Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. @tom_peters - "Want someone to think you are brilliant? Have a 10 minute conversation and let them do all the talking." @rogerschank - Reading is no way to learn When you have someone to ask, you ask. Reading is what you do when you have no one to ask. Research suggests cooperative behaviour is not instinctive, but learned - via @hrheingold The human ability to cooperate with strangers is an evolutionary puzzle. In most animal species, cooperation is only observed among kin or in very small groups where future interactions are likely. To explore the nature of cooperative behaviour, the researchers compared decision-making in economic games between high-trust and low-trust societies. What Is RSS: A Guide To Really Simple Syndication Benefits, Best Uses And Applications RSS is a powerful but simple way to gather content from all over the web, making it easy for you to follow the latest updates from all of your favorite websites without having to visit them all individually. - @RobinGood It’s No Myth: Robots and Artificial Intelligence Will Erase Jobs in Nearly Every Industry - via @petervan If we can develop the economic structures necessary to distribute the prosperity we are creating, most people will no longer have to work to sustain themselves. They will be free to pursue other creative endeavors. The problem, however, is that without jobs, they will not have the dignity, social engagement, and sense of fulfillment that comes from work. The life, liberty and pursuit of happiness that the constitution entitles us to won’t be through labor, it will have to be through other means. @marshallk - Automation of knowledge work That’s right, automation of knowledge work is expected to have one of the very highest economic impacts of all these disruptive technologies - but is the very-least discussed among general interest and business publications. What does that mean? I think it means "get in now," for one thing.  High potential, low hype sounds like an opportunity for arbitrage against the future. Source: McKinsey

Business value increases with transparency. ‘In 2006, restauranteur Jay Porter banned tipping in his San Diego restaurant, the Linkery. Instead, he implemented a service charge, and split it—transparently—amongst staff. Porter also ran a second restaurant that still allowed tipping, and this made for a useful comparison. "Once established, the tipless/service charge model made us more successful in every dimension," he said. The staff worked as a team, instead of selfishly trying to maximize their own tips. Servers and chefs enjoyed equal status, and staffed turnover dropped. The policy was so successful, says Porter, that it "gave us a huge competitive advantage in the marketplace; this in turn allowed us to serve a much higher quality of food and take lower margins on it."‘ - FastCoExist Businesses that are open, transparent, and cooperative are more resilient because they rely on people, not processes. In the second example above, people worked together because the remuneration was transparent. There was no way to game the system as an individual. This type of business model focuses on long-term value, not short-term profit. It can also foster innovation, as diverse ideas come to the fore when people openly share their ideas. The workers became a social network, cooperating in order to make the whole restaurant better. Knowledge networks are similar. They function well when they are 1) based on openness, which 2) enables transparency, and 3) in turn fosters diversity - all of which reinforce the basic principle of openness. In such a transparent workplace, the role of management is to give workers a job worth doing, the tools to do it, recognition of a job well done and then let them manage themselves. A socially networked business that enables open conversations around work can make better and faster decisions. This is the business value of social networks. But it is all based on trust, for without trust, there is no sharing. Transparency sets the stage for trust to develop. Image: seeking perpetual beta

I have written over 250 posts classified as Friday’s Finds. These are compilations of what has passed by me on social media over the past week or two. Originally these were posted once a week and now once per fortnight. With a critical mass of posts I now have an additional resource to mine for insight. For instance, I regularly search my blog for posts I have written so that I can recall my thoughts. I call it my outboard brain. With Friday’s Finds, I can search the posts of others to see what they have to say on a certain topic. For example, I can search to see what others have to say on leadership. When we start on a process like blogging we do not see the results until long after. With my Friday’s Finds, I now have a treasure trove of insights to review as needed. So without further ado … Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. [#251]. "The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him." - Machiavelli - via @AfricaDean "No such thing as ‘non-leader.’ Every day offers every one of us scads of leadership opportunities." - @tom_peters The Table Napkin Test by @snowded - via @SimonGTerry One of the golden rules of sense-making is that any framework or model that can’t be drawn on a table napkin from memory has little utility. The reason for this is pretty clear, if people can use something without the need for prompts or guides then there are more likely to use it and as importantly adapt it. Models with multiple aspects, more than five aspects (its a memory limit guys live with it) or which require esoteric knowledge are inherently dependency models. They are designed to create a dependency on the model creator. How Much Do We Know? by @pevansgreenwood Expertise, and being an expert, implies having the hard-won knowledge and skills that make you a reliable judge of what is best or wisest to do. It’s an inherently backwards-looking concept, ascribing value to individuals based on their ability to accumulate experience and then generalise from it, taking generic solutions that have worked in the past and applying them to specific problems encountered today. Collaboration & Cooperation - by @AmyBurvall Image by Amy Burvall

A key part of the Seek > Sense > Share framework for PKM is to find new ways to explain things, or add value to existing information. Metaphors help us understand new concepts, as do visuals. When the folks at Venngage asked if they could create an infographic on PKM I saw it as another opportunity to make sense of the framework. I also like the fact that someone else made it, so that it was not just my perspective or priorities. Don’t forget that the last online PKM workshop for 2015 starts on 7 September. Create free infographics with Venngage

A recent posting for a six-week knowledge management contract was posted by the UNDP. When it comes to requests for proposals, if you ask for something, you will definitely get offers to produce it. But is this what they need? "Conduct initial research on industry standards for KM measurement to inform the design of UNDP’s KM performance measurement, and develop tailored metrics for monitoring and measuring UNDP performance; Identify and recommend suitable tools and mechanisms to collect the data necessary for KM monitoring; Formulate standard operating procedures for data collection and monitoring and analysis of KM metrics." - UNDP The RFP is for a measurement framework that reflects current industry standards. But what if those standards are useless cookie cutters?  Is KM about collecting data or is it really about sense-making on an organizational level? The only way to enable the latter is to get everyone involved in knowledge sharing and then harvest what emerges. It is messier, and it is the opposite of what most of KM has been about. Here is a simple guide on how to enable organizational sense-making, not the mere management of data and metrics. 1. Establish methods that enable tacit knowledge to flow. People need to have better and deeper conversations around issues that matter. Training on better communication and meeting techniques can be offered. Examples of knowledge-sharing need to be made by decision-makers. People need to select their own tools, develop their own PKM practices, and be allowed to experiment. This takes time and a safe place to share. Monitoring is done while immersed in this complex adaptive system of people learning and sharing knowledge in multiple ways. 2. Establish places for groups and teams to work out loud. An enterprise social network is one such environment. However, these groups will only share their knowledge if individuals have the abilities and aptitudes to do so. You may have to go back to step one. 3. Finally, once people are conversing, sharing, learning, and experimenting in the open can the organization start to harvest insights from community managers and through good curation practice. This explicit knowledge becomes the stock on which to build the system of record, and such things as lessons recorded, and perhaps even learned. of course, there has to be something to curate, and that is only available when most people in the organization freely share. The foundation for KM should be active sense-making and a solid practice of adding value through engaged learning, within a structure that encourages open sharing. I doubt that any of this will ever appear in an RFP in the near future, or that PKM, with an emphasis on personal methods, would be an acceptable framework for those obsessed with measurement. It’s just too simple.

