Innovation

Innovation

Paper is not dead

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While speaking at the Learning Technologies conference in London, I went downstairs to see the trade show. The exhibition hall had hundreds of booths and I was told that 12,000 people had signed up. When I arrived, it looked like all 12,000 were there. I quickly got a feeling of sensory overload and tried to filter the signal from the noise, but could not.

little book of inspiration
Then I came alongside the Reed Learning booth and saw a series of booklets in racks on the exterior posts. They immediately caught my eye and I took one. This is significant, because I try very hard to leave any trade show with nothing physical in my hands. I hate carrying extra paper products that usually get thrown out, but I really liked the look and feel of this one so I put it in my bag and returned to the much quieter conference floor.

The next day I showed the little book of inspiration to Jane Hart, who also thought it was quite attractive. As we thumbed through it, we realized that we each had written articles for the book, but I had completely forgotten about it. The best part of the book, in my opinion, is how each article has its own artwork and typography. Everyone to whom I have shown the book likes it.

It’s always good to remember that old technologies can still serve an important function in our digital world. Paper products can provide a tangible connection to our words that is not available online. By the way, I got 10 copies, in exchange for a copy of The Social Learning Handbook ;)

engaged for work
Engaged for Work – The Little Book of Inspiration – by Reed Learning

Here is the link to the online version of my article: Engaged for Work

The Little Book of Inspiration is available as a PDF from Reed Learning

The connected enterprise adoption curve

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[First …] Here’s the final word on social business from me: informal social relationships have always been linked to effective performance.

[So …] Now here we are with all that we know, or should know, about the importance of informal relationships, creating high performance work environments and learning cultures.

[But …] Mental models, behaviours and formal systems remain stubbornly resistant to change.

– Anne Marie McEwan

Socbiz fullcircleYou have the enterprise social technology and you may have even developed training programs, in conjunction with supporting collaboration aligned with the workflow. But it’s those pesky “mental models, behaviours and formal systems” that still stand in your way of becoming an open, connected enterprise.

Very few organizations are truly open. The same ones keep getting cited: W.L. Gore, Automattic, Zappos, Semco SA. These are the innovators. There are others who are moving to a more cooperative work environment, where outside and inside are allowed to mix, without undo control. These are the early adopters. The majority of companies are still satisfied with improving internal collaboration and getting the job done, blind to the faster moving competition building up outside. Finally, the laggards are merely coordinating work, according to some timetable, oblivious to the end of the industrial era.

the connected enterpriseIf “informal social relationships have always been linked to effective performance” then open organizations are really a business necessity. Helping move organizations to the left is my work.

Tacit Knowledge Not Included

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It’s rather interesting to hear from the same company that 1) their situation is unique, and 2) they are looking for examples of best practices in their industry. If they are so darned unique, why aren’t they developing their own emergent practices?

When working with large organizations I frequently hear that their main business strategy is to be fast followers. This means looking for examples of best practices and applying them after they have been proven. You might even think this practice makes sense in industries like banking, where change could be rather risky.

The big problem with trying to be a fast follower is this: tacit knowledge.

Tacit knowledge is stuff that we know, but we can’t explain how to do it.  Think of it this way: have someone throw something at you, and try to catch it.  Now, describe exactly how you figured out where to put your hand to catch the flying car keys (or whatever).  You can’t.  There are calculations of speed, and trajectories, and muscle movements, and all of that goes on inside your brain and you can’t explain any of it.  That’s tacit knowledge. – Tim Kastelle

The major problem with any best practice is that it was proven to work for someone else. All best practice case studies should have a warning label attached: Tacit Knowledge Not Included. Tacit knowledge is one of the few things that cannot be copied, and what makes creative, non-standardized work so valuable. Tacit knowledge cannot be automated or outsourced. There are no best practices for tacit knowledge because it cannot be codified. Best practices can only help with lower value, routine work. They can help refine your existing business processes, but they are not a source of innovation.

tacit knowledge business valueAs Tim Kastelle says, “You build up tacit knowledge when you learn by doing.” That is why I keep saying that work is learning and learning is the work. Tacit knowledge is a source of core business value. It can only be developed through experience. Companies need to focus on learning from the work experiences throughout the enterprise, find ways to share tacit knowledge, and then make some of that knowledge explicit. But the real value is the stuff that cannot be measured, which requires a much different way of thinking about business value.

