Management

Management

distributed liberating meetings

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A great source of knowledge to plan and conduct meetings is Liberating Structures — consisting of 33 different meeting types for Revealing, Analyzing, Spreading, Planning, Strategizing, and Helping. The site links to free mobile applications — Google Play & Apple App Store — that explain what each structure is good for, how to conduct the meeting, and the rationale behind it.

Liberating Structures can also help focus distributed work teams and groups. In addition, the restrictions created by the technology medium can provide more structure than many of the physical meetings we may have attended in the past. Moving these structures online might require a bit more planning, and likely more time, but can still get the job done. For example, online video conferencing platforms that offer breakout rooms are suitable for both large and small group discussions.

So if you want to articulate the paradoxical challenges that a group must confront to succeed, then Wicked Questions might be a good meeting structure. It requires groups of 4-6 and paper for note-taking. Just substitute chairs for a designated breakout room and use a whiteboard and recorded chat. Even the audio can be recorded. This exercise can be done as sessions over a period of time to promote more conversations and reflections. It does require good facilitation and curation skills by those conducting it.

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managers are for caring

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The evidence shows that while telecommuters create positive change, the major resistance against telecommuting comes from management.

Our recent report showed that many workers we surveyed viewed managerial and executive resistance to telework as a major obstacle.

Through interviews, we learned that executives saw the benefits of using flexible work to their advantage as a negotiating tool for recruitment, promotion, retention and motivation, but they often worried about the costs of training and potential culture change.

They expressed concern that allowing telecommuting could create inequitable outcomes in the workplace, and possibly negatively impact morale.

The problem with work today is management. Often, it is detrimental to our well-being. But it is pervasive. Maintaining this status quo of management is the core operating model of global management consultancies like McKinsey.

“We are now living with the consequences of the world McKinsey created. Market fundamentalism is the default mode for businesses and governments the world over. Abstraction and myth insulate actors from the atrocities they help perpetuate. Businesses that resisted the pressure to rationalize every decision based on its impact on shareholder value were beaten out or eaten up by those who shed the last remnants of their humanity. With another heavyweight on the side of management, McKinsey tipped the scale even further away from labor, contributing directly to the increase in wealth inequality plaguing the world. Governments are now more similar to the private sector and more reliant on their services. The “best and the brightest” devote themselves to client service instead of public service. —Current Affairs 2019-02-05

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seeing the value of cooperation

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Nancy Dixon tells a wonderful story about ‘Researcher’s Square’ and the hallway of learning. The whole story is well worth your time. It describes how a diverse group of mostly independent researchers who worked in their individual offices were able to cooperate and even collaborate due to a change in the built architecture. A central hallway was placed in the middle of 20 offices so that everyone had to 1) use the same café area, and 2) use the only available large table & whiteboard, which were visible to everyone, for group meetings. In addition, copies of everyone’s published research was on display in this central area. While most researchers felt this would not change their work behaviours, it did.

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relatedness for knowledge sharing

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In the HBR article Why Employees Don’t Share Knowledge with Each Other the authors find three main reasons [research paper behind a paywall]. First, people share knowledge when they are autonomously motivated, and not directed to do so, or pressured by peers. Second, cognitively demanding work is shared more frequently. Third, knowledge is shared best between equal peers and not with those who are dependent on the sharer. While this research was done with 394 Australian workers at various locations, as well as 195 Chinese workers at one company, it is reflective of older research — self-determination theory — conducted by Edward Deci and/or Richard Ryan from 1971 to 2018.

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liberating meetings

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In meetings, bloody meetings I covered some common issues with how meetings are conducted and also provided some ways to address these. Another form is the silent meeting, put forth by David Gasca at Twitter and used at Amazon as well. These meetings are based on the common phenomena that most attendees do not read material in advance and that a slideshow is not the best way to convey complex information. Instead, a ‘table-read’ narrative of not more than 6 pages is presented at the meeting and attendees start by silently reading this document.

This type of silent meeting requires:

  1. An agenda — includes goals, non-goals, suggested timetable, & if a note-taker is needed.
  2. The ‘Table Read’ — the main source of discussion, commenting, & reflection.
  3. A facilitator to synthesize comments & lead discussions.
  4. Commenting silently & then reading others’ comments before engaging in discussion.

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meetings, bloody meetings

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My introduction to organizing meetings was in the military, where different types of meetings had standard structures. The Orders Format was something any officer could recite from memory. During officer training we were shown the 1976 John Cleese film, which was updated in 1993 — Meetings, Bloody Meetings. Cleese, a manager, is convicted in a dream of the following:

  1. Chairing without due thought & preparation.
  2. Failure to signal your intentions for the meeting.
  3. Negligent ordering of the agenda & criminal misallocation of time.
  4. Not being in full control of the discussion.

