Complexity

Complexity

Emergent Value

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A certain amount of hierarchy is necessary to get work done. Networks route around hierarchy. Networks enable work to be done collaboratively, especially when that work is complex and there are no simple answers, best practices or case studies to fall back on. This is where real business value lies – complex work.

The above image, by Verna Allee, shows the relationship between hierarchies and networks in various domains. While most organizations need to deal with all of these domains, each takes different control methods and communications platforms. Complex work requires looser hierarchies and stronger networks, something many organizations need to improve.

As simple work gets automated, it still needs to be controlled. Complicated work is outsourced but needs to be coordinated. The high value work, as I’ve contended before on this blog, is complex (and creative) and requires collaboration to get things done. This has to be enabled by communications platforms that do more than the traditional Intranet. Enterprise collaboration tools – Socialcast; Jive; Brainpark – are the platforms for complex, collaborative work. In addition, knowledge workers need to regularly poke their heads out of these private networks and get involved in public, social networks – Twitter; LinkedIn; Facebook – which are rather chaotic. This is where they may find new ideas and create emergent value for their organizations.

All levels are needed in any large organization, and they shouldn’t be confused. Enabling the outer rings is critical for long-term success and that’s what business leaders, IT departments, HR and Legal have to enable; very soon.

Follow-up post: Embrace Chaos

NetWorkShop Sackville

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“I’ve become convinced that understanding how networks work is an essential 21st century literacy.” ~ Howard Rheingold

Patti Anklam, author of Net Work, will be conducting a workshop at Mount Allison University on Saturday, 19 March (9 AM to 4PM). Sponsored by the university’s Office of Research Services, this workshop is focused on bringing together faculty, researchers and businesses in understanding how networks influence us.

Sign up for the workshop online. Similar workshops cost $399, so take advantage of this free offer .

A NetWorkShop is a customized workshop that combines:

A clear and useful presentation of basic network concepts that demystify the hype;

Practical exercises in basic methods that will help participants learn how to use network concepts to make sense of and manage organizational, project, and personal networks;

In short, the NetWorkShop offers a new perspective – a network lens – that sheds light on how human networks are structured and how technologies can enhance our ability to collaborate and co-create.

Leaders Net Work

Collaboration across boundaries is one of the most significant challenges for leaders in the 21st century. Collaboration is about working to make networks effective. Net Work – being intentional about creating and sustaining networks – is a core capability of successful leaders.

Your personal network is key to your performance. Work performance and success is highly correlated with an individual’s ability to maintain a diverse network of contacts and to understand how to maintain and manage relationships. A simple exercise will reveal the diversity and reach of the participants’ personal networks and provide insight into how personal networks affect performance.

You can’t manage a network. Many traditional “soft” management skills can refocus the role of management toward a model of stewardship. Stewardship results in creation of conditions in which vibrant and focused networks can make a difference for an organization. Using case examples from participants, we’ll work out some ways that the network perspective can leverage the power of emerging networks.

Managing in Complexity. A complex system is one in which the relationships are always changing and in which there is absolutely no way to predict the future. We’ll tie together the network concepts, exercises, and cases by taking a practical view of how to lead effectively in an environment of continuous change.

The NetWorkShop (PDF)

 

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

Social learning for business

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Here’s an elevator pitch, in 10 sentences, for social learning, which is what really makes social business work.

  1. The increasing complexity of our work is a result of our global interconnectedness.
  2. Today, simple work is being automated (e.g. bank tellers).
  3. Complicated work (e.g. accounting) is getting outsourced.
  4. Complex and creative work is what gives companies unique business advantages.
  5. Complex and creative work is difficult to replicate, constantly changes and requires greater tacit knowledge.
  6. Tacit knowledge is best developed through conversations and social relationships.
  7. Training courses are artifacts of a time when information was scarce and connections were few; that time has passed.
  8. Social learning networks enable better and faster knowledge feedback loops.
  9. Hierarchies constrain social interactions so traditional management models must change.
  10. Learning amongst ourselves is the real work in social businesses and management’s role is to support social learning.

