Just as farmhands were replaced by machines 100 years ago, so too will knowledge workers be replaced by networked computers in the next few decades. Last century, those farmhands had the option of moving to the city and working in factories, but what are the alternatives for today’s knowledge workers? It is not likely to be a new job, as the job itself is being made obsolete, underlined by 54 million freelancers in the USA today, accounting for almost 1/4 of working-age adults.
Work
business & working
work, learning & leadership
How we organize and get things done as governments, communities, and companies needs to change. We are shifting to a new economy, with global surveillance, and new ways of work. As we shift from a society focused on institutions and markets and prepare to enter the network area, three areas require greater emphasis.
the execution of education
“it pisses me off that business schools virtually ignore sales, while fawning over marketing” – Tom Peters
Marketing is relatively easy to teach. Doing sales takes time, practice, and feedback. It’s fairly obvious why universities prefer to teach marketing. I don’t know of any programs where students do real sales calls. I guess that’s for after graduation.
co-creation as a service
Give people fish & you feed them for a day
Teach people to fish & you feed them for a lifetime
Help people learn for themselves how to fish & you prepare them for life in perpetual beta
Most best practices are self-evident, whereas the problems that consume our time and efforts are usually complex. Instead of looking for best or good practices, we should take the time and money to invest in an experiment. What works for one organization often will not work for another. There are too many variables, and the environment keeps changing. However, examples of emergent practices can inform us, as long as we see them as guide posts, not rule books.
Currently, I offer online workshops on personal knowledge mastery and social learning. These have been highly successful and involve cohorts of participants from a wide variety of backgrounds. As one of the objectives is to learn from each other, this diversity increases the potential for serendipitous learning. I use what we learn to inform internally conducted workshops. My focus in all of my work is co-creation as a service.
the self-governance maturity model
“If we emphasize Autonomy, the Node Artifact, Autonomy as the core organizing principle, this will result in individuals, small groups and tribes, forming complex responsive flows e.g. through conversations and flexible ad hoc structures.” —John Kellden
In the triple operating system (Awareness>Alternatives>Action) work gets done by self-governing work teams with a degree of autonomy operating in temporary, negotiated hierarchies. Self-organizing teams are more flexible than hierarchical ones, but they require active and engaged members. One cannot cede power to the boss, because everyone is responsible for the boss they choose. Like democracy, self-organized teams require constant effort to work. Hierarchies work well when information flows mostly in one direction: down. They are good for command and control. Hierarchies can get things done efficiently. But hierarchies are useless to create, innovate, or change. Hierarchies in perpetual beta are optimal for creativity and to deal with complexity.
a triple operating system
Governance, business, and learning models are moving from centralized control to network-centric foundations. For instance, coalition governments are increasing in frequency, businesses are organizing in value networks, and collaborative and connected learning is becoming widespread. In these cases, collaboration (working for a common objective) and cooperation (sharing freely without direct reciprocity) flow both ways.
There are advocates for a dual operating system to deal with the complexity of the networked era: one that is hierarchical and another that is networked. This may make more sense than an elaborate 8-step model but the duality misses an important connection between structured work and cooperative networks. That space is the community of practice, which is neither project team nor professional network. Networks provide new ideas and perspectives from their diverse weak social ties. Work teams often have to share complex knowledge, and this requires strong social ties. Communities of practice are the bridge between these two, where we can test new ideas in a trusted space. This trinity is not three separate operating systems. It is one, that without the others is ineffective.
the bridge from education to experience
“Apprenticeship is the way we learn most naturally. It characterized learning before there were schools, from learning one’s language to learning how to run an empire.” – Cognitive Apprenticeship: Making Thinking Visible
In the apprenticeship model, novices learn under the tutelage of a master, but for the most part are assisted by journeymen, who are qualified in their trade but not yet masters. The amount of formal education in this model is usually around 10%.
“The journeyman license certifies that the craftsman has met the requirements of time in the field (usually a minimum of 8,000 hours) and time in an approved classroom setting (usually 700 hours).” – Wikipedia
A cursory look at several Canadian trades programs confirm this general ratio of 10% education to 90% field experience.
70:20:10 – a useful model
“essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful” – George Box
The shift to the network era will not be easy for many people and most organizations. Common assumptions about how work gets done have to be discarded. Established ways of earning education credentials will be abandoned for more flexible and meaningful methods. Connections between disciplines and professions are growing, and artificial boundaries will continue to crack. Systemic changes to business and education will happen. There will be disruption on a societal level as we enter what is looking more and more like a post-job economy.
Learning is a critical part of working in a creative economy. Being able to continuously learn, and share that new knowledge, will be as important as showing up on time was in the industrial economy. Continuous learning will also disrupt established hierarchies as no longer will a management position imply greater knowledge or skills. Command and control will be replaced by influence and respect, in order to retain creative talent. Management in networks means influencing possibilities rather than striving for predictability. We will have to accept that no one has definitive answers anymore, but we can use the intelligence of our networks to make sense together.
the trinity model
Update: see implementing a triple operating system for a more current view
—
Following up on my last post, the network era trinity, I have put together two images to synthesize the multiple concepts behind them. These images are my attempt to create a simple model that explains how networked organizations need to operate differently.
- Individuals must be supported in interacting with diverse social networks, as part of their work, to enhance the possibility of serendipitous connections. This is the practice of PKM.
- Communities of practice must be supported as safe places to test out new ideas. This is where HR and L&D departments can play a significant role.
- Working on complex or creative projects is the realm of human activity in the network era. These teams are effective as temporary negotiated hierarchies that can be reformed as the situation changes.
- Every worker is involved in all three of these spaces continuously, therefore working and learning are not separate activities.
- Knowledge flows from implicit personal knowledge and is socialized while learning with communities or working in groups. The organization can curate knowledge from the flows of discussions among its workers and codify it in systems of record.