Even five years ago it was not the norm to work at a distance. Employers wanted to keep workers on-site when it made no sense. Some asked for people to do virtual work, but still required they be on-site. Virtual work is no longer limited to mostly free-agents, as many salaried employees today work at least part-time off-site. It is becoming the norm and bringing change with it. When people work at a distance, in time or space, an implicit shift occurs. They have to be trusted to get the work done. Management also shifts from measuring time to measuring results. A new culture emerges. It becomes more trusting. Trust is the glue that holds creative organizations together, not rules and regulations. Culture is an emergent property of people working together. Leadership is an emergent property of people working together. It is not delivered, in a top-down fashion, by a select individual. One example of emergent leadership was the Apache nation that had only situational leaders, Nantans, who were in charge as long as warriors were willing to follow them. Because of this decentralization, they were able to fight the Spanish for over two hundred years, regrouping as necessary. A similar approach can be developed for today’s networked organizations. Tomorrow’s leaders will be found among the aggressively intelligent citizenry, using technology to augment their senses. These people will need access to their own ideas. Open information and access to our common knowledge assets will be a required part of any new leadership model. There is no other way to deal with complex systems and problems. We are now at the stage where we have some new models for work and many new communication and collaboration technologies. The next step in this evolution is for new organizational models. Some of these are being tested in venues around the world, such as democratic workplaces, eliminating bosses, reducing hierarchies, and self-managing teams. "Ideas lead technology. Technology leads organizations. Organizations lead institutions. Then ideology brings up the rear, lagging all the rest — that’s when things really get set in concrete." — Charles H. Greene Source: adapting to perpetual beta So basically, ideas are enabled by new technology around which new organizations are created. Only then do new institutions get built in order to support the new dominant ideology. The American scholar, Warren Bennis, said that hierarchy is a prosthesis for trust. With open systems, trust emerges. It takes different leadership to do the important work in complex work environments, part of which is to increase cooperation and support social learning in the workplace. Leadership is an emergent property of a network in balance. In this post-information era, organizations need to really understand networks, manage for complexity, and work on building trust. Trust reduces the need for rules. Principles are better than rules in dealing with complex situations. Adding more control processes (compliance training, for example) fails to build resilience into the organization. Every time the organization deals with an exception using a standard method, and fails to account for the unique situation of the employee or customer, it erodes trust. Let people do work worth doing, the tools to do it, and recognition of a job well done. In a transparent, diverse, and open organization, management can then get out of the way. This is how organizations can remain relevant in the network era. The great work of our time is to design, build, and test new organizational models that reflect democratic values and can function in an interconnected world. Leadership today is more of an architectural task, or one of setting up the right systems. — Excerpt from my e-book: Adapting to Perpetual Beta Posted on LinkedIn 18 August 2015

Here is a good story that shows the value of learning as working, as opposed to relying on previous expertise. "On the surface, John looked like the perfect up-and-coming executive to lead BFC’s Asia expansion plans. He went to an Ivy League B-school. His track record was flawless. Every goal or objective the organization had ever put in front of him, he’d crushed without breaking a sweat. But something broke when John went to Asia. John struggled with the ambiguity, and he didn’t take prudent risks. He quickly dismissed several key opportunities to reach out for feedback and guidance from leadership. It became clear that John had succeeded in the past by doing what he knew and operating rather conservatively within his domain. It also became clear that the company was going to massively miss the promises it had made to the Board and the Street if John remained in the role. With a heavy heart, BFC’s CEO removed his promising protégé from the role and redeployed him back in the US. He decided he had no choice but to put a different kind of leader in the role - Alex. While talented, Alex had come to be known behind closed doors by the moniker "DTM" - difficult to manage. He marched to the beat of his own drummer, and he wasn’t afraid to challenge the status quo. He loved a challenge, and he was comfortable taking risks. It turned out to be the best move the CEO ever made. No stranger to ambiguity, Alex was flexible in formulating his strategy and sought feedback from the people around him. He made a risky move at the beginning that backfired on him. But as a result, he learned what not to do and recalibrated his approach. That was the key to success. His tendency to buck the established BFC way of doing things was exactly what was required for the company to successfully flex its approach and win in the new territory". - Harvard Business Review: Improve Your Ability to Learn Alex understood that complex situations, which this definitely was, require experimentation. He probed the system, failed, observed and discussed, and then refined his initial probe, which succeeded in the long term. More and more of our work will be non-routine and will deal with complex issues. Routine cognitive work will continue to be eaten by software and machines. A client once said that she wished to have just one day of only routine problems. I doubt she will. I doubt many of us will. If experimentation, and bucking the established way of doing things, is becoming a necessity then a few things have to change to keep an organization effective. Many policies and procedures will have to be replaced with principles and heuristics. Individuals will have to become comfortable with experimentation and be allowed to take risks. Learning by doing will have to be the new routine, requiring active and ongoing sense-making in our networks and communities of practice. In the network era more of our work will be to Probe-Sense-Respond as we Seek>Sense>Share.

