Work

business & working

Resetting learning and work

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A large portion of the workforce face significant barriers to being autonomous learners on the job. From early on we are told to look to authority and direction in learning and work. The idea that there is a right answer, or an expert with the right answer, begins in our schools. John Taylor Gatto describes this in the seven-lesson schoolteacher.

The fifth lesson I teach is intellectual dependency. Good people wait for a teacher to tell them what to do. It is the most important lesson, that we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves, to make the meanings of our lives. The expert makes all the important choices; only I, the teacher, can determine what you must study, or rather, only the people who pay me can make those decisions which I then enforce. If I’m told that evolution is a fact instead of a theory, I transmit that as ordered, punishing deviants who resist what I have been told to tell them to think. This power to control what children will think lets me separate successful students from failures very easily.

Good employees wait for their supervisor to tell them what to do. In much of the industrial/service/information workplace you’re not paid to think, but to do the bidding of someone else. I know this is changing in many places, but a job is still a JOB.

Today, more of our learning is on the job so that formal training is an increasingly smaller percentage of what we need to get things done. Our informal learning needs will continue to grow, as Robert Kelley showed over a 20-year CMU study of knowledge workers. He asked:

“What percentage of the knowledge you need to do your job is stored in your own mind?”

1986 ~ 75%.
1997 ~ 20%
2006 ~ 10%

Workers need to take control of their learning, just at a time when the great majority (especially baby boomers) have been educated by the system that Gatto describes above and have endured countless hours of training measured by hours in a classroom. The crows have been culled from many flocks of turkeys.

Here’s a quote from Peter Drucker’s 2005 article Managing Oneself, in HBR (Slideshare Synopsis of Managing Oneself):

The challenges of managing oneself may seem obvious, if not elementary. And the answers may seem self-evident to the point of appearing naïve. But managing oneself requires new and unprecedented things from the individual, and especially from the knowledge worker. In effect, managing oneself demands that each knowledge worker think and behave like a chief executive officer. Further, the shift from manual workers who do as they are told to knowledge workers who have to manage themselves profoundly challenges social structure. Every existing society, even the most individualistic one, takes two things for granted, if only subconsciously: that organizations outlive workers, and that most people stay put.

Tom Peters called this change in mindset, Brand You and predicted over a decade ago that “90+ percent of White Collar Jobs will be totally reinvented/reconceived in the next decade”. Has yours? I don’t think we’re there yet.

For years, I put forth practical methods, like Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) and Skills 2.0 as one part of the equation. The other part is changing organizational structures.

Dan Pink says we’re moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. Like artists, we need to see and learn for ourselves. The great challenge for knowledge workers is to become knowledge managers – managers of their own knowledge. It’s accepting life in perpetual Beta.

However, we don’t have to do this alone. We can become independent while embracing our interdependence. We just need to get over our dependence on others who “provide a job” or “give us an education”. It’s not theirs to give. It’s ours to co-create.

I’ve learned a lot working for myself these past eight years. I’ve had to figure many things out on my own. Freelancing started the day after I was laid-off. PKM was my way of dealing with the fact of no professional development budget. But I learned with the help of others, most recently my colleagues at the Internet Time Alliance.  

Taking control of our learning and our work isn’t really a revolution. It’s more like a reset to the proper default position for the conceptual age.

Adapting to Life in Perpetual Beta

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On my services page, I [used to] have summarized my perspectives on 21st century work. It’s called: Adapting to Life in Perpetual Beta.

  1. There is no such thing as a social media strategy.
  2. There are only business strategies that understand networks.
  3. Collaborative and distributed work is becoming the norm.
  4. Social learning is how work gets done in networks.
  5. Sharing, enabling conversations and transparency are some of the values of networked business.
  6. This is done through knowledge-sharing, self-directed learning and user-generated content.
  7. Learning is part of work, not separate from it.

