Archive for Work 2.0
by Jon Husband
August 22, 2011 at 1:39 pm · Filed under
Collaboration, Connected Enterprise, Emergent, Innovation, Interaction, Management Theory, Network Effect, Social Computing, Work 2.0, Workplace, employee engagement, middle managers
OK .. so it looks like the Web, hyperlinks and ’social’ platforms for interaction are here to stay (unless electricity grids fail or corporations and governments completely take over the Web).
For the past couple of years at least there have been increasingly numerous and strident calls for fundamental make-overs of both management and leadership. People everywhere are clicking into the fact that yesteryear’s models and ways are less and less effective .. and yet we all labor on whilst yelling “change .. change, or die .. etc.”
World-renowned organizational effectiveness guru Gary Hamel set out the fundamental challenge(s) in his 2007 book “The Future of Management“. Others, such as John Hagel and John Seeley Brown’s “The Power of Pull“, have weighed in with equally sharp and challenging premises and theories. All of these pieces signal an urgent need to innovate and adapt to a new set of conditions .. conditions which are rapidly on their way to becoming ubiquitous and/or expected by the generations entering or approaching their chapter-of-life in the workplace.
It sometimes feels like this is only the next round or wave of coming to terms with rumblings and dynamics that began back in the ’60’s and ’80’s. After all, we began hearing about the critical need for empowerment, continuous learning, flexibility, agility and resilience at least two decades ago. Most of the pioneering work in these areas came from the soft-and-squishy (or seen to be that way) world of Organizational Development (OD), from people like Eric Trist, Fred Emery, Bill Passmore, Marv Weisbord, Peter Block, Charles Handy, Meg Wheatley and many many others.
As the years have passed since these pioneers first addressed the human issues in organizational structures and processes derived from engineering and efficiency principles, various elements of their thinking and practices have inexorably found their way into managing processes and people. I suggest that this is entirely understandable as the increasing frequency and intensity of complicated and complex organizational activities have grown over time, and along with the evolution of peoples’ expectations about work and meaning in a modern era.
My premise is that management innovation is available from that world of organizational development, as it’s principles and dynamics are closely aligned to Hamel’s suggestion that “activities will still need to be coordinated, individual efforts aligned, objectives decided upon, knowledge disseminated, and resources allocated, but increasingly this work will be distributed out to the periphery“.
The New Context Demands New Principles
What was yesterday called Enterprise 2.0 and today is called “Social Business” can be seen as the emergent stage of the intersection of significant advances in information technology, management science applied to business process, the analysis and control of operational activities AND the interaction and participation of people with information, opinions and knowledge to share.
These forces and factors are converging in today’s workplaces, wherein a continuous flow of information is the rule rather than the exception. Thus, it’s essential to cast a critical eye on the fundamental assumptions of work design and how work is managed. The core assumptions embodied in widely-used methodologies today still present work as ”static sets of tasks and knowledge arranged in specific constellations on an organization chart” (see all major job evaluation methodologies for more detail).
It’s getting clearer and clearer today that the capabilities and dynamics of what started in the consumer realm as social software … those funny things called blogs, and wikis, and widgets stitched together into and by web services … are finding (and have found) their ways into the workplace.
That they have migrated to the workplace makes sense. People have always (at work) been creating and building up “... knowledge through exchanging information, talking and arguing and pointing out other ideas and sources of information and ways to do things.” Such services and tools and the reasons for which people use them are the means by which general human activity (purposeful and otherwise) translates to the online environment.
So, as stated at the outset, it seems clear that we’re situated in a more interactive, less static environment. Whether we like it or not, we are passing from an era in which things were assumed to be controllable (able to be deconstructed and then assembled into a clear, linear, always replicable and thus static form) to an era characterized by a continuous flow of information. Because it feeds the conduct of organizations large and small, it is a flow that necessarily demands to be interpreted and shaped into useful inputs and outputs.
