Work

business & working

So you want to be an e-learning consultant?

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eLearn Magazine has just published my article entitled, So you want to be an e-learning consultant?

Many people dream of striking out on their own as an e-learning consultant but aren’t quite sure what it takes to succeed in a competitive marketplace. In what is sure to be one of eLearn Magazine‘s most popular features, consultant Harold Jarche lays out the basics: How to establish and develop your own e-learning consultancy, complete with actual numbers as regards fee ranges for various specialties.

It’s a bit more formal than my typical blog post. Graham Watt (my muse & mentor) thinks that I should have included the importance of long bike rides and the resulting thinking time. I agree; time for exercise and reflection is a very important aspect (perk?) of life as a free-agent.

SmartDraw has a Blog

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About 5% of visitors to this blog who found it via a search engine were looking for SmartDraw, a visual design and flowcharting tool for PC’s.  I’ve used SmartDraw for several years and was even an Affiliate for a while. When the 2007 version arrived, there were several complaints from the market and many customers wound up on my site and made their comments about SmartDraw 2007 here.

I’ve just been informed by Paul Stannard, CEO of SmartDraw, that the company has launched the SmartDraw Blog.   So go ahead and tell SmartDraw what you like or dislike about their products and services, because markets are conversations and it’s better late than never to join in.

What business are you in?

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From Tom Haskins, are two views of business today.

Exhibit A:

“There are firewalls and silos to stay inside of. There are lines of authority to conform to and procedures to execute. There are consequences for stepping out of line, going around someone or finding loopholes in the policies. There are scripts for handling phone calls, policies for handling exceptions and rules for procedural compliance.”

Exhibit B:

“Networks may function with routers to redirect linear transmissions through a past of least resistance. Networks support search and find processes that come up with unforeseen options. Networks reconfigure themselves to accommodate changes. They do not go on hold because local resources are tied up. They do not overtax a reliable node and fail to spread the challenge system wide. They get things done by letting the network do its thing.”

And then I remembered this cartoon from Hugh:

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So what business are you in – Silos or Networks?

I’ve noticed that even many so-called “new economy” companies are still based on the command & control models of the industrial age. They’re like dinosaurs wearing mammals’ clothing but they won’t be able to keep warm during the next ice age.

We’re hearing a lot about the millenials demanding a more flexible workplace and I think that with the impending demographic crunch here in North America, we may not be far from a real change in the dominant model of how we work. Let’s make sure that we have some reasonable options.

School, Work & Improv

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Last year, our son was on the Improv Team at school. You could tell it was Tuesday because he was so hyped to go to school and attend improv practice. I remember little from high school but it was things like the school play, a sports team or some neat project that sticks in my mind 30 years later; not the curriculum of 3 R’s.

It seems that what is learned in the “non-core” subjects really is the most important in long run. Art, physical education, theatre,  newspaper club, the yearbook, all provide richer learning experiences than sitting in a class (thou shalt not leave your seat) preparing for some important, graded test. Would our education system be better if it only consisted of electives and non-core activities? Could it be worse?

At our son’s high school, the Improv Team is competitive, and many students who want to do it don’t make the cut. I’ve read a couple of articles that show that improvisational skills may be much more useful than algebra or calculus will be for the majority of graduates. Perhaps improv should be compulsory, instead of math.  Michael Kindred-Pratt writes about improv skills in the workplace;

The main benefit of improv comedy is that it teaches students how to deal with uncertainty. People must make incredibly difficult decisions on the spot, which forces them to think quickly. There are no scripts or plots in improv, and no matter how hard we try, there are no exact scripts or plots in the business world either.

John Moore says that a major benefit of improv skills is that failure is an option. He writes that from improv, one can also learn how to:

  • be a passionate follower;
  • be a better listener and reactor;
  • make instinctive decisions and deal with the consequences;
  • trust others; and
  • make others look good

Not bad for a non-core educational activity that doesn’t even get class time.

