Work – Page 29 – Harold Jarche

Creating the AAA Organization

2016-11-022014-11-02 by Harold Jarche

For an organization to be agile and adaptive, the people in it need to be aware of what is happening around them, have alternative pathways to gather information and knowledge, and must be allowed to act to meet/solve both local and global goals/problems. They need to both work in their hierarchy and in a self-organizing network simultaneously! – Valdis Krebs, Orgnet

How can an organization build awareness, investigate alternatives, and act on complex problems? The organization needs to connect the outside with the inside. This is not a technology challenge but rather a structural one. Organizations need to help knowledge flow and this only happens when people are connected. Technology is a facilitator, but people are the key. This is too often overlooked, as in most enterprise social network implementations, where mere training is bolted on at the end of the technology build. Awareness, alternatives, and action can each be supported within a unified organizational framework.

Autonomous learners

2014-10-29 by Harold Jarche

When was the last course you took? How about e-learning? When was it designed? Was it current? Did it reflect your current reality? Was it useful?

One of the limitations of instructional design is the assumption that a program can be designed and built based on the initial specifications. Assuming you know everything at the start of a complex development project is rather arrogant. Arrogance is believing that the perfect system can be engineered on the first try.

The post-hierarchical organization

2016-11-022014-10-23 by Harold Jarche

The way we manage our organizations is largely ineffective for the complex challenges we face, whether driven by the environment, demographics, economics, or politics.

Hierarchies assume that management knows best and that the higher up the hierarchy, the more competent and knowledgeable that person is. But hierarchies are merely centralized networks. 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. Hierarchies are ineffective when things get complex.

Building the network era organization

2015-09-202014-10-15 by Harold Jarche

Part of the shift that organizations will have to make in the network era will be not only to add new dimensions, but to retrieve some old ones. Institutional life often required us to leave our family concerns at the door, and focus on the work to be done. In the military this could be for decades and in the church for life. Later we had to stay sharply focused on the hyper-competition of the market era. There was a battle to be done, and most marketing speak is still littered with military terms, taken from one of the largest institutions we ever created.

But we have shifted from a world dominated by Tribes, to one of Institutions, and currently a society of Markets. The next shift is to a world of Networks, as succinctly described in David Ronfeldt’s TIMN theory. According to TIMN, each new form has built upon and changed the previous mode. We are currently a predominantly triform society (T+I+M). What happens as we become a quadriform society (T+I+M+N) and what aspects of the other three will be helpful to provide balance?

The future is self-management

2014-10-13 by Harold Jarche

Two late 19th century theorists still firmly inform management thinking.

Henri Fayol’s functions of management pretty well sum up how many managers see their responsibilities today.

To forecast and plan
To organize
To command or direct
To coordinate

F.W. Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management viewed management as the necessary controlling layer in order to systematize work and make it efficient. If labourers could not adapt to managers’ directions, then they should be let go.

Learning quicker by failing safely

2014-10-102014-10-10 by Harold Jarche

I attended the Community Forests International planning session yesterday. This organization, located in our small town of Sackville, is working on two continents and recently received €1.2 million from the European Union for its work on the island of Pemba in Tanzania. The day included participation from many community groups, such as Renaissance Sackville, which I represented. It finished with a wine & cheese at Cranewood (a must-see for any visitor to town) which drew even more people from the community. I’d like to highlight what Jeff Schnurr, the founder had to say, as it reflects the advice I give to many organizations (my paraphrasing here).

The Zeitgeist

2016-12-072014-10-08 by Harold Jarche

The Zeitgeist (spirit of the age or spirit of the time) is the intellectual fashion or dominant school of thought that typifies and influences the culture of a particular period in time.

Rising from the ashes of management

2024-11-132014-10-01 by Harold Jarche

If you want to destroy the entrepreneurial nature of work, then make management part of the hierarchy. Removing management from the hierarchy is probably the simplest thing that could be done to improve innovation and increase the motivation of those who really create business value.

Management at Asana is seen as service role, rather than the next step in the pyramid on the org chart. The usual model, where exceptional work leads inevitably to the management track is a mistake, Rosenstein argues. “The effect of that is that individual work is looked down on,” he says. “That is so caustic.” – What managers do at a company that’s trying to replace them with software

Engaging Knowledge Artisans

2019-09-132014-09-24 by Harold Jarche

Every organization today is trying to address the changing nature of work, driven by rapid technological change, and made more complex by global changes in economics, politics, and resources. Simultaneously we are seeing rapid advances in all the sciences and their intersections. But what about our structures that organize how people work together? Providing better tools and developing individual skills only address part of the needs of the digital workplace. There is also a need for cognitive skills that enhance creativity and initiative. For example, working and learning out loud in online social networks significantly change the flow of knowledge and influence power structures. Pattern sensing becomes all important. Even leadership has to be exercised in a different way from the hierarchical organization, understanding the dynamics of networks.

Self-determination at work

2024-02-012014-09-17 by Harold Jarche

There’s a common saying that entrepreneurs should work on the business, and not in the business. It makes sense to stay above the day-to-day details in order to help steer the business. Perhaps it’s time to think of all businesses as networks of entrepreneurs. Everyone should be working on the business. As Peter Drucker said, “Nothing is less productive than doing what should not be done at all”. Being efficient at something that is not effective is a waste of time, and a cause for workers to mentally disconnect from the company. Efficiency for its own sake makes job a four-letter word.

How do you get an entrepreneurial mindset in a hierarchical, just-follow-the-rules, organization? Start by looking at what motivates people. Dan Pink popularized three key motivators in his book, Drive (2011): Autonomy, Mastery, Sense of Purpose. The basis of this is self-determination theory, which I think provides a much better understanding of motivation at work, and from which the following image comes.