The methodologies still in use today generally did not foresee working with networked information flows, and thus the way work is designed and managed does not really address how it could or should be managed.
We need to revisit the fundamental principles of work design AND the basic rules used to configure hierarchical organizations in which the primary assumption is that knowledge is put to use in a vertical chain of decision-making.
Both Horizontal and Vertical
Horizontal flows of information and peoples’ engagement have already been put to work in a range of early Enterprise 2.0 and Social Business experiments. But let’s be honest .. how these will work, or not, is to date less than clear. There’s an enormous amount of inertia and habit to overcome, all whilst confronting continuously turbulent conditions seasoned with healthy helpings of ambiguity .. about economics, governance and peoples’ collective capabilities to adapt.
Hierarchy is not disappearing from the organizational landscape .. nor should it. It’s an useful construct for clarifying decision-making and accountability, and I believe it will come to co-exist with the core dynamics of networked people and information …
“a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority based on knowledge, trust, credibility and a focus on results”
.. which, incidentally, is a fundamental aspect of all the ‘democratization’ (it’s probably too early to yet call it that, but let’s do so for the time being) we are witnessing in the recent uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East. Would that our western governments and organizations watch and learn as they embark on the renewal of leadership and management in the 21st Century.
The implications are huge, will demand significant effort and responsibility on the part of all individuals, and may lead to very different ways of working and being in and of the world.
But clearly, we must evolve … what we have been doing looks less and less likely to be as effective as necessary in the rapidly-approaching future.
by Bill Ives
July 26, 2011 at 9:09 am · Filed under
Social Media, Web 2.0, Work 2.0
Here is a recent study that reported digital distractions from Harmon.ie on what has become a major issue at work. It impacts both work and time outside work hours, often blurring the distinction between the two. For example, the majority of people under the age of 40 stay digitally-connected in bed, and 44% of people stay connected during a night out at the movies. Of course many of these connections are for personal reasons, but often work is involved. In the following result summaries the bullets are in the words of the study. Here are some of the work related findings:
- Two out of three users will interrupt a group meeting to communicate with someone else digitally, either by answering email (48%), answering a mobile phone (35%), chatting via IM (28%), updating their status on a social network (12%) or tweeting (9%).
- Relatively few workers disconnect to focus on a task (32%) or during virtual meetings or teleconferences (30%), webcasts (26%) or lunch (12%).
- A majority of workers turn off their devices only when their boss asks them to (85%) or during one-on-one meetings (63%).
Most of the distractions are digital.
- Users reported getting sidetracked in email processing (23%), switching windows to complete tasks (10%), personal online activities such as: Facebook (9%), instant messaging (6%), text messaging (5%) and Web search (3%).
- Multiple devices on the desktop contribute to the problem, with 65% of respondents reporting that they utilize up to three additional monitors and/or mobile devices simultaneously with their main computer screen as they work.
Companies have responded with strategies to limit these distractions.
- 68% of respondents reported that their employers have implemented policies or technologies to minimize distractions, while 73% of end users have adopted self-imposed techniques to help maintain focus.
- The #1 corporate strategy used to discourage digital diversion is blocking access to public social networks such as Facebook and/or other non-business websites (48%).
A related, but different, problem is the difficulty in finding content. Respondents reported that they spend an average of 2-1/2 hours per week trying to find the documents needed in multiple local, corporate and cloud repositories.
- The user’s email inbox is the #1 location searched, with 76% of respondents reporting email as the first place they look. Other locations include the desktop (69%), file server (52%), shared workspace (34%), portable storage device (18%) and/or cloud storage (9%).
- The average user emails two or more documents per day to an average of five people for review, increasing email-based document volume by up to 50 documents per week. The fact that these attachments are stored on multiple local computers complicates the challenge of finding the latest document versions as well as merging feedback from multiple reviewers.
