Work

business & working

agile sensemaking

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“Complex environments represent a continuous challenge for sensemaking in organizations. Continuous ambiguity exerts continuous pressures on organizations to modify their patterns of interaction, information flow and decision making. Organizations struggle to address situations that are precarious, explanations that are equivocal and paradoxical, and cognitive dilemmas of all kinds. This creates a demand for innovative approaches in sensemaking. Since agility is what is required in navigating complexity, we can call these new approaches ‘agile sensemaking.'” —Bonnita Roy

Working in complex environments requires constant sensemaking, connecting outside the organization with the work being done inside. Increasing awareness of new ideas, methods, and processes often comes through serendipitous encounters outside the workflow. Radical innovation can appear here. Radical innovation only comes from diverse networks with large structural holes, according to Steve Borgatti. This is why our social networks cannot also be our work teams, or they become echo chambers. In our work teams we can focus on incremental innovation, to get better at what we already do. This is collaboration. Communities of practice then become a bridge on this network continuum.

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connected coaching

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“Teaching and coaching are fundamentally about helping making other people better. Learning to do this can’t be done via shortcuts. It requires a willingness to be patient, to take your time and have a deep desire to develop your craft.” —@IamSporticus

My work over the past several decades has confirmed that the best leaders are constant learners. The essence of leadership or management in organizations today is helping make your networks smarter, more resilient, and able to make better decisions. Those in leadership positions need to be good learners.

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self-determination ensures democracy

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Self-determination theory (SDT) is based on three innate human requirements: Competence, Relatedness, and Autonomy.

Deci and Ryan [the researchers] claim that there are three essential elements of the theory:

1. Humans are inherently proactive with their potential and mastering their inner forces (such as drives and emotions)
2. Humans have an inherent tendency toward growth development and integrated functioning
3. Optimal development and actions are inherent in humans but they don’t happen automatically

If we change our operating models we can change the world. Models premised on SDT will serve the needs of everyone, not just management or the shareholders.

“Psychological self-determination is expressed in three different dimensions. In the first dimension people want to live their lives the way they choose to live it. This is the sense of sanctuary. The second way people express their psychological self-determination is in the widespread desire for voice: we want to be heard and we want our voices to matter. The third way we want our psychological self-determination to be expressed is in our desire to be connected: we want to be part of communities.” —The Support Economy

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business schools are a technology of the last century

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Our dominant models of how we organize and work as a society are fundamentally changing as we transition from an Information-Market economy to a Creative-Network economy. Charles Green succinctly explained the order in which this transition happens:

“Ideas lead technology. Technology leads organizations. Organizations lead institutions. Then ideology brings up the rear, lagging all the rest—that’s when things really get set in concrete.”

I broke this down in detail in a post on the new business ideology. This was further explained in Adapting to Perpetual Beta, my volume on leadership in the network era.

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automation + capitalism = a perfect storm

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I have often discussed the automation of work here and how we need to focus our development and education efforts on human competencies that cannot be done by software or machines. But is automation really the major cause of workplace disruption? For example, in Sweden automation is welcomed by workers who have state support systems for unemployment and retraining. But these supports are not available in many developed countries like Canada or the USA.

In previous technological shifts, such as one hundred years ago when agrarian field workers left for factory jobs in the city, more jobs were created. Today we do not see that, as is evidenced by the growing number of freelancers and people cobbling together several part-time jobs in order to make a living. In addition, many new jobs do not have pension plans and trade unions have lost much of their influence.

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soft skills are human skills

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Creative people are at all levels of an organization, including the janitor, and are not ‘human resources’ but individuals who have the capability of  gaining wisdom. What are often referred to as ‘soft skills’ are becoming more important than traditional hard skills. Why is this? First of all, work in networks requires different skills than in controlled hierarchies. Information and knowledge flow faster and new connections are constantly being made. The status quo is temporary. This is life in perpetual beta. It is in networks where most of us, and our children, will be working for the foreseeable future.

Cooperation

A foundational behaviour for effectively working in networks is cooperation. Cooperation presumes the freedom of individuals to join and participate. In a network, people cannot be directed, only influenced. If they don’t like you, they won’t connect. It is like being on Twitter with no followers and never getting Retweeted (RT). You are a lone node and of little value to the network. In a hierarchy you only have to please your boss. In a network you have to be seen as having some value, though not the same value, by many others.

