Wirearchy

Wirearchy

Integrating work support systems

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Here’s a good article in TrainingZone (behind a free registration firewall) on OD in the 21st Century that describes many of the issues discussed in Training for the 21st Century, but from an organisational development perspective. Anne Marie McEwan describes her work with the Johnson Controls Mobility Network which is for senior IT, HR and Facilities Management executives for exploring the practical implications of global workplace trends:

These busy executives do not have time to keep up with developments. Having researchers source, summarise and contextualise content from the internet is already a benefit. Sessions are informal.

And this sure sounds like the development of emergent practices:

In collaboration with the team, the executive engages in action learning and critical reflection of the external environment and internal structures, systems and processes. New knowledge, frameworks and tools the support team members introduce, in a just-in-time way, are of course valuable.

However, Anne Marie notes:

In the author’s experience, functional walls between HR, IT and FM are as strong as they ever were and this will threaten enterprise viability.

It’s obvious that the same workplace issues are being faced by HR, IT, OD, KM and T&D tribes departments and that similar strategies are being co-developed in these fields. Given my multi-faceted consulting work, I would even consider myself a peripheral member of all of these communities and would now include Marketing.

Reflecting on my last post on working together it becomes clear to me that using cross-functional teams is not enough for Net Work. We really need to get away from our self-imposed tribes and adopt network thinking and practices.

Working Together

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Tom Haskins has presented an excellent series of posts on complexity, work and collaboration, comparing aspects of the Cynefin and TIMN frameworks. As I thought about what Tom has written I saw one more column that could be added to his comparison, provided by Shawn at Anecdote, and that is how we can best work together at different levels of complexity.

Even though all levels of complexity exist in our world, more of our work (especially knowledge-intensive work) deals with complex problems, whether they be social, environmental or technological. As can be seen in the table below, complex environments & problems are best addressed when we organize as networks; our work evolves around developing emergent practices; and we collaborate to achieve our goals. As Shawn’s post shows, coordination, cooperation and collaboration are not the same thing.

Working Together
Complexity (Cynefin) Social (TIMN) Practices Group Work
Chaotic Tribal Novel Action
Simple Tribal + Institutional Best Coordination
Complicated Tribal + Institutional + Markets Good Collaboration
Complex Tribal + Institutional + Markets + Networks Emergent Cooperation

I’m putting this table up because it provides a quick view of why we have to change how we teach, train and work. Ask any organization how many of their problems are complex and how important it is to address these. Then find out how social networking is supported and encouraged. Ask how emergent practices are developed and whether anyone actually monitors the process or captures learning that enables emergence. Finally look at whether groups merely co-ordinate activities or perhaps co-operate and if there is real collaboration. As Shawn writes:

Collaboration works well for complex situations because the style of working collaboratively matches the nature of the issues that complex situations pose. Complexity is unpredictable, and collaborating is adaptable; complexity is messy – it’s difficult to work out the question, let alone the answer – and collaborating involves bringing together a diversity of people and talents to improvise and test possible approaches, all learning as you go. Complexity offers unique and novel conundrums, and collaboration draws on a deep foundation of trust to that fosters creativity and delivers innovations.

This is one more reason to consider a wirearchical management framework built on mutual trust.

Managing emergent practice

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What would happen if you called for closing your training department in favor of a new function?  Imagine telling senior management that you were shuttering the classrooms in favor of peer-to-peer learning. You’re redeploying training staff as mentors, coaches, and facilitators who work on improving core business processes, strengthening relationships with customers, and cutting costs. You’re going to shift the focus to creativity, innovation, and helping people perform better, faster, cheaper. You might want to give it a try.  Perhaps the time has come.

This is how Jay Cross and I finished our article on The Future of the Training Department. We showed that in complex environments, which more of us face each day, only emergent practices are effective, as backward-looking “good practices” are inadequate. Training is a method based on good practices and best practices. We establish our performance objectives based on an understanding of what we want to achieve, usually engaging subject matter experts to help us. But what if nobody knows how to do or even describe our future roles and tasks? That is the challenge for training managers in preparing workers to face complex problems.