All of this points to a very disorganized workplace. The very tools that are supposed to help us are actually overwhelming us in some cases. The solution starts with a unified strategy for digital communication and requires some smart policies, cultural issues and wise implementation of limited number of technologies. I wrote about this recently (see Taking Control of Our Knowledge Consumption and Our Social Presence). I quoted Nick Carr whose new book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains address this issue, “companies need to challenge the assumption that employees should always be available. Some people do their best work when they’re disconnected, and companies should create a work culture that encourages it.” It sounds like they need to actually force many people to disconnect.
by Rob Paterson
November 23, 2010 at 10:34 am · Filed under
Chaord, Network Effect, Organizational Design, Robin Dunbar, Social Networking, Socialprise, Trust, Trusted Space, Work 2.0, Workplace
I saw another piece of stupidity the other day when a “Social Media Expert” claimed that his thousands of friends on Facebook and Twitter made him such an expert and that he could teach you how to have that many friends as well. In other words that having lots of Friends was the goal!
Of course people like him make these claims based on nothing.
A few of us do read and those of us who do have long known of the work of Robin Dunbar. Those who care to do some work, know that there is a lot of science that underpins how humans live in social groups and that there is an underlying math that is well known.
So for those that don’t have time to read here he is in 16 minutes on Youtube offering you the science that shows why:
- Our social personal limit is about 150 people
- How this came about
- That we have layers of intimacy inside this limit
- That there are layers beyond it but that are not intimate
- That meeting face to face – is crucial to maintaining these relationships and that they degrade if not enhanced with face to face
- That men and women use two very different types of social grooming to maintain their networks – women need to talk and men need to do
- That the folks who claim to have thousands of friends are nearly all men with poor social skills in the real world
So for all you Social Media Experts and HR professionals and Organization Design Folks here is Dunbar:
by Paula Thornton
October 1, 2010 at 3:46 pm · Filed under
2.0 Design Thinking, Enterprise 2.0, Work 2.0, Workplace
This morning @MrAlanCooper was on a roll with an anti-requirements theme of tweets. I replied that almost a decade ago I had given a conference presentation “Requirements Don’t Work”, which included many references from his books. Recognizing that I randomly perpetuate this conversation all over the place, I’ve gathered parts of it here, starting with one from today:
Requirements are a response to a design — they’re not the procuring cause of a design.
Let’s look at this realistically. If the current methods, which include requirements, worked then why is there a 68% failure rate in IT projects? Michael Krigsman (@mkrigsman) postulated:
The solution lies in recognizing that requirements definition is critical.
Been there. Thought that too. But it’s been debunked (sadly, pre-internet, reference to the study is gone). I replied to Michael’s post:
Back in 1990 or so I found a one-page ‘editorial’ that reshaped my career focus. It effectively reported a study to ‘debunk’ the “we didn’t get the requirements right” theory.
So they audited the process. Were all the requirements captured as intended? Check. Were all the requirements met by the solution? Check. Result: Fail!
And this is where my life changed…they brought anthropologists into the environment in which the system was being used — an emergency room. They added more requirements based on their observations…the system was a success.
Now let’s talk about having the wrong skills…
Attempts to share this same story with a group of Business Analysts, was met with opposition. There I commented:
In reality, requirements (especially the way in which they’re gathered and managed in most cases) serve only one purpose — facilitating testing. They are typically useless for ensuring the success of a solution….
Another valuable analogy to consider is the model employed by commercial building. In that model, assume that Requirements and ensuing Development are not part of the activities of the General Contractor, but are one of the responding trades. That means that a larger architectural/design effort has gone on prior to the ‘response’. In that prior effort, blueprints are already drawn up and specifications (not requirements) have been delivered. The ‘requirements’ are the responses by the individual trades as to how they plan to fulfill the specifications.
The fact that we have a huge phase missing in the discipline of the SDLC and that it starts with some ‘poof’ ["...and then a miracle happens"] of requirements has been a fallacy for decades.
