Wirearchy

Wirearchy

Wrong Medium, No Message

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Last month, in Learn the language before you speak to me, I said that you have to understand what it’s like to be a node in a social network and that there is almost nothing like it in the industrial workplace or school system to prepare you for this. The basic premise is that you have to walk the talk before you can criticize.

A recent post by Dave Pollard highlights what can happen when the older generation [my age cohort of which many are in positions of authority] does not engage with the same media as the younger generation. It seems that most young people in the workplace (generation millennium) use IM, text messages and especially their mobile devices to connect with their peers. This generation is ignoring the desktop and the organisational knowledge bases and turning to their own age cohort for timely help and advice. This is a real cultural and age gap that can have a detrimental impact on our organisations:

Aside from the wasted content effort, this means that most young people will learn from peers, not from mentors. How much of what senior people know will never be learned by younger workers, simply because the networks of trust necessary for valuable conversations will not have been forged (and given that Gen Millennium workers are expected to change jobs on average every four years, might never be forged)?

Our generation should know better than to just ignore this situation. It is up to us to engage younger workers, not to complain that they don’t get it. Leadership by example is required, but first we have to be able to communicate. That means observing communication behaviours in our organisations and seeing how we can best connect. It may mean getting a Twitter account and a mobile device so that we can see that quick post about an issue that someone is facing.

Opportunities in difficult times

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It’s hard to get management’s attention when things are going well. They’re running off to meetings, golf games, conferences and the like. However, as cash and clients become scarcer, management has to focus on the business at hand and figure out how to do things better. They might even question the role of the training department.

I’ve been in the business of virtual learning and online collaborative work pretty well since the Web entered the business world. It’s been a hard sell over the years, especially since many people would prefer a trip to Florida in the Winter to attend a training course. Everyone deserves some time away from the office, but as travel and training budgets get slashed, more companies are examining learning and working on the Web.

WWW's "historical" logo, created by Robert Cailliau.
Image via Wikipedia

Recently I’ve been seeing more search phrases like – “open source social networking” and “cheap web conferencing tools” – coming to this site. Necessity is the mother of invention and people are looking for options. Luckily, many organisations have led the way in online collaboration over the past decade and there is a fair bit of expertise around, as witnessed by the range of knowledge on our Work Literacy online learning event. There are also a lot of tools to select from – some would even say too many.

I have a feeling that there will be a growing demand for innovative ways to help people in organisations work and learn together using the Web. For instance, I’m talking with a potential client who does not want me to travel on-site. Since I’m advising on how to move from a classroom teaching model to e-learning, he reasons, we should set the example and do all of our work online. I’m quite comfortable working that way, but it’s taken several years of practice.

I also see a rising interest in online performance support and just-in-time help, as opposed to just-in-case online courses. For professionals with skills in analysing business problems and finding methods and cost-effective technologies to address them, this is a time of opportunity. If people in the learning & development field complain that they can’t get management’s attention at this time, then perhaps they never will.

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Finding the Sweet Spot – Review

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The first comment on the cover says:

“This one is a keeper. Buy three. One for you, one for someone you care about, and one for a friend who really and truly needs it.” Seth Godin

I was given a copy of Dave Pollard’s Finding the Sweet Spot by a friend and read it on the plane home last week.  I’ve been watching Dave develop the model for natural enterprises for quite some time and even helped to coin the term, so I’m definitely a fan of the “natural entrepreneur’s guide to responsible, sustainable, joyful work”. Natural Entrepreneurship is based on a six step model that is easy to understand, but will take some work to implement, but then anything worthwhile requires effort:

  1. Find the sweet spot: Identify your Gift, passion, and purpose
  2. Find the right partners
  3. Research unmet needs
  4. Imagine and innovate solutions
  5. Continuously improvise
  6. Act responsibly on principle

Implementing these steps does not require an initial outlay of capital and natural entrepreneurs can get started even while they hold down a job. Each step is covered in detail, with practical advice and some anecdotes. A key aspect of natural entrepreneurship is that it is not premised on the unsustainable notion of perpetual growth.

The book is well written and edited and doesn’t ramble on as a series of blog posts might ( a bit what I feared when I picked up the book). I would recommend this book to anyone growing or changing an organisation, from single start-up to small company or non-profit; though there are examples of larger companies in the book.

I will be adding Finding the Sweet Spot to a few select reference books that I’ve used for business strategy work; including Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start and Christensen’s Seeing What’s Next. Now I have to buy some extra copies to give away.

Free Work Literacy Online Workshop

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On Monday, September 29, Michele Martin, Tony Karrer and I will be hosting a free 6-week learning event on social media for learning professionals. This “course” (kind of like an unworkshop) is sponsored by Work Literacy and the eLearning Guild, in part as a run-up to  DevLearn 2008. All are welcome.

