Changing the mechanistic mindset

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The latest question from Michael Cook (Organizational Development Talks: OrgDevTalk) continues from our last conversations:

Harold: I am still not certain about my future as a member of the blogging community but I have revisited our last exchange and rekindled my spirit for that dialogue…

Among the many things you said in your post of February 1st a couple have stuck with me as they pertain particularly to where I put my energies. Here is the first of these:

“Our industrial management models are based on a belief that our structures are merely complicated.”

To me this statement gets right to the heart of where I am stumped about how to support clients. Without fail, in the past five years every new client I have been engaged by has specified one of two things they really wanted to see change in their organizations culture. They said either 1) they wanted more leadership from their mid-level managers or 2) they wanted more ownership from their employees for the outcomes the business required. The phrase they often use is wanting people to “step up.”

In my dialogues with them I do my best to point out that to the best of my knowledge both of these changes are within reach, however, not without them, the client, making the first move. Among the moves that they need to make is to stop imposing a management structure designed to serve the interests of the ownership of the business on employees who are doing their best to fulfill the requirements of customers or clients.

The challenge of having this conversation make a difference lies in speaking this way into a system that believes that their company is really mechanistic in its operation and that they, the owner or senior manager, are really in control. This perspective is supported entirely by the belief that not only is the organization mechanistic, it is merely, as you have said, complicated.

How would you recommend breaking through this mythology? My guess is that a conceptual approach won’t cut it. Without releasing the grip of this perspective the outcomes they desire are virtually impossible to attain.

The second thought that you shared of particular interest was the notion of Wirearchy: a dynamic multi-way flow of power and authority based on information, knowledge, trust and credibility, enabled by interconnected people and technology. The truly stunning aspect of this idea is that it may in fact be possible to implement on some level without the use of technology. In my own experience some version of Wirearchies have been around for a long time, especially on complex development projects. What would you recommend as an approach to have a client see that the notion is less something new than something not yet formally recognized or empowered? Then, having accomplished that objective, how best to introduce the possibility of leverage deriving from some sort of investment in technology?

To me both your remarks and the questions they generated for me are interrelated and from an OD standpoint truly stand as the gateway to establishing new management models.

I think this may be a long response, Mike.

I recently gave a presentation to senior HR executives, discussing the need for new work and learning approaches premised specifically on the need to focus on complex (and creative) work.

Rob Paterson sums up complexity and why we need to understand how if differs from the merely complicated:

“It’s a simple message, really. But if you don’t get it, you’re headed for chaos.

Simple = easily knowable.

Complicated = not simple, but still knowable.

Complex = not fully knowable, but reasonably predictable.

Chaotic = neither knowable nor predictable.”

In that presentation to HR Execs I show that simple routine work is constantly being automated (e.g. automated tellers) and complicated work is being outsourced to the cheapest labour market (e.g. call centres). If companies want to be competitive in the global market, they need to focus on non-standardized, complex & creative work.

automation

Work is changing as we get more connected. The old ways of organizing work are becoming obsolete, as 84% of workers in the US plan to change their jobs in 2011. They want out, in spite of a lacklustre economy. We are seeing mass, decentralized and social movements that confront existing hierarchies, politically and in the workplace. The recent examples of uprisings in North Africa are good attention-getters. There is no normal. All our institutions are facing the challenges of always-on connectedness and the need to adapt to Internet Time. Social media are just the current tip of the Internet iceberg, making work relationships much more complex. Workers do have to step up, but they also need the tools and authority. Encouraging workplace practices like personal knowledge mastery is a start.

When I show that our existing professional disciplines are like blind monks examining an elephant, I get some attention. The need for collaborative work and social learning increases as higher-value complex work requires passion, creativity and initiative. These skills are not taught in some training program, but shared socially through modelled behaviour and over many conversations. We need to understand complex adaptive systems and develop work structures that let us  focus our efforts on learning as we work in order to continuously develop next practices. The role of leadership becomes supportive rather than directive in this new knowledge-intensive and creative workplace. Artificial boundaries that limit collaboration and communication only serve to drag companies down and create opportunities for more agile competitors.