The author of this blog post was unnerved by the dissonance that ensued in the path to common understanding (a deplorable practice often seen in requirements gathering sessions) and closed the comments. Shutting down the conversation is a symptom of the problem: behaviors indicative of and reinforced in cultures of command and control — the antithesis of a 2.0 era. Design inherently insists on embracing creative dissonance.
Clearly there are those who understand the difference — Alan Cooper’s comments today were retweeted by many. Some have traveled similar paths of discovery, such as @suredoc’s (Keith Anderson) “Prototyping Insights From a Guy Who Writes Requirements“, where he also takes direct aim at the classic Systems Development Lifecycle (SDLC).
The SDLC mindset is based on the fact requirements drive everything. By “requirements” I mean a document of some sort that can either be well-written or, as I’ve seen of late, an Excel spreadsheet wishlist.
I remember a custom 9 volume SDLC manual set. I was fascinated by the ‘whole’ of it all. Imagine, 9 volumes of detail as to how the floor of hundreds of developers were to do their jobs (manuals for which I was the most frequent user…to insert page corrections — the cost of which I shudder to consider). In ALL of those hundreds of pages there was a reference to “start with the requirements” and not a stitch of information on what they were or how you got them — in the SDLC, requirements just somehow magically appear.
To better inform myself, I sought out leaders in the requirements process and attended training. Aside from helping us look for ‘nouns’ (clearly a data-focused paradigm), the instructor attempted to give us tracking and auditing skills — again, circling back to the feloneous assumption that requirements are somehow ‘lost’ and that’s the cause of failure. There was nothing discussed about eliciting requirements or the issues to do so — including the also infamous lament from developers “but they keep changing their minds” — as if the changing landscape of business wasn’t a design reality that needed to be embraced.
Similar to my inspiration from the commercial building industry, in “The Obsolete Idea of Requirements” @smalltalk80 (Niklas Björnerstedt) was inspired by the advertising agency model:
In advertising, a customer typically does not write a contract for a single project. The contract is instead the foundation of an extended relation. The advertiser works with the customer, looking at what the customer does and what the customer wants to achieve in the future. The advertiser then formulates ideas that are elaborated on together with the customer. Some of these ideas result in “projects”, others are more open ended. Over time the customer uses a number of (imperfect) measures to assess how well the advertiser is helping it achieve its goals. Most of the goals a customer cares about are not related to a particular project, they are formulated in terms of the business itself.
Three things to add to great observations. First, Niklas is seeing the influences of design practices in the customer relationship. Second, advertising has a significant difference: creating need where none exists. Third, where he notes “They would describe what they were doing today and what their goals were for the future.” — this will lead to incremental improvements and often radically incremental improvements, but rarely innovative results (often also part of the “requirements”). But innovation isn’t always or even mostly desirable. There are many ’starving workers in the business landscape’ who would trade their paychecks for ‘good enough’. Many truly innovative solutions can be found in the amazing work-arounds that employees have created on their own, just to get their work done in spite of the euphemistic machine they’re forced to operate in.
The realm of Enterprise 2.0 insists on a more open, interative, collaborative and continuous means of making stuff happen than the methods of classic requirements can afford. In design, requirements are the collection of constraints that must be honored, or thoughtfully traversed. Requirements do not specify the results. But as my first quote embraced the classic definition of requirements — the things used to test results against — if everyone still needs to call those “requirements”, let it so remain.
Footnote: In re-reading a prior piece I’d written on Pixar, I was reminded of earlier ranting I’d done on requirements.
by Rob Paterson
September 27, 2010 at 10:34 am · Filed under
2.0 Business Model, 2.0 Design Thinking, Adoption, Barriers, Community, Connected Enterprise, Customer Service, Disney, Energy, Interaction, Interviews, Management Theory, Marketing, Network Effect, Organizational Design, Platforms, Relationships, Robin Dunbar, Social Contact, Social Media, Social Networking, Social Objects, Socialprise, Trust, Trusted Space, Twitter, User Revolution, Web 2.0, Wisdom of Crowds, Work 2.0, Workplace
What would it be like if your business had a sales, marketing and support force that was 1.3 million strong that you did not have to pay for? What if you could source this leverage with a tiny central force? Sounds impossible? Do you have any idea of how this could work?
