Category: future of work

Trust is a design choice

Posted on by simongterry in future of work, Leadership

A man who trusts nobody is apt to be the kind of man nobody trusts – Harold Macmillan

At the beginning of any organisation, whether you realise it or not, you are faced with a design choice:

Do I trust my people?

The answer to that question and the culture that grows around that answer determines how so many processes, conversations and other interactions will occur across the organisation.

If you don’t trust your people

Should you be going ahead with your organisation?  Seriously.  Think about it.  They are going to have to act on their own at some point.  Nobody can or should remove every independent decision from another person.  

Can you build their capability to earn your trust?  It is worth investing some money in recruitment and development to avoid the costs ahead in an organisational design without trust.

If you still want to go ahead, prepare yourself for lots of controls, hierarchy, and monitoring processes and people.  A lot of value will be invested in controlling people, managing the lack of trust out of your business so that you can function. You will also be more likely to have silos of power and information separating haves and have nots.  These processes will all impede the agility, engagement, flexibility & potential of your people.  Remember you don’t trust them so that’s what you chose.

Of course, trust may only extend so far. If they are not trusted in one process, do you trust them in others?  Can you explain why the processes differ.  You will need to or the lack of trust will be corrosive to an overall culture of trust.  We all have heard examples of the refrain “I can discuss a $1m deal with a client, but I can’t post a comment on the intranet without approval.”  If there is a reason then you need to be able to explain it. 

Often you hear the excuse “but the consequences of failure are catastrophic, we cannot afford to trust”.  If the consequences of failure are extreme, you need trust more but you might want to think about how you genuinely engage your people in mitigating the risks.  Taking the risks out of their control may be no improvement at all if the result is apathy or lack of responsibility for the risks.

If you trust your people

If you trust your people, focus on the culture of personal accountability in your organisation.  Work to build your people’s capability to that they are better able to exercise that trust.  Give people real meaty challenges to enable them to show your potential.  Ask yourself if you can have a flatter organisation, fewer approvals and put more upon your people.  They might just revel in the challenge and surprise you.

A word about ‘Trust but Verify’

‘Trust but verify’ is a commonly discussed way to enable organisations to loosen the shackles and create a higher trust environment.  In many cases, some verification will be mandated by regulatory or other requirements.  People need follow-up and follow-through to see the reinforcement of their responsibility and to understand that there are consequences of breaches of trust.

However make sure you have the order right.  If your process turns out to be ‘Verify, then Trust’, you have no trust at all.  If someone can’t act on their own and wear the consequences, then you don’t have ‘Trust but Verify’.

The Velocity of Knowledge in Flight

Posted on by simongterry in future of work

“I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.― Mark Twain

Knowledge in flight – faster flight

As you focus on knowledge in flight, you see the power of accelerating the sharing of knowledge.  You also start to be able to see where knowledge has value and is moving.  Focusing on these movements pushes us to think about how we can accelerate the systems of the flow of knowledge into and through our organisation.  Savings of time, waste and rework arise when knowledge can move quickly to where it is most needed.
 
Nobody wants to accelerate the velocity of knowledge as speed for speed’s sake.  If anything one of the challenges of the digital age is we have to much quick data and information.  Instead, we need to accelerate the effective use of knowledge to create additional value across the organisation.  To do so, we will need to accelerate the sourcing, sharing and the practical application of knowledge.
 
How to accelerate sourcing, sharing and use of knowledge?
 
