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10 General Principles For Leading and Managing in the Networked Knowledge Workplace

by Jon Husband

March 25, 2010 at 1:08 pm · Filed under 2.0 Design Thinking, Change, Collaboration, Connected Enterprise, Dead Paradigms, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Social Computing, Organizational Design, Social Computing, Trust, User Revolution, Web 2.0

As some FASTForward readers may know, I’ve worked with organizations on human resources, organizational/work design and organizational effectiveness issues for most of the past two-and-a-half decades.

I’ve also been reasonably deeply involved for the past decade with the evolution of the Web and networks and how they impact knowledge work, work design, collaboration, knowledge management, and individual, group and organizational learning.

I wrote this short burst of one-pagers a few years ago in an attempt to be succinct but pithy about the range of changes we all are or will be experiencing as the interconnected environment in which we carry out work contiues to spread and penetrate the inner workings of organizations. I’ve changed a few words here and there to reflect that we’re now in 2010.

I’d love to know what you think, and what I’ve missed or need to change.

1. Customers, employees and other stakeholders are all interconnected, and have access to most, if not all the information that everyone else has

This fact has large implications for any organization. It means that you can’t hide – anywhere.

Michael Schrage of MIT puts it very succinctly:

“Networks make organizational culture and politics explicit”

It’s essential, in this interconnected age of instant accessibility to information and knowledge, that as a leader and manager you are aware of the potent force that is contained in networks of connected information and people.

The implications are clear.

People have to understand and believe in what an organization is doing, why the organization is doing what it does, and how it’s doing it.

The messages from leaders have to be clear and believable, and the culture that carries out the organization’s mandate and mission has to be flexible, responsive and open.

Fear and cynicism, being driven to perform – as opposed to being invited to contribute your best – can’t carry the day.

2. The organization chart usually reflects power and politics in the organization … more often than not, customers and employees find work-arounds to create the experiences that delight

Most organization charts reflect an organizational design that is intended to deliver a strategy developed by a small group of people sitting on the top of an organization

Evaluating and ordering jobs in terms of their size and importance is often used to implement the organizational design

Most methods of job evaluation use factors, logic and language that were developed in the 1950’s and 1960’s – perfect for the Industrial Age, less than perfect for the interconnected Information Age.

Often, reporting relationships and chains-of-command get in the way.

Why do you think the Dilbert comic strip has been so successful for so long ?

Probably because people know that lots of time, energy and effort is expended keeping bosses happy – usually at the expense of customers.

Many managers aspired to, and spent the last twenty years, learning how to become “bosses”. Do you know what prison guards are called by the inmates ?

You guessed it – Boss

3. People interconnected by the Internet and software have ways of speaking to each other – and so they do that – all day long

People communicate. That’s what people do.

They share jokes, they send around interesting e-mails and web sites, they help each other get things done.

The nature of work in the Information Age has changed – dramatically. And it’s likely that the nature of work will keep changing.

If you want to see what work might look like – watch developments in the usability and usefulness of blogs and wikis. Watch younger people as they bring the gaming mentality into the workplace and watch how they communicate using cell phones, e-mail, and IM and the (eventual) derivatives of podcasting.

Watch, too, for developments in telepresence.

Employees are people, too. They communicate just like all the other real people, in Social Networks. They’re the ones communicating with your customers and shareholders.

It’s essential for an organization’s success, and the personal success of each and every one of those employees, that they feel proud of what they communicate. They want to be engaged in positive ways in making a meaningful contribution – to the customers, to themselves and to their fellow employees.

4. Champion-Channel-Coordinate replaces Command-and-Control

Thousands of articles have talked about how command-and-control dynamics are less than effective in the new set of interconnected conditions found in the workplaces of the Information Age.

Remember how you felt (or feel today) when commanded by a parent or other authority figure?

All too often, going to work in today’s organizations feels like re-living the adult version of that experience.

Not all organizations are like this – but fewer and fewer of tomorrow’s organizations will be able to function effectively if command-and-control remains the dominant dynamic.

Coaching has become an important response to changing this dynamic. Coaches help leaders and managers listen better, respect other people more authentically, and become more effective at striking a balance between:

Clarity and Decisiveness … and … Flexibility and Openness

As change swirls and complexity keeps on growing, champion-channel-coordinate helps good ideas and effective responses come to the surface, be examined thoroughly, and get implemented.

Effective leaders and managers know how to (or learn how to) champion, channel and coordinate.

