Work

business & working

It’s all about conversations

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Markets are conversations —Cluetrain Manifesto

… and so are organizations.

The network design principles successful organizations follow are: ( 1 ) shortening the distance between two randomly picked files/nodes/people. ( 2 ) getting more people who you personally know to know each other. —Esko Kilpi

Conversations.

How do we have these at work? I mean real conversations, about work that matters.

We narrate our work.

This was very natural when people worked together.

Italian fishermen mending nets on wharf at foot of Union Street in San Francisco

 

Fishermen repairing their nets on the wharf at the foot of Union Street in San Francisco — Source: Wikimedia

Jane Hart, in a very preliminary survey, shows the top three ways that people prefer to learn at work:

  1. Collaborative working within your team
  2. Personal & professional networks & communities
  3. General conversations and meetings with people

It’s all about conversations.

But in too many organizations, the major obstacle is that teams are distributed, either geographically or in time; or people are too busy to have meaningful conversations. This is why narration of work is so important. It’s the only way that others will have the slightest clue about what you are doing. If they don’t, why would they want to continue working with you?

So let’s talk about work, in meaningful ways. If work is not worth discussing, why bother doing it?

Three Principles for Net Work

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Work is changing

The nature of work is changing in our increasingly networked economy. What was considered good, dependable work in the 20th century is now getting automated or outsourced. Automated tellers have replaced thousands of bank clerks but even more advanced jobs are getting automated as we connect the world with computers. The New York Times reported in March of 2011 that armies of expensive lawyers, who once did “discovery” work have been replaced by software programs that do the work at a fraction of the cost. The same applies to computer chip designers, loan officers and tax accountants. Furthermore, any work that can be outsourced is going to the place of cheapest labour, wherever in the world that may be.

The main driver behind this shift is the interconnectivity of the Internet. It enables hyper-competition, destroying geographical barriers for anything that can be digitized. This includes all information and visual products, from creative writing, to photography and video, to radiological images.

For knowledge workers, there is diminishing value in standardized work, as it will be either automated or outsourced over time. Standardized work usually falls into simple or complicated knowledge domains. According to the Cynefin knowledge management framework, developed by Dave Snowden, in the simple domain, “the relationship between cause and effect is obvious to all” while in the complicated domain, “the relationship between cause and effect requires analysis”. For each of these domains, jobs can be standardized and training can be designed based on accepted practices.

But longer term value today resides in non-standardized work that requires creativity, imagination and innovation. This type of work falls into Cynefin’s complex domain where, “the relationship between cause and effect can only be perceived in retrospect, but not in advance”.

Consider that neither training nor education can adequately prepare workers for the complex domain because there are no best practices, only emergent practices that have to be developed as the work gets done.

This is why, in the network era, work is learning and learning is the work.

Known Problems and Exceptions

Look at a knowledge worker and how things can get done in an interconnected enterprise. Any situation can first be examined from the perspective of being a known problem or not. If it is known, then the answer can be looked up or the correct person found to deal with it. That answer may have been automated and put into a digital knowledge base or even outsourced to a company overseas.

Known problems require access to the right information to solve them. This information can be mapped, and frameworks such as knowledge management (KM) help us to codify it. We can also create tools, especially electronic performance support systems (EPSS) to do the work and bypass any background knowledge in order to accomplish the task. This is how simple and complicated knowledge continuously gets automated.

If there is a new problem, or an exception, then the knowledge worker has to deal with it in a unique way. Exception-handling is becoming more important in the networked workplace as standardized work provides no competitive advantage in a hyper-connected economy. These complex exceptions need tacit knowledge to solve them, but tacit knowledge cannot be codified in a KM system or EPSS. Tacit and complex knowledge gets shared when people work together and develop trusted ties. Therefore, exception-handling requires more collaborative approaches to work.

In addition, once an exception is dealt with, it is no longer new. It is now known. As each exception get addressed, some or all of the solution will get automated. The exception boundary is a constantly changing edge that knowledge workers have to negotiate.

