Friday’s Finds: "I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over; on the edge you find things you can’t see from the center." - KurtVonnegut. - via @JenniferSertl "Everyone is a born leader … We were all leaders until we were sent to school to be commanded, controlled, and taught to do likewise." - Dee Hock - via @Jan Höglund "By the excessive promotion of leadership, we demote everyone else." - Henry Mintzberg - via @flowchainsensei "Privacy is a side effect of people not being connected." - Buster Benson - via @tar1na @claytoncubitt - "Turning your phone off at the door is the new taking your shoes off at the door." @MarkFederman - "‘Organizations are too complex; we must make things simpler.’ Wrong. Organizations are made too complicated in response to complexity." Peter Kruse: Transforming Organizations into Social Brains | sense-making strategy - via @toughloveforx Organizations that do not develop connectivity, arousal (or engagement) and collective valuation facility will have a poor chance of survival in the competition with organizations that do.  That includes the organizational approach to strategy, leadership and communication, whose main task will be to enable neural facility (or at the very least not stand in its way!) Success in the neural world will depend strongly on social empathy and an ability to work with social resonance phenomena, that steer and focus attention and energy through the net (Kruse—part 4). The Financialisation of Labour - via @lpgauthier At present companies are hoarding capital and worried about the future, so it is not in their interests to invest in plant - which is what robots are. Their outlook is essentially reactive and short-term, so they want a reactive, short-term workforce. They don’t want to undertake the capital expenditure required to automate. They don’t want to invest in workers long-term either because training and development is also a capital expense. And they don’t want to wait for full productivity: they want to buy in workers who can "hit the ground running" - hence the impossible requirement for young people entering the workforce to have "experience". However you look at this, there are structural problems in the labour market caused by companies’ short-term outlook and lack of confidence about the future.

A couple of months ago I added a visual presentation to my About section, as I thought that might help convey my perspectives regarding my professional services a bit better. It’s what guides me, in my work. I think many of my perspectives on learning were planted when I first went to school, in a one-room schoolhouse in the Rocky Mountains of BC. With only three pupils in my grade, we had a lot of freedom and we got to see what the older kids were doing. I was allowed to be quite independent and even more so later when I was home-schooled after the schoolhouse closed. A basic assumption that I have developed is that many things can, and should, be simplified. Principles and values are often more resilient as guidelines than complicated rules and regulations, especially in dealing with complex issues. When it comes to learning, simplicity usually works best, as in simple systems to support learning. Often it’s just a case of removing barriers to learning. Our networked world is changing work fundamentally. In hyper-connected work environments, learning has to be part of working. This is because labour is increasingly based on unique talents, not easily replaceable tasks. This is also shattering our divisions of labour that many organizations are structured around, like IT, HR, KM and others. With an increase in customized, high-variety work we are seeing concepts like time at work or pay by the hour becoming obsolete. With these changes, organizational dysfunction is becoming obvious to all. Things aren’t worse today, there is just more exposure. To succeed in this networked world, organizations need to promote openness, transparency, and diversity. This enables innovation through more and better connections. It’s not just social business, but open business, that is needed to move from hierarchies (simple networks) to wirearchies (complex, human networks). Harold Jarche introduction from Harold Jarche

So Gartner states that only 10% of social networking roll-outs succeed. Surprised? I’m not. Computer World UK reports that certain characteristics are necessary for success, once a purpose has been provided: The purpose should naturally motivate people to participate. The purpose must resonate with enough people to catalyse a community and deliver robust user-generated content. The purpose should have a clear business outcome. Select purposes that you and the community can build on. It’s a bit more complicated than that. First of all, most roll-outs focus on rolling-out, not changing behaviour. The hard work begins after the software vendors have provided the initial training and the organization is on its own. Social media, and social networks,  change the way we communicate. Like any new language, they take time to learn, and adults are usually not very good at showing their lack of fluency with a second language. They don’t like to look foolish. While people may say it’s not about the technology, unfortunately that’s where a large share of the budget goes in social network initiatives. The bigger change to manage is getting people to work transparently. Transparency is a necessity for cooperation and collaboration in networks, as a major benefit of using social media is increasing speed of access to knowledge. However, if the information is not shared by people, it will not be found. It’s not a question of "motivating" people, but understanding why people are naturally motivated to share. I would surmise that the 90% failure rate may have a lot to do with the dysfunctional state of those organizations implementing social networks. Attempts to use enterprise social networks, that inevitably increase transparency, will only serve to illuminate organizational flaws. The knowledge sharing paradox is that social networks often constrain what they are supposed to enhance. Why would people share everything they know on an enterprise network, knowing that on the inevitable day that they leave, their knowledge artifacts will remain behind? Enterprise knowledge sharing will never be as good as what networked individuals can do, because of ownership. Motivated or not, workers do not own the social network or their data. Individuals who own their knowledge networks will invest more in them.Those who do not, will not. Even with a clear, resonating purpose, salaried employees still own nothing on the enterprise social network. Aye, there’s the rub.

Part of the shift that organizations will have to make in the network era will be not only to add new dimensions, but to retrieve some old ones. Institutional life often required us to leave our family concerns at the door, and focus on the work to be done. In the military this could be for decades and in the church for life. Later we had to stay sharply focused on the hyper-competition of the market era. There was a battle to be done, and most marketing speak is still littered with military terms, taken from one of the largest institutions we ever created. But we have shifted from a world dominated by Tribes, to one of Institutions, and currently a society of Markets. The next shift is to a world of Networks, as succinctly described in David Ronfeldt’s TIMN theory. According to TIMN, each new form has built upon and changed the previous mode. We are currently a predominantly triform society (T+I+M). What happens as we become a quadriform society (T+I+M+N) and what aspects of the other three will be helpful to provide balance? TIMN by David Ronfeldt As we examine the organizational change required for the network era, we should look at what we can retrieve from our past. The feeling for belonging we had in Tribes has been lost in Institutions (which include Corporations) as they no longer offer the stability they once did. Markets are overly focused on competition, and we know that the concept of perpetual growth cannot last on a finite globe. So what does a connective, cooperative organization look like? It will be one that provides a sense of belonging like a Tribe, but with more diversity and room for personal growth. It will have the Institutional structure to manage the basic systems so people can focus on customers and community, not merely running the organization. It will have Market type competition, but without a winner-take-all approach. There is a lot we can learn from our common story. Not all organizational change has to be new ‘E2.0′ techno buzz stuff. Builders of the network era organization, perhaps for the first time in history, have an advantage of being able to look back, not beholding to Institutional or Tribal leaders. Builders just need to be careful in listening to the Markets, for they too are voices from the past, but don’t yet realize it.