The last slide of that presentation shows a type of servant leadership, supporting the real work being done.

connected leadership


I have learned that I need to start a conversation on complexity but it has to be simple enough not to lose my clients’ attention and not to seem like an academic lecture. This latest presentation is one more iteration of that. If you can can reframe the conversation, then you can talk about new ways of working and integrating learning. For example, most managers would agree that more work and effort is required for exception-handling. Social networks are an excellent framework to deal with these. This can start a new business conversation.

Analytical tools like organizational or value network analysis are also good ways to show what is really happening in an organization and its environment. Visualization is a powerful change agent. The most effective technology to start with to see the value of more collaborative, less controlled, work practices is micro-blogging. This could be an open platform like Twitter or a cloud service like Yammer or Chatter or an in-house tool like Status.net.

I agree that it’s not necessarily about the technology, even though technology is everywhere.

Sometimes it’s just giving up control, as the wirearchy framework suggests. Adam Kahane wrote in Solving Tough Problems:

“If we want to help resolve complex situations, we have to get out of the way of situations that are resolving themselves.”

According to the authors of Getting to Maybe, in complex environments:

  • Rigid protocols are counter-productive
  • There is an uncertainty of outcomes in much of our work
  • We cannot separate parts from the whole
  • Success is not a fixed address [perpetual Beta]

None of these require technology, but they all require a new mindset. I have worked with clients who accepted the need to deal with complexity and change their work structures. Patience is a virtue.

 

Enterprise Social Technology – Review

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Scott Klososky sent me a copy of Enterprise Social Technology with this handwritten note, “If nothing else, it shows what can be done using crowd sourcing.” The story of how this book was written provides an interesting subtext to its main subject. As project manager Corey Travis writes:

For the content, we decided to heavily outline the chapters, then narrow the crowd by picking three potential writers for each chapter. We had them each write the full chapter and submit their version, and we then picked the best. We have no idea whether anyone has used this model before; we just believed it would help us create a stellar book, and we are pleased with how it worked out.

The book’s twelve chapters follow Scott’s recommended implementation strategy for enterprise social technology, from Setting Social Tech Goals and Assembling the Team to Developing Pilot Projects and Security & Regulations. Each chapter concludes with a summary of key points and there is lots of good information that any organization could use, large or small. It’s main focus is on marketing, sales and online reputation management, coupled with explanations of tools and platforms.

The book is not focused on social media for workplace performance improvement, my own area of professional interest. However, the chapter on “Building a River of Information” reflects some of what I have been advocating with networked learning or personal knowledge management (PKM).

People have always built rivers of information for themselves, but in the past it was a laborious process that required determination and discipline … Now, with Web 2.0 and the new information tools that are being developed every day, everything you ever wanted to know is literally at your fingertips. The Internet acts as eyes, ears and mouth of just about every organization in operation today, and it offers users a larger, more accessible river of information that can help their companies reach new heights of success.

The chapter discusses the need for managing rivers of information from multiple perspectives, like executives or sales or engineers, and then shows how to get started. Not just building the river, but pruning irrelevant or under-performing sources is also explained. The sales force is described as the department that could most likely profit from these techniques of harvesting “information  about competitors, and thought leaders, industry news, statistics, and infographics”.

Social technologies are a fact in the workplace and this book provides a comprehensive overview of the issues. The twelve step method provides a clear path to implementation. Since ROI is always a hot topic, take note of the entire chapter dedicated to it. One key piece of advice is don’t outsource measurement until you understand it very well yourself.

I would recommend this book to my clients and also point them to the Enterprise Social Technology companion website that includes many more resources. Like the cover says, this book was “By the Crowd, for the Crowd”.

 

Outsider by choice?

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Here are some of the things I found via Twitter this past week.

“I’m an outsider by choice, but not truly. It’s the unpleasantness of the system that keeps me out. I’d rather be in, in a good system. That’s where my discontent comes from: being forced to choose to stay outside.” George Carlin, Napalm and Silly Putty. via @cburell

“In human affairs, times of advancement are preceded by times of disorder. Success comes to those who can weather the storm.” —The I-Ching – via @ken_homer

The secret life of chaos – BBC video via @complexified

It turns out that chaos theory answers a question that mankind has asked for millennia – how did we get here?
In this documentary, Professor Jim Al-Khalili sets out to uncover one of the great mysteries of science – how does a universe that starts off as dust end up with intelligent life? How does order emerge from disorder?
It’s a mind bending, counter intuitive and for many people a deeply troubling idea. But Professor Al-Khalili reveals the science behind much of beauty and structure in the natural world and discovers that far from it being magic or an act of God, it is in fact an intrinsic part of the laws of physics. Amazingly, it turns out that the mathematics of chaos can explain how and why the universe creates exquisite order and pattern.

