Work

business & working

Productivity

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Worthwhile’s Anita Sharpe mentioned productivity measures and how the US Government measures output instead of real productivity. Anita quotes Kevin Kelly (10 Rules for the New Economy) :

"Any job that can be measured for productivity probably should be eliminated from the list of jobs that people do. . .Where humans are most actively engaged with their imaginations, we don’t see productivity gains — and why should we? Is a Hollywood movie company that produces longer movies per dollar more productive that one that produces shorter movies?" 

A similar question came up at Nine Shift on whether "productivity is no longer a valid measurement".  Dan Pink sees the world moving from an Industrial/Information economy towards a Creative Economy. These new economic conditions, created by Asia, Automation and Abundance will require "right-brain" skills in design, synthesis and empathy. If you agree with Pink, which I do, then it becomes obvious that industrial era measurements will be useless in the next economy.
Unfortunately, most measures of creativity are not as clear-cut as those for more technical and physical skills. In the interim, we will have a mismatch between what is measured and what really matters.

Learning About Sharing

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Note: This is a re-post from last week due to a system change (Drupal 4.4 to 4.6).
One interesting observation I made this week is that not everyone is as open to sharing their thoughts and opinions in a public way as my fellow bloggers are. Coming from a community of practice that shares ideas and uses sharing mechanisms like Creative Commons, public Furl and Bloglines archives, you sometimes take for granted that everyone has this outlook. I came across some strong opinions that knowledge is power and it must be kept to oneself or a small circle of people. I keep on learning :-)
Seb also referred to this related paper.

Web 2.0

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Web 2.0 is the common term used to refer to the new generation of web applications and systems that enable community or many-to-many relationships. BusinessWeek has a recent article that summarizes many of the converging and diverging factors influencing this next phase of the Web:

Indeed, peer production represents a sea change in the economy — at least when it comes to the information products, services, and content that increasingly drive economic growth. More than two centuries ago, James Watt’s steam engine ushered in the Industrial Revolution, centralizing the means of production in huge, powerful corporations that had the capital to achieve economies of scale. Now cheap computers and new social software and services — along with the Internet’s ubiquitous communications that make it easy to pool those capital investments — are starting to give production power back to the people. Says Benkler [Yale professor]: "This departs radically from everything we’ve seen since the Industrial Revolution."

Commerce is changing as a result of this new business platform, with successful examples such as e-Bay and more recently Skype. The graphic provided in the article is a good visual of the change from the Web 1.0 to 2.0, with Web 2.0 described as:

Many-to-Many: File-sharing, blogs and social networking services are connecting masses of people simultaneously. Their collective efforts are spawning new services including online encyclopedia Wikipedia and free netphone network Skype.

For an ongoing discussion of Web 2.0, including its influence on higher education, go to What’s Web 2.0? which is run by Will Pate.

 

Innovation & Disruption

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If you were interested in my previous post about Clayton Christensen’s model of disruptive innovation in his book Seeing What’s Next, then read these two articles by Dave Pollard. Dave has taken Christensen’s theories a step further and integrated other models to come up with a more prescriptive strategy for companies to approach innovation. His recommendations are boiled down to six steps, which he explains in detail in his posts:

  1. Research the strategy canvas for your industry [based on Blue Ocean strategy];
  2. Find out from each segment of customers (including low-end and current non-customers) what they value and what their unmet needs are;
  3. Compare the strategy canvasses to the needs of each segment;
  4. Find the gaps;
  5. Brainstorm and ‘imagineer’ how you can effectively, competently and profitably fill them; and
  6. Experiment, test, qualify and then roll out the qualifying innovation opportunities.

