by Paula Thornton
December 5, 2008 at 11:45 pm
· Filed under Enterprise 2.0
After reading and re-reading Bill’s recent post I immediately thought that the highest value of the post was in his reference to an Apocalypse. I said so in my comments:
Bill: My apologies for failing to note the most significant message of your piece: 2.0 enables the Personal Apocalypse. I’d even suggest that the advent of the Personal Apocalypse eclipses any/all purpose for KM (yet another nail in the KM coffin). Why? Personal economics. One affords the individual control over the economic factors, the other does not.
I would have left it at that, until a report from McCann crossed my path on Twitter. Suddenly there was a clear message there that reinforced this meme: strangers no longer. Let me explain. Each and every time I have been involved in an E2.0 initiative (as in, “anyone bothered to seriously listen to what I had to say in a business setting”), I find that I eventually find a way to circle back to the most relevant ‘first’ place to focus: connecting people to each other. This is not an E2.0 distinction — indeed it is only after this goal is satisfied that anything 2.0 can be accomplished. None of the value is relevant until “me” meets “we”, but in very specific, intentional ways.
Bill’s notes that apocalypse is a term applied to:
the disclosure to certain privileged persons of something hidden from the majority of humankind
Do you see the obvious association to the relevance and exponential value of transparency to the individual voice? What happens when 2.0 channels are the means and the mechanisms for bringing to pass apocalyptic disclosure? Forget the rapture and think in terms of everything we’ve been experiencing this past year.
Now dial back to 1999 and the advent of Y2K. Remember what was associated with that same timeframe? Few remember the peak of the internet boom because of the ensuing bust. Remember how everyone said, “the internet changes everything”? Now consider several thoughts from Clay Shirky (featured speaker at FASTforward ‘09) in “Here Comes Everybody“:
…most of the barriers to group action have collapsed, and without those barriers, we are free to explore new ways of gathering together and getting things done.
None of the absolute advantages of institutions like businesses or schools or governments have disappeared. Instead, what has happened is that most of the relative advantages of those institutions have disappeared — relative, that is to the direct effort of the people they represent.
The Web didn’t introduce a new competitor into the old ecosystem…[it] created a new ecosystem.
In reality, 2.0 is not only apocalyptic for business as we know it, it’s also a paradoxical “deadly embrace”:
- If they fail to embrace it, they will be made irrelevant by their competition
- If they do embrace it, they can be made irrelevant by the same people to whom the power shifts
I have no doubt that there are a lot of executives (including those from the big-3 auto manufacturers) who are in denial about the association between what they are experiencing and these concepts. They blame it on the economy. Let me say this loud and clear (leveraging this 2.0 channel that affords me the power to do so): this IS the economy, an economy that has shifted radically due to increased efficiencies that have been largely ignored because they were always seen through a lens that focused on the ability to decrease business cost. What was missed was that the radical reduction of transaction costs shifts the economic reality enough to elminate the current value of organizations, making organizations effectively irrelevant.
This is the economy of personal choice and personal voice.
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DariaDecember 8th, 2008 at 6:32 am |
Have you read the post by Andrew McAfee about the shift of decision rights? It’s a pretty interesting post. I support the view that with the adoption of E 2.0 or PM 2.0 the power of the team grows, but at the same time there may be no shift of the decision rights. Organization leaders will not disappear. They will be empowered by the wisdom of their whole team.
Daria: Thanks for reading and for commenting!
Your reference to PM 2.0 helps me understand your perspective. I understand what you’re saying and I totally understand its relevance from your viewpoint.
Clay has a lot of examples to seed a slightly modified perspective. At first what you see is the total collapse of organizations, and then you’re willing to recognize that they will still exist — but clearly not in any way we think of them today. I’m working on another piece that might help illustrate this. Your comments will be a beacon for me to try and more clearly address some of this.
[I'm not familiar with the tenets of PM 2.0 but if they're not advocating the 'relinquishing' of controls, then they're misguided.]