This too, is in perpetual Beta …

Journey to the edge

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This past week I was involved in many stimulating conversations with some very interesting people. The theme of new organizational structures came up and it was observed that one challenge we have is in addressing our inherent tribal nature. There is a strong need to belong to something, which can detract from critical thinking and questioning the inherent assumptions of our structures. Another growing challenge is how do skilled, motivated and intelligent managers deal with dysfunctional organizations? I get asked this question quite often as many very good people just seem to be stuck in the job/mortgage/pension trap. How can we get off this treadmill?

One very important observation on organizational change is that anthropology does not scale like technology does. Trying to solve someone’s problem from the outside only results in the problem being changed from the inside. We have to solve our own problems and that takes time. For example, a polycentric approach encourages design at the local level, with certain design principles (like a pattern language) instead of answers. So how can we take action on observations like those in my last post – 21st century workplace – and start the journey to the complex and chaotic edge? My aim, with my partners at the ITA and TULSER, is to find and map some of these pathways.

 

The 21st century workplace: moving to the edge

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The evidence of simple and (merely) complicated work getting automated and outsourced is widespread. Meanwhile, the business imperative is to be innovative, creative and agile.  The current Canada Post strike is evidence of this shift, with workers reacting against a major automation initiative. The postal automation process currently has significant flaws, but who thinks these cannot be solved in some future iteration? What is the future of complicated work, such as mail sorting and delivery? Rather bleak, I would think. However, solving a customer’s unique problem of getting pieces of art to several remote locations can be complex. There will always be complex problems that cannot be solved through automation.

I’ve used this concentric model to describe the networked workplace in recent posts:

emergent workplace

Basically, valued work in the 21st century workplace is moving to the outer rings to deal with growing complexity and chaos. The high-value work is in facing complexity, not in addressing problems that have already been solved and for which a formulaic or standardized response has been developed.

Dave Jonassen has said that as adults, most people are paid to do only one thing – solve problems. When dealing with work problems we can categorize the response as either known or new. 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 map it. We can also create tools, especially electronic performance support systems (EPSS) to do work and not have to learn all the background knowledge in order to accomplish the task. This is how simple and complicated knowledge gets automated.

new known

Complex, new problems need tacit knowledge to solve them. Exception-handling is becoming more important in the networked workplace. The system handles the routine stuff and people, usually working together, deal with the exceptions. As these exceptions get addressed, some or all of the solution can get automated, and so the process evolves.

The 21st century workplace, with its growing complexity due to our inter-connectivity, requires that we focus on new problems and exception-handing. This increases the need for collaboration (working together on a problem) and cooperation (sharing without any specific objective).

One challenge for organizations is getting people to realize that what they know has little value. How to solve problems together is becoming the real business imperative. Sharing and using knowledge is where business value lies. With computer systems that can handle more and more of our known knowledge, the 21st century worker has to move to the complex and chaotic edge to get the real (valued & paid) work done. In 50 years, this may not be an issue, but right now there are many people who need help with this challenge. This is the important work of leaders everywhere: enabling the current workforce to enter the 21st century.

Riding the roller coaster

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roller-coaster

It’s been a roller coaster of a ride for the past eight years but I’m still here, freelancing, blogging and trying to figure out life in perpetual Beta. So on my eighth anniversary as a free agent, I would like to thank all the wonderful people in my communities (virtual and physical) and networks (professional and personal) for their help, support, understanding, insight and humour. I’d also like to thank all the people who have taken time to comment on my writing and extend my own thinking.

Last year at this time, I wrote about what I had learned as a free agent. Those lessons still stand. In retrospect, I think that the seven year mark may have been The Dip that Seth Godin refers to in his book, and I’m glad I decided to stick it through.

I’ve been travelling a lot more this year, with three speaking engagements already for The Conference Board of Canada, in addition to my teaching at University of Toronto’s iSchool Institute. I have an upcoming engagement at MODSIM [now cancelled] in Ottawa plus several scheduled speaking events in the Fall, such as CSTD and SIBOS. All of these mean meeting new people, connecting with old friends and having an opportunity to learn more.

I’m also very grateful for my colleagues at the Internet Time Alliance. With Charles, Clark, Jane and Jay along for the ride, the roller coaster is a lot more fun.

