How we organize and get things done as governments, communities, and companies needs to change. We are shifting to a new economy, with global surveillance, and new ways of work. As we shift from a society focused on institutions and markets and prepare to enter the network area, three areas require greater emphasis.
the execution of education
“it pisses me off that business schools virtually ignore sales, while fawning over marketing” – Tom Peters
Marketing is relatively easy to teach. Doing sales takes time, practice, and feedback. It’s fairly obvious why universities prefer to teach marketing. I don’t know of any programs where students do real sales calls. I guess that’s for after graduation.
self-organization and self-reflection
Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.
“A job is an artifact of a renaissance era scheme to prevent us from creating and exchanging value among ourselves.” – Douglas Rushkoff, via @fer_ananda
thinking critically
Critical thinking – the questioning of underlying assumptions, including our own – is becoming all-important as we have to make our way in the network era. Critical thinking can be looked at as four main activities:
- Observing and studying our fields
- Participating in professional communities
- Building tentative opinions
- Challenging and evaluating ideas
selling workplace learning to the HSP
Highly successful people (HSP) don’t need help making sense of their days.
“What if you could rely on others in your life to handle these things and you could narrow your attention filter to that which is right before you, happening right now? I met Jimmy Carter when he was campaigning for president and he spoke as though we had all the time in the world. At one point, an aide came to take him off to the next person he needed to meet. Free from having to decide when the meeting would end, or any other mundane care, really, President Carter could let go of those inner nagging voices and be there. A professional musician friend who headlines big stadiums and constantly has a phalanx of assistants describes this state as being ‘happily lost’. He doesn’t need to look at his calendar more than a day in advance, allowing each day to be filled with wonder and possibility.” —Daniel Levity, in The Organized Mind
co-creation as a service
Give people fish & you feed them for a day
Teach people to fish & you feed them for a lifetime
Help people learn for themselves how to fish & you prepare them for life in perpetual beta
Most best practices are self-evident, whereas the problems that consume our time and efforts are usually complex. Instead of looking for best or good practices, we should take the time and money to invest in an experiment. What works for one organization often will not work for another. There are too many variables, and the environment keeps changing. However, examples of emergent practices can inform us, as long as we see them as guide posts, not rule books.
Currently, I offer online workshops on personal knowledge mastery and social learning. These have been highly successful and involve cohorts of participants from a wide variety of backgrounds. As one of the objectives is to learn from each other, this diversity increases the potential for serendipitous learning. I use what we learn to inform internally conducted workshops. My focus in all of my work is co-creation as a service.
the self-governance maturity model
“If we emphasize Autonomy, the Node Artifact, Autonomy as the core organizing principle, this will result in individuals, small groups and tribes, forming complex responsive flows e.g. through conversations and flexible ad hoc structures.” —John Kellden
In the triple operating system (Awareness>Alternatives>Action) work gets done by self-governing work teams with a degree of autonomy operating in temporary, negotiated hierarchies. Self-organizing teams are more flexible than hierarchical ones, but they require active and engaged members. One cannot cede power to the boss, because everyone is responsible for the boss they choose. Like democracy, self-organized teams require constant effort to work. Hierarchies work well when information flows mostly in one direction: down. They are good for command and control. Hierarchies can get things done efficiently. But hierarchies are useless to create, innovate, or change. Hierarchies in perpetual beta are optimal for creativity and to deal with complexity.
a triple operating system
Governance, business, and learning models are moving from centralized control to network-centric foundations. For instance, coalition governments are increasing in frequency, businesses are organizing in value networks, and collaborative and connected learning is becoming widespread. In these cases, collaboration (working for a common objective) and cooperation (sharing freely without direct reciprocity) flow both ways.
There are advocates for a dual operating system to deal with the complexity of the networked era: one that is hierarchical and another that is networked. This may make more sense than an elaborate 8-step model but the duality misses an important connection between structured work and cooperative networks. That space is the community of practice, which is neither project team nor professional network. Networks provide new ideas and perspectives from their diverse weak social ties. Work teams often have to share complex knowledge, and this requires strong social ties. Communities of practice are the bridge between these two, where we can test new ideas in a trusted space. This trinity is not three separate operating systems. It is one, that without the others is ineffective.
humanity
Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. I am currently in Toronto, returning from speaking at the Institute for Performance and Learning where my topic was ‘Humanity: the killer app’.
“One reason I find it a revelation to read newspapers, listen to radio: Human-curated news is tremendously more varied than machine-filtered.” – @mims
“the people driving for Über are doing R&D for automatic cars!” says @rushkoff at #platformcoop – via @jerrymichalski
“I’m not a human resource. Certainly not an asset. Don’t even mention a human capital. I’m a human being, period.” – @Mintzberg141 via @rachelbotsman