Yesterday’s exceptions will be tomorrow’s examples. The challenge is to make sense of both today. Today’s complex work is tomorrow’s merely complicated or even simple work.

Narration, Transparency and Power-sharing

Narration is making one’s tacit knowledge (what one feels) more explicit (what one is doing with that knowledge). Narrating work is a powerful behaviour changer, as long-term bloggers can attest.

In an organization, narration can take many forms. It could be a regular blog; sharing day-to-day happenings in activity streams; taking pictures and videos; or just having regular discussions. Developing good narration skills, like adding value to information, takes time and practice. Narrating work also means taking ownership of mistakes.

For example, just adding finished reports to a knowledge base does not help others understand how that report was developed. This is where activity streams and micro-blogging have helped organizational learning. Workers can see the flow of sense-making in small bits that over time become patterns. Humans are very good at pattern recognition. Narration of work is the first step in integrating learning into the workflow.

Transparency is an easy concept to understand but much more difficult to implement in an enterprise. It means switching the default mode to sharing. This can be enabled by social media, but social media also make the company culture transparent. A dysfunctional company culture does not improve with transparency, it just gets exposed.

With complex work, failure has to be tolerated, as there are no best practices for exceptions (this is why they are called exceptions). Transparency helps the organization learn from mistakes, but only if the mistakes are shared. Organizations cannot know what is known unless the entire business ecosystem is transparent. Workers need to be able find information fast, which is what McKinsey & Company has reported in the last two years as the main benefit of using social media in the enterprise: increasing speed of access to knowledge.

Distributed power enables faster reaction times so those closest to the situation can take action. In complex situations there is no time to write a detailed assessment. Those best able to address the situation have marinated in it for some time. They couldn’t sufficiently explain it to someone removed from the problem if they wanted to anyway. This shared power is enabled by trust. Power in knowledge-based organizations must be distributed in order to nurture trust. But the challenge, as John Hagel describes it, is “One of the big challenges for companies is that unlike information or data flows, knowledge does not flow easily – as it relies on long-term trust-based relationships”.

Jon Husband defines “wirearchy” as; “a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority based on information, knowledge, trust and credibility, enabled by interconnected people and technology.” This is the desired state, but getting there is difficult. Examples of shared-power organizations are growing (e.g. Semco SA; The Morning Star Company; W.L. Gore & Associates) but they are not yet the majority.

Conclusion

These three simple principles of narration, transparency, and shared power should provide enough guidance to motivated leaders in an organization. Implementation depends on the specific context of each organization and the ability to keep things in what I call, “perpetual Beta”.

Power-sharing and transparency enable work to move out to the edges and away from the comfortable, complicated work that has been the corporate mainstay for decades. There is nothing left in the safe inner parts of the company anyway, as it is being automated and outsourced.

The high-value work today is in facing complexity, not in addressing problems that have already been solved and for which a formulaic or standardized response has been developed. One challenge for organizations is getting people to realize that what they already know has increasingly diminishing value. How to learn and solve problems together is becoming the real business advantage.

 

 

Preparing for the future of work with PKM

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Hugh Macleod, one of my favourite cartoonists and someone who really understands the networked economy, recently asked; How Do You Best Prepare For The Creative Age?

Image: Gapingvoid.com

Chris Jablonski at ZDNet identifies five trends driving the future of work as we get virtual, online and global [I think he misses “local” though, especially as energy prices continue to increase]. Trend 4: Adaptive lifelong learning the norm -“Ten years from now, relevant work skills will be shaped by the continued rise in global connectivity, smart technology and new media, among several other drivers.” This is linked to the Institute for the Future‘s graphic of Future Work Skills 2020 identifying six disruptive shifts as well as the skills necessary to deal with them:

  1. Sense-making
  2. New media literacy
  3. Virtual collaboration
  4. Cognitive load management
  5. Novel and adaptive thinking
  6. Social intelligence
  7. Trans-disciplinarity
  8. Computational thinking
  9. Cross Cultural competency
  10. Design mindset

The first four of these skills are ones that the personal knowledge management framework  has been based on. For the past two years I have offered full-day workshops on PKM  at the University of Toronto’s iSchool Institute, with the final one scheduled for 1 June 2012 (Network Learning: Working Smarter). Feedback indicates that most people would prefer to do this online, so I experimented with a workshop that just finished last week. Here are some comments:

“There is a saying that “when the student is ready the master (teacher) shows up” and that is how I see this course.”

“Without any coherent strategy I often was not persistent in my undertakings. This course gave me an excellent opportunity to evaluate my position and to work out an appropriate approach.”

Future PKM workshops will be either custom designed for organizations who want these onsite, or conducted online at the Social Learning Centre, hosted by my colleague Jane Hart. Here are the details on online PKM workshops.

Shifting to Net Work

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Our first Net Work Literacy session ends this week. There were several reasons why Jane Hart and I decided to offer this two-week online programe. The idea first came to me as I realized how many of my clients and colleagues were not as connected as they could be, too often wasting their time on routine things and not building networks that could help them get work done.

I’ve also noticed that people in their mid to late job careers are woefully unprepared to adapt to a post-job world, where work is simultaneously connected, contractual, part-time, global and local. Once the job is gone, many also lose their professional networks. The Net Work Literacy programme aims at getting people to think in terms of networks, with a focus on taking control of their professional development.

Our programme is global in scope, with participants from four continents so far. However, a key to long term success in learning and working in a post-industrial society is connecting these global learning networks with one’s local community. As energy costs increase, more of our resources will have to be local. Using network skills at the local level, connected to a global support network, is one way to develop a sustainable way of life.

As we continue with the Net Work Literacy programme, I intend on getting more stories about what is happening in various localities and learn how people are dealing with what my friend Bill Draves calls a Nine Shift.

There are 24 hours in a day. We have no real discretion with roughly 12 of those hours. We need to eat, sleep, and do a few other necessary chores in order to maintain our existence. That hasn’t changed much through the centuries, so far.

That leaves approximately 12 hours a day where we, as individuals, do have some discretion. That includes work time, play time, and family time.

Of those 12 hours, about 75%, or 9 hours, will be spent totally differently a few years from now than they were spent just a few years ago. Not everything will change, but 75% of life is in the process of changing right now.

Employees are often laughing

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cluetrain modified

Here’s a modified version of theses 11 to 13 of the Cluetrain Manifesto (1999), for all those corporate personnel support functions (HR, L&D, OD, KM):

People in a networked society have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from the human resources department. So much for L&D rhetoric about adding value to commoditized learning content.

There are no secrets. Networked workers know more than management does about the company’s own products and services. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone. What’s already happened to markets is now happening among employees. A metaphysical construct called “The Company” is the only thing standing between the two.

Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy (Cluetrain #7)

shifting control

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In The Learning Workplace [dead link], Anne Marie McEwan describes “four profiles of learning workplaces according to structure, global reach, knowledge type, workstyle and social complexity”: Traditional, Emergent, Networked & Hyper-networked.

Many, if not most, companies today face the challenge of moving from a Traditional profile to what I would call “more networked” or somewhere between profiles 2, 3 & 4. This “shift to the right” includes:

  • Developing work structures that are less hierarchical, allow for more individual autonomy and some level of networked responsibility.
  • Expanding reach to be more global, as the Internet seeps into all aspects of business.
  • Incorporating ways of sharing increasingly complex knowledge.
  • Shifting away from a focus on place of work and number of hours worked toward more virtual and mobile connections with workers.
  • Enabling complex social interactions to develop trusted relationships across distances.

These shifts are corroborated by much of the current literature on social business. The big question is: how do we get there? While an even more pressing question may be: how do we get started?