All human systems are complex and today most economic value is intangible, so that the most important knowledge for any organization is tacit.

In this world, workplace learning should be guided by a 70:20:10 approach, all workers should be empowered to actively practice PKM, and companies should promote knowledge-sharing & collaboration.

How to work in the creative economy

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Gary Hamel says that we are moving from an Industrial to a Creative Economy, which requires more independent workers with initiative, creativity, and passion.

What other changes will this creative economy drive? I see changes on several levels.

  1. Core ideas about valued work:
    1. from producing tangible goods to intangible services;
    2. from looking for best practices to constantly developing emergent practices;
    3. from standardized jobs to being transparent in changing work practices as one learns while working.
  2. The underlying technology that enables work:
    1. from centralized factories to distributed and dynamic workplaces.
  3. Organizational models to get work done:
    1. from centralized physical workplaces, to decentralized and dynamically changing ones.
  4. Distribution and sharing of knowledge about how work is managed:
    1. from schools of business, removed from the workplace, to communities of professionals learning as they work.
  5. The ideology behind business and work:
    1. from the principles of scientific management based on:
      1. hierarchies
      2. standardized practices
      3. specialized tasks and jobs
      4. planning and control
      5. predominantly extrinsic rewards
    2. to an understanding of complexity and the necessity to continuously Probe-Sense-Respond and engage workers by enabling autonomy, mastery and a sense of purpose.

work is changing

Solo change agents set you free

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Here is what Domino’s Pizza learned about implementing personal knowledge management practices, after their recent pilot project:

First, learners want some guidance about the changing boundaries of professional development. Traditional models of learning involve taking a chunk of time to step out of the workplace. PKM makes learning a real-time activity within the flow of work. The company needs to clarify what people are allowed and expected to do in terms of learning during the workday.

Second, information services, particularly information security, needs to be a partner in the effort. The director of information security consulted throughout the effort and attended the workshop, where he was able to offer some valuable insights.

Finally, as learning practitioners, we’re awash in information about social tools and technology-enabled learning. It can be easy to overlook how unfamiliar busy professionals are with some of these technologies—especially in a work context. We need to take the time to help familiarize them with new tools, using practical, realistic examples. – Eric Kammerer

There were three key considerations: 1) how to take control of your professional development; 2) how to do this within a particular organizational structure, and 3) how to do this with the available tools and abilities of users. Unlike PKM at an individual level, in a corporate implementation there needs to be a balance found between organizational objectives and personal ones. In this case, I helped set the stage, provided some initial guidance, and then Eric and his team continued on their journey.

A key difference between a solo change agent and a corporate consultant, is that the former is there to set you free, not chain you to proprietary methods and processes. Had I been working for one of the big name consultancies on this PKM project I would likely have lost my job for not selling an ongoing engagement to my client at Domino’s. Instead, I provided enough support to get them going on their own. I am not selling fish, and I am not teaching people how to fish. I help people learn for themselves how to fish. This is social consulting and it does not scale the way traditional consultancies do. Instead, it grows through transparency, authenticity, results, and especially trust.fishing-nets

I have said before to beware of anyone trying to sell cookie cutter solutions for complex organizational issues. Companies have to do the hard part of organizational change themselves by putting in the effort. As a solo change agent, I can get you started, give coaching and advice, and provide ongoing resources. I cannot do it for you. Domino’s is an excellent example of a company that understands this. Is your company getting the best value from its consultants?

networks are the new companies

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Nilofer Merchant wrote in The New How that, “Permission to innovate without asking happens when the strategy is co-owned.” This is a necessity in an economy where the average company lifespan continues to decrease. The company no longer offers the stability it once did as innovation, and resulting business disruption, comes from all corners. Economic value has been redistributed to creative workers, and then diffused through knowledge networks. In an interview with Stowe Boyd, Nilofer succinctly explains several of the pieces that must come together in structuring work in the network era.

