Communities – Page 13 – Harold Jarche

taking back our society

2018-11-252016-11-30 by Harold Jarche

Monopolies & the Human Condition

“When monopolies succeed, the people fail …”, Henry Demarest Lloyd wrote in March 1881, denouncing the practices of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. Almost a century later, John Kenneth Galbraith warned of the dangers of blindly having faith in our capital market system and the organizations and institutions that support it.

“The greater danger is in the subordination of belief to the needs of the modern industrial system … These are that technology is always good; that economic growth is always good; that firms must always expand; that consumption of goods is the principal source of happiness; that idleness is wicked; and that nothing should interfere with the priority we accord to technology, growth, and increased consumption.” —The Atlantic 1967-06-01

Both Demarest Lloyd and Galbraith saw the flaws in the capitalist system, especially the tendency to think of people as mere replaceable human capital. In 1994, Peter Drucker discussed the rise of the knowledge worker, a term Drucker coined in 1959. This had the potential to shift the focus of our production systems from capital to labour. But Drucker saw that the shift to a society of knowledge workers would not be easy, as we are still struggling with it today.

“It is also the first society in which not everybody does the same work, as was the case when the huge majority were farmers or, as seemed likely only forty or fifty years ago, were going to be machine operators.

This is far more than a social change. It is a change in the human condition.” —The Atlantic 1994-11-01

Today, we deal with some of the same struggles against monopolies as Demarest Lloyd, but we are several billion more people, facing climate change and environmental degradation. At the same time, our democracies are under attack from the abuse of surveillance technologies by corporations and governments.

The political tide is shifting to embrace tribalism. The change in the human condition identified by Drucker requires new thinking and putting new models in practice. Our existing institutions do not offer these. Our markets, especially our labour markets, are not designed for this change in the human condition. Automation, coupled with non-routine work as the norm, fundamentally changes our concepts of labour and earning a living.

open, transparent & diverse

2016-11-27 by Harold Jarche

There is a lot of talk about being in a post-truth (lying) era and the amount of fake news displayed on social media. Because of this, many well-known people have left social media platforms, with public announcements of course. Paul Prinsloo shows the disconnect we face when engaging with these platform monopolies: “Yes, I know Facebook uses my clicks and ‘likes’ to profile me. Yes I know the space is increasingly becoming creepy … Yes, I am increasingly aware of those watching. But for now, Twitter and Facebook are my oxygen that allows me to breathe.”

If you are already famous you don’t need social media. If you have a well-paying secure job, you do not need social media: yet. If you (still) have tenure, you do not need social media. Most of the rest of us need it: to stay current, to learn, to find work, to escape our geographical limitations.

“In other words, while being a privileged white guy working in a reasonably-prestigious university might mean that he can avoid the 21st century for a while, for the rest of us social tools enable us to make important connections, do innovation work, and increase our serendipity surface.” —Doug Belshaw

beta conversation 2016-12-14

2018-01-132016-11-23 by Harold Jarche

A Deep Conversation on Connected Leadership

I will be hosting the next Beta Conversation on Wednesday, 14 December at 19:00 GMT/UTC (apologies to the folks down-under for the early start, but it’s almost Summer for you while I have to put studded tires on my bicycle for the ice). The subject will be connected leadership, as discussed in adapting to perpetual beta. This will be the last Beta Conversation for 2016, with the next scheduled for February 2017.

beta conversation 2016-11-22

2018-01-132016-11-13 by Harold Jarche

I will be hosting the next Working in Perpetual Beta webinar on Tuesday, 22 November at 16:00 GMT/UTC (08:00 Pacific, 11:00 Eastern, 17:00 CET). The subject will be the topics discussed in working in perpetual beta.

This is the beginning of a regular monthly series of web discussions, Beta Conversations, on topics I have written about in the perpetual beta series. Each session will be 90 minutes long. For participant confidentiality, these sessions will not be recorded. Stay tuned for the announcement of the December conversation focused on networked leadership, as discussed in adapting to perpetual beta.