Platform capitalism is the ability of a common internet exchange medium to enable easy commercial transactions. Buyers of services get convenience, while sellers get a larger market. The spoils go to the owner of the platform, receiving a significant percentage of revenues. Most of these platforms are created when regulations and oligopolies make these transactions difficult by traditional means. Platform capitalism initially disrupts a sector that is poorly served. It requires four contributing factors. A platform: a central application that controls the data on all interactions and activities. A critical mass of users: tech-savvy users looking for an easier way to get something, usually requiring minimum human interaction. Desperate service providers: people with no ability to organize due to weak or non-existing trade unions in their field, who need to make up for a non-living wage, part-time, or contractual work. Lack of regulations and oversight: government agencies that either cannot keep up with technology advances, or political leadership that condones poor working conditions in the name of progress. For example, we see many people willing to drive for a company like Uber in order to increase cash-flow. But drivers for Uber have no career track and as the platform gets richer, drivers become replaceable commodities. Over time they may even be replaced by self-driving cars. This is an indicator of what a post-job economy may look like for many. One of the outcomes of this phenomenon [platform capitalism] is that over time the democratization of communication, the initial impetus for this blog, gets sideswiped, to varying degrees, by new re-massifying forces. The niche offerings that made the online environment so refreshingly unlike the mass market world of hierarchical decision-making, capital-intensive production and distribution, and limited shelf space, are still there of course, but what we’re seeing is a privileging of those who sign up for more industrial muscle with the new middleman companies such who aggregate the work of podcasters, YouTubers, Instagrammers, Vine creators, etc. and optimize it for an advertising-supported world of content. - IP: Getting Value from your Creativity Control of data is the new source of power in the network era. "Each of us has the gold and many companies feel they can simply take it. It’s time to empower ourselves and take our data back", says Chris Middleton. Whether we socially own our data, or if it is capital for trade by third-parties, will be a key economic question our society needs to address. The truth is we are living in neither a digital capitalist nor a digital socialist future just yet. We are poised between the two, but nearing the point where these two different viewpoints collide in a global conflict. Let’s call it the First World Data War. Forget religion, this is the real Great War of our age. There will be bloodshed, both figuratively and literally. - Diginomica The democratization of our data, which is more and more the dominant form of the fruit of our labour, is a major issue for how wealth will be distributed in the network era. For now the platform capitalists seem to be winning. But society is waking up, with initiatives like the Ingenesist Project and Project VRM. We can use open source models to shut off the lights of big data. Many of us are leaving, or have left, the confines of hierarchical organizations of the industrial and information eras and are becoming mobile and global knowledge workers in a creative economy. But at the same time we need to prepare to assault the new walls already created by the platform capitalists. Image: adapting to perpetual beta      

Jane Hart compiles a list every year of the Top 100 Tools for learning. Voting closes on 18 September. Here are my top tools this year, with last year’s position shown in brackets. Please add yours! 10 (new): Netflix: I find I am watching a lot of documentaries on this popular video streaming service and I am learning a lot. The latest was a series on the American civil war. 9 (new): Slack: this message application is a great way to stay connected and work in small groups and I am a member of two active Slack communities. More information on why Slack is more than chat. 8 (new): Skype: I find I am using Skype more to stay in touch with people through conversations and text messaging. 7 (7): Apple Preview: is the productivity tool I use the most, so I can focus on learning, not fighting with applications. It lets me annotate pictures, resize images, add signatures, and most importantly ensures I do not have to have Adobe Acrobat to open PDF’s. It is a huge time-saver. 6 (new): Pixabay: is a great source for copyright free photos to use in presentations. 5 (5): Keynote: Apple’s presentation application has enabled me to improve my slide presentations, through its simplicity and lack of clip art. 4 (4): Feedly: is my feed reader to keep track of blogs and news sites via RSS. 3 (3): Diigo: Social bookmarks are a quick way for me to save a web page and find it easily. 2 (2): Twitter: Next to my blog, Twitter is my best learning tool and allows me to stay connected to a diverse network. 1 (1): WordPress: powers my blog, which is the core of my PKM. It’s easy to use, has a huge community, and there are many plug-ins and additions available. I also use it to deliver my online workshops.

Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. @hrheingold: "Don’t refuse to believe; refuse to start out believing." #crapdetection @nielspflaeging: "Any tool involving points and badges is superfluous, even systematically destructive in an organizational context." @kjeannette: What is a Community of Practice? 6 lessons: 1) Narrow down the domain and purpose (i.e. make it attainable) 2) Hire a community facilitator, or even better, a social artist? 3)Reduce bottlenecks and start with ‘low hanging fruit’ type of platforms. 4) Modeling how to be social is critical. 5) Learning might lead to collaborative works. 6)CoPs grow like gardens and that’s why developmental evaluation is becoming really interesting to me. Why I Am No Longer a Measurement Specialist - via @surreallyno Teachers and many parents understand that children’s development is far too complex to capture with an hour or two taking a standardized test. So resistance has been met with legislated mandates. The test company lobbyists convince politicians that grading teachers and schools is as easy as grading cuts of meat. A huge publishing company from the UK has spent $8 million in the past decade lobbying Congress. Politicians believe that testing must be the cornerstone of any education policy. The most important app you will ever download - via @tantramar [I agree, I use 1Password] In June of this year, [Chalene’s Johnson’s] Twitter account was hacked, as was her main Instagram account. She shared this sad tale on her podcasts … Upon completing the tedious and time-consuming task of recovering from the hack, Chalene researched password managers to ensure she’d never have to endure such an experience again. At the end of her quest to find the best password manager, Chalene discovered 1Password! Job Polarisation In Europe: Are Mid-Skilled Jobs Disappearing? - via @mbauwens The implication for policy is that there is no inescapable trend in occupational developments. The pervasive forces of technical change or international trade do not necessarily polarise or upgrade occupational structures: different policies and contexts can significantly alter their effect. And as in many other areas, the Scandinavian countries provide the most attractive example. Cooperation is what makes us human - via @RogerFrancis1 Ultimately, Tomasello’s research on human nature arrives at a paradox: our minds are the product of competitive intelligence and cooperative wisdom, our behavior a blend of brotherly love and hostility toward out-groups. Confronted by this paradox, the ugly side—the fact that humans compete, fight, and kill each other in wars—dismays most people, Tomasello says. And he agrees that our tendency to distrust outsiders—lending itself to prejudice, violence, and hate—should not be discounted or underestimated. But he says he is optimistic. In the end, what stands out more is our exceptional capacity for generosity and mutual trust, those moments in which we act like no species that has ever come before us. @samihonkonen: An organization Fit for its Context The proper way to conduct ourselves in the complex domain is through experiments. Constant, short, safe-to-fail experiments that give us empirical data on what works. Successful experiments are scaled up, unsuccessful ones we learn from and then forget. Yet blind experiments, random shots in the dark, are not effective. We need something to guide our experiments. When we understand our business and our organizations as a system, we can make educated guesses on what would lead towards better performance for the whole company. Systems thinking helps us find leverage. Source: http://www.samihonkonen.com/an-organization-fit-for-its-context/

