What is the optimal digital transformation technology for a networked organization? It is a suite of capabilities that foster an organizational culture that is constantly learning in order to understand and engage the complex environment in which it lives. Like the Internet, that enabled a digital transformation of society and business, these technologies must be based on a simple structure.
ConnectedEnterprise
Connected enterprise
marketing-oriented learning
Jane Hart sees modern day learning and development (L&D) professionals as agents of change, who are not “order takers” but “trusted advisers”. Therefore the challenge is to become a trusted adviser. Trust is not gained by being an expert, but by doing something of value for others. People trust those who help make useful connections, or initiate change for the better.
holding the space
There is an aspect of leadership that gets little attention in the popular management press. It is about holding space. Holding space means protecting the boundaries so that people can work. Nations hold their space through laws, treaties, and armed forces. Organizational leaders need to hold their space so that people can work. I do not mean controlling place, just holding it.
building the intelligent enterprise
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.
embracing perpetual beta
Michelle Ockers has been working hard at incorporating social learning in the workplace, as her posted case study shows. After reading, finding perpetual beta, Michelle asked me to elaborate on a few points. These are her questions, and my attempt to address them.
democracy at work
“It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” – Winston Churchill
Our society has tried many ways to organize work over the years, yet real democracy is a form that few have attempted. The need to control people runs deep in our work cultures. Managers have ‘direct reports’ and humans are regarded as ‘resources’. The need for command and control stems from inadequate means to effectively communicate. But in the past decade we finally have the circumstances where almost anyone can communicate with almost everyone. Hyperlinks have truly subverted hierarchy, even though institutional and market hierarchies are doing their utmost to prevent or control this. Oligopolies control most of our communications media, even democratic states run surveillance operations on their citizens, and many workplaces monitor all mediated communications. These are reactionary attempts to stop what has the potential to be the inevitable spread of democracy.
Why do we need democracy? It is the only way humans will be able to organize in order to deal with the complex problems facing us. Our intangible marketplaces, like the app economy, will continue to be highly volatile. Climate change and environmental degradation cannot be addressed by any existing institution. New approaches to solving wicked problems are required if humanity is to thrive or even survive into the next century.
digital workforce skills
“Are there new ways to think about our digital workplace skills that allows us to take our thinking up to a new plane, the next meta-level of thinking and working where we have much higher leverage, can manage change that is an order of magnitude or greater in volume than today, work in fundamentally better and smarter new ways — and perhaps even work a bit less — yet produce much more value?”
Dion Hinchcliffe asks What Are the Required Skills for Today’s Digital Workforce? and provides an image that addresses a good spectrum of skills for the network era.
adapting to perpetual beta
- There is no such thing as a social business strategy.
- There are only business strategies that understand networks.
- Cooperative and distributed work is becoming the norm in the network era.
- Social learning is how work gets done in networks.
- Sharing power, enabling conversations, and ensuring transparency are some of the values of networked business.
- Trust emerges when these principles are put in practice.
- Learning is part of work, not separate from it.
What follows is a summary of what I believe are some of the most important issues facing organizational design today.
every medium
Wirearchy is “a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority, based on knowledge, trust, credibility and a focus on results, enabled by interconnected people and technology”. It is a medium for organizing how people work together. Wirearchy is a new way to work. Viewing wirearchy through the tetradic laws of media might give some clarity on what it can be, and what we need to beware of.
caught in-between
The core premise of finding perpetual beta is that the digital world is bumping against the analog world and we are currently caught in-between.