Here are some observations and insights that were shared on social media this past fortnight. I call these Friday’s Finds. "We don’t see something until we have the right metaphor to let us perceive it." - Thomas Kuhn - via @tobiasmeyer "Humans require the difficult and messy social routing protocol of trust." - Valdis Krebs @orgnet - via @voinonen "What if sucessful projects having a plan is just survivior bias?" - @drunkcod Half-baked ideas - by @kmpinner #PKMastery Just because you know how to do something doesn’t mean you should: It’s rewarding to give other people a chance to shine. The value of the collective is sometimes better than the value of the individual: What was returned to me was far better than what I would have created myself. Creativity needs space: If you provide someone the solution they never really have a chance to think outside the box and innovate. It’s hard work getting over yourself: I have to remind myself daily that I do not need to have all the answers, that I can be imperfect, and that if I don’t take the chance to fail then I will never truly learn. Be wary of Experts: In a study of 64K expert predictions over 16yrs, experts didn’t know better than a monkey throwing a dart at a board - via @rwartzman #PKMastery Managing the information overload is a real challenge. Our default faced with the overload is to actually what I call narrow-cast — to kind of hunker down and focus in on fewer sources than ever — you know, the analyst who we always got our information from, the newsletter that we always read. But we lose in that process a lot of new forms of information that can be very useful. So whether that’s crowdsourced information emerging out of social media, or whether it’s information that challenges our pre-existing beliefs, I think we need to consciously seek out diverse and different points of view — some points that do challenge our beliefs, because that’s another thing that we’re prone to be drawn to: information that confirms what we already believe. … We’ve got to push against that natural bias, because there’s so much research now that supports the importance of gathering different and diverse points of view and bringing those into the equation. Data Enslavement - by @ballantine70 What didn’t get a mention was how the analytics arms race results in the best STEM graduates today being sucked out of the world of engineering, and into the world of financial services, lured by salaries that are totally out of proportion to what other industries can afford to invest. We end up deploying great minds to (tiny) marginal improvements, rather than risky step changes in how we do things. Polishing rather than building… The social graph structures of coordinators, gatekeepers, team players, super-connectors - via @gramleth & @dhinchcliffe

This is the synopsis of a webinar for TP3 Australia I presented last evening (my time). Three major external forces and trends are influencing the future of work: Technology is changing Expectations … of what is possible Globalization is changing Value Creation … from tangible to intangible, as culture gets digitized Social Media are changing Relationships … to a ubiquitously connected and pervasively proximate world Automation is ending the industrial era. Examples include lawyers replaced by software, bank staff replaced by websites, travel agents replaced by apps, and soon drivers will be replaced by robots. Workplaces are finding themselves at a break-point between the industrial era and the network era, with industrial era systems and structures unable to adapt to a world of mostly non-standardized, non-repeatable work processes. What used to be valued traits in the workforce - obedience, diligence, intelligence - are not those required to do non-standardized work, which will soon be the only work that humans will be needed for. Gary Hamel identified initiative, creativity, and passion as the traits needed in a creative economy. I call these three traits - Talent, which cannot be automated. For individuals to thrive in the new workplace, and for organizations to succeed, they need to focus on developing Talent. Creating intangible value is not like producing tangible goods. The Return on Investment is not obvious. Developing a trusted relationship with a client by doing something extraordinary does not always produce the same results, but sometimes it can be significant. How do you measure the value of a free umbrella in a rainstorm? It could be exceptional if the recipient happens to be a well-connected customer experience expert. Intangible value is much more volatile, as witnessed by the shifts in the market over the past few decades. Only one original member of the Dow Jones is still on it. Intangible value of the S&P 500 is over 85%. This is stuff that cannot really be measured, yet it drives most of the economy. Creative, non-standardized work is difficult to learn. It requires informal, peer-assisted, cooperative learning, which does not happen in a classroom, as artists have known for millennia. Knowledge to do this work is not easily captured. You cannot take a recipe book and create a chef. Sharing implicit knowledge is not as simple as "knowledge-transfer’. The only way humans have figured out how to share implicit knowledge is through conversations. Lots of conversations. You would not manage a project on Facebook, and would probably not organize your family and love life using project management software. However, we learn from our social networks which are often disconnected from our work lives. As work becomes more non-standardized, we will need more insights, serendipity, and connections to be creative. In a creative economy, cooperation is as important as collaboration was in the information economy. So how can we connect knowledge flows between our wide social networks and the more focused areas of getting work done? How do we deal with time and resource constraints as well as confidentiality issues? Teams need to share complex knowledge, usually in a deadline-driven environment. Research shows that sharing complex knowledge requires trusted relationships. These take time, so we cannot form teams on the fly and expect them to be creative. But high-functioning teams can develop group think. They need places to test ideas in a trusted space. This is what communities of practice can enable, if supported and guided appropriately. CoP’s are where organizational learning & development departments should be focusing the majority of their efforts. CoP’s can also be the connector between work teams and social networks, enabling a flow of diverse opinions and perspectives to continuously permeate the organizational boundaries. In the 20th century, work was rather separate from training and education, with the office apart from the classroom. Most web-based training is separate from the work being done. Today, work is learning, and learning is the work. This requires a new perspective on how we think about organizational learning. Improving organizational performance consists of reducing errors and improving insights. Most organizations have highly structured ways to reduce errors, such a Six Sigma. But most really on luck to improve insights. But reducing errors only looks backwards, at what has been done, while insights look forward at what can be done. Many organizations are driving into the future while looking in the rear-view mirror, to paraphrase Marshall McLuhan. Gary Klein 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. PKM is a set of processes, individually constructed, to help each of us make sense of our world and work more effectively. We need to find ways of recreating what workers used to do - sit around and tell stories so they could learn. Sharing implicit knowledge is critical in  fast-moving networked, creative economy. As the operational speed increases, this type of sharing becomes critical. PKM adds an important foundation to Group and Organizational KM, which have not been as effective as promised 20 years ago. PKM makes each individual responsible for seeking, sense-making, and sharing knowledge. Groups and teams support this by working out loud, and the organization then focuses on curation, not creation of knowledge artifacts. In order to make this work, the organization must give up control, and treat workers as adults and co-developers of organizational knowledge. With PKM, we seek new ideas from our social networks and then filter them through more focused conversations with our communities of practice, where we have trusted relationships. We make sense of these embryonic ideas by doing new things, either ourselves, or with our work teams. We later share our creations, first with our teams and perhaps later with our communities of practice or even our networks. We use our understanding of our communities and networks to discern with whom and when to share our knowledge. It’s like constantly breathing in and out. If you only seek information, you are just a consumer. If you seek and share, then you are a re-broadcaster, adding little value. If seek and make sense of information, without sharing, you are missing out out on opportunities to learn and connect. While we cannot seek, sense, share in all aspects of our lives, there are some areas where it it is important to do so. Understanding knowledge networks and developing practices that work for you take time, but will ensure that you are valued as non-standardized "Talent" and not perceived as replaceable and routine "Labour". There are many layers under the SEEK > SENSE > SHARE framework, which can be supported through a wide variety of practices and disciplines. PKM is a journey to self-discipline. The PKM in 40 Days online workshop is one way to get started on the journey.