Now I just have to put these ideas to work in our latest start-up initiative …

A Culture of Dependence

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I’ve referred to Robert Paterson’s posts many times before and I like his approach of looking at the systemic causes of our economic and learning challenges. Rob has recently posted a document that outlines how to build a post-industrial economic model. It makes much use of the work of Rob Cross and Richard Florida. The premise is that we have to change our culture by developing loose networks that can become social spaces and later incubators for change and economic development. Rob gives some case studies in his paper and from a short distance I have watched this happen on PEI and it’s quite exciting. I think that this statement sums up Rob’s perspective:

Adventurous people create sustainable jobs not government. Buildings don’t create sustainable jobs. Creative people create sustainable jobs.

A different perspective comes from Moncton. David Campbell is a new featured blogger on CBC Radio One, where he discusses economic development. My reading of his blog is that we need to get more outside investment into the province so that we can create more jobs. Jobs equal economic development.

When Irving, UPM-Kymmene or any of the other large forestry companies in New Brunswick start closing their plants and laying off thousands of people (like Nackawic), I hope Veniot, Taylor and the NDP lady [CBC Radio political pundits] will be prepared to shoulder some of the blame. They, in effect, help shape public opinion on issues such as this. The forestry industry is a critical economic driver for the province. The industry is sending a very clear message. The government is delaying and the pundits are calling for politicians to "stand up" to the industry. "Fight for the rights of New Brunswickers".

One perspective is to grow our own business (Rob Paterson calls these jobs but many are in fact independent workers) while the other is to find large corporations that provide us with traditional industrial jobs. I think that being a salaried employee within a corporation is a state close to indentured servitude. The larger the corporation, the more dependent you are. You are dependent on someone or something else for your wage and in return you yield to the corporation. A population of salaried workers is in effect a dependent population – dependent on the corporations for jobs, security and economic vision. David’s reference to Nackawic shows how one town became completely dependent on one multinational employer, who left them on short notice. I see these two views as offering the choice of a new vision that will take longer to implement but will be more sustainable while the latter looks to continue the dominance of managerial capitalism. Rob’s view of local networks (of small businesses and free agents) that create local wealth and social security is more robust than David’s model of attracting more external capital to create jobs for indentured servants.

Given the extremely low costs of international communication today, we can connect to almost any market in the world, so our geographical location is no longer a limiting factor to our economic growth. Our culture of dependence is.

D-Day

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Another anniversary of D-Day and another year of being a free agent. Jarche Consulting is now at the ripe old age of two years – good enough for some cheeses but still too young for most wines.

Solving Tough Problems

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Solving Tough Problems by Adam Kahane is a short book with a powerful message. It is a series of stories about Kahane’s progress from an analytical researcher with a degree in physics to an internationally-recognized facilitator of participatory problem solving. I picked up this book in Montreal last week and later noticed that Kahane is originally from Montreal. He tells the story of his early work with Shell and the likes of Peter Senge and then the eye-opening Mont Fleur sessions in South Africa just prior to the end of apartheid. A major theme in the book is how to overcome ‘apartheid thinking’:

“My analysis also allowed me to recognize a widespread “apartheid syndrome”. By this I mean trying to solve a highly complex problem using a piecemeal, backward-looking, and authoritarian process that is suitable only for solving simple problems. In this syndrome, people at the top of a complex system try to manage its development through a divide-and-conquer strategy: through compartmentalization – the Africaans word apartheid means “apartness” – and command and control. Because the people at the bottom resist these commands, the syndrome either becomes stuck, or ends up becoming unstuck by force.”

At just under 150 pages, this is a short book but one that I will read many times over. The main lesson for me so far is that it is necessary to focus on listening, and that many answers are already there; we just have to relax and let them come to us. I see learning in the same way – when the learner is ready, the teacher will appear. As Kahane says, “If we want to help resolve complex situations, we have to get out of the way of situations that are resolving themselves”.