Look at what is common across all these factors – control.

I was chatting today with a friend of mine who works for a large multinational corporation. His main frustration is the level of control throughout the company. Many days he spends most of his time dealing with one support department or another, which has control across the company. Each time an exception occurs, the control measures are inadequate to deal with it and the central authority lacks any local contextual knowledge. My friend gets frustrated, as this is often at the expense of the client. He also says that these exceptions are steadily becoming the norm.

First Step: An initial audit of control measures that no longer make sense would be a good place to start the voyage from a traditional to a networked workplace. Just ask those who do the work where less control would help get the job done.

  1. What authorizations (budget, vacation, time off, travel, etc.) require more time than they are worth?
  2. How can we make it easier to connect with co-workers who are not at your workplace?
  3. How can we make it easier to share and access know-how?
  4. When and where would you prefer to work to be more productive?
  5. Who do you need to get to know better to enhance your work? (customer, supplier, co-worker, etc.)

Second Step: Now take that information and start doing something about it.

Social business drives workforce development

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In a workscape perspective I described how new frameworks help management, HR and L&D professionals get away from the trees to see the forest of workforce development.

Earlier, in Bridging the Gap; Working Smarter, I explained how loose external networks are necessary to have access to diverse opinions, while work teams need to share complex knowledge and therefore have to build strong, collaborative relationships.

Communities of practice are the bridges between the work being done and diverse social networks, fostering cooperation without hierarchical structure.

Basically, collaboration is necessary to do complicated, but manageable, project tasks; while a looser form of cooperation helps to understand more complex and not yet manageable problems. Cooperation is moving from a soft skill to a required hard skill.

From this perspective, the best way to develop internal workforce support structures (what used to be called learning & development) is from the outside in.

Start with what is being constantly learned in professional social networks and harvest it for insights.

Discuss these ideas cooperatively in communities of practice and then test out ways to enhance collaboration (Probe-Sense-Respond).

Through collaborative work, get feedback on where performance support may be required and if training is needed.

In this way, the externally focused social business, and everyone in it, drives the development tools and methods to support the work being done.

Everyone is involved in what used to be the instructional design process, but now there is a focus on collaboration first, performance support when needed, and training as the last choice.

A workscape perspective

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There are few best practices for the network era workplace, but definitely many next practices to be developed. A good place to start is with an integrative performance framework that puts formal training and education where they belong: focused on the appropriate 5%.

Jay Cross calls the new performance environment a workscape:

Workscape: A metaphorical construct where learning is embedded in the work and emerges in “pull” mode. It is a fluid, holistic, process. Learning emerges as a result of working smarter. In this environment learning is natural, social, spontaneous, informal, unbounded, adaptive and fun. It involves conversation as the main ingredient.

Workscapes are not new structures but rather holistic ways of looking at and reformulating existing business infrastructure. They use the same networks and social media as the business itself, but technology is never the most important part. Foremost are people, their motivations, emotions, attitudes, roles, their enthusiasm or lack thereof, and their innate desire to excel. Technology connects people.

Workscapes go far beyond traditional training and instructional services. Jane Hart has developed a comprehensive framework for the support of workplace learning and performance. Note in the centre that “learning needs to be embedded in the workflow“. This is the premise from which all organizational support must flow.

Another perspective, from Charles Jennings, uses the 70-20-10 framework to prioritize performance support. “If you keep people in the workflow, and provide them with facilities and support for learning, the learning is more effective, faster and efficient.”

A workscape perspective can help management, HR and L&D professionals get away from the trees to see the forest,  because business is a complex, interconnected ecosystem today.

Working on Internet Time

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An artisan is a skilled manual worker in a particular craft, using specialized processes, tools and machinery. Artisans were the dominant producers of goods before the Industrial Revolution. Knowledge artisans of the post-industrial era are retrieving old world care and attention to detail, but using the latest tools and processes in an interconnected economy.