The way we manage our organizations is largely ineffective for the complex challenges we face, whether driven by the environment, demographics, economics, or politics. Hierarchies assume that management knows best and that the higher up the hierarchy, the more competent and knowledgeable that person is. But hierarchies are merely centralized networks. They work well when information flows mostly in one direction: down. Hierarchies are good for command and control. They are handy to get things done in small groups. But hierarchies are rather useless to create, innovate, or change. Hierarchies are ineffective when things get complex. Source: Paul Baran, "On Distributed Communications: MEMORANDUM: RM-3420-PR" AUGUST 1964, the Rand Corporation Distributed networks are in a state of perpetual Beta. Unlike hierarchies, they can more easily change shape, size, and connections, without the need for a formal reorganization, as there are no central control nodes. In a fast evolving environment, management thinking needs to continuously change as well. This means letting go of control. Hierarchies are essentially a solution to a communications problem. They are artifacts of a time when information was scarce and hard to share, and when connections with others were difficult to make. That time is over. The Internet has highly connected markets, competitors, customers, and suppliers. With an external environment that is highly connected, organizations have to get connected inside. A networked enterprise needs to be organized more like the Internet, and less like a tightly controlled machine. While hierarchies are practical to get work done, they should not be the overarching structure for the organization. There is still a need for responsibility and accountability, but authority has to be distributed to deal with complex problems. Complex problems cannot be solved alone. They require the sharing of tacit knowledge, which cannot easily be put into a manual. In addition, tacit knowledge flows best in trusted networks. This trust also promotes individual autonomy and can become a foundation for organizational  learning, as knowledge is freely shared. Without trust, few people are willing to share their knowledge. Organizations have to become knowledge networks. An effective knowledge network cultivates the diversity and autonomy of each worker. Networked leaders foster deeper connections, developed through ongoing and meaningful conversations. They understand the importance of tacit knowledge in solving complex problems. Networked leaders know they are just nodes in the knowledge network and not a special position in a hierarchy. What does a post-hierarchical organization look like? It will be one that provides a sense of belonging like a tribe, but with more diversity and room for personal growth. It will have the institutional structure to manage the basic systems so people can focus on customers and community, not merely running the organization. It will have market type competition, but without a winner-take-all approach. Finally, it will promote cooperative actions that add to the long-term value of the ecosystem and community, not just short-term collaboration to get the next project done or achieve some arbitrary quarterly results. Making the networked organization more resilient will help everyone in it, not just a few central nodes. The networked organization takes the long view. #ITASHARE

When NASA released the photograph of the earth as seen from space, known as the blue marble, it gave new impetus to the environmental movement, showing our planet as a small dot in a black void. Seeing is believing. Visualization can be a very powerful tool in sharing complex knowledge. The visualization of social network analysis (SNA) can give us significant new perspectives, not available from looking at a series of data points. For instance, Valdis Krebs examined data on the trust levels of various news sources around the world and how these were perceived by ideological groups. The data table originally provided by PEW Research Center tell part of the story, but the SNA conducted by Valdis clearly shows how conservative media are completely separate from all other media. A similar study of pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian news outlets showed that only one was trusted by both sides, but Haaretz.com is getting squeezed by taking a moderate position. Seeing this polarization may help to understand it. The added value of using a sense-making tool like SNA to further examine information is the core of PKM. Adding value to the information in our fields helps make our knowledge networks smarter and this is how we can collectively deal with more complex problems. Visualization, and new metaphors, are essential for systemic change to happen. They give us new ways to describe and discuss phenomena. In business, visualizing network relationships can give the initial leverage of getting complex new ideas accepted into general management thinking. I once used value network analysis to help a company’s research steering group see their internal community of practice in a new light. For the first time, they saw it mapped as a value network, not a hierarchy. They immediately realized that they were pushing solutions instead of listening to their community. This was obvious when all arrows pointed toward the user community, and no tangible [solid] or intangible [dotted] value arrows pointed out. As a result, they decided to change their Charter and develop more network-centric practices. Thinking in terms of networks enabled them to see their community with new eyes. Value Network Analysis (example) by Patti Anklam There are many ways to use visualization to understand data better. The real value of big data is using it to ask better questions. Visualization can be a conversation accelerator. Here are 10 more sites showing how visualization just might change your world view. The Blue Marble

I wrote my first Friday Find in May, 2009. It was an attempt to make my finds on Twitter more explicit, as I noticed I was sharing and viewing a lot of information but not doing anything with it. My current practice is to summarize what I have found on various social media platforms (Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, private channels) and create a blog post every two weeks. With Twitter, I use the ‘favourite’ function (star) to mark any tweets I wish to review for later. Some of these are saved for later reading, others get reviewed fortnightly. On review, some make the cut for the Friday’s Finds post, though these are the minority. Any I wish to keep for later are added to my social bookmarks and categorized for easier search and retrieval. I use the Twitter fave function in a very deliberate manner. A recent research report, More than Liking and Bookmarking? Towards understanding Twitter Favouriting Behaviour (PDF) shows that this is not common behaviour. Of 606 survey respondents, only 395 knew of the Twitter favourite function and 290 made use of it. The researchers found 25 motivations for favouriting among the 48% of respondents who used it. They then grouped these into two major categories: Response and Purpose. Using the favourite function for a purpose is one of the behaviours I promote with personal knowledge mastery. It is about being explicit in our sense-making and knowledge-sharing. Bookmarking is one key method. "Along with [Liking], the bookmarking category was the most dominant reason recorded, used 75 times. Bookmarking is the second official use case for favouriting, according to Twitter (Twitter 2013). After favouriting a tweet, the tweet is kept in the user’s public favourites list, which can be reviewed from their profile. Consequently the concept of future use was well represented in the bookmarking category. Within this concept, we can differentiate between sub-codes in their concreteness of the action to come: "later", "use later" or "again" . The common activities mentioned in these reasons were to read, to show, to view, to search or to re-find: "I want to read them again", "I use the favourite feature like a bookmark feature; tweets i like so i can see them again later." or "I want to find it again easily", and "[…]I generally favourite things that I think I will want to re-find again in the future. This is extremely difficult to do using the Twitter search system." [This respondent] highlights that re-finding is a common need users have with tweets. Further, it illuminates concerns that re-finding is perhaps poorly supported by the Twitter search feature. While some reasons were vague about their intended reuse, some also explicitly stated for which activity the favourited tweet will be used: "I am a foodie and a fitness fanatic! i favourite workout routines or recipes to try later. also, motivational pics and sayings to inspire me when i need it" and "So i can use it when i work out". - page 6 The reason I created Friday’s Finds was 1) due to the poor search functionality in Twitter at the time, 2) as a reflective thinking process, and 3) to put it on a platform I could control, my blog. It is obvious many others have similar issues with retrieving information from social media platforms like Twitter. What do you do? Do you have a method? If you are using social media for any professional purposes at all, it would make sense to develop a method to learn from what you do. With all these social media platforms, we seem to constantly go through a process of looking at bits of information and trying to make sense of them. We can learn by adding these to our existing knowledge or testing out new patterns in our sense-making efforts. Social media give us more ways to connect with others in our learning but many people only see the information overload aspect of them. Effective learning is the difference between surfing the waves or being drowned by them. Liking and bookmarking are lower order learning skills but they can form the foundation for higher order elaborative learning skills. Elaborative learning relies on observing, studying, challenging, and evaluating what we see and experience. Synthesizing information can be combined with drawing inferences, forming tentative opinions, and challenging arguments. Critical thinking - the questioning of underlying assumptions, including our own - is becoming all-important as we have to make our own way in the network era. Critical thinking can be looked at as four main activities: Observing and studying our fields Participating in professional communities Building tentative opinions Challenging and evaluating ideas Twitter can be one small part of this. It is also an easy place to begin. Go ahead and tweet this post, favourite it, and then come back and review your favourites in two weeks.