Connecting with Communities of Practice

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This month, The Learning Circuits blog asks how do we break down organizational walls when it comes to learning?

One way to look at this problem is to see what kind of work needs to get done in the organization. For example, if you are trying to balance the need to support complex work with innovation, as many knowledge-intensive companies are, then there are different needs to be simultaneously addressed. Complex work requires strong ties and high levels of trust to enable work teams to function. This often has to be done behind the firewall to protect competitive secrets. On the other hand, innovation needs loose ties and a wide network to get diverse points of view. This means working outside the firewall on the wide open Web.

Communities of Practice, supported by skilled community managers and appropriate knowledge-sharing tools can bridge these two areas. They can provide a lightly structured forum to bring outside ideas inside the organization, to multiple teams, while not detracting from the work being done in individual projects.

 

Job automation

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I’ve said it so often now that you may be bored with the notion, but many people do not understand it at all. Simple work is getting automated and complicated work is getting outsourced — Automated & Outsourced.

On top of that, what was complicated yesterday is merely simple today and hence will be automated. Daniel Lemire has an interesting take on what automation will do to not just business but also politics:

In fact, most jobs require little general intelligence:

  • Jobs are highly specialized. You can sum up 80% of what most people do with 4 or 5 different specific tasks. In most organizations, it is a major faux pas to ask the wrong person: there is a one-to-one matching between people and tasks.
  • Jobs don’t require that you to understand much of what is going on. You only need to fake some understanding of the context the same way a spam filter fakes an understanding of your emails. Do you think that the salesman at the appliance store knows why some dishwashers have a shredder and some don’t, and why it matters? Do you think that the professors know what the job market is like for their graduates?

A key part of the problem is the job. Politicians want “job creation” and people want jobs to be able to feed their families and pay the bills. But the job is nothing more than a social construct. I think it’s outlived its usefulness, as I found out last year. The construct of the job, with its defined skills, effort, responsibilities and working conditions, is a key limiting organizational factor for the conceptual economy. We need to get beyond it.

In order to realize the creative potential of individuals we have to cast off old notions of how work gets done. There is no such thing as a generic  job description into which we just drop some “qualified” candidate. Job competencies are a myth. People are individuals. The role of an effective HR department would be to know each person individually. The fact is that everyone can be creative, including the janitor.

Understanding and incorporating humanity back into our work will liberate us from the industrial, scientific management models that inform too much of our work. It will also help us deal with all those complex problems that are really keeping us up at night.

 

New Hire Practices

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I know that there are no “best practices” in new hire development, also known as onboarding, as each organization is unique and often rather complex. However, there are some practices that could make onboarding better in certain contexts. I’ve looked at several examples and am very interested in unique practices (outliers) beyond the corporate norm.

I’d appreciate any unique examples if you can share them.

Unemployed Girl by Kazimir Malevich (1904)

Reference: Onboarding bookmarks on Diigo

Here are some of the key themes that I found about onboarding programs across many organizations.

Personal, dedicated coaching for each new hire (Capital One, Nokia).

Connecting each new hire to to key contacts in the organization (Capital One, Nokia). Note that Nokia will even pay for new hires to travel to other locations to meet their key contacts and co-workers.

Ensuring new hires understand the shadow or informal part of the organization through the use of tools such as network maps (Jon Katzenbach, Senior Partner of Booz & Company, author of The Wisdom of Teams).

Pairing with another worker or even tripling with two experienced workers and getting to work immediately, in order to reduce formal training (Menlo Innovations)

Two actions that can begin even before a formal offer is made:

  1. Providing access to an online knowledge base.
  2. Connecting to an internal social network to connect online & ask questions.

Embedding collaboration from the start by co-developing an individualized new hire program.

Giving time for new hires to just look around and talk to people (Semco SA; New Seasons Market)

Having weekly/monthly new hire welcome breakfasts, lunches & Happy Hours which all managers attend.

