Communities

H.L. Mencken, American satirist, wrote that, “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” That pretty much sums up the problems we are facing today in our organizations and institutions. We are using tools that assume simple, or at most complicated, problems when many are actually complex. A mechanistic approach to problem solving is inadequate in complex adaptive environments. Global networks have made all of our work, and all of our problems, interconnected. We live in one big, unfathomable complex adaptive system.

Managing in complex systems is more about influencing possibilities rather than trying to determine any predictability. This requires tacit knowledge, or ways of thinking that cannot be codified and written up as best practices. It’s a continuous process of trying things out, sensing what happens and developing emergent practices. This is the great potential of web social media. Social networking supports emergent work practices.  The true value of social networking is in sharing tacit knowledge.

What hinders the adoption of social media is that hierarchical leaders (those in power by virtue of their position, not their knowledge or ability) are not able to function when ideas and knowledge flow laterally as well as vertically. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy. Social media bypass the organization’s information gatekeepers and render hierarchical leadership useless.

Over the past century, large organizations have simplified and codified their processes in order to get economies of scale. They have also centralized as many functions as possible, including anything related to learning and performance. This is the modern institution and corporation. The problem is that this will not work any more. Biological, technological, environmental and societal change are accelerating. Moore’s Law states that computational power doubles every 18 months while human knowledge doubles every year.

Our current models for managing people, training and knowledge-sharing are insufficient for a workplace that demands emergent practices just to keep up. Formal training has only ever addressed 20% of workplace learning and this was acceptable when the work environment was merely complicated. Knowledge workers today need to connect with others to co-solve problems. Sharing tacit knowledge through conversations (the only way to do this) is an essential component of knowledge work. Social media enable adaptation (the development of emergent practices) through conversations.

In the 21st century, conversation is learning and learning is work.

What are known as soft skills, like getting along with others, are becoming much more important than commonly known hard skills. This is still not a general perception amongst business leaders; as recently as last year, Management-Issues reported:

The annual CEO study by PricewaterhouseCoopers has argued that what companies around the world are crying out for is CEOs with technical and business expertise, who have global experience, are strong leaders, innovative, creative and who can manage risk effectively.

People skills, while a bonus, were not seen as an essential, despite the fact that fewer than half of CEOs globally (and around a third in the UK) felt their HR department could manage the people agenda adequately by itself.

Work in networks requires different skills than in directed hierarchies, which have nurtured these CEO’s for the past decades. Co-operation is a foundational behaviour for effectively working in networks, and it’s in networks where most of us, and our children, will be working. Co-operation presumes the freedom of individuals to join and participate so that people in the network cannot be told what to do, only influenced. If they don’t like you, they won’t connect. That’s like being on Twitter with no followers and never getting Retweeted (RT). You are a lone node and of little value to the network. In a hierarchy you only have to please your boss. In a network you have to be seen as having some value, though not the same value, by many others.

Co-operation is not the same as collaboration, though they are complementary. Collaboration requires a common goal while co-operation is sharing without any specific objectives. Teams, groups and markets collaborate. Online social networks and communities of practice co-operate. Working co-operatively requires a different mindset than merely collaborating on a defined project. Being co-operative means being open to others outside your group and casting off business metaphors based on military models (target markets, chain of command, line & staff).

We are moving from a market economy to a network economy and the the level of complexity is increasing with this hyper-connectedness. Managing in complex adaptive systems means influencing possibilities rather than striving for predictability (good or best practices). Co-operation in our work is needed so that we can continuously develop emergent practices demanded by this complexity. What worked yesterday won’t work today. No one has the definitive answer any more but we can use the intelligence of our networks to make sense together and see how we can influence desired results. This is co-operation and this is the future, which is already here, albeit unevenly distributed.

Co-operation is a soft skill? I think not.