In conversations with friends and colleagues in many organizations over the years, it seems that not much has changed since the 1970’s. Now we can add in the standard conference call scenario of constant interruptions as people check in after the meeting has started and the chair starts all over again.

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extracting human value

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Automation + Capitalism makes for a perfect storm that many of us will not weather. Does ‘Artificial Intelligence’, the current top buzzword, really mean that we program our biases into automated decision-making systems, seal them in a proprietary black box, and let the status quo reign, with no illusion of ethics, morals, or humanity? Maintaining this status quo is the core operating model of global management consultancies like McKinsey.

“We are now living with the consequences of the world McKinsey created. Market fundamentalism is the default mode for businesses and governments the world over. Abstraction and myth insulate actors from the atrocities they help perpetuate. Businesses that resisted the pressure to rationalize every decision based on its impact on shareholder value were beaten out or eaten up by those who shed the last remnants of their humanity. With another heavyweight on the side of management, McKinsey tipped the scale even further away from labor, contributing directly to the increase in wealth inequality plaguing the world. Governments are now more similar to the private sector and more reliant on their services. The “best and the brightest” devote themselves to client service instead of public service. —Current Affairs 2019-02-05

It is reinforced by an expressed attitude that human work is something that can be broken into components and used like bits of machinery. People are merely the sum of the work that can be extracted from them by the capitalist machine. They have no other value in this economic system, and hence are always viewed as expenses.

“We see a world beyond employment and, arguably, the fundamental underpinnings for a world where work is constantly reinvented. Work is deconstructed into tasks, dispersed in time and space, and executed through many virtual and market relationships other than traditional employment. The organization is permeable, interconnected and collaborative and can change in shape. The reward is impermanent, individually defined and uses imaginative elements such as game points, reputation, mission.” —WillisTowerWatson: Future of Work

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network management protocols

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My principle of network management is a modern progressive remake of the principle of scientific management put forth by F.W. Taylor in 1911.

“It is only through enforced standardization of methods, enforced adoption of the best implements and working conditions, and enforced cooperation that this faster work can be assured. And the duty of enforcing the adoption of standards and enforcing this cooperation rests with management alone.” —F.W.Taylor

Based on this format, I have proposed the following principle for work in a post-industrial network society.

It is only through innovative and contextual methods, the self-selection of the most appropriate tools and work conditions and willing cooperation that more productive work can be assured. The duty of being transparent in our work and sharing our knowledge rests with all workers, especially management.

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autonomous workers in learning organizations

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The Learning Organization

Continued from mastery & models.

Harvard Business Review described The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge, as one of the seminal management books of the previous 75 years. The five disciplines necessary for a learning organization are:

  • Personal Mastery
  • Mental Models
  • Shared Vision
  • Team Learning
  • Systems Thinking (which integrates the other four)

Personal Mastery

Mastery comes through deliberate practice. Personal knowledge mastery is the ability to see patterns hidden to the undisciplined eye. It is the sharing and explaining of implicit knowledge in order to push the boundaries of understanding. PKM is very much based on informal learning through communities of practice and professional social networks.

Mental Models

A model is not a map but a compass that can help guide organizations. It takes time to understand these models and use them to inform our work. But they are necessary for complex work and essential as the organization gets larger.

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human capital

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“No, people are NOT capital. YOUR ‘human capital’ is what you’ve learned and not forgotten. It’s ‘capital’ each person ‘owns’ themselves; FAR more equally distributed than financial capital. Our economy needs institutions to make learning and earning better for those with less money.” —Byron Auguste

In firms that are ‘human capital-intensive’, “Should employees be shareholders?”

With context-specific human capital, the productivity of a particular individual depends not just on being part of a firm, but on being part of a particular group of people engaged in a particular task.

More importantly, once acquired, knowledge and skills that are specialized are assets that are at risk following the very same logic as that by which financial assets are at risk.

Is human capital then conceptually the same as financial capital and should investors in firm specific human capital also be seen as principals? Should employees be shareholders? Should capitalism accordingly create a much larger number of capitalists? —Esko Kilpi

Our human capital is a combination of our skills & knowledge, reputation, and social capital. This social capital is based on expertise and my relationships. Workers — human capital — are multi-faceted complex social beings who create the real value for creative and knowledge-based organizations. The greatest enemies of human organizations are our accounting methods, as I noted in automation + capitalism = a perfect storm. Our bookkeeping practices and capitalist systems are the main culprits in edging out human labour in favour of technological and financial capital.

The foundation for organizational knowledge is the human capital of each and every worker (expertise & relationships). This is increased as people work together (decisions & processes). What the organization sees and accounts for (events & outputs) is only the tip of the iceberg.

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