This way of approaching complex problems has worked, but requires a shift in approach, much like Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mind. This is where we don’t actually let go of our so-called ‘left brain’ analytical processes, but park them in order to open up our ‘right brain’ conceptualization and feeling abilities. Here is some advice from Kahane’s colleague at Shell, Alain Wouters:

There is not “a” problem out there that we can react to and fix. There is a “problem situation” of which each of us is a part, the way an organ is part of a body. We can’t see the situation objectively: we can just appreciate it subjectively. We affect the situation and it affects us. The best we can do is to engage with it from multiple persectives, and try, in action-learning mode, to improve it. It’s more like unfolding a marriage than it is like fixing a car.”

I strongly recommend this book for anyone working in groups, meetings, committees, or any other form of social organisation.

This New Business of Learning

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The New Brunswick learning industry is getting together in a couple of weeks to discuss several business opportunities. I won’t be there due to other commitments, but that’s what happens when you’re a free agent – you can’t be in two places at one time. I’m adding my comments before the meeting and I think that Godfrey Parkin’s recent post is a good place to start:

Corporate learning has to follow the Google’s “search & connect” model instead of the General Motors “produce and sell” model. Training purists sneer at “just-in-time” help systems, insisting that people need to know how to do things themselves. They undervalue collaborative learning networks, regarding them as somehow cheating. They fervently believe that adult learners must be led, child-like, through pre-determined learning paths mapped out and controlled by a central authority. They gauge the worth of an employee by his or her ability to survive on a corporate desert island, bereft of books, colleagues, mentors, databases, systems, or communication.

Jon Husband recently sent me a paper that synthesised some of the major forces of change in our digital lives. These include greater Internet access; the two-way web as the operating system; and the influence of open source business and development models. Taken together, they are giving individuals much more control and creating millions of separate markets. We’re all individuals and we all have access to the world’s information and can connect with pretty well anyone we want (think long tail). The basis of all business models has changed. The basis for the training business is changing too.

I have already talked about Google as the best learning platform around. No LMS can compete with it. Open source is also changing business models (witness Google again, or IBM or Novell), including service companies. A learning services firm has to stay ahead of the curve because even services can become rules-based and modular, making them ripe for competition from areas where wages are lower.

Lately, I heard that the current enterprise software development model is fundamentally flawed. I think that the same is true of many business principles that are taken for granted. That’s why everyone is looking for the next big thing. The key, in my opinion, is looking at the world with fresh eyes and listening with fresh ears. I wish good vision and hearing to my colleagues.

Ready for Work

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Ready for Work is a self-paced online study programme in the UK designed for potential and recent full-time education graduates. This is a free government-sponsored initiative to prepare people for the workforce:

  • Ready to learn
  • Thriving in diversity
  • Showing respect at work
  • Be enterprising!
  • Managing stress at work
  • Health and safety in the office
  • Making email work for you
  • Working with the internet
  • Data protection at work
  • Drugs and alcohol at work
  • Be a responsible employee;
  • Me and my career

One more online learning programme is not going to change the world but this initiative got me thinking about changes to our education systems. What if the government and industry sponsored more of these types of top-up programmes for job-ready skills? These could be targeted at those people just about to enter or re-enter the workforce. The education system could then move away from a focus on workplace skills and concentrate instead on learning skills. My experience is that the education system is so slow to change that by the time a new programme is implemented it’s already too late for current economic conditions.

Schools keep teaching yesterday’s work skills. Therefore the education system should focus on facilitating learning and critical thinking and media literacy and the like. When students are ready to enter the workforce they will then have the learning skills to blast through whatever job training interests them. Getting the education system out of the job training business may make for happier learners, teachers and parents.

Via The eLearning Centre

Real Time Collaboration Tools (cheap)

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As broadband becomes ubiquitous, synchronous (real time) web applications for learning and business are getting easier to implement. However, many of these systems are still quite expensive. Luigi Canali de Rossi (Robin Good) has an excellent video presentation that covers low-cost web collaboration tools such as voice over IP, web conferencing, screen sharing, document sharing, etc. This is worth 37 minutes of your time, especially if you intend to spend money in this area.