Work is learning. Learning is the work.
Innovation
Sharing complex knowledge requires trusted professional relationships. You cannot just throw people together and hope they will work effectively on difficult problems.
“strong interpersonal relationships that allowed discussion, questions, and feedback were an essential aspect of the transfer of complex knowledge” —Hinds & Pfeffer (2003)
‘As Steve Jobs said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”’ – Michael Simmons
Michael Simmons shows that Jobs had the ability to be a member of many networks, meaning that he was often the outsider, but this gave him a larger perspective than someone in a closed network, where everyone knows each other. Successful people, according to network theory, are those with more open networks. This goes against our tribal instincts and the norms of most of our institutions. Even the marketplace can be fairly homogeneous, with companies sticking to industry standard practices. But innovation often happens on the edges of disciplines. Jobs instinctively knew this with his innate curiosity.
Business value increases with transparency.
‘In 2006, restauranteur Jay Porter banned tipping in his San Diego restaurant, the Linkery. Instead, he implemented a service charge, and split it—transparently—amongst staff. Porter also ran a second restaurant that still allowed tipping, and this made for a useful comparison.
“Once established, the tipless/service charge model made us more successful in every dimension,” he said. The staff worked as a team, instead of selfishly trying to maximize their own tips. Servers and chefs enjoyed equal status, and staffed turnover dropped. The policy was so successful, says Porter, that it “gave us a huge competitive advantage in the marketplace; this in turn allowed us to serve a much higher quality of food and take lower margins on it.”‘ —FastCoExist
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.
Work is learning, and learning is the work. I have repeated this hundreds of times over the past six years and I know some people may think it is a trite statement. But the fact that learning is usually supported by an organizational department that has less influence than sales, marketing, operations, or information technology, shows that learning is not a priority in most enterprises. It’s often bolted on after the major decisions have been made. Several times on consulting engagements I have been perceived as ‘the learning guy’ dealing with a minor aspect of the ‘real’ project.
Every one of the major challenges facing us is complex. But our organizations are not designed for complexity. Our workplace training does not factor in complexity. While not all of our problems are complex, the simpler issues are being dealt with, especially through software and automation. Understanding complexity means working in it together and using our collective intelligence.
One example of using the collective wisdom of an organization is to map a path forward. Robert Paterson worked with US public radio, NPR, in 2005 to help determine how to adapt to the industry-wide changes wrought by social media. Six years later, Rob noted this report from The New York Times, “Amid all that creative destruction, there was a one large traditional news organization that added audience, reporters and revenue. That unlikely juggernaut was NPR.”
Automation of procedural work is accelerating. What was considered knowledge work yesterday will be routine tomorrow, and workers will be replaced by software and machines. At the same time, access to real-time data is making individuals more powerful, and managers obsolete.
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.
“Those of us who work in organizational development and change management need to move to the edge, and quickly. You have been warned.” – Helen Bevan
Five Seismic Shifts are changing the world of work:
“So it is important to understand that there is no one-size-fits-all philosophy in terms of successful innovation. The one constant is that you have to be open to change and new points of view. Innovation is continuous.
Successful innovators and entrepreneurs all embrace change and the risks that they pose. In fact, innovation is the poster child of the mantra that there are no rules. Only by trying out new things, by failing, by discovering what works and what doesn’t, do you gain answers to the innovation question.” —Shaun Coffey
This is a continuation of my last post, where I said that innovation and personal knowledge mastery were interconnected. Innovation has been described as a combination of observing, questioning, experimenting, and networking. This correlates with the Seek > Sense > Share framework in PKM.