Artisans did not watch the clock and neither do knowledge artisans.

rp_time-at-work-460x319.jpg

Next generation knowledge artisans are amplified versions of their pre-industrial counterparts. Equipped with and augmented by technology, they rely on their human capital and skill to solve complex problems and develop new ideas, products and services. Small groups of highly productive knowledge artisans are capable of producing goods and services that used to take substantially larger teams and resources. In addition to redefining how work is done, knowledge artisans are creating new organizational structures and business models. Knowledge artisans are retrieving the older artisanal model and re-integrating previously separate skills.

Knowledge Artisans not only design the work but can also do the work. It is not passed down an assembly line. Many integrate marketing, sales and customer service with their creations. To ensure that they stay current, they become members of various “Guilds”, known today as communities of practice or knowledge networks. One of the earliest knowledge guilds was the open source community which developed many of the communication tools and processes used by knowledge artisans today: distributed work; results-only work environments (your code speaks for you); RSS, blogs & wikis for sharing; agile programming; flattened hierarchies, etc.

It is hard to be a knowledge artisan in a hierarchical organization that tells you what to do and which tools to use. Today, we are seeing the more experienced and adventurous knowledge artisans leaving, while younger skilled artisans are not joining command & control organizations.

Are knowledge artisans the mainstay of the network era economy? If so, what does that mean for your organization or business?

Building an alliance

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A study of international alliances found that two-thirds  of the alliances between equally matched partners were successful but where there was a significant  imbalance of power almost 60% of alliances failed. Consequently in the case of a formal joint venture equal ownership is the most successful structure, 50-50 ownership being twice as likely to succeed as other ownership structures. ~ Managing Collaboration

When we created the Internet Time Alliance we were five independent consultants, all with many years working alone. We wanted to do something together but did not want to become a typical professional services company, with principals, junior staff and administrative support, all driven by sales & marketing.

Now the six of us continue to work as individuals but we are increasingly realizing the power of our alliance, which is driven by our almost daily narration of our professional work. Internally, we are completely transparent and it’s often quite amazing how quickly we can put something together, as we draw on our specific strengths and connections. More and more we are working together, sometimes in pairs, or even as a group.

People often ask, what does Internet Time Alliance really mean? Well first of all, we are all free-agents, with our individual professional practices, but we are also co-owners of our UK-based company. That means we have business presences in four countries. Jay calls internet time, the accelerated timeframe of the new economy brought on by eBusiness and the Internet. A year of Internet time may equal 7 years of calendar time. We think wikipedia’s definition of alliance aligns with our practice, “An agreement or friendship between two or more parties, made in order to advance common goals and to secure common interests“.

One of our common goals is the democratization of work and learning, as Jay discussed recently during his trip to India and I talked about in relation to social business.

Our interlaced networks are dominated by innovators and early adopters. Most of us are early adopters in that we put into practice much of what we recommend. For example, we were early to blogging and Twitter. When our clients are ready to cross the technology adoption chasm, we can be the pathfinders. We learn from our mistakes by talking about them. We’ve learned that solving problems together is becoming the real business imperative. Sharing and using knowledge is where emerging business value lies.

Image via Wikipedia

Because our work is often on the complex and chaotic edge, our business will not grow like a traditional company. There is no formula to bottle and sell. An alliance is a business model suited for a networked world and we think it’s a good one to try out. While there is no template to follow, a good starting point is to develop a network culture.

Build trust over time by doing things together. Nurture the good things that emerge and bypass the negative things. There is no need to dwell on your weaknesses. Focus on your strengths. No contract, mission statement or charter is going to create a working alliance. We had the advantage that many of us had worked together or had known each other for a long time prior to creating the alliance.

Our own business model stays in perpetual Beta and we are often trying new “probes” to see what happens. Everything is filtered through our online conversations, often in our private activity stream, but sometimes in public, like this post. If you want to create an alliance, start with openness, transparency and diversity; but trust is what will keep you together.