“throwing out the web is like breaking a mirror because you don’t like your own reflection” — @stoweboyd — via @sebpaquet

Value Networks and the true nature of collaboration by @vernaallee (Digital Edition)

The true shape and nature of collaboration is not the social network – it is the value network. Value networks are purposeful groups of people who come together to take action. Value network modeling and analytics reflect the true nature of collaboration with a systemic human-network approach to managing business operations. It shows how work really happens through human interactions, and provides powerful new practices and metrics for managing collaborative work. It provides a way to a) better support non-hierarchical organizations such as cross-boundary teams, and task forces, and b) quickly and effectively model emergent work and complex activities that have multiple variables and frequent exceptions.

The HR ‘Wheel’ that adds no value. by Paul Kearns

Paradoxically, while HR is pretending to play a strategic game, there is plenty of evidence that it is actually wasting huge amounts of value every day just doing the reactive, transactional work that is the comfort blanket of the majority of HR practitioners. The disciplinary, grievance and contractual query work they pretend to dislike is actually the only job they know. Worse still, they have a perverse incentive to ensure they have as many problems to deal with as possible (that’s why they make such a meal of trivial issues). This has the dual appeal of not only keeping them in employment (for now) but also, simultaneously, making them ‘too busy’ to do the really difficult, but high value, strategic work.

How Information Overload and the Rate of Change Effect Training. by @charlesjennings

Socialcast and social learning

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We’ve been using Socialcast for a while now and for large organizations that have multiple silos of information in repositories like Sharepoint, it’s a pretty good platform. Socialcast enables streams and micro-sharing and keeps multiple work teams in touch with each other without being burdened with too many rules. The learning curve is not difficult at all.

Socialcast also has a blog and some of the posts and infographics have been exceptionally good. I already wrote about wasted effort at work but this post on exception handling from September just caught my attention:

Social networks in the enterprise create a permanent “home” for these exceptions to live where users can communicate and collaborate around the answers. Exception management through social networks gives management clear insight into the resources needed for handling these exceptions. Viewing or monitoring the interactions and necessary actions taken to resolve these exceptions can lead to better implementation, revisions or training on these systems, and increase productivity throughout the enterprise.

A more recent post on the evolution of knowledge management clearly shows the need to support the sharing of tacit knowledge in a complex and creative economy:

This is a blog worth subscribing to.

Preparing for no normal

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There is no normal anymore. The first quarter of the year is not even over and we have regime changes on an unprecedented level. Currencies fluctuate and peak oil looms with ever higher fluctuations. Meanwhile, startup companies in emerging sectors grow to billion dollar enterprises in under two years.

How is your organization dealing with this? If it’s a large one, you are probably doing business as usual, with a few innovation projects under the hood. The general business strategy is that things will stay the same or that there wil be some growth. We know that recruiting is a big issue for many companies, but not much has changed with HR policies for the past few decades. It’s still mostly salaried work with compensation based on hours worked within some general competency model. But that’s not how creativity is nurtured, and we need a lot more creativity in dealing with the unique and wickedly complex problems we see more and more. A current question doing its rounds on the Net today is “Would your company hire Steve Jobs?”. The implicit message being that innovators don’t get hired.

We can prepare to deal with increasing complexity by promoting agility and autonomy, but there’s only one way to do that: give up control. It’s that simple.

Today we have organizations that are well-connected both hierarchically and between individual workers. In most cases, anyone can be contacted in the organization. However, the central authority retains control, as shown in the first figure.

The model we need for an agile organization with autonomous workers doesn’t look like a pyramid. In fact, it’s the opposite. When there is no normal (and no best practices to follow) then the central authority’s role is to support with a gentle hand. Inverting the organizational pyramid clearly shows the new non-directive role of the central authority. That doesn’t mean there is no leadership, just less control and greater autonomy for workers.

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Thomas Paine’s advice to “Lead, follow or get out of the way”, should be taken by most managers. Adam Kahane wrote in Solving Tough Problems:

If we want to help resolve complex situations, we have to get out of the way of situations that are resolving themselves.