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DavidDecember 9th, 2008 at 10:40 am |
I’m trying to get my mind around how goods like garbage cans, electrical fittings and plastic wrap will be produced without something very similar to today’s common organizational structure. How do the organizations structured to produce those goods become irrelevant?
I support the view that with the adoption of E 2.0 or PM 2.0 the power of the team grows, but at the same time there may be no shift of the decision rights. Organization leaders will not disappear. They will be empowered by the wisdom of their whole team.
I think that this is generally correct. There is a power shift going on, everywhere and in / with most things, but when it comes to organizations of medium to large size, people still do not really know how to self-organize and self-direct the efforts required to realize the organization’s purpose (though they / we are clearly capable and learning fast. There’s this thing called “employment”, and many people “delegate upwards” (in the words of IBM’s Lou Gerstner), as in “youse are the guys paid to have the vision and make the decisions”.
the problem(s) are that it’s becoming clearer and clearer that many of the traditional ways of doing things, taking decisions, etc. aren’t working well, or at all, these days, but we collectively have very little practice at “self”-organizing and “self”-directing. It’s not necessarily that difficult, but it requires the desire to do so, and the motivation to engage and stay with it, whereas many of us are accustomed to getting direction and ‘doing our jobs”. Almost all commonly-used reward and performance management schemes reinforce this.
Self-organizing a la “Here Comes Everybody” suits those who are not so inclined to be employed workers, per se, although it is also clear that talk, and sometimes the methods and culture, associated with “empowerment” have been in the air for sometime now.
However, we are clearly in a period of massive transition (that’s not news, is it ?), though I strongly suspect that the full scope of changes are yet to be fully understood. I also think that it will take another 10 to 20 years to have the full scope of the changes become widespread .. the desire to access and hold onto power, which is most often positional and structural (and driven / massively reinforced by compensation) is one of the largest obstacles to the rational recognition that new ways of working are emerging and are more effective to / in today’s environment.
Manufacturing is a machine. Machines can still be optimized. But what about the organizations that go with them?
Here’s one way in which I see them changing (some already have): expanding their models by focusing on the machine aspects of what they do well. For example, RJ Reynolds is typically noted for their cigarette brands: Camel, Winston, Doral, Pall Mall, Salem and Kool. But they’ve also seen themselves as a product packaging company. While I can’t validate today, at one time they held packaging contracts for tampons and other items that are packaged similarly to cigarettes.
Let’s look at another possibility, there are some companies that are still focused on 6-month cycles of new products and corresponding marketing — very old school. What if they were to open their model up so that they leverage ALL of their company as a ‘machine’ and they leverage it to manufacture, market and distribute products as a service model?
They don’t become totally irrelevant — they become irrelevant in the form they’re in today. They adapt to new forms.
Jon: I’m also seeing the possibility of seeing “Here Comes Everybody”, perhaps a bit differently than you suggest. The changes are less about people going ‘off’ on their own than about taking over as a collective ‘we’. The bottom line is that the concept of an enterprise has been a bit of a fallacy all along, and we’ve often played right along, even as employees — talking repeatedly about and blaming a ‘they’ that doesn’t exist. There is no ‘they’ — there is only ‘we’ — only ‘we’ve’ never had the collective power and voice that we can grab now.
Organizations that fail to open up to allow for such ‘voice’ will be brought down — except where ‘apathy’ is the preferred method of operation by all involved. But, I would contend, that such organizations will be brought down by the markets themselves, because they are typically highly inefficient and where they are efficient they will lack the momentum/energy for maintaining a place in the market.
There will always be exceptions.
It’s a very interesting conversation. I would just like to point out that corporations are the best expression of the “we” that we have been able to build so far. In that “we”, the corporation, some people brought in capital, some others their energy or work-force, some followed, some took on the leadership responsibility. And these organizations have changed the world in two decades, actually, they have just made possible this conversation by building its supporting tools and infrastructure.
