managing to lead in complexity

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The military is beginning to understand that some of its leadership practices need to change as its challenges increase in complexity. Future warfare will increasingly move toward the complex domain.

“Complex contexts cannot be solved; they can only be managed. In a context with variables and relationships that are constantly shifting, leaders are unable to assess the situation and apply the appropriate solution. Instead, they must begin by intentionally probing the environment and conducting small, experimental actions to generate insights they can then analyze for patterns.” —Modern War Institute at West Point 2022-06-15

Major Heloise Goodley, UK army chief of general staff’s research fellow at Chatham House, says that new skills are needed for the modern, machine-augmented battlefield.

“The proliferation of automation and artificial intelligence has not decreased the requirement for a human component in war, but it is changing the decision making and cognitive skills required of those soldiers. The army needs soldiers who have the intellectual and psychological aptitude to work in an increasingly automated operational environment, the very computer skills Generation Z have become derided for.” —The Independent 2019-01-05

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learning is the work, redux

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Ten years ago I wrote — work is learning, and learning is the work. I have been asked to speak about this topic at the LernOS Convention on 5 July, which I will present online. Let’s see what has transpired in a decade.

The first paragraph is even more pertinent today, especially given the global experiences of distributed work — We have come to a point where organizations can no longer leave learning to their HR or training departments. Being able to understand emerging situations, see patterns, and co-solve problems are essential business skills. — where social learning becomes critical in knowledge sharing and learning in the complex domain.

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one personbyte is not enough

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Nick Milton refers to an interesting knowledge management concept — “‘personbyte’ – the amount of knowledge one person can reasonably learn in a lifetime. In the craftsman economy of 100 years ago, a personbyte was enough knowledge to create an impressive artefact — a steamboat, a canal, or a suspension bridge. Nowadays one personbyte is nowhere near enough to create modern products, or deliver modern services.”

So why do we have individual performance appraisals?

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there is no public in the global market

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Two years ago, just after the pandemic was declared, I suggested that we need to go beyond civil society, governments, and markets — toward a commons or noosphere — to deal with the entangled complexities facing us. My assumptions at that time have not changed much to date.

  1. The three organizing forms for society, chronologically — Tribes, Institutions (Governments), Markets — are widely applicable across history.
  2. Each form builds on the other and changes it.
  3. The last form is the dominant form — today that would be the Market form (market volatility today is increasing inequality and turmoil)
  4. A new form is emerging — Networks (Commons)‚ and hence the T+I+M+N model.
  5. This form has also been called the noosphere.
  6. I have found evidence that what initiated each new form was a change in human communication media — T+I (written word), T+I+M (print), T+I+M+N (electric/digital).
  7. I believe we are currently in between a triform (T+I+M) and a quadriform (T+I+M+N) society, which accounts for much of the current political turmoil in our post-modern world.
  8. This model can help inform us how to build better organizational forms for a coming age of entanglement.

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the coherent organization

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Several years ago, the team at Innovisor asked — Why Do Organizations Led by Women Perform Better?

The new study puzzled Innovisor. Why do organizations led by women perform better?

Since we already established that the women on an individual level were not collaborating more than men, we decided to look somewhere else in our data.
Also because Innovisor had previously established that there was a correlation between organizational coherence and performance.

We decided to look into if organizations led by women were more coherent.

And they were! —Innovisor 2018-07-18

I have noticed similar other indicators, such as the observation that we collectively understand that what are considered ‘feminine’ traits are what leaders need today, as shown in this 2013 Inc. magazine study.

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DYOR

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For over two years we have increasingly seen this term in social and mainstream media — Do Your Own Research (DYOR).

“The words imply a fundamental distrust in authority, and thus a shift to complete self-reliance. In the case of crypto, where there may be rewards but there are definitely massive risks, you should want to rely on your own judgment rather than someone else’s, who might be paid for their endorsement or simply be a fool.” —Ross Dawson 2021-05-31

Ross warns us that that not trusting experts could lead to massive trust issues in society and, “How this plays out will be a fundamental factor in shaping our future society”. I agree.

For the most part, the lack of trust has been brought on by the institutions and those within their hierarchies. Let’s just look at this pandemic and the medical guidance put forth by experts. This has been my sensemaking experience and my journey of doing my own research.

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whataboutism

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On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

B of E: The route back to 2% inflation − speech by Michael Saunders

“The share of the 16-64 population who are outside the workforce and do not want a job because of long-term sickness is a record high, with an especially sharp rise among women. I suspect much of this rise in inactivity due to long-term sickness reflects side effects of the pandemic, for example Long Covid and the rise in NHS waiting lists.”

“There’s a saying: ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’. There’s not one that says: ‘Adequate, properly scheduled time is the mother of invention’. I know. I looked.” —@SimonHeath1

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management must move first

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This morning I gave a presentation at the IOM Summit on digital work. My topic was — Digital Work is all about human connections. The key messages are ones that have been presented here.

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ninety percent of everything is crap

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A friend recently shared an article and the title immediately caught my eye — Personal knowledge management is bullshit [dead link]. Of course I had to read it. The first line immediately stood out, “Personal Knowledge Management (“PKM”) is a trendy new term for techniques and applications designed to manage information.” I was first introduced to PKM in 2004 by Lilia Efimova and later by Denham Gray and Dave Pollard, all of whom had been writing about it for several years at that point. So I am not sure what the definition of “trendy new term” is in this case.

I shifted to the term personal knowledge mastery in 2014 in order to clarify that PKM for me is removed from traditional Knowledge Management (KM) and that it is a discipline to be mastered through practice. My PKM is not connected to any given technology though I have used several over the years.

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passivity makes no sense

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Last year I wrote that this pandemic has become a crisis in network leadership because understanding what domain of complexity we are dealing with is now an essential requirement for decision-makers. At its outbreak the pandemic was chaotic and required immediate action. Developing vaccines went from complex to complicated. Dealing with people and how various groups reacted to the pandemic oscillated between ordered and unordered domains but has been mostly complex. Clear and simple communications can help to avoid confusion, though they have seldom been delivered.

I created a framework for learning in the complex domain, including examples of organizations that are designed to handle complexity and chaos. The image below takes the basic PKM model — with teams in blue, communities in red, and networks in green, along two axes — high & low structure, and low & high abstraction. These are split in half — one for the Complex domain, and the other for the ordered domains (Complicated & Clear). The Chaotic domain has unique conditions and requires a different approach.

There are — at least — two modes for each form required to work and learn.

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