Three billion people around the world are now connected with ubiquitous digital technologies that keep improving. They also keep getting cheaper. History shows  that technology can be an enabler of democracy. Distributed communications subvert gatekeepers. John Gilmore said that, "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." As networks become the new companies, we may be moving toward a more democratic future of work, with authority distributed throughout the network. One significant counter to this trend is the emergence of platform capitalism. The robber barons of the 21st-century are the platform owners. They have combined the power of network effects with a 20th-century corporate capitalist, winner takes all approach. Amazon is choking the book publishing industry, Google is dominating advertising, and telecommunications companies are using their control of the pipes to directly compete with service providers. Über is going after the taxi and car rental industries, getting to be larger than established rental car brands, with none of the overhead. These companies do not distribute wealth but hoard it at the top. All of these companies provide initially good services to customers. But over time their monopolistic tendencies may kill competition and the entire ecosystem of innovation. Business practices like platform capitalism may also destroy workplace democracy. Democracy is messy and has redundancies, which is why it is perfect for a complex society and economy. Gwynne Dyer says that, "Modern democracy first appeared in the West only because the West was the first part of the world to develop mass communications." With global access to new digital technologies, workplace democracy can appear anywhere. Will workplace democracy start in countries that dominate the current economic environment or in nations that have a more social culture to begin with? If the globally-connected can work anywhere, people may vote with their electronic feet and join more open workplaces. The platform capitalists may get what is left over. The tables can turn quickly in a connected economy. If networks have an advantage in constantly changing economic environments, then democratic companies may be the future of work. But if we do not enable this new type of work, through legislation and practice, then economically advanced countries may see their advantage slip very quickly. Looking at the example of Canada’s resource sector, we see little democratic control of oil extraction, with most profits going to the extractor. This year, Norway had one trillion dollars in its oil fund, while Alberta had 17 billion dollars, which is not being added to. Democratization of wealth can ensure resilience in volatile economic times. Are we ready for such a shift in business attitudes? Are some countries doomed to become the next rust-belts as they cling to old economic and business models, no longer viable in the network era? Will we become the next rust-belt?

One of the potential downsides of a network society is that deception, especially by those with power over the communications platforms, will become all-too-common. John Pilger takes a look at this, focusing much of the blame on professional journalists in War by media and the triumph of propaganda. Why has so much journalism succumbed to propaganda? Why are censorship and distortion standard practice? Why is the BBC so often a mouthpiece of rapacious power? Why do the New York Times and the Washington Post deceive their readers? Why are young journalists not taught to understand media agendas and to challenge the high claims and low purpose of fake objectivity? And why are they not taught that the essence of so much of what’s called the mainstream media is not information, but power? Note: It is not just Pilger making this assessment, as Robert Parry explains in NYT shows how propaganda works. I concluded in seeking perpetual beta that we are shifting to the network era, requiring new models to do what what our institutions and markets are incapable of. I recently rewrote and reposted that conclusion, as it is the starting point for my next ebook, finding perpetual beta, which will be out this month. We are all together in our global village. Avoiding societal deception in the network era requires an aggressively intelligent citizenry and workers actively engaged in all aspects of democratic enterprises. Continuing to collaborate in hierarchies, with gatekeepers and other control mechanisms, will not transform us into a well-functioning networked society. In the network era, collaboration is outdated. We need to learn how to work cooperatively to deal with the complex problems facing us that cannot be addressed through our existing tribal, institutional, or market structures.  In the network era, we are the media, if we want to be. If we, the citizenry, give up our capability to inform each other, we have no one to blame but ourselves. This is the foundation of personal knowledge mastery: critical thinking. It is coupled with disciplined practice and strengthened by sharing with our fellow global citizens. Pilger may have found fault with the fourth estate, but we are the only ones capable of creating a fifth estate for the next stage of society. "What we need is a Fifth Estate: a journalism that monitors, deconstructs and counters propaganda and teaches the young to be agents of people, not power. We need what the Russians called perestroika - an insurrection of subjugated knowledge. I would call it real journalism." We can create a fifth estate that is not an institution, nor a slave to the markets, but a true network. We need to become real networked citizens. It means thinking for ourselves. We are not alone. Three billion of us are connected by the technology that could deceive us. Let’s not let it. We can either work to build a civil society or live in the emerging  panopticon. Media in a networked society are much too big to be left to the journalists.

