Complexity

Complexity

Talking about Working Smarter

by

Working Smarter: What is it? Why do we need to do it?

Working Smarter means integrating learning and working.

We’re networking our society, our economy and our workplaces. This increases complexity because there are more connections between people, places and things. In complex systems, the link between cause and effect cannot be determined. Instead, we need to look for constantly-changing patterns (think weather systems). More work of value is in the complex domain. Industrial-style work is being outsourced and automated.


In complex environments, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Reducing our work using mechanistic models is ineffective. People are not interchangeable parts in these systems. We are not “human resources”. Separating functions like HR, OD, KM, IT, Marketing & Training creates silos of knowledge and encourages tribal-style loyalties.

Working Smarter happens at multiple levels. Individuals need to take responsibility for their own learning and think critically. This threatens traditional command and control organizations. Cooperation via digital networks is changing how people learn and work outside the organization. Seb Paquet calls it, “ridiculously easy group forming”. We need to rethink how we collaborate to get work done. In organizing group work we have to consider each individual as well as the multiple networks that connect us.

Collaborative work, while constantly learning and connecting in networks, must be the foundation of any new organizational model. We still need to work out the details of the next workplace. We can do this by working smarter.

Patterns emerge over time

by

Andrew Cerniglia has an excellent article that weaves complexity, cynefin and the classroom together. It is worth the read for anyone in the teaching profession. I became interested in complexity as I moved outside the institutional/corporate walls and was able to reflect more on how our systems work. The observation that simple work is being automated and complicated work is being outsourced seems rather obvious to me now. Complex work has increasing market value in developed countries and that is where the future lies. However, our schooling, training and job structures do not support this.

Cerniglia explains how complex the classroom can be, when we factor in the outside that touches each student daily:

But there is another, most important factor, life outside of the classroom. What happens beyond the classroom walls, in other classes, and more significantly outside of school, affects each learner. The combination of these variables supports the idea that classrooms should be classified as “complex” with the Cynefin Framework. If we review the traits of “Complex” systems, it is clear that often times there is “no right answer” in terms of instructional choices, that classrooms are “systems in constant flux”, and that the “ability to understand” (from the teacher’s perspective) comes after class has been dismissed.

This is the situation for many people outside the classroom, whether at work or in general life: there is no right answer. Cerniglia has created an excellent concept map that summarizes the cynefin framework and is worth exploring.
Here is a detail from the map:

The patience to watch patterns emerge over time is almost non-existent, though it’s what I’ve been able to do as a freelancer, and perhaps less engagement on a job site is part of the future of work. Furthermore, there are organizations that send tacit and explicit signals which could  result in these dangers:

  • The desire to revert to simple strategies, like simple PowerPoint presentations, executive summaries and three-phased operations.
  • Impatience with results that take more than one fiscal quarter to materialize.
  • Over-control of staff and resources, negating workers’ innate need for autonomy, mastery and purpose.

A strategy of probe-sense-respond (P-S-R) means testing things out and taking action before all the data are available or fully analyzed. So far, one of the few places I’ve noticed a P-S-R approach is in web development, especially with software as a service, like Google, where not-fully-baked applications get released and are then relentlessly analyzed in action. P-S-R is the mindset for life in perpetual Beta.

Is research racing to the middle?

by

From the annual report of the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation [my emphasis]:

Large amounts of public funding are available for researchers to get started. Large amounts of capital are also available for companies when they reach their growth stage, after they have taken flight. Banks make loans and, and stock markets offer IPO’s.

What about that fledgling point in between? Very little.

This graphic shows there is much more available funding for Fundamental Research (left) then (left to right) Applied Research; Proof of Concept; Seed Capital & Early Stage Venture Capital; hence NBIF’s focus on these. Venture Capital & Growth Capital are represented as much larger as well.

My own observations are showing this may not be the case, but I haven’t done extensive research. However, one of the primary funding agencies for fundamental research (e.g. discovery grants) is NSERC, which is definitely moving toward applied research, as reported by CBC:

Funding involving industry now represents about one third of NSERC’s budget, and is expected to grow. The agency wants to double both the number of academic-industry partnerships and industry participation rates in NSERC programs by 2014-15, Walden said.