  • Map expertise and tacit knowledge: Tangible knowledge is increasingly searchable.  However too many talents are hidden inside people’s heads.  Do you know all the Postgraduate degrees that your team has?  What about their blogs, conferences, memberships and followers? Networks, skills and experience may not align with roles or responsibilities
  • Reward frequent flyers: Encourage people to share all of their expertise and to explain aloud the tacit knowledge to benefit others.  Track successful contributions back to source & give credit.  Celebrate people’s talents and reward their many contributions beyond their roles.  Build this practice into your organisational culture & systems.
  • Increase flight connections:  The better connected the networks of knowledge in your organisation and your organisation to others the more ways there are for knowledge to flow.  Work to network your centres of excellence, gurus, communities of practice internally and externally. If you use an enterprise social network or external social networks focus on building following and using @mentioning to add new connections and trace paths to knowledge.  Importantly this also incease the opportunities for serendipitous meetings to add value.
  • Build flight paths & schedules:  You travel faster on paths that are mapped in advance and where your path is managed for you.   If there are common requests or known experts, make those paths easier to navigate.  An operating rhythm of sharing allows everyone to plan and participate in a consistently level of the activity.  It may also mean getting slow moving traffic or lower value out of the high traffic routes.  Regular moderated Q&A sessions or knowledge cafes can be a great way to deliver this rhythm in an easy way.
  • Manage delays:  Some times a stop-over allows the overall journey to go faster.  Include time for thought, reflection, planning, documenting, feedback, learning, sharing, collaborating and addressing issues in execution.
  • Reroute flights: Avoid single points of failure for the flow of knowledge in your organisation.  Who else knows and could help if something goes wrong?  What other ways can people access this knowledge?  How do you share jams (leave, large projects, heavy workloads, etc) publicly to let people route around the issue themselves?
  • Cancel flights quickly:   Mark Twain’s quote above is amusing but it underlies a truth.  Organisations which have a culture that allows people to admit lack of knowledge, errors and doubt can move faster and far more effectively.

Data and information is flying around faster than ever.  Even so, we would all like to accelerate the flight of knowledge that can add value to our organisations.

What are you doing to accelerate your organisation’s knowledge in flight?

Track Knowledge in Flight

Posted on by simongterry in future of work

Man’s flight through life is sustained by the power of his knowledge. – Austin ‘Dusty’ Miller

Too much knowledge dies in storage. Much is lost in people’s heads or files never again to be used. Any dead knowledge will be painstakingly and wastefully recreated, only to be lost again. Knowledge management systems that are about creating new stores of knowledge rarely realise their potential.

Knowledge isn’t a stock. We need to focus on its flow. We need ways to see or track knowledge in flight so that we can better use it.

  • Movement means visibility: When knowledge is put into action, especially in collaboration we have a chance to see it. Often an organisation does not know what it knows until its people begin to discuss and answer questions
  • Movement means relevance: We are rightly more interested in the knowledge that is being used by others. The fact that someone else finds it relevant and wants to share and apply it signals that it is of value.
  • Movement means context: Documents and files can lack the context that is necessary to fully understand and use information. This is one reason that effective knowledge management systems focus on the role of people to provide context. Seeing information move provides a path of people who can share context.
  • Movement means others: Action attracts attention. That is likely to draw in others who can add or leverage the knowledge.

There are many ways we can accentuate the visible movement of knowledge. John Stepper talks about the power of ‘working out loud’, sharing work in progress to enable others to see and collaborate. Social tools provide a platform for moving and recording movement of knowledge in a public and searchable way. Communities of practice can become bazaars of knowledge movement and custodians of rich records of use.

Where is knowledge in flight in your organisation? How can you make that movement more visible?

Concentrate on the Flow of Knowledge

Posted on by simongterry in future of work

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge – Plato

John Stuart Mill was once described, no doubt erroneously, as someone who knew all the knowledge that it was possible for someone to know in his era.  The possibility that there is a finite stock of knowledge is one that tempts us.   Even the concept of ‘knowledge as power’ assumes a scarce stock of knowledge to be allocated out for influence.

In an era of rapid change and high levels of connectedness, what matters is not an individual’s stock of knowledge.  The value of an individual stock of knowledge is falling as new knowledge is being created fast, search costs are reduced and there is an increasing focus on collaborative knowledge work.

Individuals have greatest impact now through their ability to contribute to the flow of knowledge.

Managing the flow of knowledge in networks takes new and different skills:

  • Creators: who add new ideas to the flow of discussions to build knowledge
  • Connectors: who know where to source and distribute knowledge in and around organisations
  • Context providers: who know how to provide new knowledge with context that adds to its trust, value or meaning
  • Community managers: who build enduring communities across boundaries, aid their sharing of knowledge and building of consensus

A pile of publications, patents and Ph.Ds might offer temporary bragging rights.  However, real and enduring value of knowledge comes from its application in our everyday fast moving interactions.

Focus on the flow of knowledge in and around your organisation and you will see better the individuals who are accelerating that flow and creating new value.