Here are some observations and insights that were shared on social media this past fortnight. I call these Friday’s Finds. "as soon as a company has a Chief Innovation Officer you know that company has a problem" - Tim Cook - via @BrunoGebarski @C4LPT - "You don’t get "big data" in workplace learning - only "little data". But beware - it is usually incomplete." @mintzberg141 - "Mike—you should have been here yesterday." "In practice … all strategy-making walks on two feet, one deliberate, the other emergent. For just as purely deliberate strategy-making precludes learning, so purely emergent strategy-making precludes control. Pushed to the limit, neither approach makes much sense." Leveraging Social Networks to Drive Collaboration & Improve Execution Participating executives explored the power of building relationships across divisions, functions, and levels and the benefits of different types of networks. For example, Sparse networks are useful for efficiently gathering and disseminating information Dense networks are useful for effectively coordinating work in a cohesive group This is powerful learning for leaders of an organization that is committed to innovation. For example, someone with a large and sparse network is more likely to see innovation opportunities across the organization and promote the possibilities. These "superconnectors." have networks that are Large, in the sense that many other people cite them as contacts Sparse, in the sense that they are connected to people in disparate parts of the organization, who are not otherwise linked to each other Integrative, in the sense that they bring together contacts across divisional boundaries @SebastianOlma - Never Mind the Sharing Economy: Here’s Platform Capitalism The Sharing Economy: A Dumb Term that Deserves to Die! The truth of the matter, though, as Nathan Schneider writes on Al-Jazeera America, is that "the sharing sector of the conventional economy built on venture capital and exploited labor is a multibillion dollar business, while the idea of a real sharing economy based on cooperatives, worker solidarity and democratic governance remains too much of an afterthought. If the sharing movement really wants to disrupt economic injustice, these should be its first priorities." @NielsPflaeging - Every organization knows 3 types of power: hierarchy (formal), influence (informal) and reputation (value). Org Physics Explained [note 70:20:10 ratio] Beta Organizations

Knowledge management, for me, is personal. A big conceit of the knowledge management (KM) field is that knowledge can be transferred, but unlike information or data, it cannot. Knowledge is personal. While knowledge cannot really be transferred, our experiences can be shared. Perhaps that is why we love stories. They are a glimpse into others’ knowledge, more nuanced than any other communication medium. Stories make us human, and the best people to learn from are those who are able to admit that they mismanaged, botched, or bungled something. Of course, this can be a real challenge in organizations that do not discuss failure. Is failure an option in your organization? If not, how can you learn from it? Research shows that our memories get worse over time, but our stories, as we remember them, become much clearer. We have a propensity for self-delusion, something every jury member should always keep in mind. Fiction (story) is much more powerful than non-fiction. Would it not be more effective if we shared knowledge as stories, in education and at work? We hear a lot about the importance of curation in the digital workplace today, but what if our curators were also story tellers? Explicit knowledge (decisions, events, procedures, etc.) is relatively easy to capture, so that is often what gets attention and funding for technologies like document management systems. But stories provide the additional context that makes implicit knowledge stick in our memories. In good stories there are no answers, making them even stickier in our minds. Consider how this differs from case studies and best practices which often populate the corporate Intranet. Implicit knowledge requires interpretation and engagement to make sense of it. Data and information may be gathered by the organization, but knowledge and stories are personal. Stories can help share implicit knowledge. Think about how much time do we spend telling stories in our official work. Compare that to our leisure time when stories are often the main mode of communication. "Every amateur epistemologist knows that knowledge cannot be managed. Education has always assumed that knowledge can be transferred and that we can carefully control the process through education. That is a grand illusion." - David Jonassen Individually we can manage information flows, make sense of them, and share with others. This should be the core of KM. Sharing is important for our own sense-making. It grounds our thinking in reality. Nobody can steal our knowledge anyway. As each person seeks information, makes sense of it through reflection and articulation, and then shares it through conversation, a distributed base of knowledge can be created. It’s messier and looser than traditional KM, but it’s also more robust. This is what many of us already do, with blogs and social media. There is a lot of knowledge in an organization, some of it easy to codify, but most of it is difficult to do so. Thinking about knowledge as nothing more than content for a repository is a mistake. Like electricity, knowledge is both particles and current, or stock and flow. However, the particles are useless if they do not flow. KM should be focused on enabling knowledge flow between people. This can be supported through easy capture tools (e.g. video) and systems that enable curation (adding value through indexing, validating, categorizing, etc.). Making it easier for people to tell stories is better KM. Giving space and time to share stories is also needed. My story A decade ago, I was a mid-career professional and lost my job. Actually, I was dismissed, but the company went bankrupt a few months later. I live in a rural area with high unemployment and I knew it would be difficult to find a job, especially at my age. So I became a free-agent. Every day I would go on the Web and learn what was happening in my field. I read journals and news sources and, most importantly, I started my own blog. I wrote about my profession, new technologies, and how I saw that work was changing in the 21st-century. One day, after spending a lot of time on my blog, my wife asked how would I ever get any clients if I was giving away all my knowledge for free? I said that I believed it was more important to be known in this new connected economy than to horde my knowledge. How would people take the time to get to know who I was, if I did not give them something of value first? Of course, I did not know for sure this would work. I think my experience as a military officer for 20 years gave me some added confidence to go into no-man’s land. Ten years later and I am now an international consultant and speaker. My blog, which was my way of sharing stories and thoughts, gave me everything. It allowed me to connect with other like-minded people all over the world. I learned that the more I gave, the more I got in return. But what I received was never directly connected to any single thing I did. Any reciprocity was usually indirect, and often a chance connection. I was able to build a reputation as someone who can distill complex subjects to their essence. I "simplified the complexity" as one client put it. I was able to build a trusted network that has referred my work to others. Because of this sharing and developing trusted networked connections, I now travel across the world, speaking in Rome, Sydney, San Francisco, Paris, London, and many other venues. During that decade, I took control of my learning and my future. I tried many web tools and services, testing out hundreds of these. I created a simple model (PKM) for myself, to make sure I could stay current in my field and sense what the future might bring. I shared this model with clients who then adopted it. One was a bank, another a multinational restaurant chain. They saw great value in this model. I then tested out other ways to help people do what I had been able to do. I later developed an online workshop so that hundreds of professionals from many countries could begin to learn in networks. One of my long-time trusted connections online is Australian futurist Ross Dawson, who also understands the need for everyone to be actively engaged in learning and preparing for an uncertain future:  "The role of thinking effectively about the future cannot be outsourced. Not just leaders in business, government, and society, but all of us must actively engage with the extraordinary challenges of the future, so we can act better today." Managing my knowledge by sharing my thoughts and engaging with others around the world has been a very personal experience and has helped me see with new eyes.

