ConnectedEnterprise

Connected enterprise

Cooking out loud

by

The simple structure of the company, with its solidly embedded organizational chart restricting knowledge flow, cannot deal with the complexity of the networked economy. It takes too long to make decisions or try new things out. Looser hierarchies and stronger networks are required, but how do you go about this?

Working and learning out loud are essential practices that can change the nature of work. They help make transparent what is happening in the organization and democratize knowledge creation. First of all, everyone must be engaged in observing their environment. Then groups of people can work on problems together and learn as they work. The results of working and learning out loud can then be codified as network knowledge, which is always open for modification, as knowledge flow becomes knowledge stock. PKM – Seek > Sense > Share – is a core part of enabling knowledge to flow, unrestricted by hierarchies.

Read more

reflecting on reflection

by

Missing from most workplaces today is any time for reflection. Even events that are designed to promote learning, like the ubiquitous professional conference, ignore time for reflection. In these discrete time-based events, there is little time for reflection. Presenters hold back their knowledge in order to ‘deliver’ it just before the big official presentation. This presentation is followed by some immediate questions, discussions, and a quick break. Then it’s off to see the next presentation. Reflection, if it occurs, comes much later, and usually after the participants have gone home. It’s the same at work.

It seems that most of us are in a hurry today, and I meet few people who have read even a few good books lately and have had the time to reflect upon them. Fewer still have taken the time to digest new ideas and discuss their learning with others. There is always a need to balance action and reflection, but the latter seems to be losing out in many of our workplaces.

Read more

Build trust, embrace networks, manage complexity

by

Hierarchies

A new model for work is required. Hierarchies, simple branching networks, are obsolete. They work well when information flows mostly in one direction: down. Hierarchies are good for command and control. They are handy to get things done in small groups. But hierarchies are rather useless to create, innovate, or change.

We have known for quite a while that hierarchies are ineffective when things get complex. For example, matrix management was an attempt to address the weakness of organizational silos resulting from simple, branching hierarchies. In matrix management people have more than one reporting line and often work across business units. However, the performance management system and job structure usually remain intact so that it adds more complication, rather than increased effectiveness.

Any hierarchy, even one wrapped in matrices, becomes an immovable beast as soon as it is created. The only way to change a hierarchical organization is to create a new hierarchy. This is why reorganization is so popular; and so ineffective. Most organizations still deal with complexity through reorganization. Just think of the last time a new CEO came in to “fix” a large corporation. A connected enterprise starts by building a foundation of trust, embracing networks, and then managing complexity.

Read more

Learning to breathe in the network era

by

The networked workplace is the new reality. It’s always on and globally connected. This is where all organizations are going, at different speeds and in a variety of ways. Some won’t make it. In many organizations the outside world is better connected than inside the workplace. This makes it difficult to connect at the boundaries, which is where we have the best opportunities for serendipity and potential innovation.

At the edge of the organization, where there are few rules; everything is a blur. It may even be chaotic. But opportunities are found in chaos. Value emerges from forays into the chaos. In such a changing environment, failure has to be tolerated. Nothing is guaranteed other than the fact that not playing here puts any organization at a significant disadvantage.

Read more

Social leaders create value

by

Simon Terry’s value maturity model is based on the guiding principle of collaboration at the organizational level, not the process level. This means everyone has to be connected to the overall mission, and not just focused on their part. Goal oriented conversations keep all people in the organization connected.

An employee who is challenged to integrate his or her work at the level of the goals of the organisation has an opportunity to stop, change or transform the process. That employee can respond to the situation before them, use their discretion and use the talents of their colleagues. The employee can look to deliver greater value than the current process allows. That liberty reinforces their accountability and validates the organisations confidence in the potential of the employee. A key barrier to engagement in many organisations is that an employee can struggle to find the connection between their work and the goals of the organisation. Goal-oriented conversations can play a critical role to surface that connection. —Simon Terry

Read more

Organizational Learning in the Network Era

by

W. Edwards Deming, American management visionary, understood that systemic factors account for most organizational problems, and changing these has more potential for improvement than changing any individual’s performance. Therefore the role of executives should be to manage the system, not individuals. But the real barrier to systemic change is hierarchical management, as it constrains the sharing of power, a necessary enabler of organizational learning. People have to trust each other to share knowledge, and power relationships can block these exchanges. Just listen to any boardroom meeting and see how power can kill a conversation. If learning is what organizations need to do well in order to survive and thrive, then structural barriers to learning must be removed.

Read more

Network Era Skills

by

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 in the network era. The duty of being transparent in our work and sharing our knowledge rests with all workers, including management.

Only people can enable knowledge, trust and credibility to flow within and between markets and companies. Business in the network era is connecting companies to their markets through knowledge workers having conversations in communities and social networks. The core skills for this emerging workplace are: 1) working & learning out loud 2) cooperating, 3) collaborating, and 4) self-organizing.

Working and learning out loud make implicit knowledge more explicit. Creating ‘knowledge artifacts’ that can be shared and built upon by others results in faster organizational learning, and being able to take action on that learning. In an organization, working out loud can take many forms. It could be a regular blog; sharing day-to-day happenings in activity streams; taking pictures and videos; or just having regular discussions. Developing these skills, like adding value to information, takes time and practice. Working out loud also means taking ownership of our learning.

Read more

Reinventing Organizations – Review

by

What is a “Teal Organization”? Frédéric Laloux, in Reinventing Organizations, uses a colour scheme, based on Integral Theory, to describe the historical development of human organizations: Red > Orange > Green > Teal. Laloux lists three breakthroughs of Teal organizations:

  1. Self-management: driven by peer relationships
  2. Wholeness: involving the whole person at work
  3. Evolutionary purpose: let the organization adapt and grow, not be driven

Read more

Organize for Complexity

by

Niels Pflaeging read my ebook Seeking perpetual beta and said that “after reading the book one yearns for more from you about the right learning architecture, about how to develop organizations applying this thinking, about how to build learning programs and infrastructure.” Well I think Niels has answered much of that question himself, in his recent book Organize for Complexity. Since I promote the fact that today work is learning, and learning is the work, then if you create better ways of working, you are also improving organizational learning. As Niels writes about the “learning riddle”:

Mastery is the human capability to solve new problems. It can only be developed through practice. We call this “disciplined practice”.

Fads like business analytics, knowledge management, and big data will never make organizations fit for complexity.

This is why I now call PKM: Personal Knowledge Mastery; to separate it from much of the traditional practice of  knowledge management. #PKMastery is disciplined practice.

Read more