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Social business on the edge of the chasm

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Last year I was asked what I thought about Enterprise 2.0 (E2.0). While it’s a popular subject amongst some management theorists, there aren’t many examples of E2.0 in practice.  Peter Evans-Greenwood has a good analysis of why E2.0 is not ready for mainstream business implementation due to regulatory constraints:

So, I agree with naysayers that the business case for E2.0 etc “transforming business into a more social business” is not there today. I disagree in that I think it will happen, but we need to up-end regulation first.

As I write this, it seems the term “social business” is already replacing E2.0. Social business should be understood by organizational leaders because they will need to be ready for a significant change in their operating models in the near future. Social business is almost ready to cross the chasm.

Social business is about a shift in how we do work, moving from hierarchies to networks. The highest value work today is the more complex stuff, or the type of work that cannot be automated or outsourced. It’s work that requires creativity and passion. Doing complex work in networks means that information, knowledge and power no longer flow up and down. They flow in all directions. As John Seely Brown said, you can only understand complex systems by marinating in them. This requires social learning. Complex work is not linear. Social business is giving up centralized control and harnessing the power of networks. It is as radical as was Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management in 1911.

The potential of social business is organizational survival. Enterprises must be able to share knowledge quicker than before.  This requires a shift toward something like a starfish framework that not only allows for independent action but also distributes knowledge through all the parts. Social learning is how organizational knowledge gets distributed. Social businesses can learn quicker.

The main barriers to social business are cultural. People in charge of most organizations today got there by doing things the traditional way of the MBA mindset. They feel they do not need to change and few are willing to give up power and authority, even if it is for the good of the organization.

Shortly after posting this, I came across an article in CIO: How Social is Taking Over Business [dead link]

Literacy and numeracy for complexity

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The need for competency in developing emergent practices is not a new theme here. Neither is the democratization of the workplace. It’s all about dealing with increasing complexity.

In addition to new work practices, it seems there might also be a need for different types of literacy and numeracy, as described by Daniel Lemire. Increasing complexity blurs traditional fields of understanding:

We teach kids arithmetic and calculus, but systematically fail to teach them about probabilities. We are training them to distinguish truth from falsehoods, when most things are neither true nor false.

Most of our organizations and institutions seem to be stuck in a medium-complexity mindset. That’s not good enough in a highly complex world but there are forces that want to drag us back to a low-complexity world; one that does not exist. Standardized testing and “back to basics” movements are manifestations of this simplistic mindset. Unfortunately, it’s going to be difficult to upgrade skills for higher complexity work when we lack the necessary basic numeracy (understanding of probabilities) or literacy (seeking truth on our own).

Perhaps this is the underlying challenge in getting people to think about and be comfortable in developing emergent practices. Maybe they lack the required literacy and numeracy.

* More from Daniel on Demarchy and probabilistic algorithms

Teamwork

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Most of us have seen those great teamwork motivational posters and almost every job description includes teamwork as a critical competency. Teamwork is over-rated, in my opinion. It can be a smoke screen for office bullies to coerce fellow workers. The economic stick often hangs over the team — ‘be a team player or lose your job’.

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In the workplace, teamwork seldom takes into consideration the uniqueness of individuals. Usually you have to fit into the existing team like a cog in a machine. Team members can be replaced. In work teams, it’s business first. But we are more complex and multi-faceted than simplistic Homo Economicus. Our lives have psycho-social aspects. We are more than our jobs. Teams promote unity of purpose, not diversity, creativity, and passion.

Think of a football team, a common business metaphor in North America. There is only one coach and everybody has a specific job to do while ‘keeping your eye on the ball’. In today’s workplace, there’s more than one ball and the coach cannot see the entire field. The team, as work vehicle, is outdated.

As much as organizations advertise for ‘team players’, what would be better are workers who can truly collaborate by connecting to each other in a more balanced manner with multiple facets of their lives. There are other ways of organizing work. Orchestras are not teams — neither are jazz ensembles. There may be teamwork on a theatre production but the cast is not a team. It is more like a social network. Teams are what we get when we use the blunt stick of economic consequences as the prime motivator. In a complex world, unity can be counter-productive.

