Wirearchy

Wirearchy

the act of creation is human

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In 2005 I wrote a business plan for a client that was based on an operational model of employing ‘knowledge artisans‘.

Next-gen knowledge artisans are amplified versions of their pre-industrial counterparts. Equipped with and augmented by technology, they rely on their human capital and skill to solve complex problems and develop new ideas, products and services. Highly productive, knowledge artisans are capable individually and in small groups of producing goods and services that used to take substantially larger teams and resources. In addition to redefining how work is done, knowledge artisans are creating new organizational structures and business models.

I later followed this up by discussing how knowledge artisans choose their tools.

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revisiting self-determination theory

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Self-determination theory states that there are three universal human drivers — autonomy, competence, and relatedness. We need some control over our lives, we want to be good at something, and we want to feel that we can relate to other people. These three drivers are what make us do what we do. Skills are just one aspect of being engaged at work. Even highly competent skilled workers can be disengaged or aimless.

One effect of the network era, and its pervasive digital connections, is that networks are replacing or subverting more traditional hierarchies. Three aspects of this effect are — access to almost unlimited information, the ability for almost anyone to self-publish, and limitless opportunities for ridiculously easy group-forming.

Clay Shirky discussed this third aspect in Here Comes Everybody (2008).

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the knowledge artisan era

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An artisan (craftsperson) is a skilled manual worker in a particular craft, using specialized tools and machinery. Artisans were the dominant producers of goods before the Industrial Revolution. ABC Co. are the Artisans of the post-Industrial era, retrieving old world care and attention to detail, but using the latest tools and processes. To ensure that we stay current, we are members of various Open Source Guilds, such as the Drupal development community. —ABC Co. Business Plan 2005 (PDF)

I wrote the ABC Co. business plan for a small company with several years of development experience that had embraced open source software as a way to reduce customer costs, ensure long-term stability of their software, and focus on what they did best — custom development. As Ton Zylstra remarked in 2010, too often skilled workers are treated like replaceable cogs using standard, employer-provided tools.

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from platforms to covenants

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I wrote in agile sensemaking (2018) that radical innovation only comes from networks with large structural holes which are more diverse. This is why social networks cannot also be work teams, or they become echo chambers. Work teams can focus intensely on incremental innovation, to get better at what they already do. Communities of practice, with both strong and weak social ties, then become a bridge on this network continuum, enabling both individual and interactive creativity.

Connecting work teams, communities of practice/interest, and professional social networks ensures that knowledge flows and that people have the information needed to make well-informed decisions, especially when dealing with complexity and chaos. I have noted before that the world has become so complex and interconnected that the individual disciplines developed during The Enlightenment — like medicine — are no longer adequate to help society in our collective sensemaking, especially during global crises.

Experts in all disciplines have to get out of their silos and connect in multidisciplinary subject matter networks. A lone expert, or even a lone discipline, is obsolete in the network era. Only cooperative networks will help us make sense of the complex challenges facing us — climate change, environmental degradation, pandemics, war, etc. In today’s world, connections trump expertise.

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time for management to grow up

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In 2008, while working with a team of 40 people spread across several times zones, I suggested that we need a distributed work manifesto. This would include the requirement for collaborative documents, a group text chat, a focus on delivering content and not formatting for style, and reserving email for decisions and contracts. We are still not there yet and even during this pandemic managerial forces are trying to put distributed workers back into the office. The reality is that most workers want distributed work, most of the time.

“As companies come under pressure to offer higher compensation to staff and to recruit skilled workers, the national average base salary increase for 2023 is projected at 4.2 per cent, according to a recent survey from consulting firm Eckler Ltd.

A recent survey by productivity software company OSlash about the ‘great disconnect’ between bosses and workers found that 60 per cent of employers said they would offer employees a hybrid work schedule if they declined to return to the office.

Only 20 per cent would let employees go back to full time remote working.

Of the 800 work-from-home employees and 200 business leaders surveyed, nearly 80 per cent of remote workers believe their employers would fire them if they said ‘no’ to a return-to-office mandate.