“Independent of the term, we all agree value comes from the creative source of a connected human. And to the earlier point, networks are the new companies. Connected individuals can now do what once only large organizations could. That tosses Ronald Coase’s work out the window. And those strategic constructs from the Porter frame of mind that suggest you can have an advantage over time are largely moot because sustainable advantages aren’t so sustainable anymore.” —Socialogy: An Interview with Nilofer Merchant

1) “value comes from the creative source of a connected human”

How can any organization create value if people are not connected? This should be the main concern for any support function within the enterprise. If HR, IT, or L&D departments are not enabling better connections, then they are decreasing business value. Measuring how connected workers are should be a prime indicator of relationship capital.

2) “networks are the new companies”

The biggest impact of this new reality will be on management. Networked workers do not need bosses as work becomes transparent. Inserting managers into a network decreases connections between workers and creates bottlenecks. The relationship between contributors (workers) and coordinators (managers) is flipping. Managers in networks are called assistants.

3) “Connected individuals can now do what once only large organizations could”

The evidence is mounting that work can get done with a minimal amount of managerial friction. Network-centric organizations are smaller than their industrial counterparts. Crowd-sourced funding platforms, like Indiegogo, require less management than traditional investment firms. Network transparency and the ability to connect to anybody, decrease transactional costs.

4) “tosses Ronald Coase’s work out the window”

One of the main criticisms of Coase’s work is also being tossed out the window. “So, a key criticism is that the [Coase] theorem is almost always inapplicable in economic reality, because real-world transaction costs are rarely low enough to allow for efficient bargaining.” —Wikipedia. In the network era, real-world transaction costs diminish. Furthermore, transaction costs between networked individuals are getting to be less than transaction costs inside organizations. Workers today often have faster access to knowledge outside their enterprises. With knowledge work, this begs the question of why we need organizations for anything other than support.

5) “sustainable advantages aren’t so sustainable anymore”

The example of large consulting firms purchasing others in order to create even larger entities shows that these companies are losing their sustainable advantage and taking short-term actions to try to increase value. But as the consulting industry amalgamates and becomes a monoculture, it will be ever more open to diverse and innovative disruption from outside. As Nilofer’s point #1 states, value today comes from connected humans, not monolithic structures.

Getting the suds out of the bathtub

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What did the industrial era look like, and how did it differ from the network era? The industrial era epitomized rational, centralized control, replacing local, customized ways of doing things. The network era opens communications so wide that control is no longer possible. For instance, in the network era, leadership is about giving up control.

disconnected to high dynamicImage: From disconnected to centralized to networked

In Organize for Complexity by the BetaCodex network, the authors show the result of centralization on markets as a bit of an anomaly over time. Both decentralized and networked markets are dynamic, while centralized markets are not. In some ways, we are returning markets back to their pre-industrial state.

market dynamics betacodexImage by BetaCodex network

One clear example of this shift is shown by one of my favourite markets – beer. The US Brewer’s Association created this graph of the number of breweries over time. It shows the “Taylor Bathtub” effect very clearly (other than the Prohibition dip). This is just one more indicator that the industrial era is over. I’ll drink to that!

125_Brewery_Count

Building a talent triangle

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Richard Gayle discusses an observation made by Kurt Vonnegut on the three types of specialists it takes to start a revolution, none of whom can succeed in isolation.

First type – a true genius: “a person capable of having seemingly good ideas not in general circulation.” By themselves they are just lunatics.

Second type – a thought leader: “a highly intelligent citizen in good standing in his or her community, who understands and admires the fresh ideas of the genius, and who testifies that the genius is far from mad.” By themselves they are unsatisfied.

Third type – the integrator: “a person who can explain everything, no matter how complicated, to the satisfaction of most people.” By themselves they are ignored.

This has a striking similarity to what Malcolm Gladwell popularized in his book, The Tipping Point, with Mavens equating to Geniuses; Connectors to Thought Leaders; and Integrators to Salespeople. I discussed this in more detail on my post: the work of many.

knowledge inventoryInnovation and revolution are both focused on change. Diversity of talents seems to be necessary for both. While I don’t think a group of three specialists can automatically become the magic combination for change, it is worthwhile looking at the composition of groups and seeing if there is sufficient diversity of talents. This triad of skills can also inform free agents, who may feel they are perceived as lunatics for their ideas, may be unsatisfied, or just ignored. In those cases, they should look at finding two others to complement their unique talents. While career coaches have a certain popularity, for people who fall into one of these specialties, perhaps it’s better to work on building a talent triangle.