My second ebook, finding perpetual beta, is now available. Scroll down to read a description of the contents. You will receive a nicely formatted and edited 75-page book, that is also copy-protection free so you can read it on any device, share it with friends, or print it. The ebook is available for $24. If you want to share it with all your colleagues at work, you can purchase an organizational license for $119. This ebook contains a series of reflections on the themes originally presented in seeking perpetual beta, published in April, 2014. The aim of finding perpetual beta is to dig deeper into the issues. This is a continuing exploration of how society, technology, work, and education are changing. It questions the status quo of organizational structures and hierarchies. In addition, there is an expanded section on personal knowledge mastery (PKM), a foundational discipline for working in the network era and a creative economy. Purchasing my ebooks is one way you can support this blog (+2,600 posts) which has been online since 2004. license individual $24.00 USDorganizational $119.00 USD The 500 KB DRM-free PDF will be emailed within 12 hours (usually much faster) to the address provided. "I love the book Finding Perpetual Beta: It is more of a thoughtful treatise than a how-to manual. Readers will find it delivers sharp insights and a large amount of pristine mental models." - Niels Pflaeging "Full of detail, research & new ideas." - Charles Jennings "A perfect reflective read for the holidays." - Todd Hoskins Highlights The digital world is bumping against the analog world and we are currently caught in-between. With an external environment that is highly connected, organizations have to get connected inside. Faster market feedback challenges the organization’s ability to act. The solutions are staring us in the face. We just have to stop looking in the rear-view mirror and see the many possible roads ahead. Hierarchies do not need to be the natural organizational model. People can work in self-managing networks. Reorganization has to be part of an organization, not something done to it. If those who are educated, knowledgeable, and experienced do not push for a better world of work, then who will? An effective knowledge network cultivates the diversity and autonomy of each worker. Knowledge networks function best when each person can choose with whom and when they connect. Solving problems together is becoming the real business challenge. Complex problems require the sharing of tacit knowledge, which cannot easily be put into a manual. Tacit knowledge flows best in trusted networks. Sharing knowledge in trusted networks does not happen overnight. Sharing makes us think more about what we publish, knowing it will be seen by others. Personal Knowledge Mastery is a framework for individuals to take control of their professional development. The test of personal knowledge mastery is whether it works for you. Table of Contents Our Global Village (read article on Medium.com) Introduction Part 1: The Network Era [high-level view] The Work Shift The Shrinking Middle Class From Hierarchies to Networks Human Networks Networked Workplaces Three Major Changes Organizations and Learning New Skills New Work Tools Beyond Hierarchies Part 2: Personal Knowledge Mastery [practical applications] PKM Revisited Seek > Sense > Share Seek Sense Share PKM Tips Learning is the Work PKM and the Future of Work Production & graphics by Chris Mackay.

We are in the midst of a nano-bio-info-techno-cogno revolution. We are entering the network era and change is coming fast, which may sound like a cliché, but consider the last major shift we went through. We had lots of time for our institutions to adapt. When markets came about, we had a few hundred years to move from the Hanseatic League, adopt double-entry bookkeeping, and progress to high frequency trading. We also were able to develop education systems, from one-room schoolhouses, to public universities, and later business schools to fuel the new corporations. Today, we are seriously lagging behind in learning how to deal with the scientific advances of the network era. We do not have the time afforded to us during the last shift to a market society. We have to jump from following state-established curriculum to creating our own learning networks: in this generation. People need to learn and work in networks, shifting their hierarchical position from teacher to learner, or from manager to contributor. They need to not only take control of their professional development but find others who can help them. It is becoming obvious in many fields that we are only as good as our knowledge networks. We have to become collectively smarter. Personal Knowledge Management/Mastery is but one way to address the need to keep up with the scientific revolutions around us. I have worked on this framework for the past decade. It is designed to be appropriated and used in a different way for each person. But like e-learning and knowledge management, PKM is at risk of becoming a technology to buy and consume. Software vendors are turning PKM into a commodity, as well as other sense-making frameworks like personal learning networks (PLN). Society, and the workforce, cannot afford this. Consider the number of unemployed PhD holders today, educated for the last economy but adrift in this one. We need to take control of our learning, as neither the established institutions nor the markets will help us. Networks are the only answer, but we have to build them. PKM is not the only solution, but let’s not relegate it a box of code before even testing it out at scale. PKM is only a technology in the sense that Harold Stolovitch defines it, "Technology is the application of organized and scientific knowledge to solve practical problems." If anyone is selling you a PKM system, they do not understand it. Walk away before you waste your money. The only technology for enabling PKM is the Internet, and particularly the Web, as long as it remains open. People don’t need anything else, other than getting rid of barriers that impede their learning. Internal barriers include social media policies, firewalls, inefficient work practices, defining people by their job, and many others, too numerous to name. Usually the barriers stem from the organizational structure or from management. PKM is not productivity improvement, though that may be an emergent result of the discipline. It is not collecting things and filing them away, no matter how fancy it looks on some software platform. PKM is creating a sense-making process that works for you, and that you regularly use. PKM is beyond the workplace, just as workers are not always at work, but are always learning. For me, it’s using writing, particularly here on my blog, to make sense of concepts, theories, experiences, and opinions related to my professional life. Sometimes my non-professional life gets involved, and that’s just fine with me. For you, it’s probably something else, and that is the wonderful thing: there is no single PKM system for all. People practising PKM, in their own ways, add to the diversity of thinking in organizations and society. A single system would kill diverse thinking, which in turn would destroy any potential for change or innovation. PKM builds reflection into our learning and working, helping us adapt to change and new situations. It can also help develop critical thinking skills. The discipline of PKM helps each person become a contributing node in a knowledge network. It is the foundation for social learning, which will help us develop new network era infrastructures to replace outdated institutions and markets. It does not matter what it is called, but seeking knowledge networks, active sense-making, and sharing publicly, are practices that need to be widespread. Our collective future depends on it. From: finding perpetual beta