Adaptability – Purpose, Context and Enablement

Posted on by simongterry in future of work, Strategy

The traditional models of leadership focus on clear instructions and measurement of specific actions. Hierarchical command and control was developed in military organisations intent on bring order to the disorder of large numbers of people on complex battlefields. In a rapidly changing world, there’s a danger that this command and control model completely breaks down – too slow, too rigid and too ineffective to achieve its goals. In many cases, the first people to change their thinking have been the military

Years ago, I heard a talk by Lieutenant Colonel James McMahon who was at one time commander of the Australian SAS forces in Afghanistan. His advice to a group of aspiring business leaders was always explain what was known of the situation and be clear on the purpose, but never dictate how the mission should be achieved. Highly engaged, skillful and creative teams will find ways to deal with complexity and change that will achieve the mission and surprise you. His stories of the resourcefulness of Australian troops in a complex and changing environment were remarkable.

The role of leaders is to set a purpose and a context and to enable people to act fast and effectively on their own decisions to achieve success. US Air Force Col John Boyd described the concept of the OODA loop. The OODA loop highlights that there is strategic advantage in being faster than competitors at observing, orienting, deciding and then acting. Organisations that are quicker round this loop will be harder for their competitors to predict, have a better view of competitor’s actions & intentions and be better at execution.

Clarifying purpose and context accelerates teams through the Observe and Orient stages of the OODA loop. Activities like briefings, induction, Scenarios and role plays are great to help people to build understanding and skills in anticipating what might be encountered. They know faster where they are and where they want to go.

Building enablement will accelerate the ability to Decide and Act. However, you need to choose and skill people for their ability to decide and act to achieve success on their own. You also need to leave decision making in the hands of the individual to act and respond to the changing circumstances that they see.

There are always trade offs. Maybe the observation and orientation won’t be perfect on the ground, but it is rarely better at a distance. Maybe the decision making and action won’t be as sophisticated as it could be, but speed and adaptability is usually more important than perfection.

Give up a little command and control. Focus instead on providing purpose and context. Then enable your teams to adapt with maximum speed and effectiveness.

The knowledge revolution needs an assembly line

Posted on by simongterry in Collaboration, future of work

The industrial revolution was transformed by technologies like that of the assembly line which dramatically changed productivity and redefined the industrial model for a century. What will be the assembly line of the knowledge revolution?

From an era of mass manufacturing

Mass manufacturing arose when innovative manufacturing processes, such as the assembly line, arose to take advantage of the required capabilities like consistent & efficient power sources, better transportation, better communications and other technological advances. A number of large social changes came with the arrival of the era of mass production in the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries:

  • A shift from artisan manufacturing to factories & loss of power in the guilds (an end to skill as power) 
  • The management of work inputs in the right context and at the right time with less waste by bringing work to the worker, reducing work-in-progress & reduction of the manual effort through assembly lines and other manufacturing changes 
  • Specialisation and reduction in the task of the worker 

These changes also had a wider impact as the productivity and value created further social change, particularly as it drove a culture of mass consumption and the rise of the knowledge and service economy. Importantly, the development of this industrial revolution was largely guided by a purpose of shareholder return. With a few rare exceptions, employee engagement and fulfilment, environment or social purpose and other purposes often played a deeply secondary role.

Further phases of the mass manufacturing model whether robotics, lean/kaizen, logistics or outsourcing have been evolution on the basic revolution that began when production shifted from task oriented workshops to process driven factories. To a lesser extent, these efforts have sought to address broader social purposes.

To an era of mass collaboration

We are likely facing into a transformation of knowledge work on the scale of the industrial manufacturing. We are beginning to see new models of knowledge work and collaboration coming to life in our increasing social and digital information capabilities.

We now have the information storage and processing power, the mobility solutions and the social context that can drive insights and low-cost sharing. The coming together of these technologies offers us the opportunity to deliver information to knowledge workers when they need it (leveraging mobile and the cloud) with insight & context (from data analysis and social).

From entrepreneurs to large corporations the focus of innovation in the future of knowledge work is on how to develop new ways to leverage this technology. However for all the innovation we may not yet have seen a defining innovation on the scale of the assembly line. It cannot be far away.