According to Dave Snowden’s Cynefin framework, sense can be made in complex environments by 1) first probing through some action and then 2) sensing to understand what is happening and 3) finally responding based on what you have learned. Think of it as launching a new Web service. First it goes up as a Beta site and people join and use the services. Through their actions they give feedback; implicit and explicit. An effective strategy is to tap the feedback and actions of users and revise the service. Sometimes it is a radical change that is needed, such as when Flickr (now owned by Yahoo!) changed its early business focus from online gaming to photo sharing. In other cases it is a minor change, like accepting the use of the “@” symbol as a way of sending replies in Twitter. On the Web, and in complexity, it’s – Ready, Fire, Aim, Re-aim. I call it Life in Perpetual Beta.

A key understanding about complex environments is that they cannot be planned for. Certain skills can be developed in preparation for dealing with complexity but it is just as important to have systems in place that support workers in dealing with complexity. Shifting the main effort of the training department from content delivery to connecting and communicating is needed. That means pushing learning development tools to all workers. Everyone is now a subject matter expert at some point in time. Workers need to develop practices so that they can easily capture, find and share emerging practices. Web tools like social bookmarks, feed readers, blogs, and wikis can help (See Jane Hart’s 25 Tools for Learning Professionals).

The training department not only needs to teach how to use these tools but has to mine current practices as they evolve. Sense-making and pattern recognition become core skills for training specialists as they continuously develop new tools and processes based on emerging practices. Working in complex environments requires constant recalibration of methods and practices. There is no status quo.

In complex work environments we may need more coaches and facilitators but they will have to be as close to the work as possible. Standing back with a non-practitioner’s perspective will not help those doing the work. New roles such as ‘coach-as-co-worker’ or ‘facilitator-peer’ may emerge in this environment. As has already happened in this late industrial age, mid-level managers will become more redundant unless they can can do more than just manage. Who wants to hire a knowledge worker, as more of us are becoming, who still needs to be managed?

A landscape of influences

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More exciting pattern and sense-making from Ross Dawson, this time with the Influence Landscape Framework Beta v. 1:

This adds to other conceptual frameworks to inform us on how we can look at learning, work and especially communication in this era. The comment on influence networks echos of connectivism (just replace influence with learning):

Influence flows through networks – it cannot be understood as a linear mechanism focused on individual influencers. There are a number of key aspects of influence networks that need to be addressed to tap the power of influence.

I view the influence mechanisms as sources that one can tap when creating a personal knowledge management system. The landscape graphic also enhances the framework of wirearchy, showing that influence is dynamic and non-linear, as our working relationships must become in a networked environment.

If we put ourselves at the centre of the landscape then how we structure our lenses on the world has a significant impact on what we see. If our organisation only lets us view mass media information or from limited networks then we are closed to a wealth of other sources. If our influencers are only celebrities and famous people we are missing out on a rich source of human experience. If we don’t realize the driving forces changing the landscape then we may be blind-sided by events.

As a node in an open network we have a better chance of influencing our landscape, whether it be for learning, working or communicating. This model gives one more reason to open organisational walls to the outside – so influence can travel both ways.

Effective knowledge sharing

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The mainstream application of knowledge management, and I would include learning management, over the past few decades has got it all wrong. We have over-managed information because it’s easy and we’re still enamoured with information technology. However, the ubiquitous information surround may put a stop to this. As enterprises become more closely tied to the Web, the principle of “small pieces loosely joined” is permeating our industrial walls. More and more workers have their own sources of information and knowledge.

Following on from yesterday’s post, connecting and communicating through effective conversations, I’d like to quote again from Dave Pollard’s experience with knowledge management:

So my conclusion this time around was that the centralized stuff we spent so much time and money maintaining was simply not very useful to most practitioners. The practitioners I talked to about PPI [Personal Productivity Improvement] said they would love to participate in PPI coaching, provided it was focused on the content on their own desktops and hard drives, and not the stuff in the central repositories.