Donald Taylor notes that, "everyone has a memory that is particularly attuned to learning some things very easily". In his post, Donald says that the context in which we learn something, as well as how it is presented and received, are all important aspects of whether we will remember something. "This was not a matter of super memory but of meaning. When shown a board not from a game, but with randomly arranged pieces, the masters fared no better than the beginners. They were unable to use their immediate appreciation of how the pieces related to each other to make sense of the position. It was like trying to memorize a poem with jumbled up words." - Memory is more than Ebbinghaus I came across the concept of memory chunking while working as a training development officer in the air force in the mid-1990’s. There was relatively new research that showed how experienced air traffic controllers (ATC) chunked, or categorized, the aircraft on their screens, so they could allocate their working memory to the more important or urgent matters. Even more interesting is the evidence that shows that pilots and ATC’s chunk differently. "The way in which the information contained in a message is chunked depends on the person receiving the message: a pilot and ATCO are likely to chunk a message in rather different ways. This is due to the familiarity of each person and their professional experiences. It is also associated with the position of the person, either as the sender or the receiver … This illustrates that what may be familiar chunking by the controller is not necessarily familiar chunking by the pilot. The frequency for the next sector is used all the time by the controller and is one chunk for him, but this is not the same for the pilot. Vice versa, the call sign is much more familiar to the pilot than to the controller. A recommendation often made, associated with air-ground communications, is to limit the number of elements in a message to two to reduce the chance of an element being missed or misheard." - Memory in ATC People in the same environment will notice and remember different things in different ways. For those designing training programs, or supporting social learning in the workplace, this is an important phenomenon to consider. Memory is not linear. Remembering is not homogeneous. Even more important is the understanding that we can develop better skills at chunking and other sense-making skills. "Consciousness concerns itself only with the most meaningful mental constructions and is ever hungry to build new patterns over existing architectures. To help in this aim, it itches to combine and compare any objects in our awareness. How the brain supports consciousness closely mirrors these functions. Those specialist regions of the cortex that manage the processing endpoints of our senses—for instance, areas involved in recognizing faces, rather than merely the colors and textures that constitute a face—furnish our awareness with its specific content. But there is also a network of our most advanced general-purpose regions that directly draws in all manner of content from these specialist regions. This is the core network, incredibly densely connected together, both internally and across major regions throughout the brain. In this inner core, multiple sources of meaningful, potentially highly structured information are combined by ultra-fast brain rhythms. And this, neurally speaking, is how and where consciousness arises." - Daniel Bor: The Ravenous Brain These three examples show only a small part of the wonders of human memory and learning. If you consider yourself a learning professional, there will always be something new to learn.

‘As Steve Jobs said, "You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future."’ - Michael Simmons Michael Simmons shows that Jobs had the ability to be a member of many networks, meaning that he was often the outsider, but this gave him a larger perspective than someone in a closed network, where everyone knows each other. Successful people, according to network theory, are those with more open networks. This goes against our tribal instincts and the norms of most of our institutions. Even the marketplace can be fairly homogeneous, with companies sticking to industry standard practices. But innovation often happens on the edges of disciplines. Jobs instinctively knew this with his innate curiosity. If we cannot connect the dots looking forward, what can we do? In complex systems, self-organization can give the flexibility needed to adapt to things we cannot ever fully understand. "Self organization works by a combination of attractors and boundaries. Attractors are things that draw components of a system towards themselves (gravity wells, a pile of money left on the ground, an invitation). Boundaries (or constraints) are barriers that constrain the elements in a system (an atmosphere, the edges of an island, the number of syllables in a haiku)." - Chris Corrigan A discipline like PKM is one way of preparing the mind for life in the network era. Gary Klein, in Seeing What Others Don’t,  looked at over 100 cases of how new insights occurred in organizations and categorized them as five main types. Three of these can be enhanced through the practice of personal knowledge mastery: Making better and more diverse professional and social connections. Increasing the chances for coincidences though social networks. Practising curiosity through new experiences. Chance favours the prepared and connected mind. Only then will the dots have an opportunity to connect. Image: adapting to perpetual beta