In a complex society

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As you may have noticed, this has been a busy week. I flew to Maastricht, NL last weekend, via London and Brussels; a 24 hour trip. The highlight of getting to the working smarter event with Tulser was a short but enjoyable stop in Brussels with Christian De Neef who met me at the airport and drove me to the train station. We only know each other through Twitter and it was a casual comment on Christian’s photo that initiated our meeting.

Conversations during the working smarter events in Maastricht and London were stimulating and there were a couple of constant threads. One was the fact that there is little difference between many of the information intensive support functions in any organization  – information technology, knowledge management, learning & development, human resources.  Each support function is a blind monk trying to understand an elephant. I’ve discussed this many times and Karyn Romeis, who attended our session in London, suggests that learning has to move to the front of the organization. It’s not just learning that has to become more operational, but all support functions, and all together. As Christian and I were talking, it was obvious we shared many values, but we come from rather different disciplinary backgrounds. In the network era, it’s all merging.

The other thread was that management is the main barrier to fostering creative and innovative organizations. Many questions centred around, “how do I get my manager to understand this?” If we want to be a change agents, we have to point out examples of the old type of thinking not making sense in the organization any more. We need to create cognitive dissonance to get attention. Transforming an organization means shifting our paradigm (mental models) and this is best done through stories. The most effective stories are about plans and expectations gone awry. It took the little boy to be the first to say that the Emperor had no clothes. However, change doesn’t happen until it happens to us. To understand the power of social media for learning and collaboration (not marketing, where all the effort is currently) we have to become the change we want. That means engaging in social media and learning how to learn in a network. After Maastricht and London, we had many people commit to engaging with Twitter, blogs or other social media. They just needed a gentle push ;)

In complexity, we have to think about emergent practices, which means jumping in and immersing ourselves in the environment in order to start making sense of it. An external, analytical approach will tell us little. There is too much to understand and much that cannot be explained without experiencing it first. Networks and complexity are the defining characteristics of our “work” places today.

Photo: Watching breakfast being prepared in a London kebab diner, near Victoria Station.

Working Smarter Cracker Barrel

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Next week, at our Working Smarter event hosted by Tulser in Maastricht, NL, we will have a series of short sessions on selected topics. Each Principal of the Internet Time Alliance has three topics of 20 minutes to be discussed in small groups. My topics are listed below and include links to relevant posts as well as a short description of the core ideas behind each topic.

Complexity, perpetual Beta & the need for emergent practices

Networks & Complexity:

It is generally accepted that we live and work in an increasingly ‘wired’ world. There are emerging patterns and dynamics related to interconnected people and interlinked information flows, which are bypassing established traditional structures and services.

The cynefin framework shows that emergent practices are needed in order to manage in complex environments and novel practices are necessary for chaotic ones. Most of what we consider standard work today is being outsourced and automated. We are facing more complexity and chaos in our work because of our interconnectedness.

Network Learning (aka PKM)

Network Learning: Working Smarter

One way (not the only way) to look at network learning is as a continuous process of seeking, sensing and sharing.

Seeking is finding things out and keeping up to date. Building a network of colleagues is helpful in this regard—it not only allows us to “pull” information, but also have it “pushed” to us by trusted sources.

Sensing is how we personalize information and use it. Sense-making includes reflection and putting into practice what we have learned. Often it requires experimentation, as we learn best by doing.

Sharing includes exchanging resources, ideas and experiences with our networks and collaborating with our colleagues.

The 21st Century Training Department

Information is no longer scarce and our connections are now many. The role of the training department must shift from content delivery to enabling people to connect more easily and communicate more effectively. Connecting & Communicating are central roles for organizational leaders whose workplaces are becoming more complex, either in terms of evolving practices, changing markets or advances in technology. Enabling the integration of collaborative learning with work is a more flexible model than designing courses that are outdated as soon as they’re published.

Here are some guidelines for what informal learning development could look like:

  1. Spend less time on design and more on ongoing evaluation to allow emergent practices to be developed.
  2. Build learning resources so that they can be easily changed or modified by anyone (allow for a hacker mentality)
  3. Allow everything to be connected, so that the work environment is the learning environment (but look for safe places to fail)
  4. There is no clearly defined start or finish so enable connections from multiple access points.