Now that everyone is using Social Media – what I am seeing mainly are people who using the new tool in the old way – trying to shout above the noise – “Look at ME!” “Aren’t I cool!” “Aren’t we good!”. I am seeing a Dilbert approach – “Let’s have a Facebook site” “Let’s get on Twitter”.
Most do what most do when a new technology arrives – they apply it in the old way and so get nothing in response.
So what then is the power and leverage that you can harness by using social media well?
Boingo are on their way to finding out how to do this. Oh yes and I am one of the people that are part of this and oh yes I am not being paid and nor do I in any way work for them. I am living the theory.
So how might this work and so how might you do this too?
Boingo have a class of people that are deeply committed to the enterprise that Baochi calls her “Super fans”. They and why they are connected to Boingo and each other is the core of the leverage potential. We will meet 4 of them in this post who agreed enthusiastically to be interviewed by me. As you will see, these Super Fans are attracted first of all to Boingo by the obvious:
- The service – easy one stop access to Wifi in Airports and Hotels – is now no longer a nice to have for travellers but an essential
- The support for the service is outstanding – got a problem – you get instant personal help
But a great product is not enough. Nor is good service. What is the differentiator for Boingo is the human nature of the relationship that Boingo has with its customers. Most organizations do not allow their people to be human. Service people are often ciphers working from a script. Boingo have set up an environment where their key point of contact is a real person who is allowed to be herself.
She has a name and a face and we are all in awe and a bit in love with her. We all feel her presence watching over us. It is way more than getting her help when we can’t sign on. She watches out for us. Have a problem – A quick tweet. In minutes she is there. She is like the guy who runs the old corner store who holds your keys when you go away, keeps an eye on your kids in the street, helps you find a new roommate.
As Nuno Montegro, a customer in Portugal says – It is not what she says but how she says things that is the difference.
Nuno is like me, a customer who actively refers others to the service.
Most of Social media is all about Weak Ties – They are very useful but Weak Ties don’t get people to do much – or risk much – or commit much – that is why they are Weak – they are easy.
If you want to do something – Civil Rights in the US – you need Strong Ties. (Nice new piece by Malcolm Gladwell that explores Weak and Strong Ties in depth)
The key to attracting Strong Ties is being human. It is NOT PIMPING your product. It is instead to show that you really do care about ME. It is instead to show that you can indeed be trusted.
How do you show this? Nuno makes the point that every service and product fails at times. The key is to offer the best possible response to the inevitability of a problem. The best possible response is to know from experience that if there is a problem, you can reach a real person quickly and that they will go the distance to help you get it fixed. “I felt as if I was the only customer in the entire world when she was helping me” Nuno told me. I had the same experience.
Attracting Strong Ties is all about “Giving”.
Aaron Strout is the CMO at social media agency, Powered Inc. and is also Super Fan. “Boingo is proactive and they don’t expect a direct return – they are not selling all day – so if they want an inch, I go the mile back. It’s Karmic! I know if I have a problem that they will look after me. If people are good and do good, then good comes back. Not necessarily directly but good gets attracted back. We talk about a wide range of things that affect me not just the product – which is great too – have to have that – they listen.”
What Aaron is talking about here is a very old model for an economy that was the centre of all tribal economies – the Gift Economy. In the Gift Economy, the Big Guy is not the man who has the most stuff but the person who gives the most.
This is the power in networks – this is how Open Source Works too.
Cliff Bremmer is a programmer who works for a company called Carley Corporation that bids on government contracts to develop instructional CD base/computer based training for the US military. ”In my spare time I help companies understand and navigate the social media spectrum in a professional yet interactive way. The company I’m currently helping is the one my father works for called the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel“.