Bosses are different than leaders and managers – as both a conceptual construct and in the lived experience found in our relationship with them.

5. Conversations are where information is shared, knowledge is created and are the basis for getting the right things done

Human beings have been having conversations since time began. That’s how we’ve figured out all of the things we’ve invented and how we govern ourselves. It’s how we’ve gotten to how we are now.

In the Industrial Age, reporting relationships, and the assumption that the dog on the top of the heap knew more than all the other dogs, were the formalized structure for conversation. It doesn’t work very well this way, anymore.

The only way to deal with ongoing change is to create and sustain effective conversations – with your customers, with and amongst employees and with everyone else.

Sharing information, and creating new knowledge, in order to respond to ongoing change, is the only way that will work from here on out.

The structure, tools and culture of organizations will have to honor this fact.

There’s no other way it’s going to work.

6. Trust, Transparency and Authenticity are the glue that holds it all together

People want to trust, they want to believe – even in the face of large amounts of evidence that the system is being manipulated in the favor of a select few

In North America, we’re still trying to shake off the disbelief about the blatant dishonesty and fraud demonstrated by some corporate (and governmental) leaders. We actively do not want to believe things may be as corrupt as they seem … institutionalized dishonesty and deceit.

We don’t want to believe that these attitudes and behavior might be more widespread than is apparent, yet somehow we have a feeling that the common corporate culture rewards and supports this possibility.

Many people – checking their 401K’s or stock portfolios, or looking back at the job(s) they’ve lost – feel at best disrespected and at worst enraged that they have been taken advantage of.

The interconnectedness of the Web has created a means for people to challenge blind authority, and to push back. If their trust is abused, many will use this to establish their own authority or fight back

Let’s understand one thing … when people who have been abused decide to get organized and push back, they become a potent force.

Interconnectedness is a potent force for creating transparency and demanding trust, and many are just now learning how to use it more effectively.

7. The Workplace of the Future will be more diverse – in terms of demographics, values, gender, race and language

In the midst of all the interconnectedness and sharing of information, the composition and shape of the workplace will keep changing.

North America and Western Europe are landscapes of a changing population – different waves of immigration keep coming, and each new generation brings fresh change to the workplace. The workplace of the near future will be a sea of people from a wide range of countries, cultures and languages – and they will all be interconnected.

The range of diversity brings with an equally wide range of beliefs, values and reasons for working.

This emerging mix will bring new dynamics of relationship into the workplace – both online and offline

Learning to listen, respect and champion-and-channel will be an essential competency for success.

8. New, integrated and sophisticated technologies are being developed and implemented – and the knowledge workers of tomorrow will be more interconnected than ever

Web 2.0 has found its way to the workplace – it’s an infrastructure that’s decentralized and more open … and therefore more complex in terms of human dynamics … than that which came before.

Remember Napster ? The workplace versions exist and may be coming soon to a workplace near you. Indeed, the wider conversation about blogs and the workplace is only growing, and acquiring useful examples.

Many forms of “smartware” are also on the runway, getting ready to take off. New tools are absolutely essential to deal with the overload of information that already exists – and grows more daunting with each passing week. This “smartware” will find its way into the workplace.

Smartware will either “dumb things down” (entering information, and the system does the rest), or “smarten things up” (helping people collaborate and create new knowledge).

Many of these tools will add capability and functionality to the continuing need for effective collaboration – and so will make collaboration more and more possible.

More technology-supported collaboration will in turn increase the need for effective leadership and coaching – champion-and-channel will become more necessary than ever. The game will get sharper again.

Adapting to the new tools will require new forms of social interaction in the workplace. As change keeps coming, and work activities become more interdependent, the required adaptation will become more social and cultural in nature.

9. We’re All In This Together

The interconnected Information Age is showing us that we’re all linked together – and that the whole system matters. Systems thinking is not new .. but the spread of networks makes it effects, impacts and challenges more visible and more immediate.

This applies to organizations, to networks of customers, suppliers, employees and communities, to our societies and to the planet.

New language for this principle is popping up everywhere – knowledge networks, intranets, communities of practice, systems thinking, swarming, social software, social networks, tipping points.

Awareness is the key. Maintain an “open focus”.

Being aware of yourself, others and the effects of your actions and ways of being in relation to others is a fundamental requirement in these conditions.

10. There’s No Going Back to “Normal” – Permanent Whitewater is the New Normal

It’s almost trite to say this – the only constant is change.