The new enclosure movement

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ENCLOSURE: In English social and economic history, enclosure or inclosure is the process which ends traditional rights such as mowing meadows for hay, or grazing livestock on common land formerly held in the open field system. Once enclosed, these uses of the land become restricted to the owner, and it ceases to be land for commons. – Wikipedia

Do we no longer own common culture?

People everywhere are seeing and feeling the loss of parts of their lives to the ‘enclosure’ of privatization and the diminishment of the commons (the public spaces where certain types of common services and goods are made available to the public). – Jon Husband

Even the newest ventures are quickly getting enclosed.

What was a promise for free-range, connected, open-ended learning online, MOOCs are becoming something else altogether. Locked-down. DRM’d. Publisher and profit friendly. Offered via a closed portal, not via the open Web. – Audrey Watters

Government is also culpable.

In the absence of that [a culture of open government], though, we could paradoxically find ourselves living in a world where technology makes it easier to share information — via the government’s open data portal or its online access to information request system — while our government’s culture makes it harder to talk to the people who can give that information meaning and context. – David Eaves (Toronto Star)

But what is the price of enclosure? We will lose our ability to innovate. For a society, a country, or an organization, this is the end of evolution and the beginning of stagnation.

open societies

 

The new work

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All work today can be reduced to just four basic types of jobs, according to Lou Adler. His company identified four prototypical jobs after developing thousands of job descriptions over the years.

Everything starts with an idea. This is the first of the four jobs – the Thinkers. Builders convert these ideas into reality. This the second job. Improvers make this reality better. This is the third job. Producers do the work over and over again, delivering quality goods and services to the company’s customers in a repeatable manner. This is the fourth job. And then the process begins again with new ideas and new ways of doing business being developed as the old ones become stale.

While I am not a fan of job competencies, I think this article can tell us something about the future of work in general. For instance, Gary Hamel identified obedience, diligence, and intellect as industrial/information economy competencies. Today, initiative, creativity, and passion are essential skills for what Hamel describes as the Creative Economy. I view this new creative economy as a property of the Network Era which is bringing about the rise of knowledge artisans. So I began to map Hamel’s essential work competencies against Adler’s job types.

Another factor in the changing nature of work is the changing perception of value. In the creative economy, more value is coming from intangible assets than tangible ones. For example, the S&P stock index in 2009 was 81% intangible assets, up from 17% in 1975. I recently discussed intangibles and organizational dynamics with Jay Deragon, as part of the Smarter Companies initiative. As the Smarter Companies website explains:

Despite its enormous importance today, most businesspeople lack the basic knowledge and tools needed to optimize intangible capital. This leads to blocked learning, suboptimal performance, stifled innovation and stagnant growth.

Learning to better deal with intangibles is the next challenge for today’s organizations and workers. I developed the following graphic to describe the four job types in relation to 1) work competencies and 2) economic value. It appears that an economy that creates more intangible value will require a greater percentage of Thinkers and Builders.

jobs value competenciesAs we move into a post-job economy, the difference between labour and talent will become more distinct. Producers and Improvers will continue to get automated, at the speed of Moore’s law. Those lacking enough ‘Talent’ competencies may get marginalized. I think there will be increasing pressure to become ‘Thinkers + Builders’, similar to what  Cory Doctorow describes as Makers in his fictional book about the near future.

What is relatively certain is that ‘Labour’ competencies, which most education and training still focuses on, will have diminishing value. How individuals can improve their Thinking and Building competence should be the focus of anyone’s professional development plan. How organizations can support Thinking and Building should be the focus of Organizational Development and Human Resources departments. While Producing and Improving will not go away, they are not where most economic value will be generated in the Network Era.

As with all models, this one simplifies reality, but it may be useful for thinking about the future of work.