So I am a bit careful about all this. I like Jon point about a 10 to 20 year long change. It’s also what I see.
But I do agree that organizations will need to change and take into account this “apocalypse” (I love the analogy). My perspective is on people-centered organisations (http://www.boostzone.fr/people-centered-organizations/) and on collective leadership.
Luis: Thanks much for joining the conversation!
Your perspectives on people-centered organizations is great. Thanks for bringing that to the discussion.
As we consider all of the different perspectives noted here — all of them viable — we also need to consider another possibility, one that is just a subtlety on everything already mentioned. We’ve spoken of organizations somewhat in isolation. What we haven’t discussed is how the interworkings and dynamics between them will drag on the form and shape…basically market effects. For example, because market entrance costs are so low (for technology/service offerings), many of the 2.0 companies are spin-offs of the brightest from the larger organizations.
Here in Dallas, Telligent is a 2.0 social networking platform made up predominantly of x-Microsofters. The drain on intellectual capital from the ability to more readily self-organize hits major companies two-fold: they lose the capital and the capital now becomes a competitor.
There will be another competitive drain: the associates model. As employees find ways in which to contribute to ‘cooperatives’ (in a variety of forms, including things like Innocentive), and add to their earning power, they will often find a shift in their ‘added’ income that begins to exceed their ’stable’ income and they will also slowly fade away (if not formally, at least informally decreasing their direct contributions and productivity — all those unaccounted for extra hours put in, now diverted).
It seems that most of the things being considered are the more direct and obvious ones, not the subtle ones mentioned here. It’s these latter ones that will have the greatest impact because they will seemingly ’show up’ by surprise (when their effects get enough critical mass to be recognizable).
Clearly, there’s a distinction here between ‘knowledge workers’ and those who are still predominantly interchangeable machine cogs. But there are a lot of ‘machine cogs’ that are going to find opportunities (or create them) to leverage their talents in far more productive ways, as well.
For myself, I’m already seeing far more opportunity to find ‘work’ without looking for a ‘job’.
I agree with those views. I think that we are indeed entering a period in which people will have an opportunity to increase their bargaining power over organisations – I remember reading the term laborism (as opposed to capitalism) from last october’s issue of HBR.
Regarding both your examples (Telligent and the associates model), I have been working on how to increase a client “share of attention” of its employees as well as on how to retain major talents in an open talent market. I really think that corporations are slowly beginning to understand the changes at hand, and reacting, slowly I would say, but reacting.
I agree that the “interworkings and dynamics” between corporations will change, and that new firms and new people will find their place and invent new business models. But the organization itself is adapting and understanding that it needs to move from being organized around only the hierachical principle (I am being a bit oversimplistic) to being organize around several principles, including hierarchy and collaboration.
If it is so organized, its voice will change. Its culture will change. What I think is that we are entering a period of change comparable to the “process reengineering” one. Then we changed the processes; now, its the social fabric of the corporation that is about to change.
Luis: I really like the way you’ve differentiated the overall change taking place: “now, its the social fabric of the corporation that is about to change”
Calling out and drawing attention to ’social fabric’ is VERY relevant for ongoing discussion. Indeed, LEADING the discussion with this shift I think fundamentally changes the focus of the conversation and the direction it can take (effectively, the “2.0 changes everything” types of conversations).
I’m certainly going to consider leveraging more in-depth focus on this concept for future pieces.
You also have to wonder how much will need to change and to what degree when there are valid points for Steve Jobs taking over GM during the bailout to make radical change: http://twurl.nl/omxfam
While intended in jest, it’s worth a serious consideration as to why it would make sense and what that means.
Jon: I’m also seeing the possibility of seeing “Here Comes Everybody”, perhaps a bit differently than you suggest. The changes are less about people going ‘off’ on their own than about taking over as a collective ‘we’. The bottom line is that the concept of an enterprise has been a bit of a fallacy all along, and we’ve often played right along, even as employees — talking repeatedly about and blaming a ‘they’ that doesn’t exist. There is no ‘they’ — there is only ‘we’ — only ‘we’ve’ never had the collective power and voice that we can grab now.