This is an asynchronous (no time-scheduled activities) program and each week we’ll identify activities for all levels of skills and interest.

Here’s the program:

Date Title
09/29/2008 Introduction to Social Networks
10/06/2008 Free your Favorites / Bookmarks
10/13/2008 Blogs
10/20/2008
Aggregators
10/27/2008 Wikis
11/03/2008 Implications / Summary

Please spread the word, especially to your less connected friends and colleagues. This may be the introduction they need.

We suggest that you sign up on the Ning network that we’ve set up. It has more information and will be updated as we go along. If you’re having some some difficulties, e-mail me and I’ll see what I can do to help.

We’re also looking for your thoughts on how to get the information out to people who are not online; any ideas?

Edge Thinking

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The video of John Seely Brown on edge thinking is worth 15 minutes of your time.

JSB discusses the concept of workscapes (reminds me of Jay’s learnscape) and foresees that all managers will need general HR skills and that management will evolve over time to a coaching role. He also tells about how things changed when he became a free-agent after decades at XEROX-PARC. Within a year, JSB was more connected and had a more dynamic network than ever, and he credits social Web tools for this. The Web is a great place for do-it-ourselves learning and JSB sees work and learning becoming integrated [this is my own area of most passionate professional interest]. One example of the Web reducing the need for training is an older programmer learning new languages and techniques. He says that he just types in the exact programming error message in Google and instantly gets the performance support he needs.

Photo: Living on the Edge by Giant Ginkgo

I’m currently working on combining my last posts on The T&D Role and Learning & Performance into a more integrated article. JSB’s work, plus concepts like Wirearchy and Cynefin are starting to come together in my mind. I want to focus on the practicalities of creating a better workplace for a networked world, as many of the frameworks are already out there waiting to be implemented.

Changing the training and development role in the 21st C.

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I received several comments on my last post on Learning and Performance in Balance. This post came about as I examined the role of training and development (T&D) in the workplace. My contention is that many organisational learning initiatives don’t achieve what they set out to do. They don’t enable learning at the individual level unless the person is already motivated and few are connected to performance objectives at the organisational level.

Instead, I think that a better approach would be for the organisation to focus on measurable performance and give workers the time and support to direct their own learning. The T&D function then provides support, but not direction, and also provides a feedback loop to develop better performance support from the organisation. This goes with Klaus Wittkuhn’s statement that:

It is not an intelligent strategy to train people to overcome system deficiencies. Instead, we should design the system properly to make sure that the performers can leverage all their capabilities.

The diagram that I developed is an attempt to show that workers know best about learning, given the time and support needed, while management understands the necessary performance indicators for the organisation to succeed.

There was some concern that such an approach would allow workers to prepare for their next job and rob the current organisation. This is a possibility but as the work environment becomes more complex it is better to have employees with diverse interests and skills who can adapt to changing circumstances, instead of only being able to deal with the current state. Management must support learning, but it is too far removed from the individual worker to be able to direct it. The real experts today are those workers closest to the problem, as I responded to Virginia Yonkers:

I think that a better approach in complex organisational environments, where there are few good practices, only emergent practices, we should look at the Cynefin Model. In a complex environment, “… in which the relationship between cause and effect can only be perceived in retrospect, but not in advance, the approach is to Probe – Sense – Respond and we can sense emergent practice”. My view on this is that it is better if the Probing happens from the bottom-up and then management’s role is to support these individual probe’s of sense-making. The “experts” are now those who are closest to the problem or challenge – the knowledge workers.

I’m not advocating for a Utopian state of affairs in the workplace as regards learning. We need to allocate resources better and one way is to focus on what people do best. Management deals best with what is measurable. Individuals handle all the variables that affect their lives and know what is best for them. They’ll do what they feel is best for themselves anyway. As Karyn Romeis comments, “There is just too much just-in-case, sheepdip stuff still around. There is ample evidence that, for many managers in the corporate world, training provision is a box-ticking exercise.”

Finally, Dave Ferguson reminded me that even in workplaces that require defined processes and  standardization, the workers have the ability to improve things, but need support to have these implemented. This can be the role of the T&D group in the 21st Century – to communicate what the workers have learned in such a way that management can understand it. This is a reversal of the top-down role of the industrial era.

Learning and Performance in Balance

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If you scratch the surface of training and development in any organisation you realize that management doesn’t really care about learning; they want measurable performance. This is understandable and paying lip service to the learning organisation, et al, is a waste of time. At the organisational level, performance should be the only measure. However, there is much that cannot be measured and new work processes and skills are emerging in our digital economy. Management is usually the last to know about these, so they won’t likely be planning learning activities to support emergent processes.

In a complex work environment, where innovation is more important than following established procedures, responsibility for learning should be delegated to the lowest level  – the individual worker. These workers should be encouraged to collaborate in their learning activities, with little or no direction from above. Bottom-up emergent processes are better in a changing environment because those at the coal-face best understand the issues, even if they may not be able to articulate them.

