Work

business & working

Leadership for Networks

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It takes different leadership to increase collaboration and support social learning in the workplace. Leadership is the key, not technology. Most of our leadership practices come from a command and control military legacy that have been adopted by the business world for the past century. But hierarchies don’t help us manage in networks, whether they be social, value or organizational networks. Steve Denning explains:

Saying that hierarchies are needed is like arguing for smoking cigarettes. Hierarchies are a harmful habit that we need to break. We may be addicted to them, so that breaking the habit is hard, but the way forward is clear.

The reality is that there is another way. One can mesh the efforts of autonomous teams of knowledge workers who have the agility to innovate and meet the shifting needs of clients while also achieving disciplined execution. It requires a set of measures that might be called “dynamic linking”. The method began in automotive design in Japan and has been developed most fully in software development with approaches known as “Agile” or “Scrum”.

Jon Husband has succinctly described an organizational framework for networks. Some variation of wirearchy informs successful organizations (like Semco SA; Google; W.L. Gore, Zappos; etc):

In an increasingly interconnected world, a new organizing principle is emerging …

“Wirearchy is a dynamic two-way [multi-way] flow of power and authority based on:

  • knowledge,
  • trust,
  • credibility,
  • a focus on results

enabled by interconnected people and technology“ (Jon Husband, 1999)

The language of social business

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The latest question from Michael Cook (Organizational Development Talks: OrgDevTalk) continues from our last one:

Wow, your response to my last question was a deep and wide one indeed. I think I may need to put some more definite boundaries around where my concerns lie. First, the line from your last response that captured my interest was this: “To stay engaged with interconnected markets, business must get more social.”  I am thinking about some of my clients and approaching them with the thought that they need to have their businesses become more social. Just to test my own understanding it seems to me that by using the term social, especially in view of the IBM quote you referenced, that you mean to say highly connective, many options for connectivity are now a must for the value proposition of any organization. I imagine you mean more than that but am I in the right ballpark?

What I think I need is some language that creates a new context for the term social because I am afraid my clients will consider the remark naive. ‘Business is business and social is social.’ This would be their natural response, thinking that “social” means not results focused. I know you are using the term in a context that may be transparent to you but I can assure you that my clients do not share the same transparency.

What I need to do is be able to connect your conversation to the critical relationship between companies and customers and show how social media plays an important part in sustaining these relationships into the future. Can you give me a couple of concrete examples where this connection was made using social media that I might be able to share?

Secondly, when I read through your response to my last question I notice that you did not directly address the last part of my question where I asked about the right time to bring a technical expert into a conversation with a client. I suspect it is at the level of strategic value because I know most of my clients would not have an extensive interest in the technology itself but more the outcomes it might leverage. Again, am I on the right track here?

Does social mean highly connective? It’s much more than that. Social means human. It is an understanding that relationships and networks are complex. Our industrial management models are based on a belief that our structures are merely complicated. Here’s an explanation from Noop.nl

The main difference between predictable systems and complex systems is our approach to understanding them. We can understand simple and complicated systems by taking them apart and analyzing the details. However, we cannot understand complex systems by applying the same strategy of reductionism. But we can achieve some understanding by watching and studying how the whole system operates.

What’s important for managers is that this also works the other way around. We create complicated systems by first designing the parts, and then putting them together. This works well for mechanical things, like buildings, watches and Quattro Stagioni pizzas. But it doesn’t work for complex systems, like brains, software development teams, and the local pizzeria. We cannot build a system from scratch and expect it to become complex in the way that we intended. Complex systems defy attempts to be created in an engineering effort.

Social means the bonds that keep us together. Much of it is about trust. If I trust you, I might ask you for advice, so trust is essential for collaboration. We lose it if we try to micro-manage knowledge work. A framework like wirearchy is much better for complex environments than our traditional models of command & control, functional management and enforced adoption of work practices. Wirearchy: a dynamic multi-way flow of power and authority based on information, knowledge, trust and credibility, enabled by interconnected people and technology.

