What Happens When Two Bloggers Actually Meet Face to Face?

April 6, 2009 at 5:52 pm · Filed under Collaboration, Collective intelligence, Communities, Distributed Work, Management, Work Design, social networks

The answer:  good things.

I’m just back from a conference in Vancouver, BC, where Jon Husband just happens to live. I was smart/lucky enough to have announced publicly that Charlie Grantham and I would be in Vancouver for a few days, and Jon was gracious enough to get in touch and suggest we meet (since we never had).

The three of us ended up having breakfast together last Friday, and then Jon was the perfect host, offering us a ride out the airport for our trips home.

Of course, Jon being the champion of Vancouver that he is, the ride took a little extra time (which we had plenty of) as he gave us a mini-tour of the downtown and surrounding area.

I had been in Vancouver before, but not for over 20 years, so it was an eye-opening tour. I’ve always had good feelings about the city (stemming from a wonderful summer in the mid-80’s characterized by many late evening dinners down near the harbor).

But even more important than enjoying Vancouver was enjoying getting to know Jon. We (including Charlie) discovered way more in common than any three older gray-haired guys who had never met before have any right to expect. As Jon described on his own blog last week (“Back to the Future . . .  of Work“), we share many intellectual curiosities and probably even more views and values about organization, work, people, and even politics.

So here’s to the value of face to face meetings. In spite of our mutual fascination with what Jon calls “wirearchy,” we also agree wholeheartedly in getting together physically to share a real space, not just a virtual one.

Of course, that f2f meeting never would have taken place without the AppGap blog and our e-newsletter (where I’d announced the Vancouver trip in the first place), so I guess we owe some thanks to Hylton Joliffe and the folks at Intuit too for originally making Jon and me aware of each other.

But the nice part of now having “pressed the flesh” is that I’ll have a whole lot more context from now on as I read Jon’s blog comments. And I suspect we’ll see each other again in the not-too-distant future.

Thanks, Jon, for your hospitality and for your always-stimulating questions about the future of work and of management.

Will the retiring workforce retire?

March 30, 2009 at 9:43 am · Filed under Tips for Tough Times, Work Design

I was on an information exchange teleconference last Friday with engineers from one of my clients and engineers from one of their partners. The topic was the generational shift in the workforce and a general knowledge sharing about techniques each is using to support both the newer and the older generations in the shift.

I was struck by a comment made on the call that the anticipated “brain drain” from the retirement of baby boomers (a much discussed topic several years ago) was not as imminent as previously thought. Why? “It’s the economy, stupid.” Having seen their 401Ks cut in half by the recent economic crisis, many workers are opting to stay longer in the workforce.

Curious, I checked in with my friend Dave DeLong, whose seminal 2004 work on the topic, Lost Knowledge,  put all the pieces together along with recommendations for companies to prepare themselves for the (at that time thought to be) inevitable exodus. Dave, of course, has been thinking of this himself and describes the phenomenon as “all these retirement-eligible engineers piling up at the door” (nice image). He also offered the following food for thought:

• If those engineers (or other types of experts) are not retiring, they probably recognize that their knowledge is their meal ticket, so why should they be sharing it? I would be on the watch out, then, for more knowledge hoarding, which can be done is a variety of discrete ways.

• If all these engineers have decided to stick around because the economy is poor, what is to prevent them for all leaving at once, when things do turn around. My argument is the problems we had before this recession are going to come back to hurt us with a vengeance when business becomes strong again and people start feeling they have other options.

• I have heard a consistent story of many organizations currently experiencing older workers delaying retirement. But I have also heard growing concerns about this mass exodus when things turn around. If managers have been lulled into a false sense of security by the current delayed retirements, organizations may be hurt even more in the long term.

• Equally problematic is in most organizations resources have been cut for knowledge sharing/transfer activities because of the downturn, which makes implementing solutions even more challenging. I argue for the need to balance the short term “snake pit” of budget cuts and layoffs against the longer terms needs to sustain strategic capabilities.

Dave and I would both be interested in hearing more about what is happening on the ground with companies that were planning to lose workers — what has the impact been?

Following the Beat of Your Own Drum

January 19, 2009 at 3:23 pm · Filed under Artisan Economy, Collaboration, Collective intelligence, Communities, Distributed Work, Networks + Networking, Web 2.0, Work Design, social networks

I’ve come across several posts and articles recently that have gotten me thinking about the pros – and cons – of working independently.

Generally I am a serious advocate of small firms and free-lancers and a genuine cynic about large organizations (but I’ll hold back and express that cynicism some other time).