Organizations that fail to open up to allow for such ‘voice’ will be brought down — except where ‘apathy’ is the preferred method of operation by all involved
Agree 100%
Interesting debate but like so many it is riddled with a form of self interest that has no clear outcome that can be satisfactorily parsed in management terms and which would be far better served if dished up in plain English and not as convoluted double speak. Example: “Do you see the obvious association to the relevance and exponential value of transparency to the individual voice?” – Frankly no.
The way I read much of this ’stuff’ leads me to a conclude that proponents are fantasizing about replacing ‘the enterprise,’ its hierarchies and structures with a form of anarchy. That’s fine where it leads to something of value but what, where and how?
Having spent most of my life in service (aka people) based organizations, the only thing the technology allows is the easier discovery of people who may help solve problems, better execute a project…whatever. That doesn’t necessarily mean the existing structures collapse. We’ve always known the informal organization is the one that ‘gets things done’ far better than the org chart would suggest. The fact we can see it more clearly doesn’t change the org chart. It is treating management as imbecilic to assume they don’t know these structures exist.
In any event, those holding onto the levers of power will put up one heck of a fight to retain that power. More important, they have the means with which to make sure they are insulated well into the future. And please don’t throw the financial crisis at me with a ‘See I told you so,’ because you only have to look at who is being introduced into power to understand that it is ‘out with the old, in with the older’ and no discernible shift in thinking.
Some of the Tweets around this are farcical. The idea for example that a sellers market changes the organization internally is plain wrong. It may change the composition of the workforce and lead to some pruning but the basic structures remain largely intact. Otherwise you end up with chaos. More important, people instinctively take a flight to survival.
There is an implicit assumption that all people are willing to follow this particular Pied Piper. Not true, regardless of the way you cut it. Check inside any organization and when asked, they may say yes, but what will they do? Nothing. Nielsen’s 1/9/90 law is alive and well. Most people just want to come to work, do their job, get paid and go home. The kind of changes you are proposing requires far more than that. So OK – people’s jobs are at stake. But when everyone’s job is at stake Maslow’s hierarchy of needs kicks in. Hard.
I find the references to Y2K amusing. What the enterprise people I know remember about that time is the over hyping of problems that turned out to be a fallacy. The resultant reigning back of IT spend and gradual reduction in software inventory was the direct result which has seen IT budgets consistently reduced over the succeeding 6 years. Echoes of today’s E2.0 ’stuff?’
The reference to Innocentive is even more interesting. That is pretty much restricted to one market (healthcare) and is at a very early stage. Close up it looks like a glorified version of e-lance with the emphasis on labor arbitrage. That model may work in a few markets but I don’t see it as generally viable. Jury is definitely out on that.
But isn’t the kicker that Andrew McAfee and many others have been searching for the last 2+ years for solid enterprise changing examples to back their theories with little real success? At least he agreed with that thought when we met at E2.0 in Boston. As have others with whom I’ve since spoken. Isn’t the reality that the argument is trying to forecast a conclusion that has yet to be reached, let alone proven? Or rather isn’t it the case that what we really see today are small change outliers? Possible game changers but not even close to the fundamentalist change I hear in the tone of these kinds of discussion.
Does all this mean that proponents are plain wrong? Not necessarily. But they absolutely must moderate the way the arguments are presented as though they are some genre of absolute truths. Otherwise they risk being tarred as destroyers and not as change agents for good.
Which brings me to the fundamental problem. Theories are presented as facts which are not in existence. That is a dangerous position to take because it threatens management in ways that are guaranteed to lead to resistance, even if the theory is internally sound. On that one, Maslow rules, OK?
Dennis: Your comments suggest clearly why I disagree with most of your writing. You proport fundamental facts of economics to be theories. Where did you study economics?