The Gift?
Not only is he a fan but in interacting with Boingo he has learned a lot about how to use SM media well. “If there is anything I’m proud of lately it’s that I helped the Pegasus Hotel promote their brand with the help and support of @Boingo and other companies to become one of the most popular brands in Jamaica.” Boingo is not only helping him with his travel and Wifi but is talking with him and helping him help his dad in his business with advice and Tweet Up prizes such as free access and bag tags. The Gift in action!
He can see the flaws of how most use SM – “They are stuck in self promotion versus communication. I can see through it all – it’s all about them.”
In the Gift Economy that drives Trust and so Strong Ties, the starting point is YOU. In the non network economy the starting point is ME. No small difference!
Shelby Rogers is a flight attendant, a serving soldier (in the active reserve) and the wife of a serving soldier. Travel is her life. When she is not working, she travels. Access to Wifi has made her travel better – “I now know more than the Gate Agent does about my flights!” and it has taken away much of the loneliness that travel brings with it. Who has not been alone eating room service and watching TV in our room? “I can stay in touch with my husband on Skype and every city seems to have a friend in it.”
For Shelby, Boingo is a service that truly meets her needs. But it is how Boingo is connected to her that has transformed a pleased customer into a Super fan.
How often has your service provider taken you out to dinner? “We have even had dinner recently. I am now a walking billboard for Boingo with winking bag tags!”
So what does this mean? What are the lesson for both Boingo and for you?
- Baochi is no accident – the Boingo senior leadership have created the role and given it the space to enable someone who is naturally humane to be herself inside it. This new way of using Strong Ties to be the centre of a network is all about culture. In most cases senior leadership is too scared to let go. But if you do let go and create this safe place then the power of the network effect can be yours
- A really powerful network has to have an inner core bound by Strong Ties. This is where the leverage is. One staff person like Baochi can without too much trouble have close ties with 34 people. That gives her an outer network of 1.3 million. If she can handle the Dunbar limit of 144 that creates an opportunity of 400 million! You can see that with the right person, you can have a vast reach – provided you realize that your goal is not to have thousands of relationships but a few Strong Ones
- The secret is the math of social leverage. Many of you know about the “Dunbar Number”. Some of you know about “Magic numbers – the hierarchy of trust in human groups. If you don’t here is a quick primer.
So what now?
I think that the next stage would be this:
- At the moment all the Super Fans have a strong relationship with Baochi – I think that the best next step might be to find a way to connect them to each other
- At the moment most of the dialogue is still about the obvious and excellent service that Boingo provides – I think that some of the work that the Super Fans could do might be to deepen the conversation – Shelby touched on this in her interview with me – What is it that being easily connected while travelling does? In her case it helped her deal with isolation and loneliness – it helped her do her job better – it kept her in touch with her husband – these are deep issues that I think connect all of us who travel a lot
As I think about networks, I think about the laws of physics. All systems have order and attractors. Some force is needed to keep systems coherent.
Think of the Sun in our own local system. It has mass that provides a gravity that holds all the planets and asteroids and stuff in a pattern. It has energy that creates life in the system. I think that any healthy human social system has to have gravity and light.
At the very centre is the “Right Space” a Trusted Space created by the leadership. In this Space, the Right Person – Right being a person who as part of her natural persona truly cares about others. Connected to her is the fuel and the mass that makes up the Sun – the Super Fans. The closer they are to the centre and the closer they are to each other – the more mass and the more energy. The more mass and energy, the larger and more healthy the network of Weak Ties that form up around the Sun.
What gets in the way is our fear about losing control.
At Disney the surface of the Brand Icon never changes but inside the mask is a person who changes all the time and so is never allowed to speak.
But in the new world we have to take off the costume and let the person inside have conversations with the public – HARD to do.
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