A friend recently pointed me to a post by Tina Brown on The Daily Beast (one of those many, many political blogs). I don’t read the Beast very often, but this one isn’t about it politics -  it’s about “The Gig Economy.”

“Gigs” are, obviously, projects – the things we free-lancers and small businesses depend on for a living.

Brown has become intrigued with what she calls “gigonomics” – the explosion of people working this way. She reports on a recent survey conducted by The Daily Beast and Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates. Five hundred employed U.S. citizens aged 18 and over were interviewed via the Internet on January 8 and 9.

Here’s what got Brown interested:

A full one-third of our respondents are now working either freelance or in two jobs. And nearly one in two of them report taking on additional positions during the last six months.

Just as startling, these new alternative workers are not overwhelmingly low-income. They’re college-educated Americans who earn more than $75,000 a year.

Welcome to the club Tina! Regular readers of this blog are probably all practitioners of gigonomics. So what’s the big deal?

Consider this, for one:  none of the job statistics we’ve been hearing about daily since last September come close to measuring the impact of the economy-on-free-fall on small businesses. Traditional unemployment data comes from reports from large businesses and applications for unemployment compensation.  It just doesn’t capture the slowdown or flat-out stoppages of work being experienced by all of us small business types.

Just about all the “gigworkers” I’ve talked with recently are reporting that while they may have a project right now, the outlook for the next gig is pretty bleak. In fact, that’s being kind – the outlook is grim indeed.

Now, there’s either going to be a whole lot of creative scrambling (and some pretty intense competition) for the next gigs, or there’s going to be a whole more people “on the street” (hopefully not literally) than even the most thoughtful economists and government leaders seem to be expecting.

This thing could get a whole lot worse way before it gets any better.

But there’s another side to this explosion of small businesses and gigs. And that’s what Jon Husband wrote about just the other day right here  (“The Mass Customization of Work“). A more or less unrecognized consequence of this mass customization of work and the “atomization” of business is the loss of rhythm and synchronization that Jon highlighted.

When we’re all working independently and in our own offices (either at home or at Starbucks, etc) it takes a whole lot more effort and awareness to “sync up” with peers, colleagues, clients, vendors, and so on. We no longer have all those “signals” from the workplace that you see in large organizations – from the mundane clock on the wall to the progression of colleagues towards the cafeteria or the parking lot at lunchtime – let alone the boss scheduling meetings, directing your work, setting deadlines, and so on. And of course we’re not doing anywhere near as much “same time/same place” work as we used to.

As Jon rightly points out, thank god for the proliferation of Web 2.0 social networking tools – though we still have a lot to learn about people use them.

Anyway, this all something to think about on a Monday morning – and one that’s supposed to be focused on national service instead of ruminating on the future of work. I guess I’m just a bit out of sync with everyone else!

Seven Leaders Lessons

December 31, 2008 at 9:45 am · Filed under Communities, Culture, Networks + Networking, Work Design, social networks

Living in a network age requires new skills, especially for leaders. It’s time to distinguish management practices based on context. Command and control may be required in some situations, but when it comes to collaboration and innovation, only a management style based on principles of net work will do.  Here are seven for today, the seventh day of net work.

1. Network intentionally. High-performing people tend to have stronger, more intentional networks. Think about your own personal network and ask yourself whether it is diverse enough and broad enough to support your goals. Also, are you networking your group or organization, making the necessary connections across boundaries to facilitate the flow of new ideas?
2. Practice network stewardship. Pay attention to the health of the networks for which you are responsible.  Use the three mapping tools, four design facets and the eight tensions (tomorrow) to diagnose problems and develop remedies.
3. Know your place in the structure. We all have structural roles in a network as well as (perhaps) titles. As a leader, do you need to be the hub or the weaver? The orchestrator or the collaborator? Know when it is time to share or relinquish leadership. Be mindful.
4. Embrace complexity. Learn to distinguish the complex from the complicated and act accordingly, using the complexity mapping tool listed on  the Third Day.
5. Leverage technology. There is no excuse for not surveying, learning about, and introducing social technologies to help people in your networks connect and engage. (You have to wait two days for the Nine .)
6. Create the capacity for net work. Encourage those about you to develop skills to build and leverage networks in all their endeavors. The world is waking up to this. In a modest poll by Work Literacy, Network skills get the most votes for knowledge areas in which people see the most opportunity for improving effectiveness.
7. Use the network lens. We live in networks all the time, like fish in water. We have to step outside of a context to see it clearly; apply the network lens to bring focus to action.

Happy New Year!