‘These sponsors aren’t paying for the research out of philanthropy. They want results.’— Janet Walden, NSERC

She presented the figures as part of a panel titled “Universities as economic powerhouses: industry-academic collaborations” at the Canadian Science Policy Conference in Montreal.

Other agencies, such as Canada’s NRC and ACOA’s Atlantic Innovation Fund also fund applied research

The purpose of the Atlantic Innovation Fund is to:

  • increase research and development (R&D) being carried out in Atlantic Canada research facilities leading to the launch of new products, processes and services;
  • improve the region’s capacity to commercialize R&D;
  • strengthen the region’s innovation system by supporting R&D and commercialization partnerships and alliances among private sector enterprises, universities, research institutions and other organizations in Atlantic Canada; and
  • enhance the region’s ability to access national R&D programs.

Perhaps the NBIF graphic no longer portrays the situation in Canada. If significantly less money goes toward fundamental research, what will happen to the innovation continuum? I wonder if we are racing to the middle and in our quest to be “innovative” we are forgetting the basic research that fuels all innovation. One example is that for the widely-used Global Positioning System (GPS) to work you need to employ both theories of relativity. Now who would have thought of that application when those theories were first put forth?

Organizations and Complexity

by

I’ve discussed this table before, but I’d like to put all the links together to highlight what we need to do with our organizations and structures to deal with complexity.

From the evolving social organization we developed this table to show the differences between three archetypal organizations.

Simplicity Complication Complexity
Organizational Theory Knowledge-Based View Learning Organization Value Networks
Attractors Stakeholders (vision) Shareholders (wealth) Clients (service)
Growth Model Internal Mergers & Acquisitions Ecosystem
Knowledge Acquisition Formal Training Performance Support Social
Knowledge Capitalization Best Practices Good Practices Emergent Practices

How we can support emergent practices in the increasingly complex enterprise:

COMPLEXITY

Patti Anklam, in discussing value networks and complexity  states:

Understanding of complexity provides a practical guide to managing context.

You can’t manage a network, you can only manage its context.

Slight alterations in the structure can create significant change over time;

But you must first look to understand the context

VALUE NETWORKS

Value network analysis is a process which is more art than science. Humans work in complex environments and we are by our very nature unpredictable. The result of a VNA allows you to ask better questions but it doesn’t give specific answers (it’s not a tool for bean counters). I think that VNA is an excellent change management tool. I can see the use of VNA and the resulting concept maps enabling better communication within organizations, with clients, with funders and throughout communities

CLIENTS (SERVICE)

I have met new friends, business partners and clients with social media, and like the authors of Trust Agents, I would say that a “no sales” approach works best in the long run. The chapter called the Human Artist covers online etiquette in detail and should be read by any self-described social media guru. Also, three of the book’s chapters reflect The Law of the Few – how small groups of people enable social change or the transmission of new ideas.

Connectors: They talk about the idea of being Agent Zero, or the person who connects groups where no previous connection exists.

Mavens: They also discuss creating value, or doing things that people need, one small bit at a time. In Make Your Own Game, the premise is to find a niche and become an expert in it.

Salespeople: In Build an Army, the authors show the promise and pitfalls of crowd-sourcing and social networks for business.

ECOSYSTEM

Most intelligent people know that there is no such thing as a job for life. Corporations have shown that loyalty to the enterprise does not work both ways. Organizations should look at how they can structure to take advantage of these workplace changes. The first part is to stop thinking like a hierarchy, with titles and reporting relationships, and start framing the enterprise in terms of networks. Mapping value networks is a start, as is talking about social networks and supporting them through the use of social media. If you look at work differently and talk about it differently, then new conversations and attitudes will result.

Here are some ideas, for starters:

Abolish the organization chart and replace it with a network diagram.

Move away from counting hours, to a results oriented work environment

Encourage outside work that doesn’t directly interfere with paid work, as it will strengthen the network

Provide options for workers to come and go and give them ways to stay connected when they’re not employed. Build an ecosystem or join one (e.g. an open source community).

