the capacity to have deep discussions about important topics is essential for breakthrough thinking and innovation.

Has the recession created a freelance utopia or a freelance underclass? via @MsRasberryInc

The country’s freelance nation has always been a diverse lot, some of whom were pushed out of full-time jobs and others who actively pursued this pathway with entrepreneurial zeal. But the recession has forced a growing number of people to grudgingly pursue this path. Do some of them end up “loving it”? Of course. Will some devote their extra free time to creative pursuits, perhaps to become indie rock darlings? Sure. But those who want to pursue the freelance life to support themselves full time are having a far harder time doing so.

Douglas Rushkoff: What we lack is not employment, but a way of fairly distributing the bounty we have generated through our technologies

The question we have to begin to ask ourselves is not how do we employ all the people who are rendered obsolete by technology, but how can we organize a society around something other than employment? Might the spirit of enterprise we currently associate with “career” be shifted to something entirely more collaborative, purposeful, and even meaningful?

China adds $6.50 of value per iPhone. iPod supported 14000+ jobs in the US – by @TimHarford

A similar story seems to hold for jobs. Greg Linden, Jason Dedrick and Kenneth Kramer of the University of California, Irvine, look at the jobs created by the old faithful iPod. Their study reckons that the iPod accounted for almost 41,000 jobs worldwide in 2006, and only 30 of those were in manufacturing in the US. But the iPod supported more than 6,000 engineering or other professional jobs in the US – as well as almost 8,000 lower-paid jobs in the likes of retail and distribution. Linden and his colleagues reckon that US workers earned more than two-thirds of all the wages paid to workers in the iPod value chain.

Guardian: Ecology is the new economy. via @JenniferSertl

The basis for this thinking is that the linear way in which the world economy currently operates fuels a culture of consumption and creates more waste than is sustainable in the long term. In contrast, the living world operates in a circular cycle where the waste of one species provides the food for another and resources flow.

Adapting to a networked world

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Simon Bostock referred me to this speech that Ben Hammersly gave to the UK’s Information Assurance Advisory Council. The main theme is how the ruling generation (Baby Boomers) are failing to understand how the Internet has changed EVERYTHING.

You’re all the same age, and upbringing, as the people that the digital generations are so upset with. Don’t take it personally, but your peers are the sorts of baby-boomers that have been entrusted with the future, while they are obviously so deeply confused by the present.

For example:

[Moores Law] This is all obvious for us, yes, but Truth Number One, is that anything that is dismissed on the grounds of the technology-not-being-good-enough-yet is going to happen. We have to tell people this.

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Fundamental Truth Number two is that the internet is the dominant platform for life in the 21st century.

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Indeed, a small part of the trigger for the London riots can be understood as the gap between the respect given to peoples’s opinions by the internet, and the complete disrespect given by the government and the ruling elites.

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The government, and the security industry, in this country and elsewhere, have spent the past ten years really blowing it. Time and time again there has been a demonstration of security theatre, or overreaction, or overstatement of the risks in hand. From liquids in airports to invading Iraq, no one believes this stuff any more.

Hammersly likens his role as “translator” between the ruling generation and the younger generations, and given his record, he seems to be doing this with a vengeance. I’m sure it will still take some time to get the message through.

Earlier this year I spoke to HR Executives and Chief Privacy Officers about social media, the most visible part of the world connected by the Internet. After one presentation it was clear that the group (all over 40) knew that things were changing but few understood what they could do within the context of their own organization. Or perhaps they had no real incentive to do so.

While people like Hammersly are needed as translators, we also need pathfinders to show concrete measures that can be taken by the pioneers. Using the  tipping point metaphor, Mavens deeply understand the situation, Connectors are needed to get the word out and Salespeople have to convince those in control to take action. That means there’s work for many while we get to the critical mass where a networked way of working (e.g. wirearchy) living (e.g. Shareable) and learning (e.g. MOOC)  become natural.

Two simple backchannel options

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I’ve been looking at some simple ways to add a backchannel for a conference, with a few major constraints. It has to be free or very low cost. It should not be open to the general public (thus eliminating Twitter). It should be as simple as possible.

The simplest tool I found was Today’s Meet, which lets you set up a backchannel in seconds, requires no account set-up, allows pseudonyms, is web-only, provides a full transcript and will delete all contents after a set time. Pretty good for a free service. One main issue could be that the site is not password protected. There is a unique URL generated and if kept confidential, is acceptable for low risk conversations. The site can be set up minutes before the conference and transcripts downloaded minutes after the conference is over and then deleted. Overall, a rather stealth technology.

A more complicated, but also more robust platform is WordPress. It requires each user to create a WordPress account. Using the P2 theme, available with a free wordpress.com account, you can set up a private community activity stream that looks much like Yammer. Benefits include customization, the addition of explanatory pages and several widgets, including Twitter feeds. With the worldwide WordPress community, you also know the technology will be around and supported for a long time.

So these are two free options to use at conferences where participants do not want to be on the open web and have some concerns about security or publicity. These are not options where security is a major concern. In that case, stick to your Intranet or VPN.