I would suggest that in a knowledge-intensive work environment, where workers already have some degree of autonomy, it would be best to give them complete control over their learning. Just drop the organisational learning function and concentrate on performance. Management must then keep open communications with workers and can develop tools that will support emergent processes as they develop. Management will always be one step behind in this process, but that’s better than being completely out of touch.

It is a better balance to let workers direct their learning and collaborate as they see fit (within limits of privacy, security, etc). The modern organisation should get out of the learning business and into the business of supporting its workers.

My thanks to recent posts on this subject by Tony Karrer, Michele Martin and Clark Quinn.

The new nature of the firm

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Read/Write Web has taken up the call of Enterprise 2.0 with a new channel on the subject and starts by examining the nature of the firm, how large corporations have amassed huge wealth and control over the past 50 years and the factors contributing to a potential change in this situation:

  • Demographics: Retiring baby boomers and Generation Y’s network-savvy approach to work
  • Technology: How networks subvert hierarchy and force companies to focus on their core business.

The conclusion is that there are opportunities a-plenty.

That is huge opportunity for a lot of start-ups. There has never been a better time to be an entrepreneur. It also a huge challenge for the incumbents. Big companies need to re-define themselves in fundamental ways to find new ways to be big in a meaningful way.

The next post on R/WW is about the specifics of running an enterprise 2.0. It’s nuts and bolts kind of stuff. What is missing here so far, and I know that this is a new channel, is the foundation of enterprise 2.0.

I’ve mentioned this before about work literacy. We need a unifying principle for post-industrial work. Wirearchy is still, in my mind, that principle, as it includes the role of technology but is focused on how we interact in this workplace:

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

For enterprise 2.0 to work, it needs to embrace democracy in the workplace, something that rarely exists in industrial, command and control, organisations – which account for almost all of our businesses. Businesses run as monarchies or oligarchies but very few operate as democracies. We are so accustomed to this structure that most business people would say that it is impossible to run a business as a democracy. We know they are wrong and that there are democratic business models that work today.

I think that enterprise 2.0 will not fulfill its potential unless its foundation is more than just web technologies or networked businesses. We need to integrate this democratic organising principle into our discussions on enterprise 2.0 and I am sure that many captains of industry will loudly disagree. Without an architectural organising principle, the enterprise 2.0 ship will not sail very far.

Photo by S_K_S

Unmeeting

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I attended a learning conversation on Unmeetings with Jay Cross and several other very interesting people today.  This will be the first of a series of dialogs on Learnscape Architecture. Jay said initially that, “The conversation will go where it wants to, but we’ll begin by considering how unmeetings can facilitate learning.”

My reflections and notes from the hour-long conversation follow. Unstructured conferences allow people who wouldn’t normally speak up an opportunity to do so. There was a reference to the book Why Work Sucks and the notion that all meetings should be optional. A point was made that the core question around unmeetings was how much structure does it take to create value. More discussion led to the observation that set agendas may not be necessary and may even impinge on learning. An example is the World Cafe, a model where everyone has a voice, not just the official speakers.

A key to good meetings, including unmeetings, is more so in the facilitation, not any set agenda.  A facilitator is someone who can watch the flow. The idea of  flow from one type of tool to another came out. Perhaps we need some paths to enable better work flow, starting with unmeetings/openspace, which can produce artefacts such as visualisations/mind maps. These can then lead to participative structures like blogs/wikis and finally, once the path is clearer, to project management.

You do not own me

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Last year I went through a very long process applying for a job that had the potential to be interesting and challenging. It entailed no move on my part, mostly work from home, some international travel, and the opening of new lines of business, both geographically and in terms of industry sectors. The salary was OK and the benefits reasonable, so I seriously considered the offer.

Then I received the written offer of employment and was shocked by the non-compete clause. I would not be able to work for any company that was deemed by my employer to be a competitor, for two years. Nor could I go back to my own consulting practice and do work for any of these companies. My employer would have the right to determine who these companies were, after the fact. Needless to say, I turned down the job offer.

Charles Green at The Trusted Advisor reports on a recent decision by the California Supreme Court that strikes a major blow against non-compete agreements for employees, basically stating that no employer can deny future employment to a worker. As Green states:

This is simple human dignity; employers do and should have many rights, including various forms of intellectual property protection (trademarks, patents, copyrights)—but those rights have their own distinct protections and can stand on their own. Using employees as chattel to further a former employer’s competitive adventures is unnecessary—and thoroughly out of sync with a modern global business world.

I have often referred to salaried employment as indentured servitude, and practices such as non-compete clauses are examples of this culture. Perhaps with more worker mobility, a growing body of free-agents and less dependence on corporations for work, we may see this culture changing. Let’s hope that the lawyers hear about this soon.