By analogy, knowledge work will change dramatically in an era of mass collaboration:

  • Shifting the work from a knowledgeable expert to an digital algorithm, social network or most likely both (an end to knowledge as power) 
  • Reducing the search for information, the cost of sharing information and bringing knowledge to the worker as and when required for the task 
  • Provision of information in a richer more relevant context and with greater insight enabling new methods of the discovery, use and dissemination of knowledge, which is likely to mean new knowledge itself. 

Shaping purpose and outcomes

Managed with a focus only on shareholder value creation, this transformation could be massively disengaging and alienating for the knowledge workers of the global service economy. Managed with a focus on purpose (taking account of social value and economic value), this transformation could deliver massive productivity improvements, increased discretionary effort and an era of increased engagement and meaning in work.

Component parts of this transformation are being created now with innovation in enterprise social & cloud solutions, new mobile capabilities, big data and other innovations. The time to influence the direction and breadth of purpose of this innovation is now. The challenge that surrounds us is to develop the management innovations that will leverage these new capabilities to great social benefit.

The new era of knowledge work calls for its entrepreneurs and the simplicity & power of an assembly line for knowledge.

Do you agree? What would the assembly line for knowledge work look like? Can a broader and more balanced purpose guide this innovation in knowledge work? Which paths will we take as the knowledge revolution develops?

Concepts in this post borrowed from:

  • Richard Sennett, The Craftsman and Together
  • Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus 
  • Gary Hamel, The future of management 
  • Umair Haque’s HBR blog

The social enterprise must be social

Posted on by simongterry in Collaboration, future of work

A rush of social enterprise technologies is happening led by start-ups and major technology vendors. Everyone is racing to capitalise on the application of social technology into their application or process. Businesses are starting to realise the opportunity of social business processes with their people, customers and other stakeholders. Suddenly ‘social business’, the ‘social enterprise’ and ‘the future of work’ are hot topics.

In this hype and rush, one thing might just get lost – the creation of real community. The social enterprise must be social.

If you think this is an exaggerated concern, remember that technology does not create value. The value comes from how we use it. I have spent a lot of my time working with customer relationship management systems. In too many cases around the world, these projects are often cited as classic examples of failed technology implementations. Why? Most customer relationship management implementations have little relevance to customers and customer relationship employees. The efforts of vendors and businesses to wrap customers in process, data, leads and insight misses the opportunity to manage customers in a real vibrant profitable relationship. Business objectives get in the way of customer objectives and these systems fail their objectives and their users.

So how do we ensure that the social enterprise remains social?

Here are three thoughts:

  • Encourage real interaction: Questions and answers, back chat, push back, small talk, sports conversation, rapport building, jokes, laughter, entertainment, cynicism and mischief making are all part of the interactions that we have every day. Attempts to build systems or encourage use that exclude this ‘noise’ will fail to engage users. This ‘waste’ often has a real social purpose of creating engagement, enhancing productivity, building trust, sharing insight into others and deepening relationships. These are the gains that most vendors and businesses are looking to achieve by adding social features to their applications. 
  • Embrace community (that means culture, two-way communication, creativity, concerns and occasional chaos): Successful social technologies are built on real community. Successful community is what draws in users and allows the sytem to create value. The community will reflect the common culture of the organisation, the common ways of interacting and doing things. Working with community and culture demands that communication is two-way, creativity in the users is encouraged, community concerns are promptly addressed and the community embraces diversity and occasional chaos. You can treat people like children and lock-out these things with features, policy and tight control. However you will get a community culture that is sterile, users who follow orders and the productivity & engagement of a dictatorship. It is far more powerful to treat the community as adults and guide the culture of your organisation to the benefit of the business and community. 
  • Be part of society and social concerns: The best & most engaging social activity connects to a broader purpose. We all live and work in a broader society that makes decisions on what they think of us and our business. One of the powers of social enterprise solutions is the ability to bring that conversation into the workplace. Make the social enterprise one that can deliver social value beyond the bottom line. The employees, customers and other stakeholders who use the system are looking for this opportunity. 

Social enterprise solutions will need to deliver to business goals to have a continuing role in business. However, ensuring that these solutions create community by remaining human and social is critical to their success.