Other common qualities of good programs are that they are – informal; extend over time (up to 2 years in some cases); and involve active participation by supervisors/managers

Some companies, like Zappos, will pay people ($2,000) to leave after onboarding, so that only motivated workers stay.

The Networked Workplace

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The networked workplace is the new reality. It’s always on and globally connected. This is where all organizations are going, at different speeds and in a variety of ways. Some won’t make it.

First you connect people inside the workplace, then you connect organizations, and then you connect the world. That’s where we are today.

Look at how work gets done. First, simple work keeps getting automated. Many years ago the typing pool was made redundant. Today lawyers are on the block, tomorrow it may be you.

Then complicated work gets outsourced. Complicated work is that which can be analyzed and broken down into its component parts. It’s ripe for outsourcing. That used to mean overseas, but today, overseas is getting closer to home. These shifts will continue.

What’s left is complex work, but this requires passion, creativity and initiative. These cannot be commoditized. This is where the main value of the networked workplace will be made. It’s a constantly moving sweet spot. Today’s complex work is tomorrow’s merely complicated work.

At the edge of the organization, where there are few rules; everything is a blur. It’s chaotic. But opportunities are found in chaos. Value emerges from forays into the chaos. In such a changing environment, failure has to be tolerated. Nothing is guaranteed other than the fact that not playing here puts any organization at a significant disadvantage.

Two major changes are needed for the networked organization to capitalize on simultaneously working in simple, complicated, complex and chaotic environments.

First, power must be distributed. It’s a move toward democracy without losing the entrepreneurial zeal. Some companies are already there. There are no answers or cookie cutter approaches here, so don’t try to copy anyone.

Distributed power enables faster reaction time so those closest to the situation can take action. This is often the case in complex and chaotic environments where there is no time to write a detailed assessment of the situation. 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. Shared power is enabled by trust.

Second, transparency must become the norm. Transparency ensures there is an understanding of what everyone is doing. It means narrating work and taking ownership of mistakes. Transparency helps the organization learn from mistakes. Of course this is very difficult for any command and control organization, with its published organization chart and sacrosanct job titles, to embrace.

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’s nothing left in the safe inner rings. It’s being automated and outsourced. But the outer rings are scary and workers can’t be controlled out there or they’ll be ineffective. Aye, there’s the rub. Deal with it, or others will.

Social learning for collaborative work

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The authors at Human Capital Lab say that social learning makes little sense and we should really be focused on collaborative learning:

In its simplest form, collaborative learning is a model based on the idea that knowledge can be created through the interaction and collaboration of individuals. It is not driven by a specific tool, or learning plan, but is driven by the need for information and the accountability that those engaged have to one another. Where we decided to move from the verbiage “social learning” comes from the attempt to really define the term and realized that the focus continually goes back to “social” (and often social media tools) rather than to “learning.” It’s not about the tool, it’s about the learning and collaborative method by which it is accomplished.

I disagree.

Social learning is based on the understanding that we are social animals, as described by Albert Bandura in the 1970’s:

The social learning theory of Bandura emphasizes the importance of observing and modeling the behaviors, attitudes, and emotional reactions of others. Bandura (1977) states: “Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do. Fortunately, most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action.” (p22). Social learning theory explains human behavior in terms of continuous reciprocal interaction between cognitive, behavioral, an environmental influences.

Our social networks have a significant influence on our behaviour, as clearly shown in research by Nicholas Christakis and others.

Image: Smoking in a Face to Face Network (2000) by Nicholas Christakis

Calling social learning, collaborative learning misses out on the fact that all learning happens in a social context.

We collaborate because we have a reason to do so (such as in the workplace).

We learn socially because we are wired to do so.

In a workplace context, social learning is how we share tacit knowledge so that we can work collaboratively. They go hand-in-glove but are not the same. It’s leadership’s responsibility to create structures that encourage social learning in order to do collaborative work.

We need to encourage social learning because things are changing too fast and it’s the only way we can keep up, by learning socially and working collaboratively.

Image: by Ross Dawson: Corporate Directors Understand Change (n = 500)