However…over the past 15 years or so, there have been enormous amounts of energy spent resisting change – waiting and hoping for things to go back to “normal”.

It won’t happen. It’s useful to acknowledge and accept this, and get started … at learning how to learn, and equipping yourself for constant adaptability.

It’s a good – but not the only – way forward.

At the same time, you won’t survive by trying to make yourself into a chameleon. You can’t be all things to all people.

Connecting to your self – your values, your ways to build and acquire knowledge, and understand and use your intuition – is in my opinion the only way to go.

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RobMarch 25th, 2010 at 1:41 pm

Jon – Luther had 95 theses – you boiled it down to 10 – brilliant Rob

Jon HusbandMarch 26th, 2010 at 9:17 am

Thanks, Rob .. as you know we both (and many others) have been thinking about these issues and advancing the general understanding of them for some time now.

I don’t see anything in what I have written that someone who’s paying attention would not have synthesized out of a bunch of leadership, management and organizational development books or curricula. That’s, in effect, all I have done .. placed in the context of network dynamics’ impact on organizations.

Jon HusbandMarch 31st, 2010 at 7:43 am

I’ve noticed a few of the most recent comments or re-tweets stating ” I wish he’d back it up with data, case studies”.

Let’s see …

1. Customers, employees and other stakeholders are all interconnected, and have access to most, if not all the information that everyone else has

What kind of data would be best here. How about just a link to the Pew Internet Research site ? Lots of stuff there about how people are increasingly interconnected and gave access to much or most of the information other people have.

2. The organization chart usually reflects power and politics in the organization … more often than not, customers and employees find work-arounds to create the experiences that delight

What would be the most useful data and case studies here ? Anecdotal evidence gathered over the years ? A long list of business / organizational effectiveness / management books offering examples of work-arounds ? YouTube clips ? A series of Dilbert cartoons ?

3. People interconnected by the Internet and software have ways of speaking to each other – and so they do that – all day long

Are data or several case studies needed to prove or elaborate this point ? Personally, I don’t think so.

4. Champion-Channel-Coordinate replaces Command-and-Control

I think that the best, or most widely-know case study that would support this point is last year’s FAST Company article on Cisco Systems

5. Conversations are where information is shared, knowledge is created and are the basis for getting the right things done

Look around you. I’m willing to bet that it is in conversation(s) that even you get a lot or most of YOUR work done. Is a case study or data really needed here ?

6. Trust, Transparency and Authenticity are the glue that holds it all together

I agree .. data and a case study would be most useful here.

7. The Workplace of the Future will be more diverse – in terms of demographics, values, gender, race and language

I think there’s lots of research and articles about this .. impending retirements acceleration, younger generations’ expectations about gender balance and generally greater equality.

But yes, the point would benefit, or be more strongly established, with specific data or case studies.

8. New, integrated and sophisticated technologies are being developed and implemented – and the knowledge workers of tomorrow will be more interconnected than ever

There’s lots of E2.0 collaboration platform adoption, or social tools, or personal knowledge management (PKM) tools left for people to adopt, and cognitive / working styles yet to change.

SaaS, Social CRM, cloud computing .. etc. None are fully established, and yet they all would seem to hold out the promise that there will be greater adoption and use as we move into the future.

9. We’re All In This Together

Data ?

Case studies ?

It seems clear that we are all on this same ball of rock, hurtling through a cold and silet universe. The ‘existential’ questions and issues associated with that fact have long been known and felt by many.

10. There’s No Going Back to “Normal” – Permanent Whitewater is the New Normal

Again .. data ?

Case studies ?

Look around yourself. reflect on your experiences over the past five years, and those of people whom your know. know. Get back to me.

RobMarch 31st, 2010 at 11:42 am

For all you case study folks – after you have read Jon’s answer – here is a question for you – what are you reading and doing – there is a ton of work behind what is being said – is this really new for you?

If so – get reading and get doing – the field is large and is not even leading edge anymore

Steve HoltApril 7th, 2010 at 7:32 pm

What I find so amusing about this is that I was in a meeting of Knowledge Management professionals today all agonizing over how to get people to share information. As your list makes clear, that’s hardly the problem. People are going to naturally share information. The problem is better seen as how to better enable sharing or how to not block them from sharing.

AhmadAugust 18th, 2010 at 8:15 am

I really enjoyed reading it all,
Thanks.
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ffblogMarch 25th, 2010 at 1:08 pm

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