The following extract is the concluding section of finding perpetual beta. The last personal knowledge mastery in 40 days online workshop for 2015 started this week "Work is learning, learning work" — that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. Our increasing interconnectedness is illuminating the complexity of our work environments. More connections create more possibilities, as well as more potential problems. On the negative side, we are seeing that simple work keeps getting automated, like automatic bank machines. Complicated work, for which standardized processes or software can be developed, usually gets outsourced to the lowest cost of labour. On the positive side, complex work can provide unique business opportunities. Because complex work is difficult to copy and creative work constantly changes, these are where long-term value for human work lies. Both complex and creative work require greater implicit knowledge. Implicit knowledge, unlike explicit knowledge, is difficult to codify and standardize. It is also difficult to transfer. Implicit knowledge is best developed through conversations and social relationships. It requires trust before people willingly share their know-how. Social networks can enable better and faster knowledge feedback for people who trust each other and share their knowledge. But hierarchies and work control structures constrain conversations. Few people want to share their ignorance with the boss who controls their pay cheque. If we agree that complex and creative work are where long-term business value lies, then learning amongst ourselves is the real work in any organization today. In this emerging network era, social learning is how work gets done. Becoming a successful social organization will require more than just the implementation of enterprise social technologies. Developing, supporting, and encouraging people to use a range of new social workplace skills will be just as important. Individual skills, in addition to new organizational support structures, are both required. PKM skills can help to make sense of, and learn from, the constant stream of information that workers encounter from social channels both inside and outside the organization. Keeping track of digital information flows and separating the signal from the noise is difficult. There is little time to make sense of it all. We may feel like we are just not able to stay current and make informed decisions. PKM gives a framework to develop a network of people and sources of information that one can draw from on a daily basis. PKM is a process of filtering, creating, and discerning, and it also helps manage individual professional development through continuous learning. The mainstream application of knowledge and learning management over the past few decades has had it all wrong. We over-managed information because it was easy and we remain enamoured with information technology. The ubiquity of information outside the organization is showing the weakness of centralized enterprise systems. As enterprises begin to understand the Web, the principle of ‘small pieces loosely joined’ is permeating thick industrial walls. More and more workers have their own sources of information and knowledge, often on a mobile device. But they often lack the means or internal support to connect their knowledge with others to get actually get work done. PKM frameworks can help knowledge workers capture and make sense of their knowledge. Organizations should support the individual sharing of information and expertise between knowledge workers, on their terms, using PKM methods and tools. Simple protocols can facilitate this sharing. Knowledge bases and traditional knowledge management (KM) systems should focus on essential information, and what is necessary for inexperienced workers. Experienced workers should not be constrained by work structures like teams but rather be given the flexibility to contribute how and where they think they can best help the organization. We know that formal instruction accounts for less than 10% of workplace learning. The same rule of thumb applies to knowledge management. Capture and codify the 10% that is essential, especially for new employees. Now use the same principle to get work done. Structure the essential 10% and leave the rest unstructured, but networked, so that workers can group as needed to get work done. Teams are too slow and hierarchical to be useful for the network era. Social businesses should leave teams for the sports field, and managing knowledge for each worker. People who are adept at learning how to learn will be better prepared for jobs of the future because they know how to engage with a community and tap into net- works for support. This is what PKM is all about. It starts by seeking people and knowledge sources and the Seek > Sense > Share cycle finishes by sharing with communities and social networks. There is a need for PKM skills in all types of organizations and for people at all levels, from freelancers, researchers, managers, executives, and many more. The benefits are not just for individuals, preparing for their next job, but the organization gains from employees who take control of their learning and freely share their knowledge. PKM makes for more resilient individuals and the companies they work in. Much of PKM is about finding balance. In seeking knowledge sources, we have to balance aggregation, or getting as much information as possible, with filtering, or ensuring that we have more signal than noise. Our networks need to be diverse and varied in order to be exposed to new ideas, but we cannot keep track of everything, so we have to be judicious with our time. We need to constantly lump things together, while filtering out the good stuff so we can find it again. It is like breathing information in and out, while making sense of only a small portion at a time, sometimes built by many grains before trying to express our knowledge in order to make sense of it. These processes are not taught in schools or training programs. There is no right answer in PKM. There are only processes that work. The test of PKM is whether it works for you. A person’s PKM practices will change over time, and the most important aspect is being aware of how we seek sources of information, make sense of our own knowledge, and then share it at work, in communities or through networks. It is all about continuous learning. PKM practices can help make sense of the current environment, whether it be your profession, your job, or your areas of interest. A resilient learning network, that can develop from practicing PKM, creates a more resilient framework from which to make decisions about the future. The more you give to your networks, the more you will receive from them. PKM provides a way to do this in a more structured, but personal, manner. The result is enhanced serendipity, always an advantage in a changing world.

At Red Hat, the enterprise IT company,  "managers focus on opportunities, not score-keeping". ‘We also rely on associates’ peers and communities to informally assess how people perform. We pay attention to their reputations and how they are regarded by others. We look at the scope and quality of their influence. The result is that rather than "managing up" to their boss to get a good review, Red Hatters are accountable to the community as a whole.’ - Jim Whitehurst, CEO Red Hat This is a good example of networked management, as opposed to scientific management (1911), which informed the past century of practice. Principles of Networked Management: It is only through innovative and contextual methods, the self-selection of the most appropriate tools and work conditions, and willing cooperation that more creative work can be fostered. The duty of being transparent in our work and sharing our knowledge rests with all workers, especially management. Image: adapting to perpetual beta 1. "innovative & contextual methods" = in the network era work and jobs cannot be standardized, which means first getting rid of job descriptions and individual performance appraisals and shifting to simpler ways in order to organize for complexity. 2. "self-selection of tools" = moving away from standardized enterprise tools toward an open platform in which workers, many of which are part-time or contracted, can use their own tools in order to be knowledge artisans. 3. "willing cooperation" = lessening the emphasis on teamwork and collaboration and encouraging wider cooperation. 4. "duty of being transparent" = shifting from ‘need to know’ to ‘need to share’ especially for those with leadership responsibilities, who must understand that in the network era, management is a role, not a career. Transparency is probably the biggest challenge for organizations today, and it can start with salary transparency. 5. "sharing our knowledge" = changing the environment so that sharing one’s knowledge does not put that person in a weaker organizational position. An effective knowledge worker is an engaged individual with the freedom to act. Rewarding the organization (network) is better than rewarding the individual, but only if people feel empowered and can be actively engaged in decision-making. Intrinsic, not extrinsic, motivation is necessary for complex and creative work.  

Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. @skap5 - "The economic game has been completely transformed and the farm system where the next generation learns how to play hasn’t." The Buurtzorg Model of socialcare, via @GC_carrGomm Cutting bureaucracy is only one part of the socio-political equation, because the Buurtzorg model is one of workplace autonomy and democratic leadership where decision making and setting targets is decentralised to clinical teams. ANZ bank brings in robot workers to do the ‘boring’ jobs, via @RossDawson "I think if people’s jobs are to do things that robots can do, then that is not a good place to be. It is a challenge for us to ensure we actually move people into roles and enhance the roles so that they adapt," he said. "There are likely to be significant changes in many professional roles as we go along. But then again, when I was doing my degree there used to be a role called bookkeeper. Those don’t exist any more, but there has never been more people employed in accounting as today, the roles are just different." Dee Hock: The Art of Chaordic Leadership (PDF), via @DebraWatkinson Leader presumes follower. Follower presumes choice. One who is coerced to the purposes, objectives, or preferences of another is not a follower in any true sense of the word, but an object of manipulation. Nor is the relationship materially altered if both parties voluntarily accept the dominance of one by the other. A true leader cannot be bound to lead. A true follower cannot be bound to follow. The moment they are bound they are no longer leader or follower. If the behavior of either is compelled, whether by force, economic necessity, or contractual arrangement, the relationship is altered to one of superior/subordinate, manager/employee, master/servant, or owner/slave. All such relationships are materially different from leader/follower. @orgnet - "Connect on you similarities. Benefit from your differences."

