Democracy

Democracy

turmoil and transition

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One of the greatest issues that will face Canada, and many developed countries in the next decade will be wealth distribution. While it does not currently appear to be a major problem, the disparity between rich and poor will increase. The main reason will be the emergence of a post-job economy. The ‘job’ was the way we redistributed wealth, making capitalists pay for the means of production and in return creating a middle class that could pay for mass produced goods. That period is almost over. From self-driving vehicles to algorithms replacing knowledge workers, employment is not keeping up with production. Value in the network era is accruing to the owners of the platforms, with companies such as Instagram reaching $1 billion valuations with only 13 employees.

We have connected the world so that data and information can flow in the  blink of an eye. There are fewer information asymmetries, as companies like Amazon bust down one industry after another. Interconnectedness and increasing computational power will continue to automate work and outsource any job that can be standardized. New businesses are employing fewer employees, while manufacturing is moving to an increased use of robots.

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simple structures for complex problems

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What is the optimal digital transformation technology for a networked organization? It is a suite of capabilities that foster an organizational culture that is constantly learning in order to understand and engage the complex environment in which it lives. Like the Internet, that enabled a digital transformation of society and business, these technologies must be based on a simple structure.

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hold space for complex problems

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Professor Lynda Gratton at the London Business School outlines five forces in The Shift: The Future of Work is Already Here, that will shape the future patterns of work.

“Technology (think 5 billion people, digitized knowledge, ubiquitous cloud).
Globalisation (think continued bubbles and crashes, a regional underclass, the world becoming urban, frugal innovation).
Longevity and demography (think Gen Y, increasing longevity, aging boomers growing old poor, global migration).
Society (think growing distrust of institutions, the decline of happiness, rearranged families)
Energy resources (think rising energy prices, environmental catastrophes displacing people, a culture of sustainability emerging).”

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holding the space

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There is an aspect of leadership that gets little attention in the popular management press. It is about holding space. Holding space means protecting the boundaries so that people can work. Nations hold their space through laws, treaties, and armed forces. Organizational leaders need to hold their space so that people can work. I do not mean controlling place, just holding it.

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democratizing distribution

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One of the greatest issues that will face Canada in the next decade will be wealth distribution. While it is currently not a major problem, the disparity between rich and poor will increase. The main reason will be the emergence of a post-job economy. Almost all of our institutions and many of our laws are based on the notion of the job as the normal mode of working life. Schools prepare us for jobs. Politicians campaign on job creation. Labour laws are based on the employer-employee relationship. Amongst those Canadians who had or have a job are the few who also have a drug plan, a missing component from our universal health care system. The haves are becoming outnumbered by the have-nots.

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building the intelligent enterprise

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Managers need to be given non-traditional roles in order to become key units of intelligence in the organization. They will then have the mission to come back to pollinate intelligence throughout the organization.

However, managerial innovation is primarily reflective and collaborative. This is a real challenge in terms of societal evolution!

Making business intelligent is providing our organizations the opportunity to become more humanistic, which would in my view be a real proof of intelligence. – Marine Auger [l’originale en français à la fin]

These are the concluding paragraphs of Marine Auger’s book, Et si vous rendiez votre entreprise intelligente? which I have loosely translated. It is accompanied by an image showing the three components of an intelligent enterprise: organizational; managerial; and cultural. These are supported by the foundation of intelligent communication.

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democracy at work

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“It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” – Winston Churchill

Our society has tried many ways to organize work over the years, yet real democracy is a form that few have attempted. The need to control people runs deep in our work cultures. Managers have ‘direct reports’ and humans are regarded as ‘resources’. The need for command and control stems from inadequate means to effectively communicate. But in the past decade we finally have the circumstances where almost anyone can communicate with almost everyone. Hyperlinks have truly subverted hierarchy, even though institutional and market hierarchies are doing their utmost to prevent or control this. Oligopolies control most of our communications media, even democratic states run surveillance operations on their citizens, and many workplaces monitor all mediated communications. These are reactionary attempts to stop what has the potential to be the inevitable spread of democracy.

Why do we need democracy? It is the only way humans will be able to organize in order to deal with the complex problems facing us. Our intangible marketplaces, like the app economy, will continue to be highly volatile. Climate change and environmental degradation cannot be addressed by any existing institution. New approaches to solving wicked problems are required if humanity is to thrive or even survive into the next century.

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adapting to perpetual beta

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  • There is no such thing as a social business strategy.
  • There are only business strategies that understand networks.
  • Cooperative and distributed work is becoming the norm in the network era.
  • Social learning is how work gets done in networks.
  • Sharing power, enabling conversations, and ensuring transparency are some of the values of networked business.
  • Trust emerges when these principles are put in practice.
  • Learning is part of work, not separate from it.

What follows is a summary of what I believe are some of the most important issues facing organizational design today.

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our future of work

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Henry Demarest Lloyd wrote in March 1881, that “When monopolies succeed, the people fail …“, in his piece denouncing the practices of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. Capitalism does not have to be corporatism. There is little doubt today about the extent of corporate power and influence of monopolies, especially in their newest form: platform capitalism. In 1967, John Kenneth Galbraith warned of the dangers of blindly having faith in our corporate systems.

“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.”

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