Management

Management

The Future of HR

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“The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades” – Timbuk3

Complication

Many of today’s larger companies have overly complicated, hierarchical structures. As they grew to their current size, control processes were put in place to create efficiencies. To ensure reliable operations and avoid risk, work became standardized. New layers of supervision appeared, more silos were created, and knowledge acquisition was formalized, all in an attempt to gain efficiency through specialization. Support departments, like human resources, were added to manage the resulting complicated structure.

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Creating the AAA Organization

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For an organization to be agile and adaptive, the people in it need to be aware of what is happening around them, have alternative pathways to gather information and knowledge, and must be allowed to act to meet/solve both local and global goals/problems.  They need to both work in their hierarchy and in a self-organizing network simultaneously! – Valdis Krebs, Orgnet

How can an organization build awareness, investigate alternatives, and act on complex problems? The organization needs to connect the outside with the inside. This is not a technology challenge but rather a structural one. Organizations need to help knowledge flow and this only happens when people are connected. Technology is a facilitator, but people are the key. This is too often overlooked, as in most enterprise social network implementations, where mere training is bolted on at the end of the technology build. Awareness, alternatives, and action can each be supported within a unified organizational framework.

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The future is self-management

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Two late 19th century theorists still firmly inform management thinking.

Henri Fayol’s functions of management pretty well sum up how many managers see their responsibilities today.

  1. To forecast and plan
  2. To organize
  3. To command or direct
  4. To coordinate

F.W. Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management viewed management as the necessary controlling layer in order to systematize work and make it efficient. If labourers could not adapt to managers’ directions, then they should be let go.

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Rising from the ashes of management

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If you want to destroy the entrepreneurial nature of work, then make management part of the hierarchy. Removing management from the hierarchy is probably the simplest thing that could be done to improve innovation and increase the motivation of those who really create business value.

Management at Asana is seen as service role, rather than the next step in the pyramid on the org chart. The usual model, where exceptional work leads inevitably to the management track is a mistake, Rosenstein argues. “The effect of that is that individual work is looked down on,” he says. “That is so caustic.”  – What managers do at a company that’s trying to replace them with software

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Ten Years, Ten Thoughts

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In compiling my ebook, Seeking perpetual beta: a guidebook for the network era, I tried to cover all the posts that resonated with readers, clients, and colleagues over a decade. Here are some highlights, representing one thought per year.

    1. Taking control of our learning is a challenge for individuals used to working inside hierarchies that demand conformity and compliance.
    2. The mainstream application of knowledge management and learning management over the past few decades was mostly wrong; we over-managed information, knowledge, and learning because it was easy to do.
    3. The basic structure of the job presumes common skills and the mechanistic view that workers can be replaced without disruption.

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seeking perpetual beta

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New! Purchase all five e-books, ‘seeking perpetual beta’ – ‘finding perpetual beta’ – ‘adapting to perpetual beta’ – ‘working in perpetual beta’ ‘life in perpetual beta’- for €29.

After 10 years of blogging here, I have compiled my best posts into an ebook. It’s called Seeking perpetual Beta: a guidebook for the network era. Instead of digging through over 2,500 posts on this site, now you can read a cohesive narrative that covers learning, working, and managing in the emerging network era. This ebook is the result of a decade of seeking, sense-making, and sharing knowledge on the Web.

“the best $25 you’ll ever spend on yourself” – Susan Scrupski

“One of the best purchases you’ll do this year!” – Luis Suarez

“masterful synthesis of 10 years of blogging about networks” – Jon Husband

“Harold knows just how to harness the power of equal, open collaboration in the networked economy.” – Ian Chew

Scroll down to read the introduction and table of contents.

Back on sale by popular demand, seeking perpetual beta is available for $20.

Introduction

The following essays are abridged and updated posts as well as combinations of posts made over the course of a decade. When I started my blog, I had three categories: learning; work; and technology. Today there are many others, as my professional interests have expanded and changed. My perspective on work and learning has been one of perpetual Beta, which also could be called strong beliefs, loosely held. Alpha is a mindset of pumping out flavour of the month drivel. Beta is more than Alpha, as you have to affirm to principles and actually commit to something, while remaining open to change. I have been observing the signs and indicators of the shift to the network era for the past decade. These articles have stood the test of time, and have been refined and discussed many times in order to be suitable for Beta.