The argument that ‘business is business and social is social’ makes little sense today. Business is social because it involves people. Business must be more social the more complex the work and the greater the need for collaboration. We foster innovation through social interactions. The idea that a lone person working in a lab can come up with a brilliant idea is largely unfounded. Connections between people drive innovation, says Tim Kastelle; “Connecting ideas is the core of innovation, but without connecting ideas to people, there is no innovation at all.”

How does social media connect companies and customers? There are many case studies on social media for marketing and customer service available online . However, as my colleague Jane Hart writes:

There are many examples of how enterprises/organisations (profits and non-profits) are using social media for EXTERNAL marketing, customer support, etc, but few real-life case studies of strategic approaches to its use INTERNALLY for social and collaborative learning and/or performance and productivity improvement.

Making organizations more effective is what really interests me.

When working with clients, I would bring in technical expertise as late as possible. Technology is more often a business constraint than an enabler, especially internal IT departments. They will tell you what you can’t do. Determine the business requirements first and make sure they’re clear. Then figure out how to enable them with technology. Don’t let the IT tail wag the business dog. As Steve Woodruff writes, social media is not a business strategy. That also means that a self-proclaimed “social media strategist” should not be developing your business strategy.

No best practices, but some strong indicators

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It’s been a busy week, mostly on-site with a new and exciting client project. I’m still trying to get a flight home (hopefully this evening) but at least I’m able to get out my weekly Friday’s Finds. Here’s what I learned via Twitter this week.

QUOTES

@jackvinson “I did blogging in my KM class a few years ago. “forced blogging” = flogging :-)”

@zenmoments “Freedom is not worth having if it does not involve the freedom to make mistakes. ~ Gandhi”

—

Performance Measurement “a Complete Waste of Time” – via @julienllanas

So, why do companies spend so much time and money on trying to come up with new rating systems and fancy pay for performance plans? Actually, I have no idea. I’m hoping someone out there can help me on that one. But, this week is a milestone week in my career – I’ve officially decided to do something about it – I’ve propsed to my executive team that we eliminate our performance rating system and ditch this whole pay for performance idea.

@stevedenning: Coordination: From hierarchical bureaucracy to dynamic linking via @RessHum

2. The team reports to the client, not the manager: The shift in the organization’s goal from producing goods and services to delighting clients means that the team effectively reports to the client, rather than the manager. The manager’s role is to give the team a clear line of sight to the client. Work is presented to the client or customer proxy at the end of the process of iterations, so that the team doing the work can experience the reaction. Progress is measured not by whether the boss is satisfied but rather whether value is delivered to clients. Instead of reliance on progress reports, progress is measured by only in terms of finished work—work that actually delivers value to clients at the end of a work cycle.

Un-Manage Your Employees by @DHH  Getting rid of distractions and co-managing so workers can get things done. – via @dhinchcliffe

When you hire people who do nothing but manage, you implicitly say to the rest of your employees, “Don’t worry about the coordination or structure of your work—all these concerns now belong to the manager.” When people don’t have to think about the totality of their work environment, because that’s now the manager’s job, they’re less engaged, less motivated and less efficient.

The Net Work of Leadership: Create the Space by @panklam

What he [Rangaswami] says is (and I agree) is that it makes no sense to give smart people tasks, but to “expose them to problem domains and then giving them the resources and tools to solve these problems.”  When a problem domain is large, it takes a network, more than just a team, and the vision of a leader who can create the spaces within which people will make the right choices about what tasks they must select to work toward the solution of the problem.

Going Social – Chief Learning Officer, Solutions for Enterprise Productivity via @fdomon

You may be saying to yourself: “Echols, this tale of hats and cattle is all well and good, but what’s the bottom line? I need best practices to convince my management.” Well, right now there are no best practices to emulate, but there are lots of experiments going on to define solutions. I repeat, these are experiments, and to succeed, your organization needs to have a culture of experimentation. Experiments produce failures most of the time. Acceptance of failure and disciplined learning from those failures is key because the winners in this arena will be the organizations that learn the fastest, and you can’t learn if you don’t try.