We can add to Dave’s anecdotal evidence the research from  Wharton’s Haas & Hansen in Does Knowledge Sharing Deliver?, via Tony Karrer. The researchers found that the two types of organizational knowledge – codified in a knowledge base and interpersonal sharing – are appropriate to different tasks. Generally speaking, codified knowledge does not help teams to produce any better unless the team is rather inexperienced. Interpersonal sharing can be more effective for some teams but it is time-consuming. According to Haas:

“We find that using codified knowledge in the form of electronic documents saved time during the task, but did not improve work quality or signal competence to clients, whereas in contrast, sharing personal advice improved work quality and signaled competence, but did not save time,” Haas says. “This is interesting because managers often believe that capturing and sharing knowledge via document databases can substitute for getting personal advice, and that sharing advice through personal networks can save time. But our findings dispute the claim that different types of knowledge are substitutes for each other. Instead, we show that appropriately matching the type of knowledge used to the requirements of the task at hand — quality, signaling or speed — is critical if a firm’s knowledge capabilities are to translate into improved performance of its projects.”

The inability of expensive enterprise knowledge management systems to deliver broad results is similar to the 80-20 funding ratio between formal and informal learning. We’ve been putting too much money in the wrong place.

A way forward for KM and Informal Learning 2.0

We should move away from central digital information repositories (KM, Doc Mgt, LCMS, etc.). I’m not advocating tearing down any existing IT infrastructure; just enabling a parallel system, which may exist already, to grow. Some suggestions:

  • Develop measures that can help experienced knowledge workers capture and make sense of their knowledge.
  • Support the sharing of information and expertise between knowledge workers, on their terms, using personalized knowledge management methods & tools.
  • Keep only essential information, and what is necessary for inexperienced workers, in the organizational knowledge base – keep it simple.

Connecting and Communicating through Effective Conversations

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What if a company creates an IT infrastructure but nobody uses it? This is one of the questions posed by Dave Pollard in What’s Next after Knowledge Management? Dave’s work has helped me develop practical  processes for knowledge workers, such as sense-making with PKM and his observation that most workers want the company knowledge-base to be very personal informs this work.

So what have our efforts in enterprise knowledge management (KM) since 1975 yielded so far? According to Dave, only three information technologies were adopted wholesale by enterprises (fax, e-mail, intranets) with minimal results in the management of information or knowledge.

In other words, in adding to the volume and complexity of information systems, we have added relatively little value, and in some cases actually reduced value. The reason for this is simple:

  1. We have not done anything to substantively improve the ability of senior management to manage the business (i.e. to manage cash flow, share price, risks or opportunities).
  2. We have not done anything to substantively improve the effectiveness of any of the information flows … that matter in organizations, or the quality of the information.

We have, in short, implemented a solution that addressed no problem. We introduced new KM tools because we could.

Dave predicts the future organization may look more like this:

The IT department is still responsible for maintaining security around the organization’s proprietary information, but very little content is left in this category.

The KM department still manages the purchase of external information, though almost all information in 2025 is free; information producers have realized that their business model is to apply that information to specific customers’ business environment, in consulting assignments, rather than trying to sell publications.

Most of what the KM department does now is trying to facilitate more effective conversations among people within the organization and with people outside the organization, including customers.

And, when the organization holds sessions and conferences on strategy, risk, innovation or customer relationships, the KM department is on hand to do advance and just-in-time research.

The issue of the relevance of KM is not that different from the future of the training function. Both are support functions that have to be integrated with 1) the organization and 2) the individual. As workers become more nomadic (more jobs & contracts over a lifetime) they will be taking their networks and productivity tools with them. Connecting the organization’s networks to the individual’s, and vice versa, is the new organizational management challenge. In the diagram below, I show that Connecting & Communicating should be the focus of the training function, which is pretty well what Dave says is the role of the new KM department.