I have said many times that teamwork is overrated. It can be a smoke screen for office bullies to coerce fellow workers. The economic stick often hangs over the team: be a team player or lose your job, is the implication in many workplaces. One of my main concerns with teams is that people are placed on them by those holding hierarchical power and are then told to work together (or else). However, there are usually power plays internal to the team so that being a team player really means doing what the leader says. For example, I know many people who work in call centres and I have heard how their teams are often quite dysfunctional. Teamwork too often just means towing the party line. One solution to hierarchical teams are self-forming teams. Many of the companies described in the book, Reinventing Organizations, are based on the principle of self-organization where hierarchies are temporary, negotiated structures. Bosses are often voted on by their peers. Self-organizing teams are much more flexible than hierarchical ones, but they require active and engaged members. One cannot cede power to the boss, because everyone is responsible for the boss they chose. Like democracy, self-organized teams are hard work. But they are best to deal with complexity. As I have said before, hierarchies work well when information flows mostly in one direction: down. They are good for command and control. They are handy to get things done in small groups. But hierarchies are rather useless to create, innovate, or change. "Our challenge is not to banish hierarchies, but to balance them with open systems, properly guided," says Ed Morrison. A network perspective is needed to see how teams and hierarchies should work, according to Eugene Eric Kim. Networks are not a rejection of hierarchy. Networks are a rejection of rigidity. A hierarchy is an efficient form of decision-making, as long as it’s the "right" hierarchy. Powerful networks allow the right hierarchies to emerge at the right time. But hierarchies are attractive, so they are not likely to go away soon, according to Professor Jeffery Pfeffer. "There’s this belief that we are all living in some postmodernist, egalitarian, merit-based paradise and that everything is different in companies now," he says. "But in reality, it’s not." In fact, in a new paper that explores the notion that power structures haven’t changed much over time, Pfeffer explains that the way organizations operate today actually reflects hundreds of years of hierarchical power structures, and remains unchanged because these structures "can be linked to survival advantages" in the workplace. The beliefs and behaviors that go along with them, he writes, are ingrained in our collective, corporate DNA. Pfeffer says that "relationships with bosses still matter for people’s job tenure and opportunities, as do networking skills." The job (salaried employment) is the key factor that will change the nature of work teams. As long as people have jobs, we will have hierarchical teams. The job is premised on the assumption that people can fit into existing teams like cogs in a machine and that team members can be easily replaced. We already have other ways of organizing work. Orchestras are not teams; neither are jazz ensembles. There may be teamwork on a theatre production but the cast is not a team. It is more like a social network. Hierarchical teams are what we get when we use the blunt stick of economic consequences as the prime motivator. In a complex and creative economy, the unity of hierarchical teams can be counter-productive, as it shuts off opportunities for serendipity and potential innovation. We are moving into a post-job economy, something that business school professors seem to be ignoring. Work will become much more complex and multifaceted than a simplistic model of Homo Economicus can address. Those of us who do not have jobs are already working in self-organized teams. Look to the edge cases to see the future. Hierarchies will become temporary arrangements to get things done. The future will be hierarchies in perpetual Beta.

Every fortnight I collate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. @EskoKilpi - "Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution were about sharing new ideas within networks of people" @RDBinns - "The RSS reader is an antidote to the algorithmic feed of facebook, the impossible tide of twitter, and news site editorial filters." @IndyJohar - "We are busy maintaining 17th C enlightenment notions of freedom in world where we have become slaves to the asymmetric power of networks" Work Is Bullshit: The Argument For "Antiwork" "Antiwork is a moral alternative to the obsession with "jobs" that has plagued our society for too long. It’s a project to radically reframe work and leisure. It’s also a cognitive antidote to the pernicious culture of "hard work," which has taken over our minds as well as our precious time." Guardian: Fightback against internet giants’ stranglehold on personal data starts here - via @hughcartoons ‘The mechanism for rotating the playing field is our old friend, the terms and conditions agreement, usually called the "end user licence agreement" (EULA) in cyberspace. This invariably consists of three coats of prime legal verbiage distributed over 32 pages, which basically comes down to this: "If you want to do business with us, then you will do it entirely on our terms; click here to agree, otherwise go screw yourself. Oh, and by the way, all of your personal data revealed in your interactions with us belongs to us."’ Fortune: The Algorithmic CEO - via @C4LPT "Indeed, the math house is shaping up as a new stage in the evolution of relations between businesses and consumers. The first stage, before the Industrial Revolution, was one-to-one transactions between artisans and their customers. Then came the era of mass production and mass markets, followed by the segmenting of markets and semi-customization of the buying experience. With companies such as Amazon able to collect and control information on the entire experience of a customer, the math house now can focus on each customer as an individual. In a manner of speaking, we are evolving back to the artisan model, where a market "segment" comprises one individual." @ValaAfshar - "The average company lifespan on S&P 500 in 1960s was 60 years. Today, average age is 10 years"

I had a conversation with a flight attendant on a long overnight trip last year. Most of the passengers were sleeping and we had time for a nice chat. We swapped a few stories. I’m always interested in how organizations are viewed by the people nearer the bottom than the top of the hierarchical pyramid. You can learn a lot about the culture. The flight attendant told me a story about his manager for whom he had booked an executive class plane ticket to an international culinary conference.  At the last minute, the manager decided he could not go, so he asked his subordinate to attend in his place. The flight attendant rearranged his schedule and agreed to go. On arriving at the airport he was surprised to find that his boss had taken the extra effort to downgrade the airfare to economy class. What was good enough for the manager was considered too good for his staff. This story tells a lot about organizational culture. It is a culture of entitlement that has resulted in exorbitant CEO salaries and compensation, even when these CEO’s abjectly fail. Duty is seldom considered. As a young officer cadet I had to memorize a quote, which was posted above one of the college doorways. "Duty is the great business of a sea officer; all private considerations must give way to it, however painful it may be." - Horatio Nelson The manager’s private considerations gave way to any possibility of developing a professional relationship with his subordinate, who had lost respect for him. Respect is difficult to earn and easy to lose. Leadership by example is all the little things added up, day after day.

In a recent CBC News story, a railway conductor lost her job following a derailment. She claimed she was not adequately trained. Here is a comment from the Railway Association representative: "In your job, you are qualified and do your job, but you feel you should know more. It doesn’t mean you are not qualified for your job. You might have a personal perception, that you would need additional training, but the minimum standards for your position are determined by the railways." Image: Pixabay If you are interested in organizational performance issues, here are a few points to ponder. This is conjecture, based only on this article, but it highlights significant issues for training professionals. Would more and better training have helped this conductor? Would a longer on-job-training period have better prepared the conductor? What if she had instant access to some experienced conductors at a support centre? Would job aids have helped, such as emergency checklists used by pilots? Would a non-training solution be better? More staff on the train Better identification of cargo Safer trains Safer tracks New regulations Many employees receive mandated training. Compliance training is a standard response by industry regulators when dealing with human performance issues. Usually an industry association, with training specialists, develops the guidelines. The owners of compliance standards, whether authorities like government and regulatory bodies, professional bodies, or internal legal counsel, are stuck in a mindset that in order to get good workplace performance you must have training. It is also an acceptable method of keeping executive officers out of prison if something goes wrong. If something REALLY goes wrong, the fact that someone had been through a training program means the organization is off the hook. This mindset permeates the training industry. Too many people in the training department make the leap from a performance issue (lack of skills, abilities, knowledge; lack of access to appropriate data and resources; etc) directly to ‘training as the only solution’. This is a wrong approach and is the most costly. Management plays into this, with statements like "We have a training problem" while no one challenges that statement. There is no such thing as a training problem. Here are some ‘training problems’ that are not solved through training: Poor communications Unclear expectations (such as policies & guidelines) Inadequate resources Unclear performance measures Rewards and consequences are not directly linked to the desired performance These barriers can be addressed without training. Only when there is a genuine lack of skills and knowledge, is training required. A trained worker, without the right resources and with unclear expectations, will still not perform up to the desired standard.  Allison Rossett states that "… performance support is a repository for information, processes, and perspectives that inform and guide planning and action." There are many cases where performance support is needed to help workers, even if they are trained. When performance is infrequent When the situation is complex When the consequence of errors is intolerable When performance depends on a large body of information When performance is dependent on knowledge or information that changes frequently When performance can be improved through self-assessment When there is a high turnover rate When there is little time or money for training Even trained workers need an effective performance support system.

