Work

business & working

the knowledge artisan

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An artisan is skilled in a craft and uses specialized tools or machinery. Artisans were the dominant producers of goods before the Industrial Revolution. Knowledge artisans are similar to their pre-industrial counterparts, especially when it comes to tools. Knowledge artisans not only design the work but they can do the work. It is not passed down an assembly line.

Augmented by technology, they rely on their networks and skills to solve complex problems and test new ideas. Small groups of highly productive knowledge artisans are capable of producing goods and services that used to take much larger teams and more resources. Many integrate marketing, sales, and customer service with their creations.

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change takes time and effort

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The idea that generalists and soft skills are needed in the modern workplace seems to be hitting the mainstream of HR, L&D, etc. I have written about these for the past decade or more, and I think it’s necessary to clarify some of the discussion.

1. Wicked problems need neo-generalists

Neo-generalists defy common understanding. They cross boundaries, and some break them. They see patterns before others do. They go against hundreds of years of cultural programming. I doubt this is what most employers in large organizations are looking for. But neo-generalists are necessary today — “It is through the hybridization of and cross-pollination between such disciplines [science & humanities] that we will arrive at solutions for our wicked problems.” Hiring and developing generalists will not be enough.

2. A centuries old schism is not addressed overnight

E.O. Wilson, in The Origins of Creativity, envisages a third enlightenment that will bring us closer to seeing humanity as one common group, uniting fields of knowledge. But how many in the humanities have deep science skills, and vice versa?

“Scientists and scholars in the humanities, working together, will, I believe serve as the leaders of a new philosophy, one that blends the best and most relevant from these two branches of learning.”

Recombining the sciences and the humanities will take some time. In the meantime, cross-disciplinary teams may be more practical.

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citizen-learners

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Crooked Broker Capitalists

Dave Pollard (2007) showed that in a ‘crooked broker society’, an Exploiter oppresses a Desperate Supplier. This unbalanced relationship is reinforced by a Procurer who in turn gouges an Addicted Buyer. It’s the underlying nature of unregulated capitalism that drives us toward such a society. For example, Peter Thiel, a platform capitalist, wrote that, “If you want to create and capture lasting value, look to build a monopoly.”

In platform capitalism, workers (labour) are the desperate suppliers, exploited by the platform (e.g. Über, Amazon, Google, AirBNB) once it has a monopoly as the medium of exchange. Various middle-men then become the procurers, gouging not just customers but also public services paid by citizens.

In 1881 Henry Demarest Lloyd wrote that, “When monopolies succeed, the people fail …”, in his piece denouncing the practices of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. John Kenneth Galbraith warned of the dangers of blindly having faith in our corporate systems.

“The greater danger is in the subordination of belief to the needs of the modern industrial system … These are that technology is always good; that economic growth is always good; that firms must always expand; that consumption of goods is the principal source of happiness; that idleness is wicked; and that nothing should interfere with the priority we accord to technology, growth, and increased consumption.” —John Kenneth Galbraith (1967) The New Industrial State

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adding value with teams

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In working collaboratively & learning cooperatively I noted that team collaboration requires the transparent sharing of knowledge — using enterprise social networks and other technologies — so that everyone on a team knows what is going on and why. Decisions, and why they were made, are shared. New processes and methods are co-developed to create emergent practices. This method of work has to be supported by management by enabling — innovative and contextual methods, the self-selection of the most appropriate tools and work conditions, and willing cooperation between workers.

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insights over processes

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Process improvement, like Six Sigma, stifles innovation. Process improvement is a tool set, not an overarching or unifying concept for an organization. Process improvement is a means — for certain contexts like manufacturing — and not an end in itself. The fundamental problem with all process improvement methodologies is that you get myopic. The evidence is clear.

“Since Frederick Taylor’s time we’ve considered business – our businesses – vast machines to be improved. Define the perfect set of tasks and then fit the men to the task. Taylor timed workers, measuring their efforts to determine the optimal (in his opinion) amount of work he could expect from a worker in a single day. The idea is that by driving our workers to follow optimal business processes we can ensure that we minimise costs while improving quality. LEAN and Six Sigma are the most visible of Taylor’s grandchildren, representing generations of effort to incrementally chip away at the inefficiencies and problems we kept finding in our organisations.” —Peter Evans Greenwood

“But simply following the steps of a process is no longer a guarantee of success, if it ever was. Business is increasingly complex and interconnected, and it seems unlikely any single system can tame it. The smart enterprise of the future will need a constantly evolving rotation of systems and skills, employed by adaptable and flexible workers. They will be harder to teach in a course, but they may outlast all the fads and fashions that preceded them.” —Whatever Happened to Six Sigma?

“Fifty-eight of the top Fortune 200 companies bought into Six Sigma, attesting to the appeal of eliminating errors. The results of this ‘experiment’ were striking: 91 per cent of the Six Sigma companies failed to keep up with the S&P 500 because Six Sigma got in the way of innovation. It interfered with insights.” —Gary Klein

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co-learning is better than marketing

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Work is learning, and learning is the work. Marketing, for the most part, is about learning. What’s interesting is that ” … the content developed by most marketing departments is used in less than 7 percent of all buying decisions”, according to McKinsey, as cited in The Hypersocial Organization. So it’s not about the content. It’s all about the human connections.

As the Cluetrain Manifesto (1999) began with its first of 95 theses, “Markets are conversations”. Cluetrain continued with thesis #11 — “People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products.” We learn best from each other in trusted relationships.

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more than re-skilling

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Here is the advice of the co-founder of Degreed on a ‘workplace self-training paradigm‘.

First, encourage them to think of reskilling as a game — one they now have more control over winning …

Next, help workers manage their skills with regular checkups to evaluate their current expertise against market conditions …

Finally, work with employees to pinpoint opportunities to put their new skills into action.

It reminded me of advice that Lilia Efimova gave fifteen years ago — on which I based I my own PKM framework — which is a broader approach to workplace learning than merely looking at work from a training or re-skilling perspective.

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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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the silo effect

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“Silos are cultural phenomena, which arise out of the systems we use to classify and organize the world,” states Gillian Tett in The Silo Effect. Silos are bounded hierarchies that define specialized work or areas of knowledge. They come in the form of academic fields, organizational departments, schools of thought, and many other forms created by humans. They are all based on an explicit or implicit model of how things are done. But all models are imperfect explanations of the world. Forgetting that can make us blind to what would be obvious to an outsider.

Tett first gives an overview of silo thinking and its effects — such as the 2008 financial crash — and goes into detail with examples. This is followed by various stories of silo-busting. The conclusion provides a few rules of thumb. Hierarchies and classification systems are necessary, especially in complex fields of practice, so we will never get rid of silos, says Tett.

The challenge is to find ways to get outside their boundaries and see from multiple perspectives. Silo thinking can be countered by engaging ‘cultural translators’ — “people who are able to move between specialist silos and explain to those sitting inside one department what is happening elsewhere” — but only about 10% of an organization’s staff need these skills.

Helping information to flow requires that everyone not only share data and information but also have the opportunity to interpret information and share their conclusions. Not everyone sees the world in the same way. Cultural translators are also ‘knowledge catalysts’.

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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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