SOCIAL

In a framework for the social enterprise we noted how knowledge workers get things done by conversing with peers, customers and partners, as they solve the problems of the day. Learning from these social interactions is a key to business innovation. To participate in their markets, organizations, customers and suppliers need to understand each other and this too, is social. Social learning is how knowledge is created, internalized and shared. It is how knowledge work gets done.

EMERGENT PRACTICES

The cynefin model 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.

Many of the problems we face today are COMPLEX, and methods to solve simple and complicated problems will not work with complex ones. One of the ways we addressed simple & complicated problems was through training. Training works well when you have clear and measurable objectives. However, there are no clear objectives with complex problems. Learning as we probe the problem, we gain insight and our practices are emergent (emerging from our interaction with the changing environment and the problem). Training looks backwards, at what worked in the past (good & best practices), and creates a controlled environment to develop knowledge and skills.

To deal with increasing complexity, organizations need to support emergent work practices, in addition to their training efforts. They must support collaboration, communication, synthesis, pattern recognition and creative tension, all within a trusting environment in order to be effective.

Work is learning; so what?

by

“Work is learning, learning work” – that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

(once again, apologies to Keats)

—

I rewrote the above lines a while back and they sum up how networks have changed the relationship between learning and working. They’re one and the same thing, as the ubiquitous network merges work and learning.

Why?

Networks – Our workplaces, economies and societies are becoming highly networked. The transmission of ideas can be instantaneous. There is little time to pause, go into the back room for a while and develop something to address our challenges. The problem may have changed by then.

Complexity – The Cynefin framework is one way to examine established practices at work. For example, most simple and complicated work today is being automated and outsourced. Higher paid work often involves solving complex problems where there are no established answers and we need to engage the problem and learn by probing. Complexity is the new norm in the modern workplace.

Life in Perpetual Beta – Not just rapid change, but continual change, requires practices that evolve as they’re developed. In programming, this has meant a move from waterfall to agile methods. Beta releases are the norm for Web applications and as we do more on the Web, other practices are following.

The integration of learning and work is not some ideal, it is a necessity in a complex world.

Current models for managing people, training and knowledge-sharing are insufficient for a workplace that requires emergent practices to keep up with change. Looking back at best practices will only cause us to fall further behind. Formal training has only ever addressed about 20% of workplace learning and this was acceptable when the work environment was relatively stable. Knowledge workers today need to connect with others to learn and solve problems in real time.

Emergent practices can be developed collaboratively while solving problems for which there are no definitive answers. For instance, what’s the “best” Internet business model? Where once we could document knowledge and develop guidelines and practices to be followed by most workers, we now need to let workers develop their own practices, according to their particular context, which is constantly in flux. This is a very different approach from the way we designed jobs and training in the past.

So what?

Training, as a separate function from work, will become a luxury. It’s time to re-think your training strategies.

Supporting the development of emergent practices throughout the workforce will become critical to survival. Social media are tools that can help us develop emergent practices. They enable conversations between people separated by distance or time. Social media can facilitate the sharing of tacit knowledge through conversations to inform the collaborative development of emergent work practices. It’s time to master social media for your workplace.

With constant learning and unlearning required to do our work, the idea of a fixed job description and and core competencies becomes antiquated. Those who cannot adapt will be bypassed or ignored by the network. It’s time to rethink your ‘job’.

Complexity links

by

I use Delicious to keep track of web resources and recently passed on, via Twitter, my social bookmarks tagged with complexity. Here are some of those bookmarks.

James Surowiecki’s three conditions on the use of the Wisdom of Crowds [something often overlooked], via Dave Snowden:

  1. independence of opinion between the individuals
  2. relevant diversity among the individuals
  3. decentralization of the decision-making process

A short explanation of the Cynefin framework (and video by Shawn Callahan), by Ton Zijlstra:

Over the years I’ve seen the number of issues companies and professionals are dealing with shift more and more to the complex realm. Because our internet and mobile communications connected world as a whole has shifted towards this complex domain more by increasing the connections between us and as a result the speed of change, the dynamics around us and the amount of information. A quantitative shift with massive qualitative impact. Complexity is where predictability is absent, and only in hindsight cause and effect are clear. It’s the messy bits, as Shawn says, where human interaction, culture, innovation, trust are at play. And it’s those same messy bits where increasingly organizations are able to distinguish themselves from others, or not.