Recounting:

• Six myths
• Five purposes
• Four design facets
• Three network tools
• Two network sources
• One network lens

The first day of Net Work

December 25, 2008 at 7:01 pm · Filed under Collaboration, Work Design, social networks

It’s been just two years since I sent the final manuscript of NetWork to the publisher and it feels like it is time for a review and refresh. What better time than the new year? In keeping with the season, then, I offer twelve days of Net Work (though I will not make any pretense of keeping to the metre).

The first day? A network mindset, of course. One network lens. We have but to think about how networks underlie all that touches us and put the thinking lens on. It is abundantly clear that networking thinking is coming to the fore. We live on a global interconnected planet, we work in networks and bring our networks to work. We continue to see evidence of the impact of social networks on personal health and even hour happiness).

Understanding the power of networks is not new — successful people have been associated with strong networks for a very long time. What are significant are:

• The application of the pioneer work social scientists and mathemeticians who deployed the power of computer to map, analyze, and derive the principles of the structure of networks.
• The accumulation of evidence through practice (including that of my teachers Rob Cross and Valdis Krebs) that a structural analysis of our organizational and personal networks can lead to insights that will help us better improve, leverage, and sustain them

This view, or the “network lens,” is fundamental to being in the world today.

Breaking the monopolization on programming

October 27, 2008 at 9:45 am · Filed under Web Apps, Web Commuting, Work Design

The Economist Magazine has a 14 page special report on Corporate IT in its latest issue. Most of the articles invariably talk about the “cloud” and how it along with software as a service is changing technology. The key point is that software as a service is transforming the technology industry and its importance cannot be overestimated. Whether it be Google App Engine, Salesforce.com, Netweaver and Windows Strata, all the major technology players are doing more with software as a service in the cloud.

But a critical question is what does this mean for the future of productivity in the workplace? Given less attention in the special section, was a thought that I found rather compelling. The notion that anyone can start programming (in less than 20 minutes!) using a new generation of cloud based, software as as service  tools that make development easy.

Think about that for a moment. Just as finger touch typing is becoming pervasive among the Gen X and Gen Ys so too may basic programming. Imagine the next time an employee needs to mash together data from different databases, visualize them and host a provocative discussion about the implications, he can do so by creating his own program on the fly. As the Economist article emphasized, the geeks would lose their monopoly on programming with these easy tools and employees could dramatically increase their productivity.

Maybe this is a little far fetched, but then again the thought of a computer on every employee’s desk was as well not too long ago. And some of the tools that make programming user friendly, already exist today. Its just a question of whether “self service” can be extended to the domain of employees creating their own programs to meet their immediate business needs.

ROI, Worker Efficiency and User-centred Design

October 25, 2008 at 4:48 pm · Filed under Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, Work Design

I’ve been advising a multi-national company here in Australia about knowledge management practices. Apparently, though, there’s only a small window of opportunity for them to install some new software, so their plan is to do the technology installation first and then train people to use it.

It reminded me of Taylor’s Industrial Age and how the introduction of new technologies back then meant improved efficiency. I know many managers today who also hold to this premise, so they seek out software that will deliver them better compliance and improved risk management capability, particularly in the area of electronic document management and recordkeeping. Some even believe that it will deliver improved efficiency for the findability of information by staff and  an improved capacity for knowledge management.

What often results, though, is the introduction of new ways of working that:

• Do not align with the way individuals currently work or even want to work
• Enforces a way of thinking of information that does not match the way people think about the information they use or want to use

The outcome is a diminished capacity to realise the return on investment and an increase in the amount of change management required to change the way staff think and behave. Personally, I’ve found that when risk and records management are involved in the equation that demand a set way of working, people simply become non-compliant and develop work-arounds to suit the way they want to work — and no amount of training will change the way they work.

To achieve the best return on investment then, work needs to be designed to more closely aligned to the way people think and the way they behave. Logically, only then should technology decisions be made and introduced.

Those organisations who are leveraging social computing tools in the workplace are discovering that because people know how to use these tools, because they like using these tools, and because it has an immediate ‘whats in it for me‘ factor, their introduction at the enterprise-level brings an immediate ROI without training.

The way to achieve this is to apply user-centred design principles:

1. understand how people want to work and how they think about information
2. design and identify tools that best align with workers thinking and behaviour

Forrester’s POST methodology for introducing tools into an enterprise summarises this approach well:

1. People: know how they think and behave
2. Objectives: determine what behaviour you want to reinforce or change
3. Strategy: work out how you intend on delivering your objectives and the ROI you’re seeking
4. Technology: match the people, objectives and strategy with an appropriate technology

This approach essentially puts the proverbial cart back to where it belongs — after the horse — and therefore achieves efficiency that it seeks.

M