One of the approaches we’ve suggested at togetherLearn is Informal Learning 2.0 – supporting collaborative and self-directed work – very much like the new KM which is about facilitating more effective conversations. We’re all in this together and support functions (KM, IT, HR, T&D, OD) had better start working together. Now that’s a conversation worth having.

Changing how people and organizations interact

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Jon Husband has recently published a paper, What is wirearchy? In case this is a new term, the definition of wirearchy is was posted on the top right of my site. In the paper, Jon starts with the origin of the framework:

In that context of ubiquitous impact, reams have been written about the erosion of the effectiveness of command-and control as the dominant model for leading and managing purposeful organized activities in business, education, government and governance, politics, culture and the arts … all the areas in which humans act together to create and get things done. That mode of getting things done is evolving to champion-and-channel … championing ideas and innovation, and channeling time, energy, authority and resources to testing those ideas and innovative possibilities).

There is little doubt that rigid, hierarchical command and control is not working very well in any field, including its originators: the military and the church. On Twitter yesterday the togetherLearn gang discussed the roots of human computer interaction (HCI) and how we need something akin to “human organizational interaction” as a similar combined field of practice for the post-industrial workplace. I see wirearchy as a framework for practitioners of such a new discipline as HOI.

For instance, Jon gives some specific advice for leaders, managers, employees and citizens. Taking from each of these, I would suggest something like the following for organizational performance professionals (HR, T&D, OD, IT, etc):

Understand the scope and reach of interconnected markets, people and flows of information. Learn how and why people are connecting, talking and sharing information by doing so yourself. Listen, set an example and be a coach in your work. Be responsible, accountable and transparent in all you do.

Jon concludes his paper with the “Fundamental Sociology of Networked Knowledge Work”:

An adult-to-adult model (rather than parent-child) is emerging – with all of the attendant responsibilities for both parties in the relationship.

Many workers, as well as supervisors and managers, will find this kind of a transition rather difficult as too many of our structures have been developed from an opposite sociological perspective. That does not mean that a restructuring of how we organize our work is not neccessary, it will just be difficult in some cases.

Don’t look to business schools for leadership

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Business schools tout themselves as thought-leaders, but they only appeared on the scene after the mass production industrial model had been proven. We shouldn’t expect leadership from our academic institutions, with their profitable business schools, until we have a proven new organizational model for the post-industrial era. Actually, business schools may be to blame for our current economic problems. According to renowned management professor Henry Mintzberg:

From where I sit, management education appears to be a significant part of this problem. For years, the business schools have been promoting an excessively analytical, detached style of management that has been dragging down organizations.

Every decade, American business schools have been graduating more than a million MBAs, most of whom believe that, because they sat still for a couple of years, they are ready to manage anything. In fact, they have been prepared to manage nothing.

The current economic situation is the result of an utterly failed management model. It’s obvious when you compare Japanese automakers with the “Big Three” in North America – the same materials, the same technology and the same base of workers, but DIFFERENT management. Yes, it’s management’s fault.

Mintzberg also says that, “Management is a practice, learned in context.” That means that book-learning is not enough. Thomas Malone’s The Future of Work and Gary Hamel’s The Future of Management are two good books that look at the need for new management models. They’re a start. What’s missing from both are practical models to implement and that is one of my key interests in consulting. I think that adding the framework of wirearchy and the practical examples of natural entrepreneurship would be useful. Since both of these are completely ignored by business schools, I take that as a positive indicator. However, we still need to try these models, frameworks and ideas in the context of managing real businesses. That’s the challenge.

I believe that future management models can find inspiration and clues in web-based service companies as well as small, community-based businesses. A networked society means that businesses have to be nimble and small-thinking because every individual transaction is unique. One bad experience can go viral. Lack of transparency is mistrusted. Command and control matters less and less. Look to business models that understand the importance of community.