Verna Allee says that in states of ‘complex unorder’, loose hierarchies and strong networks are necessary. This point was driven home this morning as I listened on CBC radio about the closure of a rural school in Nova Scotia and how the option of turning it into a ‘hub school’ was beyond the comprehension of the school board and department of education. These are strongly hierarchical organizations, while the community has been strengthening its networks between multiple actors in the region and beyond. The community understands it is dealing with a state of complex unorder, while the bureaucrats still think it is merely ‘complicated order’, as the departmental guidelines on hub schools attest. "The neo-liberal argument is that the demand for school space is down and surplus inventory should logically be discarded. School sites are just property, a disposable public asset, and a potential public liability if they do not yield a return on their investment. By this logic fewer school children mean fewer schools. Schools have no place in neighbourhoods too small to supply a large enough clientele to make them ‘viable’. Market forces and market thinking trump democratic ideals for local communities." - The School as Community Hub Image by Verna Allee Alexis de Tocqueville, in his book ‘Democracy in America’ based on his travels in 1831, identified ‘associations’ of citizens to be a driving force in the new democracy. John McKnight, in The Careless Society, described these groups as having three key capabilities: "the power to decide there was a problem, the power to decide how to solve the problem - that is, the expert’s power - and then the power to solve the problem". As de Tocqueville saw how a society could function without an aristocracy, we now must see how government can function without a bureaucratic elite, and communities can operate without bureaucratic overlords. At this time, communities best understand their problems, and have the networked ability to solve them, but they lack the expert’s power of access to legislation and taxation. Almost two hundred years ago the association of engaged and connected citizens enabled a functioning democracy in early America. Today, the dominance of markets, and market-centric thinking is coming to an end. In the early network era we need to develop systems of loose hierarchies and strong networks to deal with the increasing complex unorder our communities face. Democratic ideals must trump market thinking, or we will be doomed to live in the past, using the tools of the past. Source: adapting to perpetual beta The European Union is an example of how decentralization can work within a unified political entity. It is still a work in progress, as is democracy. "Under the principle of subsidiarity, in areas which do not fall within its exclusive competence, the Union shall act only if and in so far as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States, either at central level or at regional and local level, but can rather, by reason of the scale or effects of the proposed action, be better achieved at Union level." - EU Declarations Subsidiarity is a founding organizational principle for democracy in the network era. It enables community-level cooperation to counter competitive market forces to meet local needs within a global context. Imagine if our governments had a clause that stated that they would act only if objectives could not be achieved by the local community. Neither the market nor the government have the answers to our problems anymore. Both need to step aside for network era democracy to work. The solutions to our problems are in our networks, local and global.

Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. 1984 Revisited - @avivakillian "What is the aim of mass surveillance? One may suppose it is to stop terrible acts before they happen - as a means to watch over and protect the lives of innocent civilians. Another may suppose it is to establish a dictatorship that suppresses freedom of thought and seeks to solidify existing power structures. Its pretty obvious which of the two Orwell envisaged: And its true, if you want to keep a secret these days you can’t even share it with yourself. Whether its a nude, details of an extra marital affair or even something as bland as your search history, it seems everything is on the table for whoever wants it in the age of hacktivism, mass surveillance and data broking." Image via blog.meeco.me We spent two weeks wearing employee trackers - @FastCoExist ‘What can this data be used for besides squeezing more work out of its users? There are few use cases outside of fixing the bottom line. If we had a specific business goal, perhaps the data could have been used to make changes to achieve that, but the information didn’t do much to improve individual workers’ understanding of their jobs. Their thoughts might best be captured by a stray thought of Clendaniel’s as we paged through Humanyze’s analysis: "There are few use cases for personal improvement here, and many more for productivity and efficiency." He wasn’t being particularly positive.’ "Massive inequality is incompatible with robust democracy" - Robert Reich "An economy depends fundamentally on public morality; some shared standards about what sorts of activities are impermissible because they so fundamentally violate trust that they threaten to undermine the social fabric. It is ironic that at a time the Republican presidential candidates and state legislators are furiously focusing on private morality - what people do in their bedrooms, contraception, abortion, gay marriage - we are experiencing a far more significant crisis in public morality." Why we cannot learn a damn thing from Semco, or Toyota - @NielsPflaeging "What I mean is this: When talking about organizational leadership, even the best example just doesn’t help! At least not as long as one, almost magic ingredient for change, or transformation, is missing. And that magic ingredient is our image of human nature, the way we think about people around us, and what drives them. Not just the trust we place in other people is key, but whether we trust them to be self-motivated, driven by the need for self-fulfillment, and capable of self-organizing within boundaries and team settings." As Systems Collapse, Citizens Rise - @Otto Scharmer "To summarize, the refugee crisis is a microcosm of the future that we all face over the next 10-20 years. The social grammar of that crisis looks like this: • As rules and regulations (that always reflect the past) are increasingly out of sync with the actual reality on the ground, we see • Systems starting to fail, break down and collapse, which leads to… • People, journalists/media rising to the occasion or not-and accordingly… • The logic of collective action arising from either the past (muddling through or regression) or from the present moment (co-sensing by tuning into what the emerging future calls us to do). If the latter happens, we begin to see that the crisis and breakdown of our larger systems are actually a phenomenal opportunity to renew and update our old bodies of rules and regulations to be more fluid and in sync with the actual situation on the ground. If the former happens we will see an enormous magnification of human suffering and amplification of the system breakdowns on an unprecedented level of global scale."    