The Network Era

The fundamental nature of work is changing as we transition into the network era. Creative work is beginning to dominate industrial work as we shift to a post- job economy. The major driver of this change is the automation of routine work, especially through software, but increasingly with robots. Valued work is in handling exceptions, dealing with complex problems, and doing customized tasks.

The products of this work are often intangible and not physical. As a result, our industrial work structures need to change. Organizations have to become more networked, not just with information technology, but in how workers create, use, and share knowledge.

The workplace of the network era requires a different type of leadership; one that emerges from the network as required. Effective leadership in networks is negotiated and temporary, according to need. Giving up control will be a major challenge for anyone used to the old ways of managing. An important part of leadership will be to ensure that knowledge is shared throughout the network.

Learning is a critical part of working in a creative economy. Being able to continuously learn, and share that new knowledge, will be as important as showing up on time was in the industrial economy. Continuous learning will also disrupt established hierarchies as no longer will a management position imply greater knowledge or skills. Command and control will be replaced by influence and respect, in order to retain creative talent. Management in networks means influencing possibilities rather than striving for predictability. We will have to accept that no one has definitive answers anymore, but we can use the intelligence of our networks to make sense together.

The shift to the network era will not be easy for many people and most organizations. Common assumptions about how work gets done will have to be discarded. Established ways of earning education credentials will be abandoned for more flexible and meaningful methods. Connections between disciplines and professions are growing and artificial boundaries will continue to crack. Systemic changes to business and education will happen. There will be disruption on a societal level, but we can create new work and learning models to help us deal with this next phase in human civilization. The statistician George Box wrote that, “essentially all models are wrong, but some are useful”. We will never know unless we try them out.

Table of Contents

(65 pages for tablet version)

Introduction

1. THE NETWORK ERA
The Changing Nature of Work
Complication: The Industrial Disease
A Networked Market Knows More
Job is a Four-letter Word
Knowledge Artisans
Working Socially
Figure 1 The Connected Enterprise
Tapping the Creative Surplus

2. WORK IS LEARNING & LEARNING IS THE WORK
PKM and the Seek > Sense > Share Framework
Figure 2 PKM = Seek > Sense > Share
PKM and Competitive Intelligence
PKM and Innovation
Managing Organizational Knowledge
Training and Complex Work
Narrating Our Work
Collaborate to Solve Complex Problems

3. LEADING & MANAGING IN NETWORKS
Network Thinking
Figure 3 Trust Emerges Through Openness and Transparency
The Connected Enterprise
The Knowledge Sharing Paradox
Managing Automation
Flip the Office
Connected Leadership
Figure 4 Connected Leadership

4. THE GLOBAL VILLAGE
Figure 5 Organizing Characteristics
Figure 6 TIMN (David Ronfeldt)
Figure 7 Tetrad of a Networked Society

Colophon

Layout and design by Tantramar Interactive

Management in perpetual Beta

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“Our research indicates that, contrary to what one might assume, good analysis in the hands of managers who have good judgment won’t naturally yield good decisions.” — What Matters More in Decisions

Is it because they are assuming the problem is complicated …

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.

… when in fact it is complex?

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.

Our linear management models are based on people developing skills and expertise and over time moving up the organizational or disciplinary hierarchy. The higher up one goes, the greater the qualifications, and the better the compensation. These people are our experts.

One of the things that makes experts so convincing is that they exude confidence. They can talk calmly and knowledgeably about a subject, make reference to relevant facts and build a compelling logic for their case. A good expert is always impressive, but still usually wrong.

In fact, in a twenty year study of political experts, Philip Tetlock found that their predictions were no better than flipping a coin. Further, he found that pundits who specialized in a particular field tended to perform worse than those whose knowledge was more general. —Why experts always seem to get it wrong

Most expertise looks backwards. Experts develop case studies from their experience, and then best practices through reflection on these experiences. In a linear world, this is good. For complicated problems, reliance on experts usually works.

In a complex world, experts may inform our decisions but we should not rely on them. We need to try things out in context. Lots of things, lots of times, and with little fanfare. This is management in perpetual Beta. It means thinking for ourselves and developing our own expertise for our constantly changing environments. Getting current managers to understand and accept this is one of our major organizational challenges.
rear view mirror

Six roles of network management

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If helping the network make better decisions is a primary role of management in the emerging economy, how does one get there? I highlighted the six roles of management in the network era in my last post and I would like to build on these and show how this is being practiced at Change Agents Worldwide.

help network make better decisionsFirst of all, the founders set a good example of transparency and working out loud. Subsequent members have joined and continue to narrate their work. Also, the network does not have a marketing department, as everyone is responsible for connecting with our markets. Everyone must set an example because there is no one to defer work to. In this environment everyone is learning and everyone is teaching by example. As a result, work gets done very quickly, such as our first ebook, that would have taken months to complete by a central marketing department.