Happy Monday

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I’m on the road this week. We’re working with an interesting client and I’m doing what I love: designing new ways to work and learn more effectively. Life is good :)

When you work for yourself, it doesn’t feel like work, just an opportunity to do better.

Social business on the edge of the chasm

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Last year I was asked what I thought about Enterprise 2.0 (E2.0). While it’s a popular subject amongst some management theorists, there aren’t many examples of E2.0 in practice.  Peter Evans-Greenwood has a good analysis of why E2.0 is not ready for mainstream business implementation due to regulatory constraints:

So, I agree with naysayers that the business case for E2.0 etc “transforming business into a more social business” is not there today. I disagree in that I think it will happen, but we need to up-end regulation first.

As I write this, it seems the term “social business” is already replacing E2.0. Social business should be understood by organizational leaders because they will need to be ready for a significant change in their operating models in the near future. Social business is almost ready to cross the chasm.

Social business is about a shift in how we do work, moving from hierarchies to networks. The highest value work today is the more complex stuff, or the type of work that cannot be automated or outsourced. It’s work that requires creativity and passion. Doing complex work in networks means that information, knowledge and power no longer flow up and down. They flow in all directions. As John Seely Brown said, you can only understand complex systems by marinating in them. This requires social learning. Complex work is not linear. Social business is giving up centralized control and harnessing the power of networks. It is as radical as was Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management in 1911.

The potential of social business is organizational survival. Enterprises must be able to share knowledge quicker than before.  This requires a shift toward something like a starfish framework that not only allows for independent action but also distributes knowledge through all the parts. Social learning is how organizational knowledge gets distributed. Social businesses can learn quicker.

The main barriers to social business are cultural. People in charge of most organizations today got there by doing things the traditional way of the MBA mindset. They feel they do not need to change and few are willing to give up power and authority, even if it is for the good of the organization.

Shortly after posting this, I came across an article in CIO: How Social is Taking Over Business [dead link]

Social media for senior managers

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This is the second of my conversations with Michael Cook on Organizational Development.

Michael:

I was thinking about the metaphor you used in responding to my question, that “social media are like new languages”, then after reflecting on that idea for a while I re-read your response and realized that you had actually said “social media are new languages” not like new languages, they are actually new languages. I was jolted into realizing where much of my current challenge is coming from. I keep attempting to learn about social media by comparing them to something I already know about rather than recognizing that while they have aspects that are familiar they are truly new phenomena.

So now I am wondering, email is email and it is ubiquitous. Anyone who has used email for any amount of time has had instances of recognizing its limitations. For one, it does a terrible job of conveying context and tone. Yet, there is no doubt that many of my clients (most of whom are senior managers, 45+ years of age) will do as I have done and think of an ESSP (Emerging Social Software Platform) as a glorified email system, and when I make a suggestion that they consider writing a blog they will give me the “devil eye” and shrink back like I have suggested maybe we hug. Since these are very likely the people in an organization that stand to gain the most by endorsing an investment in some form of social media, where would you suggest I begin a conversation with them about the topic and when is the right time to bring in someone with a technical background to support any signs of interest? It seems to me that starting with a product discussion is probably not where I would want to begin.

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Harold: Once again, let me rephrase the question – “How do you start the discussion about social media with senior managers who think of technology as just more IT products and platforms?”

I like to start any conversation with a client from a business perspective. IBM describes the current situation as such:

The rapid growth of social networking and mobility has enabled people to tap into the experience of others to accomplish anything – ranging from their work to the way they purchase goods and services.

This pretty well sums up what is driving business change. People can connect to anyone, anywhere and at any time. This changes all the control systems that organizations have developed over the past century: pricing, pay, hours of work, product development, jobs, customer service – you name it.