Sharing complex knowledge requires trusted professional relationships. You cannot just throw people together and hope they will work effectively on difficult problems. "strong interpersonal relationships that allowed discussion, questions, and feedback were an essential aspect of the transfer of complex knowledge" - Hinds & Pfeffer (2003) Being engaged with a diverse network of people who share their knowledge makes for more effective workers. Understanding how to do this becomes a key business skill in the network era. "We learned that individual expertise did not distinguish people as high performers. What distinguished high performers were larger and more diversified personal networks." - Rob Cross, et al (2004) It is not the size of our networks that matters, but the diversity of opinions and expertise that we can draw upon, in order to prevent group think, or an ‘echo chamber’ effect. In times of crisis, when information is critical, then having a diversity of opinions can ensure that drastic measures are not taken for the wrong reasons, or that viable options are not ignored. "We need input from people with a diversity of viewpoints to help generate innovative new ideas. If our circle of connections grow too small, or if everyone in it starts thinking the same way, we’ll stop generating new ideas." - Tim Kastelle (2010) We all need to balance strong and weak ties to ensure that we are effective as professionals and engaged citizens. Doing so is an art that can be mastered over time, with practice. "Experts have long argued about the optimal structure of a person’s professional network. Some say that a dense, cohesive network brings more social capital, while others argue that a sparse, radial network, one that provides opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurial activity, equates to greater social capital. [Paul] Erdős’  network shows both patterns — a densely connected core along with loosely coupled radial branches reaching out from the core.  The people in the core/center of your network probably know the same things you do, while the people along your network’s periphery probably know different things and different people than you know." - Valdis Krebs (2015) Image: finding perpetual beta

About 10 years ago I worked on a project with nursing staff as they changed their basic care model from one that was patient-centric to a model where "nurses engage the person/family to actively participate in learning about health". The McGill Model of Nursing is learning-centric. This fundamental shift in focus is a prime example of the major organizational change required from both our education systems and our management models, as we transition into a networked creative economy. In an era of ubiquitous connectivity, leadership at all levels and all sectors must be about promoting learning. There is no other way to address the many wicked problems facing us. If work is learning and learning is the work, then leadership at work should be all about promoting learning. Consider the case of young children. Do they really need to master a core curriculum? Marie Bjerede describes how she learned to relax and let her daughter take control of her own learning. What is interesting to me about all this is that I have completely ignored my daughter’s work other than to listen when she wants to share and to provide the digital tools that make it possible. As she tells me about this passion I learn about the skills she has developed on her own: [Hours in Front of a Screen] … In other words, my daughter has taken ownership of her informal learning in an area she is passionate about. The digital resources and communities of interest available to her through the Internet means she is able to independently pursue her interests without waiting for an adult to mediate her learning. And as a side effect of doing what she loves, she is gaining both cognitive and non-cognitive skills that will serve her in college, work, and life. Marie is taking a learning-centric approach to parenting, providing support only when asked. In adapting to perpetual beta I described how leadership in networks must be learning-centric. Leaders have to set an example by initiating change and themselves learning by doing. They also have to create systems that let others do the same. So what is connected leadership? Help the Network Make Better Decisions — Managers should see themselves as servant leaders. Managers must actively listen, continuously question the changing work context, help to see patterns and make sense of them, and then suggest new practices and build consensus with networked workers. Improve insights — Too often, management only focuses on reducing errors, but it is insight that drives innovation. Leaders must loosen the filters through which information and knowledge pass in the organization and in- crease the organizational willpower to act on these insights. Provide Learning Experiences — Managers and supervisors may be vital for workers’ performance improvement, but only if they provide opportunities for experiential learning with constructive feedback, new projects, and new skills. Focus on the Why of Work — Current compensation systems ignore the data on human motivation. Extrinsic rewards only work for simple physical tasks and increased monetary rewards can actually be detrimental to performance, especially with knowledge work. The keys to motivation at work are for each person to have a sense of Autonomy, Competence and Relatedness, according to self-determination theory. This is a network management responsibility. Be Knowledge Managers — Leaders need to practice and encourage personal knowledge mastery throughout the network. Be an Example — Social networks shine a spotlight on dysfunctional managers. Cooperative behaviours require an example and that example must come from those in leadership positions. While there may be a role for good managers in networks, there likely will not be much of a future for bosses.

Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds [due to my travel and work schedule in South Africa this week, I am a day late]. "Money is the wealthy person’s curtain which hides all their defects from the world." - Anon - via @RogerFrancis1 @Orgnet - "You need both strong ties and weak ties for a successful professional network". More: Professional Social Graphs Project Syndicate: Germany is not Volkswagen The most important factor behind Germany’s success is that the structure of its firms improves the quality of their products. German exporters are organized in a way that is less hierarchical and more decentralized than other European firms. This gives them several advantages. Decentralization enables employees at lower levels of the corporate hierarchy to devise and implement new ideas. As these employees are often closer to customers than those higher up, their collective knowledge about what the market is demanding is an important source of value. State of Freelancing in the USA - via @abarrera Freelancers are a growing workforce. There are now almost 54 million Americans freelancing, an increase of 700,000 over last year. That’s more than a third of the American workforce. Millennials, as I’ve argued before, are native freelancers, and it shows: They are freelancing at a higher rate than any other group. Independent workers are freelancing by choice. Survey respondents told us that they’re freelancing because of the flexibility, freedom, and balance that it offers. In our survey, 60% of respondents said they started freelancing more by choice than by necessity, compared to last year’s figure of 53%. Critically, half of freelancers we talked to said that they wouldn’t take a traditional job, no matter how much it paid. And because being a freelancer lets you work from anywhere, a third of freelancers say they have been able to move because of the flexibility their career provides. Five Reasons Your School is Not Performing - @iPadWells

The best leaders are constant learners is the subject of a recent post in the Harvard Business Review, written by Kenneth Mikkelsen and myself. This is resonating with many readers who realize that the network era is changing the nature of all organizational relationships. As we attempt to transition into a networked creative economy, we need leaders who promote learning and who master fast, relevant, and autonomous learning themselves. There is no other way to address the wicked problems facing us. If work is learning and learning is the work, then leadership should be all about enabling learning. In a recent Deloitte study, Global Human Capital Trends 2015, 85% of the respondents cited learning as being either important or very important. Yet, according to the study, more companies than ever report they are unprepared to address this challenge. Leadership today is not about being the most important node in the network, it is about making the network stronger. This was also the topic of my closing keynote at the International Conference on Open & Distance Education, in South Africa yesterday. As ICDE participant Modiehi Rammutloa noted, "connecting with people is not really a problem, sustaining the network is always a challenge". Sustaining the network, and making it more resilient, is the work of appointed and emergent leaders today.  