On transforming to the enterprise of the future, by Art Murray at KM World:

Move from a posture of sense-and-respond to one of “co-creating.”

Stephan Haeckel’s Adaptive Enterprise brought us from make-and-sell to sense-and-respond. In today’s environment, even sense-and-respond may not be enough. Enabled by massive social networks with memberships numbering in the hundreds of millions, the cycle of listening to customers and filling their wants and needs is both rapid and continuous. You need to get into your customer’s mind, and let your customer into yours. The same goes for your suppliers, even your competitors.

Action: Trash the stupid customer surveys, along with the sales presentations. Have an ongoing conversation instead. Ask thought-provoking, open-ended questions and listen intently (the right way to do knowledge capture). Focus on needs and desired results, and find the most efficient and effective way to achieve them.

Added bonus: Do the same internally, from staff meetings to budget planning to performance reviews. Get knowledge flowing in all directions.

Rob Paterson, “ … we refuse to see the complex and work as if complexity was complicated or simple.”

It’s a simple message, really. But if you don’t get it, you’re headed for chaos.

Simple = easily knowable.

Complicated = not simple, but still knowable.

Complex = not fully knowable, but reasonably predictable.

Chaotic = neither knowable nor predictable.

Simple Rules, by Michael Dubakov [check out the simulations]:

Many complex systems are based on simple rules. A set of several simple rules leads to complex, intelligent behavior. While a set of complex rules often leads to a dumb and primitive behavior. There are many examples.

The Cynefin framework and (the complexity of ) classroom instruction, by Andrew Cerniglia:

Classroom instruction is complex but do we treat it as such? Is “sensing” a priority of teacher education? How would an instructor who waits for “patterns to emerge” be viewed by their supervisor? As laid back? Aloof? And does outcome-based education (unintentionally) result in educators treating complex situations as complicated, or worse yet, simple in nature?

Complexity and Collaboration

by

Some of the things I learned on Twitter this past week:

@jonathanfields: “The day you say “that SOB stole my idea” is the day you need to face your own inability to execute.” via @moehlert

@barbarosa1: “There are an increasing number of world problems that can’t be solved by hierarchy. Collaboration is the only chance for a solution.” via @sifowler

@timkastelle Nice post from @EskoKilpi: Complexity. The new world between chance and choice

The Internet changes the patterns of connectivity and makes possible new enriching variety in interaction. The changed dynamics we experience every day through social media have the very characteristics of the edge of chaos.

The sciences of complexity change our perspective and thinking. Perhaps, as a result we should, especially in management, focus more attention on what we are doing than what we should be doing. Following the thinking presented by the most advanced scientific researchers, the important question to answer is not what should happen in the future, but what is happening now?

Our focus should be on the communicative interaction creating the continuously developing pattern that is our life.

Outsourcing Journalism: [More evidence that simple work is automated & merely complicated work is outsourced. Be creative or lose your job.] by @RossDawson

Seed.com is considering outsourcing fact-checking and copy-editing – given finding the right talent and quality control systems this should be feasible

When was the last time you worked entirely with people in the same building? Collaboration Is More Important Than Ever by @elsua

I mean, when was the last time you were working with your colleagues in your same building and on the very same project (Just that ONE project!)? Or even in the same country? I bet that was a long while ago! In my own case, the last time I had all of my colleagues in the same building and working on the same project was in 2000. Yes, that far back! From there onwards, people have become a whole lot more distributed, and virtual, to the point where my current team expands globally nowadays across various geographies. And we are all working on a bunch of various different projects / initiatives as well. To us all, like I said, collaboration is not a nice thing to have, but a critical success factor of not only what we do, but who we are as knowledge workers doing Web work day in day out.