More on democratic workplaces

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A little while back I mentioned democratic workplaces and WorldBlu. Some may find the notion of democracy in the workplace an interesting idea, but not really practical. To change your mind, listen to Ricardo Semler as he explains the flaws of our industrial work structures and what he has done with his company of 1,400 workers who vote for their bosses, only attend meetings that they want to and figure out their own remuneration plan. After 25 years in business, the company has had an average of a 20% rate of return, even with the economic turmoil of its host country, Brazil. It also has only 1% employee turnover.

Semler, author of Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace and The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works, says that historically no real change has ever come from inside an industry. In my mind this questions the whole assumption of letting the market decide what is best for society and gives a very important role to government – forcing innovation on industry, such as more fuel-efficient cars.  He says that the primary key to innovation is intuition, not analysis or faster processing or access to more information.

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The main message of this talk at the MIT Sloan School of Management is that we need to undo our dominant  business models which are the legacy of military hierarchies because they are inefficient, ineffective, and stifle innovation. He uses the automobile industry as an example of an industry that has only made incremental advances in the last 100 years, still relying on the combustion engine and fossil fuels.

Even the ‘new economy’ has been undone by our hierarchies. Semler cites the example that many of us have learned how to send e-mails on a Sunday night but few of us have learned how to go to a movie on a Monday afternoon. As a result, we have unbalanced our lives. During the second half of this 48 minute video/audio Semler gives some examples on how his company has created a truly democratic and competitive company.

Are you rarefied?

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Hugh Macleod posted a thought-provoking article showing that many workers are just commodities, living out their lives in quiet desperation. A more politically correct term would be “human resources”. It seems that the good ol’ days are over, even for many self-described knowledge workers:

Last week I was on the phone to an old friend of mine, a guy in his late forties, who was born and bred in Michigan, and is living there now. He was telling me about his uncle, who, about four decades ago, got his highschool sweetheart pregnant. So instead of going off to college, he found himself with a new wife, a child on the way, and an assembly-line job at General Motors. But even though this situation clipped his wings considerably, he still ended up having a nice life in the end, with a home, a big yard, two cars, a steady paycheck, weekends fishing or hunting deer, and vacations in Hawaii every year or so. “The days where a blue collar guy like my uncle could have a nice life without doing much,” my friend said, “those days are gone. Gone forever.”

And in the back of my mind, I’m thinking the same is starting to happen to white collar guys more and more, as well. But it’s not quite out in the open yet. Society’s not quite ready to have that conversation.

Hugh has called the need to become unique “de-commodification”, but asks for a new term which has been provided by John Dodds:

You don’t need to decommodify – you need to rarefy.

rarefy
– to make more complex, intricate, or richer.
– to refine a design or pattern.

One other comment, straight to the heart of the matter, was by David St-Lawrence, “Being a commodity is inevitably dehumanizing, no matter how much they pay you.”

That’s the option for many people, isn’t it? Take the cash and the temporary shelter of a job and keep your head down. But you don’t develop your unique brand by doing this and when the day comes that you’re out the door, you’re not ready with a rarefied offering. You’re just one more brick in the wall, to be checked-off by HR, competing against other commodities.

Spiders and Starfish

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Reading The Starfish and the Spider only took one day [resting with a cold] and it’s an illuminating book. Spider organizations are those with centralized control and if you cut off the head, the rest will die. In starfish organizations, cutting off one leg will not kill it, because intelligence is distributed throughout the organism. The authors start by examining the two hundred year struggle between the Apache (starfish) and the Spanish Army (spiders), showing how a decentralized Apache nation was almost impossible to conquer because there was no head. A modern day equivalent is Al Quaeda.

What I found most interesting is that the degree of centralization for an optimal organization depends on many factors, so there is no magic recipe [like informal versus formal learning]. Finding what the authors call the “sweet spot” requires constant monitoring of the environment. Today’s sweet spot may be tomorrow’s lost cause.