I presented the McLuhan media tetrad last week in South Africa. [see ‘a world of pervasive networks’ for background on these laws of media]. Societies change their basic organizing structures when the primary mode of communication changes [T+I+M+N]: from oral, to writing, to print, and now to electric (digital). As we shift our dominant communications medium from print to electric, our organizing methods must change as well. We no longer organize as tribes in ‘developed’ countries, but we still have strong cultural and familial bonds. Our institutions have not disappeared but they are inadequate for many of the modern challenges facing us. Faith in markets is declining, as they are found to be inadequate to share wealth in any equitable fashion. We are seeing an increase in cooperation among many agents in the networked society as they try to create new ways living together and exchanging value. TIMN by David Ronfeldt Ubiquitous networks have the potential to extend our humanity as we connect and understand each other. Networked models will obsolesce markets and institutions. For example, the blockchain technology will significantly change banking and financial markets. But networks will retrieve a sense of kinship, as I experienced last week, connecting with people I have only known online, and then spending time in physical communities where the sense of human connection is extremely strong. The way people in places like Soweto connect, recognizing each other each time they meet, may become the norm in a networked society. We see this already with the derision that marketing speak receives on social media. As the authors of the Cluetrain Manifesto observed in 1999: "Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman." Corporations represent the declining market model of organizing. But it is not all good news when examining technology shifts with McLuhan’s tetrad. A networked society could reverse into a popularity contest, where our value is only measured in our mediated reputation, such as numbers of Twitter followers, or some other arbitrary figure. The key to progressing to a new way of organizing human activities in the network era is to ensure that the old models are not allowed to drive the agenda. Neither our tribal leaders (religious, geographical, cultural), our institutions (political, religious, economic), nor our markets (corporations, exchanges, trade deals), have the answers. Only networked individuals, with positive intent, can determine how best to organize the next society. It is a big challenge, but my faith in humanity was restored this week in the many exchanges I had with people facing seemingly insurmountable odds in building a new democracy. An aggressively engaged and intelligent citizenry can be an unstoppable force for change.  

Ubiquitous digital networks are extending our capacity to listen and speak with others. In a hyperlinked world, we can tap multiple global perspectives and easily push our own views through various free and inexpensive media options. This is making many traditional centres of expertise, like news sites, obsolete. At the same time, access to important contextual knowledge is limited to the few, such as attendees at the yearly World Economic Forum in Davos. With all of this access to information and knowledge, we are seeing a retrieval of storytelling. The TED talks are one example of finely crafted stories, though their impact and the agenda of sponsors may over time reverse into a single or even false narrative, controlled by a few powerful interests. This is how McLuhan’s laws of media can be useful in seeing what kinds of changes digital networks will bring about in how we communicate as a society in the network era. Every new technology enhances some aspect of humanity, obsolesces some previous technology, retrieves something from our past, and can reverse into the opposite of its initial intention. I recently read David Hutchens’ latest book, Circle of the Nine Muses, and if you you want to master the art of storytelling then I would highly recommend it. I worked with David on a project a couple of years ago, and he is a master of his craft. This book reflects his mastery. Topics include: Four Core Stories, Hosting Story Circles, Listening & Sense-making, and Leadership Archetypes. I want to talk about this last topic. Sixteen leadership archetypes are identified in the book: Caregiver, Companion, Creator, Everyman, Genie, Hero, Innocent, Jester, Lover, Mentor, Prophet, Rebel, Ruler, Seeker, Storyteller, Wizard. Each one is described in detailed, such as the response to the ‘dragon’ (a challenge one faces). David generously sent me a copy of the cards representing these archetypes and I used them to close my workshop on networked leadership, at the UNISA Graduate School of Business Leadership, two weeks ago. In the exercise I asked the participants to identify three archetypes they would take with them while changing their organization from a hierarchical to a more networked management structure. Two of the archetypes were selected above the others: Rebel & Jester. Each one provides an outside (on the edge) perspective for the journey. As we face the challenge of ‘digital transformation’ or whatever name your organization gives to its current change management initiative, consider not just what you need to do, but who who would like to have beside you. These archetypes can help foster that conversation and focus it so that you can create your own story. Image by David Hutchens

Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. "It is not for me to change you. The question is, how can I be of service to you without diminishing your degree of freedom?" - Buckminster Fuller, via @decasteve "Results are gained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems." - Peter Drucker, via @africadean @lemire: Secular Stagnation ‘We are moving to a more abstract world. It is a world where it becomes harder to think about "productivity", a concept that was invented to measure the output of factories. What is the "productivity" of a given Google engineer? The question is much less meaningful than if you had asked about the productivity of the average factory worker from 1950.’ Twitter cuts employees; but not to save money ‘It’s not that they are getting rid of low performers…it’s just that every extra employee impedes agility. It’s the complete opposite of "employees are our greatest asset." I suspect one of the surprising benefits of the gig economy / on-demand workforce is that organizations will find it refreshing to have fewer full-time employees to manage. It means fewer layers, less people in meetings, fewer steps between each employee and customers, and less politics.’ @freelancersu: 4 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Going Freelance 1. Why are you freelancing? 2. What are your key strengths? 3. What are your customer’s needs? 4. Can your bank account handle the transition? FastCompany: Welcome To The Share The Crumbs Economy "That’s why the share-the-crumbs economy is more than a labor tragedy—it’s an existential challenge. In short, the gurus of the sharing economy have been at the vanguard of an audacious attempt to forge an economic system in which individuals and businesses with "more money than time" are able to use faceless interactions via brokerage websites and apps to force an online bidding war among lower-income people to see who will charge the least for their labor, or to rent out their personal property (such as their car or home). If everyone is consigned to doing piecework, and no one knows when the next job will come, or how much it will pay, what kind of private lives can we have, and what kind of relationships or families?" "Organizations need A leader" [not THE leader] - via @anthonyonesto Image by @gapingvoid