The challenge for business leaders is to manage work with porous organizational boundaries. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy. We need to change our mental models and even invert the management pyramid.The typical branching organization chart does not reflect the way that work gets done in networks. Work is really done in the white space within and now outside the organization.

Work today has few time or geographical boundaries. As our water coolers become virtual, social relations online will be the glue that connects us in our increasingly distributed work. Every little tweet, blog post, comment or “like” online shares our individuality and humanity. These actions help us be known to others in the digital surround. They help us build trust to get things done, be productive and innovate. However, we cannot benefit from professional social networks unless we engage in them. This requires more than merely mastering the technology. It means being social in our work. Not using social media to connect, contribute and collaborate is like sitting in a closed office all day.

According to McKinsey, the main reason that businesses today use social media is to increase the speed of access to knowledge. It’s not a question of why we should understand social business but what can we do to survive and thrive in what has become a social business ecosystem. Social media are necessary to keep up.

Here is an indicator of the changing nature of business in a highly networked and social marketplace; the “app” market:

This rapid adaption to what customers want requires a very different organizational structure than at many companies. It must be able to adapt rapidly to new information and it must move that information around rapidly … Staying engaged and being adaptive – the successful companies will have both of these attributes.

To stay engaged with interconnected markets, business must get more social. Social learning, which can involve many of these web social media, is how we get things done in networks.  Most organizational value is created by teams and networks, not individuals working alone. While learning may be generated in teams, this type of knowledge comes and goes. Organizational learning really spreads through social networks. Therefore, social networks are the conduit for effective organizational performance.

Blocking, or circumventing, social networks slows learning, reduces effectiveness and may in the end kill the organization. Senior managers need to understand social media in order to support learning in social networks which will enable practitioners to produce results.

The wisdom of lists

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Finding out how others perceive you can be an interesting professional exercise. Marketing and branding may have their place but understanding how the rest of world sees you reverses that lens.

One function of Twitter that I haven’t used much is the ability to create Lists. I only have two lists, but many people seem to find them useful. For example, I have one that includes my Internet Time Alliance colleagues, so I can stay up to date with their tweets, across 8 time zones, without any additional searching. Lists are just groupings of profiles and can be created by any user. All lists are named and some have a detailed description.

I’m on about 400 lists so I decided to take a look at them and I noticed that I’m categorized in many ways. I then went through all of the titles and descriptions, standardized the language & spelling, and put these words into a text document which I used to create a Wordle cloud.

Here’s what my social mirror reflected back to me.

Organizational Development and social media

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This post is the beginning of what we hope will be an ongoing conversation (Organizational Development Talks: OrgDevTalk) between Michael Cook and myself. Mike contacted me after having read my posts through the Human Capital League, which cross-posts many of my articles.

Michael:

“Thanks again for both the time and the conversation we’ve started on social media and uses in the workplace. As a starting point for our dialogue I’d like to begin with a broad question…I am an OD consultant by profession with a passion for improving the overall return on investment that a company makes in human capital and a co-equal commitment to improve the overall experience of being at work in any environment for each individual. Honestly, I want to see less suffering in the working experience.

Given these two commitments why, in your view, it is consistent with what I am already working on to give myself over to gaining a better understanding of some of the newest developments in the social technologies. I mean to say here that I am first and foremost a people guy. Won’t getting involved with these technologies simply be a distraction, a boost more for my ego than necessarily moving my commitments forward?”

Hi Mike:

Let me restate the question. Why should I, as an OD professional, concerned with the human aspects of organizations, have to understand web technologies? As Andrew McAfee says, “it’s not not about the technology”. McAfee addresses much of this question in his post, so I won’t repeat what he says.

All organizations use information and communication technologies to some extent, whether it be email, data management systems or more recently, social media. The one technology that is changing how we work, learn and relate is the Internet, especially the web. Many information technologies are just exploiting Internet connectivity in some way. Saying we don’t need to understand the Internet is like saying we didn’t need to understand speaking, reading or writing to do our jobs before. In my experience, most organizational issues boil down to one factor: communication. The Internet is where we communicate; from voice to data to social networking.