Cooperation is not the same as collaboration, though they are complementary. Collaboration requires a common goal while cooperation is sharing without any specific objectives. Teams, groups, and markets collaborate. Online social networks and communities of practice cooperate. Working cooperatively requires a different mindset than merely collaborating on a defined project. Being cooperative means being open to others outside your group and casting off business metaphors based on military models (target market, chain of command, line & staff).

We are moving from a market economy to a network economy and the the level of complexity is increasing with this hyper-connectedness. Managing in complex adaptive systems means influencing possibilities rather than striving for predictability (good or best practices). Cooperation in our work is needed so that we can continuously develop emergent practices demanded by this complexity. What worked yesterday won’t work today. No one has the definitive answer any more but we can use the intelligence of our networks to make sense together and see how we can influence desired results. This is cooperation and this is the future, which is already here, albeit unevenly distributed.

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we don’t need no stinking hierarchies

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When we think of management we usually think of control over others. Management decides. F.W. Taylor in the early 20th century saw management as the necessary controlling layer in order to systematize work and make it efficient and so developed his Principles of Scientific Management. If labourers could not adapt to managers’ directions, then they should be let go. Managers decide and workers carry out their wishes. The common assumption was that work cannot get done without management and that relationship must be hierarchical with managers in layers above those doing the work. But perhaps this situation is merely a lack of adequate technology?

Gwynne Dyer showed how tyranny was a requirement to organize societies that could not freely communicate on a massive scale. They lacked the technology to talk to each other and make collective decisions effectively and efficiently.

“The mass societies had many more decisions to make, and no way of making them in the old, egalitarian way. Their huge numbers made any attempt at discussing the question as equals impossible, so the only ones that survived and flourished were the ones that became brutal hierarchies. Tyranny was the solution to what was essentially a communications problem.” —Gwynne Dyer

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the random organization

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“Post-industrial work is learning. Work is figuring out how to define and solve a particular problem and then scaling up the solution in a reflective and iterative way – with technology and alongside other people.”
“The future of work has to be based on willing participation by all parties, and the ability of all parties to protect their interests by contractual means.” —Esko Kilpi

This week I had the privilege of co-presenting a session on the future of work and the role of learning to the EMBA students at the Berlin School of Creative Leadership. Esko Kilpi told a story of visiting an Amazon warehouse and how tubes of toothpaste would arrive in a large crate and then individual tubes would be placed randomly throughout the warehouse, wherever there was room. Using RFID, the computer system knew where each tube was located. This random network of objects, instead of all similar types being grouped together, reduced order fulfilment time by about 70%. Esko explained that random networks are actually more effective at making connections. This reminded me of Dave Weinberger’s book, Everything is Miscellaneous.

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retrieving gender balance

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This is a follow-up post from our future is networked & feminine.

Power & Media

The TIMN model, developed by David Ronfeldt describes how human societies have organized: first in Tribes, later with Institutions added (T+I), and in our current society where Markets dominate (T+I+M). As we enter an era where the Network form (T+I+M+N) gains dominance, most of the previous organizational forms will evolve to adapt to the new form. The Network form puts into question our current market-dominated forms, including our institutions and our families. Consider that the nuclear family is no longer the dominant Tribal form in many developed countries. Fewer people have faith in our existing institutions and our capitalist markets are seen as inadequate in distributing wealth. One example is the move to establish a universal basic income in many countries because our markets are unable to effectively distribute wealth.

The TIMN model aligns with changes in how we communicate: Tribes were mostly Oral, Institutions developed with the Written word, Markets were enabled by Print, and Networks communicate Electrically, fragmenting linear literacy. One potential aspect of the Network era is that it will retrieve a more Oral form of discourse, albeit in a new, electric manner. After thousands of years where Writing and Print have dominated, we may be retrieving some aspects of a Tribal society.

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vanity fare

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There are many rankings and listings published for most industries and fields. There are also industry prizes, like the Academy Awards or the BAFTA film awards. With some you even have to pay to submit your application. I work in several fields and from time to time get listed as an influencer in some category. Too often these awards and rankings have no published criteria so they appear from the outside to be nothing more than a popularity contest.

If there are no criteria, then these lists or rankings are similar to vanity metrics. They feel good but tell you little.

I have only appeared on two listings that include selection criteria.

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