The format of each session is as follows:

Presentation of the key themes
Discussion of questions provided by participants in advance
Open discussion

Given the positive feedback from the last webinar held on 10 November, these sessions will be capped at 12 participants. This will ensure time for deeper dialogue and to address everyone’s questions. We will use the https://zoom.us/ platform, which does not require any special plugins or additional software so you can access the session from work.

If you are interested in applying new organizational models for the network era that optimize human learning, based on cooperation, knowledge-sharing, and transparency, then please join us.

november webinar

2018-01-132016-10-31 by Harold Jarche

Working in Perpetual Beta

I will be hosting a webinar on Thursday, 10 November at 16:00 UTC (08:00 Pacific, 11:00 Eastern, 17:00 CET).

The subject will be the topics discussed in working in perpetual beta, the last volume of the series. I will show the research behind the network learning model and the triple operating system, and explain how these were developed over several years. I will also take any questions in advance from participants. The general outline will be 30 minutes of presentation, followed by 30 minutes of discussion or answering questions and longer if there are lots of questions. I intend to use the https://zoom.us/ platform, which I have found to be very easy to access.

The registration fee includes a copy of Working in Perpetual Beta.

not working, out loud

2018-11-132016-10-26 by Harold Jarche

I am a proponent of working out loud [transparent knowledge sharing] and see it as an essential connector between personal knowledge mastery and organizational knowledge management, as it helps make organizational knowledge explicit. John Stepper has recently advanced the idea of working out loud with his book on the subject. Many others are now practicing it: #workoutloud.

enabling self-governing teams

2017-03-122016-10-18 by Harold Jarche

“All forms of governance are failing their citizens — dictatorships and communism failed in the last part of the 20th century, and in this century democracies are not meeting citizen expectations. No matter which leaders are chosen, the systems themselves are failing.” – Yaneer Bar-Yam

Our communities were not developed for a global economy, our institutions were not designed for a networked citizenry, and our markets were created for physical goods, not networked intangibles. We need to create new institutions and markets for the network era. Perhaps monitory democracy is an answer. Perhaps it requires an applied blueprint for the restoration of democracy.

the problem is to know what questions to ask

2016-10-09 by Harold Jarche

“As we move to driverless cars and machine learning and an economy in which any action that is repeated can be automated, let’s spare a thought for the kids who only get Cs in school. What will become of them? What do you mean you have no idea? That’s your job! Let’s bring some small measure of consensus back to political culture.” – John Ibbitson, Globe & Mail 2016-10-07

As we move into a network society, every existing form of human organization will come under pressure to adapt to the new realities that are beginning to emerge. Almost everything is changing, except human behaviour. First we shape our structures, then our structures shape us. We are in desperate need of new structures.

We are the media: Social media extend emotion, obsolesce the linearity and logic of print, retrieve orality, and when pushed to their extreme result in constant outrage. This is what John Ibbitson is so concerned with. But this is the new nature of a digitally networked world. We cannot ‘go back to Peoria’, as it no longer exists as a convenient litmus test. It has been fragmented into millions of disconnected pieces.

retrieving rationality

2016-09-18 by Harold Jarche

“The underlying social and psychological motivations that drive crowds have remained constant over time. But our new technological scaffolding has changed the way that they form and exist in the world. Today’s crowds can grow to unheard-of proportions and never dissolve. Their members are no longer equal. And for the technologically savvy, their power they embody is easier to wield, and the members are easier to manipulate.” – Renee DiResta on RibbonFarm

According to Renee DiResta, the new digital crowd that influences public opinion is “persistent and large & unequal and easy to manipulate”. Digital social media platforms are changing the influence that crowds have on society because once formed, they no longer need to disperse. I mentioned before that social media can reverse into constant outrage, in we are the media.