Meanwhile, 78 per cent of employees surveyed said they would be willing to take a pay cut to continue working from home, with Gen Z respondents being the most willing to do so.”
—The Star 2022-10-07

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stupidity — the new normal

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Two years ago I wrote about the new normal of work, citing a Citi Global Perspectives & Solutions report that had just been published. The major trends identified in the report included observations such as evidence that in cities more likely to vote for Donald Trump, there were fewer jobs that can be done remotely. Much of the focus was on the impact of working from anywhere and the decline in air travel. Citi’s Chief Learning Officer discussed the company’s investments in learning technologies, collaboration technologies, and improved meeting practices — the latter which I had discussed in bloody meetings.

I concluded that most people would like the option to work from home, most of the time. Many workers have tasted it, and in spite of the challenges of being forced into distributed work — they like it. Now that everyone is familiar with video conferencing we can also see that in many workplaces — zoom is not the problem, meetings are.

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the new normal of remote work

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“Working from home is not an option for every job, but there is clear evidence that it can have major advantages in the right applications and with the right workers. And as we show in this report it also can have a positive impact on the environment.”

So concludes the June 2020 report, Technology at Work v5.0 — The New Normal of Remote Work, published by Citi Global Perspectives & Solutions [Disclosure: Citi is a current client]. The report has many contributors and is focused on what remote work now looks like in view of the ongoing pandemic. Like most companies, Citi has had to adapt to “the new normal of remote work” but is in no hurry to return to the previous work situation.

“We will use data, not dates, to drive decisions: Any decisions about returning to the office will be dependent on data, including local medical data. We are not, nor will we be, focused on hitting specific dates …

One approach won’t fit all: The timing and ways we come back to the office will vary based on location, office setup, resources and medical guidance. For high risk or vulnerable colleagues, we will continue to take extra precautions. For those with family and childcare needs, we will remain flexible.” —Citi HR Operating Committee

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we all need an inner circle

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Work has always been about who you know, more than what you know. That’s why the rich and powerful send their children to elite schools. It’s not about the education but rather the connections. We still fool ourselves that a capitalist economy is a meritocracy — which any marginalized group can attest is false. However, the emerging network era and its democratization of media is giving voice to more of these groups.

I have advocated for retrieving gender balance in our organizations as the controlled linearity of the written and printed word — patriarchal in their essence — will be obsolesced by the connected, electric medium. This connected world requires each of us to develop broad and diverse social networks in addition to trusted communities of practice. Today, this is even more important for women than men, though I think it will be essential for all genders in the near future. Social networks are our professional safety nets.

Professor Brian Uzzi studied hundreds of MBA graduates and noted significant differences in the social networks of men and women. While social networks are important to both, successful women also had an ‘inner circle’ of trusted female advisors. Networks and communities are not the same. Communities are the connectors between diverse networks and work teams. They are essential. We all need an inner circle.

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work in 2018

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When we look at the future of work, the loss of current jobs, and the effects of automation, we should use a compass to guide us, not a list of what the skills of the future may look like. That compass is self-determination theory which states that there are three universal human drivers — autonomy, competence, and relatedness. We need some control over our lives, we want to be good at something, and we want to feel that we belong with other people. These three drivers are what make us do what we do. Skills are just one aspect of being engaged at work. Even highly competent skilled workers can be disengaged or aimless.

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organizing for the network era

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In my last post I noted that many organizations today are nothing more than attractive prisons. The current organizational tyranny was a response to a linear, print-based world. These organizations are artifacts of a time when information was scarce and hard to share, and when connections with others were difficult to make and required command and control. The network era, with digital electric communications, changes this. Organizations today should be designed more like the internet: small pieces, loosely joined.

Last year I described several of my principles and models for the network era and showed how they related to each other. I would like to put these together in a coherent framework to show how we can design organizations for the network era, instead of ones optimized for markets, institutions, or tribes. The network era needs new structures, not modified versions of obsolete models.

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