Professional blinders

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It seems that everyone has an answer in dealing with the latest iteration of web technologies – social media. However, as complexity theory tells us, there are no clear and simple answers. Simple processes can create highly complex systems. Maybe that’s why some disciplines might come across as professional liars.

The conceit that we have the answers might be partially at fault. I mean, many of us have spent years in our professions and we have the credentials and certifications to prove it. We must know what we’re talking about, right? But what if none of us can really see the whole picture?

Listening to others and engaging in meaningful conversations is a first step in losing our disciplinary blinders. Let’s not be blind monks examining the elephant.

Blind-Monks-and-Internet

Seven years and 95 theses

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Do hyperlinks really subvert hierarchy? I recently asked on Twitter. They can when people outside the organization take advantage of ridiculously easy group-forming. Examples such as United Breaks Guitars and the various mass, decentralized and social revolutions show what is possible when hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.

However, are there any workplace examples, where existing management practices were forced to change? I don’t know of any, though I think we will see many in the near future.

I read the Cluetrain Manifesto when it was developed and published online in 1999. I even bought a dead-tree version a few years years later. I’m still amazed how many senior executives have never even heard of the Cluetrain. While it may be a bit of a rant, it’s available online for free and makes some very important statements that still resonate a decade later. The Internet has changed the way we work.

Many of my posts over the past 7 years have been inspired by one of the Cluetrain’s 95 theses.

2004 – Lee LeFever hits the nail on the head with this Esse Quam Videre (to be rather than seem) post about weblogging in business. It’s just too easy to see through the smoke when you post every day. You have to be yourself, or you’ll get caught. Lee talks about this idea stemming from the Cluetrain Manifesto (worth the read in spite of its rant style). From Rick Levine’s section of Cluetrain, “Talk is Cheap”, is this excellent sidebar – “A knowledge worker is someone who’s job is having really interesting conversations at work.” That would be most bloggers, I would say.

2005 – Regular readers know that I often refer to The Cluetrain Manifesto. If you haven’t read it yet, take a look at the 95 theses, but I’d suggest that you read the whole book – online or in print. Scott Adams has taken the theses and re-mixed them for education. I’ve re-mixed a bit more, but don’t have the energy (yet) to address all 95:

  • Learning is conversation.
  • Learners are human beings, not demographic sectors.
  • What’s happening to education is also happening among learners. A metaphysical construct called “The School” is the only thing standing between the two.
  • To traditional educational institutions, networked conversations may appear confused, may sound confusing. But we, the learners, are organizing faster than they are. We have better tools, more new ideas, no rules to slow us down.

2006 – Markets are conversations and conversations [relationships] create markets … Let’s go back to the Cluetrain Manifesto, from which we get the initial thesis that markets are conversations. In this case, I think that theses 11 and 12 are much more pertinent:

#11. People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products.

#12. There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.

2007 – One of the main forces of change that will affect how we learn is the weakening of the industrial command & control organisation. We don’t need a third party to mediate our learning because we can find interesting stuff and interesting people (interesting to us, at least) on the Web. I see those workers, who one could call the “Cluetrained’, as already dropping out of the bottom of the industrial organisation’s pyramid and doing it on their own. “It” meaning working, learning, creating and collaborating.

2008 – Here is an important note to corporations; Cluetrain Thesis #20:

Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At them.

Gee, what’s next, people making fun of education?

2009 – Cluetrain #10. As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.

Jeff Jarvis:

To make the money I don’t make teaching, I consult and speak for various media companies and brands. The only reason I get those gigs is because companies read the ideas I discuss at Buzzmachine and ask me to come and repeat them in PowerPoint form and explore them with their staff. I’ve also been asked to teach executives how to blog (a class that should, by rights, take about two minutes). That work and the teaching get me to a nice income in six figures. So I’m not looking quite as idiotic now, I hope.

Rob Paterson:

NPR, all my work in New Media, Blackwater, Education – all my paying gigs have come through this medium [blogging].