We are all knowledge managers at CAWW, sharing as we work transparently. Some, like myself, share blog posts at appropriate moments. Others share tools, techniques, and experiences. The organizational knowledge base, much of it captured in a large wiki, constantly grows. There is no central management for our knowledge.

It is important to know why we are creating this not-for-profit “collaborative sharing economy model for consulting services”. We constantly discuss the Why of our work, and ensure we stay focused and do not chase every new opportunity. Our Why is to change how work gets done in large organizations. As a result, we have a very diverse group of change agents, from various disciplines, countries, and industries.

It is interesting to see how our discussions focus on improving insights and we are not overly focused on merely improving internal processes and procedures. We leave that to people doing the work, as change agents are independent and can choose their own tools and techniques, like true knowledge artisans.

With hundreds of years of experience, an open discussion environment, and people who have worked as internal and external consultants, there is no shortage of learning opportunities. Change agents can freely join project teams and try something new. CAWW is one big learning experience for everyone, and the speed of learning is amazing.

These ‘management’ roles apply to all members, for in a network, everyone is a manager, and everyone can play a leadership role. The principles of openness, transparency, and diversity provide a solid foundation for these roles to be practiced. I think this model will help to create a new way of approaching workplace change. Large, hierarchical consultancies are no longer sufficient to help organizations adapt to the network era. As Donald Clark says, “Dinosaurs don’t give birth to gazelles.”

Helping the network make better decisions is the primary job of every change agent. It should be the job of every person in every organization. Perhaps some day it will be.

Management in Networks

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In networks, cooperation is more important than collaboration. Collaboration is working together toward a common objective. This is what most workplaces are focused on. It is also what most managers focus on. Implicit in many workplaces is that if you are not focused on the objective at hand, you are not doing any real work. This emphasis on collaboration blinds managers. They cannot see the potential of social networks for enabling sense-making and knowledge-sharing. Many managers do not understand the value of cooperation, or sharing freely without direct reciprocity. Cooperation sounds too much like wasting time on Facebook or Twitter. Most management practices today still focus on 20th century models, such as Henri Fayol’s six functions of management [look familiar?].

  1. forecasting
  2. planning
  3. organizing
  4. commanding
  5. coordinating
  6. controlling

I heard these same functions discussed by a workplace issues consultant on the radio as recently as yesterday morning. Notice that there is no function for enhancing serendipity, or increasing innovation, or inspiring people. The core of management practice today has not changed since the days of Fayol, who died ninety years ago.

But the new reality is that networks are the new companies. The company no longer offers the stability it once did as innovative disruption comes from all corners. Economic value is getting redistributed to creative workers and then diffused through networks. Knowledge networks differ from company hierarchies. One major difference is that cooperation, not collaboration, is the optimal behaviour in a knowledge network. In networks, cooperation trumps collaboration.

So what are the functions of management in the network era?

managing network era

Improve insights – Too often, management only focuses on reducing errors, but it is insight that drives innovation. Managers must loosen the filters through which information and knowledge pass in the organization and increase the organizational willpower to act on these insights.

Provide Learning Experiences – As Charles Jennings notes, managers are vital for workers’ performance improvement, but only if they provide opportunities for experiential learning with constructive feedback, new projects, and new skills.

Focus on the “Why” of Work – Current compensation systems ignore the data on human motivation. Extrinsic rewards only work for simple physical tasks and increased monetary rewards can actually be detrimental to performance, especially with knowledge work. The keys to motivation at work are for each person to have a sense of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. This is a network management responsibility.

Help the Network Make Better Decisions – Managers should see themselves as servant leaders. Managers must actively listen, continuously question the changing work context, help to see patterns and make sense of them, and then suggest new practices and build consensus with networked workers.

Be Knowledge Managers – Managers need to practice and encourage personal knowledge management throughout the network.

Be an Example – Social networks shine a spotlight on dysfunctional managers. Cooperative behaviours require an example and that example must come from those in management positions. While there may be a role for good managers in networks, there likely will not be much of a future for bosses.