@Paula – duh? You’ve not presented an economic argument, neither have I. I don’t pretend to be an economist but I take my cues from here: http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2008/12/22/is-economics-a-science/.
I’m taking a management line based on my thinking as a professional accountant trained in social psychology and who specialized in recovery work at distressed businesses.
Dennis: Perhaps you need more credible references. Let’s start with the dictionary: Science — a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws.
The example your ‘friend’ gave indeed proves economics is not a science. But unfortunately he chose the wrong evidence. He chose the evidence taught by many to ‘be’ economics…all wrong and highly flawed. I come from the Heynesian school of economics. As such, economics is a science.
You said: “The reference to Innocentive is even more interesting. That is pretty much restricted to one market (healthcare) and is at a very early stage” Healthcare? Are you kidding. Early stage? Have you been watching, or did you just miss the last decade? http://www.fastforwardblog.com/2008/03/31/the-new-natives/
Blasting McAfee? Now you just sound like Tom Davenport who clearly made a mockery of himself on the stage at FF08.
What is it exactly that you’re trying to PROVE and based on what evidence will you be satisfied? You don’t prove 9-11 — it just happens and you deal with the consequences. You can’t engineer your way out of complexity.
You’ve asked me not to tell you what you believe. Then prove to me that you don’t believe the things I’ve had to surmise from your words…you still DON’T understand 2.0 — otherwise you wouldn’t sound so much like Davenport, playing a sadly tragic Shakespearean character part:
“It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
You said: “they risk being tarred as destroyers and not as change agents for good.” I guess it totally depends on your perspective. Indeed, I see ‘we’ as the change agents for good and ‘thee’ as the destroyers.
Power to the possibilities.
It’s a sure sign that I’ve hit a nerve when the responses instantly plummet to the insult and dismissive levels. I usually associate that with a closed mind. So let’s deal with the issues you raise:
1. Whether economics is a science or not is a point of legitimate debate. You have a point of view but seem to be presenting as fact. I have a point of view though it is loosely held.
2. Err – I’ve met with Innocentive on several occasions this last year, I’m on their distro list and I’ve run the numbers. Please recheck. They’re mostly in healthcare and health related sectors. Better still, ask them. Unless things have changed the last three months, I think you’ll find they will agree on that. When I posed the question: “So you’re elance for the enterprise?” They didn’t disagree.
3. I’m not railing at McAfee or the general E2.0 hypothesis – we had a perfectly amicable discussion where he agreed that finding substantive use cases was problematic. It was a continuation of a similar discussion two years ago and which has been borne out time and again from others.
4. I’m suggesting that the tenor of arguments fails. I did not say the argument necessarily fails.
5. Simply waving a hand re: 90/9/1 and saying ‘deal with it is’ isn’t much of an argument. In the cases I have been managing, it has proven incredibly difficult to move the needle. I’m not convinced ‘we’ know enough about the mechanics of interaction to be certain how the needle is moved. We have some reasonable guesses based on certain cultural factors but that’s about as good as it gets.
6. You can engineer your way out of complexity through deconstruction but in that I would pick my cases very carefully. But I’m not sure what you mean by ‘complexity’ in this context. Process? people? organization? IT landscape? Different arguments for each. For ONE argument, check this: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howlett/?p=559
7. ‘Power to the possibilities.’ This is the sort of remark that makes me wince. Catchy? Yes. Endearing? No. Does it help advance the argument without invoking images of Che Guevara? No. THAT’s the problem. There is an important yet subtle difference between moderating the language and moderating the argument. Your position on the former fails even if the position on the latter is logically sound when presented in such tones to a management audience.
8. Finally – as a philosopher, surely you know that your attribution of me as a mirror to Davenport is logically unsound as it is based on supposition and inference rather than an understanding of the individual position. In any event, you might want to check the discussions Tim O’Reilly and I have had on this general topic but which started round about here: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howlett/?p=525
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