If you’re interested in games and social networking (super useful for eLearning and learning) then Games for Social Networks: Notes On The Design and Business of Networked Play is ace from @aquito.  via @BFchirpy

You are not replaceable *because* you share know-how, in fact it gets you places. The fallacy of know-how recipes and hoarding. by @johnt

Chefs share their recipes in books, but will reading one make me a chef. Even when they do demo’s where you can pickup contexual, peripheral and nuances like: what goes with what, acidic’s, timing, seasonal food, temperatures, etc…it still doesn’t mean I can do it, or that I’m a chef. As I said in my recent post, knowledge is not an accumulation of facts, it’s a way of being…Libraries vs Apprenticeship/Storytelling.

“Shape Patterns, Not Programs”

by

Excellent lessons and a wealth of references are included in this paper, Changing Homeland Security: Shape Patterns, Not Programs which is applicable to a wide and sundry audience.

Advice from Socrates to a man who over-planned his son’s birthday party – “ask the women”, with the following results:

We held the party at Panathinaikon Stadium. We set up places to eat, a site for crafts, a tent for shelter and rest, a station for music, and a space for art. Singers wandered and told stories. There was a field for wrestling and running and flying kites. We encouraged the children to try what they pleased. We helped if they asked, then we stepped back and watched. When there was hitting or crying or harsh words – and there was – we immediately spoke sternly or separated the offenders. Then we redirected them toward an established activity.

In sum, our strategy was to control only that which could be ordered. For those activities in the realm of that which is, and must be, unordered, we watched and we shaped – gently, but with insistence. Because I have learned to know the difference between the states of order and unorder, I am now seen by all Athens as the wisest of men. Second to you of course.

On planning for the future

We need to learn how to become a partner with an uncontrollable future.

Consider how one rears children. They are not little machines waiting to be directed by higher headquarters. They are people learning how to be free and responsible citizens. Their future emerges; it is not designed. So too with homeland security – it is only five years old.

There is much good advice here for all organizations dealing with complex issues.

The collapse of complicated business models

by

Clay Shirky, in the collapse of complex business models, notes:

Bureaucracies temporarily reverse the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In a bureaucracy, it’s easier to make a process more complex than to make it simpler, and easier to create a new burden than kill an old one.

The premise of his article is that successful organizations and industries become more complex over time and are unable to embrace new ways of doing things, which at the onset are much simpler. He discusses the complex television industry and how it cannot produce simple, and low cost, fare for the web.

I’m not sure if complexity is the issue. I see it more as complication. Companies and industries start out as relatively simple operations and then become more complicated. Complicated systems can be analyzed, and we can tell how things work. Modern organizations are not complex, they are merely complicated. A complex organization could not be managed.

The real problem is on the outside, not the inside, of the typical complicated organization. The outside environment has become complex and the complicated organization lacks the ability to deal with it. Systems like the Neilson ratings don’t give us the kind of information we need to make decisions on programming. The media landscape is too fragmented to completely analyze.

The Cynefin framework describes the complicated & complex domains as:

  • Complicated, in which the relationship between cause and effect requires analysis or some other form of investigation and/or the application of expert knowledge, the approach is to Sense – Analyze – Respond and we can apply good practice.
  • Complex, in which the relationship between cause and effect can only be perceived in retrospect, but not in advance, the approach is to Probe – Sense – Respond and we can sense emergent practice.

The typical large modern organization tends to thoroughly assess a situation before acting, assuming it can be analyzed. This does not work in complex environments where we need to first do something and then see what happens. We see this with Beta releases of web services, which adapt as they are used by more people. many web companies understand this.

I don’t see simplicity as the solution to dealing with complex environments. A new organizational structure is required that is 1) based on simple units but is 2) connected as a network that is much more complex than any hierarchical organization could ever be. This type of organization will be too complex to manage directly. It will self-manage and adapt. The best work structures to deal with complexity will be complex networks, and likely some mix of wirearchical, chaordic, democratic, etc.

Wired Work

by

Wirearchy may be a neologism, but I’ve found it to be a most descriptive term for discussing what happens when you connect everyone via electronic networks. To paraphrase Jon Husband:

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.

This presentation covers my interpretation of wirearchy and is a continuation of my presentation on Net Work: learning to work anew. Once again, it is in MP4 format and runs less than 5 minutes.

Wired Work: complexity, the web and business:

2 way flow

wired work (MP4)