Any new management models will have to break down long-standing silos between departments and let people connect on a more human level. We are not “human resources”. We need models that keep everything at a human scale, so biological metaphors, instead of mechanistic or military ones, may be more appropriate. This is the kind of thinking that the Internet Time Alliance is extending: tearing down the training department and instilling human performance into the organizational DNA. Learning is not something that is ‘done to you’ and management should not be an external force but instead an internal motivational driver of the organization. Once again, look at the definition of wirearchy:

a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority based on information, knowledge, trust and credibility, enabled by interconnected people and technology

This would be a good foundation for the next generation of business schools.

Starting an Online Community

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There are several factors that should be looked at when creating a collaborative working/learning space. I’ve previously referred to Column Two’s three tiers of collaboration – Capacity, Capability & Strategy and it’s a good model to start with. Part of capacity are the existing processes and culture of collaboration while capability includes the best tools for the job. It’s not easy for a group of individuals, who do not know each other, to work collaboratively from the onset. It is even more difficult to ask that this collaboration occur online when the participants are not in the habit of working on the Internet. The practice of sharing needs to be joined with the tools that work for the culture. Finally, strategy includes the leadership, direction and project management of getting things going to work collaboratively online.

It’s important to get participants/members first used to processing their information flow online. A framework such as Personal Knowledge Mastery can be used, but each person must be given time to practice, connect and get feedback. The community also needs to be nurtured, one relationship at a time, as the creators of Flickr realized:

A lot of our success came from George, the lead designer, and Caterina. Both of them spent a lot of time in the early days greeting individual users as they came in, encouraging them and leaving comments on their photos. There was a lot of dialogue between the people who were developing Flickr and their users to get feedback on how they wanted Flickr to develop. That interaction made the initial community very strong and then that seed was there for new people who joined to make the community experience strong for them too.

Because culture is slow to change I would recommend starting with the simplest tool-set possible. Turn off most functions and only enable new ones when people start asking for more. As with tools, the same minimization principle goes for content. It is more important to build relationships and to draft the right people than it is to build the best content. Community trumps content online. Therefore, the focus should be on building connections.

A model we used for a CoP prototype (the first of several to be implemented on a variety of ‘topics’) was based on these roles in the core team:

Process Lead (Communities) – Stays current on online communities, evaluates progress, helps members with knowledge-sharing, develops processes and records progress.

Recruiter (Early Adopter) – Identifies and connects with other potential Early Adopters.

Recruiter (Maven) – Identifies subject areas of interest to the community and finds knowledge or human resources.

Technical Lead – Identifies technologies and ensures that the community has the right tools.

Topic Lead – The ‘go-to’ person on all questions relating to implementation. This person is supported by the other core team members.

Break down the walls

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If we don’t bust down the industrial-age silos in our organizations, their walls will inevitably crash down on us. Just ask the News department that had walls between print and the Web.

Three years ago Jon Husband called for an amalgamation of support functions in the networked workplace or eOD (e-OrganizationalDevelopment). Luis Suarez has suggested the merging of knowledge management and learning. Most recently Euan Semple calls for combining HR, Communications and IT. Euan says that HR are “maintainers of order, rather than enablers of staff”; that Communications manages rather than enables communication; while IT controls risk instead of enabling the business. These are generalizations, but expose the weaknesses of our current management system.

I’ve recommended before that a wide range of silos (HR, Training, Personnel, KM, OD, Communications, PR, Marketing, etc.) should be incorporated into one support function. Individuals could have a variety of roles, depending on organizational needs but all have to be focused on the organization. Separate departments create tribes and internal cultures that may be at cross-purposes with other departments or the overall organization. With hyper-linked information and access to expertise, not only are internal departments of less value, they could subvert the organization’s future by not responding quickly and appropriately.

I know that there’s more than one way to achieve better functioning organizations but tearing down the walls is a good place to start.