2010 – It is only by working (and learning) interdependently, retaining our autonomy, co-developing our mastery and feeling a shared sense of purpose that we will be truly motivated. The opportunity the Internet has given individuals is the chance to work cooperatively toward a shared purpose (Seb Paquet calls this “ridiculously easy group-forming”). The Internet also affords organizations the opportunity to loosen the dependence of workers through participative engagement (as The Cluetrain Manifesto explained a decade ago). The new organization must be some mix of free-agent autonomy, support mechanisms for mastery, and a wide enough span for each person to develop a personal sense of purpose.

Seven years and still independent

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I’ve been putting my thoughts on this blog for seven years now. When I started (19 Feb 2004), the term blog was not exactly mainstream and one media “guru” said blogs were on their way out. Today, my blog is still the main part of my “outboard brain” and I can’t see how I could manage my sense-making processes without a blog as home-base.

I have tried to keep this blog true to my principles and beliefs but still professional and courteous. I cannot say the posts here have a neutral point of view. I was an advocate of open source software before it was popular with the mainstream. I have  commented on oligopolistic practice, suggested that the LMS is not the centre of the universe and have advocated for de-schooling. While not radical, this blog has not been corporate mainstream either. Of course, there is always a price to pay for that, as I continue to learn. However, I cannot see how I could remove myself from my online life. For instance, I never comment online under a pseudonym. My writing reflects me and nobody else, though I try to be restrained and provide balance. I allow negative comments and only delete spam.

If you want to know what I think, read my blog. If you’re surprised by my behaviour, you may not have read enough.

Blog post #1,865

Image: Seven Beggars

Analogies and false analogies

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Here are some of the things I learned via Twitter this past week.

“It was 1977. We thought we were doing an experiment. The problem was, the experiment never ended.” ~ Vint Cerf on the Internet. via @moehlert @monkchips

Triple Bottom Line: the bad idea that just won’t die

This idea is of course ridiculous. It’s ridiculous not because companies can’t or shouldn’t track performance in those areas — they can, and they should. It’s not even ridiculous because such performance can’t be quantified — many environmental and social impacts can be measured, and companies’ performance on various measures can be tracked from year to year.

No, the problem with the 3BL is that it’s a terribly misleading metaphor. It’s an accounting metaphor, used in domains that don’t satisfy some of the basic assumptions that make financial accounting work. (In my Critical Thinking class, this is what we call the “False Analogy” fallacy.)

Johnnie Moore: Learning is not a parcel via @DavidGurteen

Learning is not a FedEx package that you sign for at the door. Learning happens on its own schedule. We often realise the significance of events long after their original impact, and may actually continue to revise what we think the lesson is as our lives unfold.

L’Innovation via les réseaux d’apprentissage. by @fdomon [my article translated to French]

C’est Tim Kastelle qui m’a présenté le concept Agréger-Filtrer-Connecter pour l’innovation, que j’ai utilisé pour mon PLE (Personal Knowledge Management) avant de le changer en Enquêter-Discerner-Partager. L’innovation est inextricablement liée à la fois aux réseaux et à l’apprentissage. C’est pourquoi les compétences nécessaires à l’apprentissage en réseaux sont essentielles pour les entreprises aujourd’hui. Nous avons besoin d’innover pour rester en tête dans un monde en mutation. Les règles sont en constante évolution. A peine le temps de s’habituer à de nouveaux business modèles comme Amazon ou Google, que quelqu’un comme Alvis Bigis nous propose un excellent article sur la façon dont l’économie américaine a besoin de devenir sociale. A parlant du site Groupon.com, il dit « Jamais avant Groupon, une entreprise n’avait atteint 2 milliards de dollars de chiffre d’affaires annuel en seulement 2 ans. » Qui sait quelle sera la suite ?

Wasted Effort at Work

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The Dare to Share: A New Culture of Collaboration in the Enterprise infographic, by Socialcast provides an excellent snapshot of the need  for collaborative work and learning practices.

The web and ever-transforming digital technology have revolutionized the concept of communication and collaboration at work. Fundamental to employee collaboration is how individuals join together to achieve a mutual goal. Collaboration is based on the idea that sharing knowledge through cooperation helps solve problems more efficiently.

One part of the graphic shows three areas of opportunity for most organizations: sources of wasted effort. These are activities where you should be able to get measurable results fairly quickly.

Make meetings optional.

Promote video and web – conferencing & go mobile.

Reduce email to inbox zero.

Thanks to Jane Hart for highlighting this.