With this ubiquitous connectivity, more of our work is at a distance, either in space or time. Telework and distributed teams are becoming the norm. If we are going to support people doing this kind of work, we need to understand it. However, working online takes practice to be proficient. It is difficult to understand theoretically. For example, even though I have worked online for over a decade, I did not really understand Twitter until I used it.

But can’t we understand these communications media theoretically, or get advice from our IT department? For example, a doctor does not have to have suffered a disease before discussing how to treat it. Many academics in business school have never started a company, yet they can talk about the fundamentals of business.

Why is the Web, and especially social media, so different?

I think that one fundamental difference about social media is they have a strong influence on the user, very much in a McLuhanesque medium/message/massage way. Those who come to web media for the first time are like adults learning a new language. You cannot start with the same advanced mental models and metaphors that you have in your primary language. Furthermore, if you do get to an advanced level in your new language, its idioms, metaphors and culture may have had a strong influence on how you think in that language.

Social media change the way we communicate. Write a blog for a year or more and your writing (and thinking) will change. Use Twitter for some time and you will get a sense of being connected to many people and understanding them on a different level. Patterns emerge over time. Even the ubiquitous Facebook changes how you react to being apart from friends. Social media can change the way you think.

When you adopt a new web social medium you are also starting on the bottom, or at the single node level. You have to make connections with what will become your network, either by connecting to existing relationships or doing something that helps to create new relationships, like writing a blog post. Starting over, in each medium, can be daunting, especially for someone in a position of authority who is concerned about image or influence.

Yes, you need to use the tools in order to understand what it’s like to be a node in a social network. There is almost nothing like it in the industrial workplace or school system to prepare you for this. Therefore you won’t know what you’re talking about until you learn the new language of online networks. The only way to learn a new language is through practice.

Social media are new languages.

Lessons from Cirque du Soleil

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How do you capitalize on widely divergent and constantly changing skills? Lyn Heward, Director of Creation at Cirque du Soleil says that the core skill for each of their  artists is the ability to learn quickly. She used the framework of the seven doors to anchor her presentation at Mount Allison University this evening. An enthusiastic and compelling speaker, Lyn Heward showed how le Cirque maintains creative tension and has managed to grow to over 20 ongoing productions around the world.

For me, these were points worth considering further:

Constraints (budgets, consumers, differences) can become creative catalysts.

Risk-taking. Complacency is the biggest risk any person or organization has.

The most difficult culture to prepare their international troupes for is the USA, which has the highest number of social norms that must be learned before working there.

The clown as teacher, makes it easier for the “student” to drop his guard, become engaged, and learn …

Literacy and numeracy for complexity

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The need for competency in developing emergent practices is not a new theme here. Neither is the democratization of the workplace. It’s all about dealing with increasing complexity.

In addition to new work practices, it seems there might also be a need for different types of literacy and numeracy, as described by Daniel Lemire. Increasing complexity blurs traditional fields of understanding:

We teach kids arithmetic and calculus, but systematically fail to teach them about probabilities. We are training them to distinguish truth from falsehoods, when most things are neither true nor false.

Most of our organizations and institutions seem to be stuck in a medium-complexity mindset. That’s not good enough in a highly complex world but there are forces that want to drag us back to a low-complexity world; one that does not exist. Standardized testing and “back to basics” movements are manifestations of this simplistic mindset. Unfortunately, it’s going to be difficult to upgrade skills for higher complexity work when we lack the necessary basic numeracy (understanding of probabilities) or literacy (seeking truth on our own).

Perhaps this is the underlying challenge in getting people to think about and be comfortable in developing emergent practices. Maybe they lack the required literacy and numeracy.

* More from Daniel on Demarchy and probabilistic algorithms