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One of the five requirements for a successful starfish organization is to have a catalyst. In many ways, I think that is the role I’ve played, or tried to, in various organizations over the years, and it explains why I quickly lost interest in climbing the corporate ladder.

Catalysts are bound to rock the boat. They are much better at being agents of change than guardians of tradition. Catalysts do well in situations that call for radical change or creative thinking. They bring innovation, but they’re also likely to create a certain amount of chaos and ambiguity. Put them into a structured environment and they might suffocate. But let them dream and they’ll thrive. (p. 131)

I would recommend this book, especially the chapters on “The Hybrid Organization” and “In Search of the Sweet Spot”. The book should provide a new lens to look at your organization and its environment, whether it be for-profit, non-profit or a government agency.

If you think that decentralization is not an option for your organization, consider that your employees may strongly disagree, as reported by Ross Dawson:

In the first boom we [WPP Group] lost a lot of our staff to start-ups. When the companies failed, many came back to work for us. At the re-entry interviews, they didn’t say they were grateful to have a job. They said to a man and woman that if they could go back to work in a more unstructured and flexible work environment they’d go in a heartbeat.

Faith & Optimism

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Want to escape from your cubicle? Then read Escape from Cubicle Nation. Yesterday, Pam wrote about the difference between theory and practice in bootstrapping your own business. She discussed all the things that can go wrong and I can relate to them all – projects shutting down; cashflow issues; paperwork; family; etc. However, Pam finished on a high note, noting that attitude is extremely important:

Don’t underestimate the power of faith and optimism. While all the financial basics I mentioned above are critical, belief in yourself and the greater good in the universe is essential to get through tough times. On a practical level, you come across as a confident and positive business partner as you are wooing new clients and financial institutions. And on a metaphysical level, why not call upon all the good, magical, miraculous energy in the universe to help make things happen? On many occasions, I have witnessed unanticipated “miracles” manifested in the form of money coming out of nowhere, the right friends showing up at the right time, and new business opportunities coming from unexpected places. One thing is sure … worrying all the time will do nothing to move your business forward.

Of course, a dose of insanity helps, so I guess I’m OK ;-)

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New models for living, working and learning

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This week I’ve noticed that everything seems to come back to our artificially created systems. If I’m waiting for a decision it’s because of poor information flow at some bottleneck in a hierarchy. If I’m not able to take action on an idea that would help many people it’s due to some artificial construct called a regulation or policy. No one is responsible; it’s the system. I feel blocked at every turn and I’m not alone. Mark Federman sums it up best with his thesis pitch:

I make the observation that almost all organizations that we have in our world – be they business corporations, non-profits, volunteer organizations, sewing circles, soccer clubs, schools, religious organizations – they all look like factories. By this I mean that they are Bureaucratic, Administratively controlled and Hierarchical – in other words, BAH! I suggest that this is not because it is human nature to be BAH, but rather this is an artefact of the Industrial Age that was mechanistic (with roots in the Gutenberg Press), industrial, fragmented, and functionally oriented. Now, as I look around, I observe that we are no longer in the Industrial Age. Rather, we are living in a world in which everyone is, or soon will be, connected to everyone else – an age of ubiquitous connectivity. This brings about the effect of being immediately next to, or proximate to, everyone else – in other words, pervasive proximity. I therefore ask the question, what form of organization is consistent with the ubiquitously connected and pervasively proximate world of today, rather than with the 19th century?

We are in desperate need of new models for living, working and learning. Rob Paterson has been discussing the messy world that we now live in and how modern armies cannot win against insurgents or stabilize failed states. Dave Pollard & Jon Husband recently talked about the value of leadership. Leaders may be required in hierarchies but are they necessary in wirearchies?

The great work of our time is to design, build and test new organizational models that reflect our democratic values and can function in an inter-connected world. Failure by our generation to do so will leave the next one to deal with the reactionary forces of corporatism; something our children are already facing.