In the last half of the 20th century in Canada it was mostly assumed that as an adult you had a driver’s license and that you most likely owned or had access to a car. I know, I didn’t get my license until I was 26 and that made me a very rare specimen indeed. Our cities, and especially our rural areas, are still primarily designed for motor vehicles. Malls continue to be built without designated pedestrian paths or bicycle lanes. Meanwhile, many older malls are abandoned and crumbling. Around here, it’s still assumed that everyone moves around by automobile.We are now well into the second decade of the 21st century and the Web is over 25 years old and e-mail is much older than that. However, many of my generation (the boomers) are living their lives as if the Internet is an interesting thing to have around or ‘surf’ but not really essential, like a car is. But things are changing. Most younger people own a mobile device and manage several networks on the Web - Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. For them, a car may be optional but a mobile Web device is essential. Accessing the Web today is like driving a car 25 years ago. You need it to get around, work, and be social. The web is critical for businesses and citizens to connect. For organizations, connecting on the Web cannot be left to a few specialists. We all need to get involved in the network era and learn by doing. You can’t become a driver without practice, and the same goes for the Web. I would suggest that anyone who doesn’t have a learner’s Web permit had better get one soon. That’s especially true for my fellow baby boomers.

"Do you remember that document I sent you and briefed you about?" … "No, I didn’t think so." It seems that few people have time to pay attention to anything that cannot be put into a known holding bin in their mind. If it’s new, complicated, or complex, there is no time to make sense of it in our hurried professional lives. In a world of general attention deficit disorder, understanding that nobody has understood what you have produced is a critical foundation for communication, especially in business. Assume that nobody has read what you have written. For those rare exceptions, assume they have interpreted it in a manner other than intended. So what can you do? First of all, you need clarity of mind. Anything you believe is important to communicate has to be revised, tested, and edited many times. On this blog I have taken many half-baked ideas and worked at simplifying convoluted concepts over several years. But readers will take one point and run with it, taking it where they wish. I am not in control. They are. All I can hope is to engage them. Over time I may even be able to convince them of a new idea. If you need to convince others to hire you, engage you, buy your product, or anything else, then your quiver needs many arrows. Even if one hits the target, it does not mean it will stick. These people are not those who have read your blogs posts, articles, or books. But they have probably put you into a category already. Your job is make it clear why your point of view is important to them. It’s best to assume everyone has a lack of time and a different frame of reference. It won’t make you more successful, but perhaps less frustrated. You should over-prepare, practice all the time, and pay attention to signals. It is not about you. I’m working on being less frustrated

Openness enables knowledge-sharing, which fosters innovation through a diversity of ideas. Trust emerges in networks that are open and transparent. This is how open source software is developed. There are lessons to learn for open source work. Consider open source software versus software as a service. If you do not own the software, you do not really own your data, as they are usually useless without the software to use them effectively. The same can apply to labour. If the workers do not own the platform that provides the work, then they may be of little economic value without it. Über is an excellent example of platform capitalism that turns labour into an easily replaceable commodity. Some day that labour may even be automated, eliminating the need for drivers. An open source network needs a core operating system that is open and transparent. The operating system is essential for the network to function but is not owned by anyone and can be taken to create a new network at any time. What keeps the network together is the trust amongst its members. Members influence the network through their reputation. Everyone has a stake in the network working better. Labour does not currently work this way. The salaried employee has no power over the wealth generation platform. Freelancers may have more flexibility, but they are constrained by the contract relationship. An open source work model requires something similar to the relationship between corporations. Giving each worker the rights of a corporation would create a labour market of equals. In an economy based increasingly on intangible value, the primary capital is financial, itself an intangible good. This makes it open for disruption. An open source work model might ensure a more resilient labour market and could reduce periods of mass unemployment. Open source software development brought us distributed collaboration tools such as blogs and wikis. It was also key in promoting learning out loud. "Software developers have created an incredible educational environment for themselves that supports the idea of "public learning" … learning in a way that simultaneously makes the environment smarter." - Dave Weinberger Perhaps open source can inspire a new labour model for the network era. Source: opensource.com

Automation of procedural  work is accelerating. What was considered knowledge work yesterday will be routine tomorrow, and workers will be replaced by software and machines. At the same time, access to real-time data is making individuals more powerful, and managers obsolete. "Startups are nimbler than they have ever been, thanks to a fundamentally different management structure, one that pushes decision-making out to the periphery of the organization, to the people actually tasked with carrying out the daily business of the company. And what makes this relatively flat hierarchy possible is that front-line workers have essentially unlimited access to data that used to be difficult to obtain, or required more senior managers to interpret." - WSJ 19 April 2015 Fewer people are needed to do "the daily business of the company". Machines and software help us get things done more efficiently. They can help us see patterns. Many current jobs will be done better by machines sometime in the near future. We should not try to work more like machines in order to compete with them. We should focus on being more human. Artificial intelligence is not artificial creativity. Only people can be inspired. Often this inspiration comes through serendipity: happening upon and seeing new connections. As Steven B. Johnson wrote, "Chance favors the connected mind". Our social connections make us human. Interconnected people have the ability to adapt to a world dominated by machines and algorithms. In a world where our social networks provide the safety net once afforded by institutions and organizations, a different form of work behaviour is needed. Companies and managers may promote the need for better collaboration, but it only profits their small worlds. Collaboration is working together for a common purpose. That purpose is usually provided by someone with positional authority. It is not often the common purpose of those assembled for the task. On the other hand, cooperation is sharing freely with no expectation of direct reciprocity. We cooperate because it makes us feel better and humans are hard-wired through our evolution to cooperate. Cooperation is a necessary behaviour to be open to serendipity. It also encourages experimentation through new connections. Cooperative behaviour contributes to society, not the narrow objectives of the organization. As companies come and go, at an ever faster rate, the social relationships between people remain. When one person loses a job, it is the social network that will find other work. Contributing to the social network is good in the long run. It also requires a long term view, not a focus on quarterly results. Cooperation makes us human. We can never be better computers. People can not become more efficient than machines. All we can do is be more empathetic, more passionate, more creative. Our social connections reflect and reinforce our humanity. Cooperation is social. Collaboration is a temporary agreement to get something done. Amongst trusted people, collaboration is the easy part. Machines cannot cooperate. As the nature of work keeps changing, fueled by the nano-cogno-techno-bio revolutions, trying to be more productive is a fool’s errand. We need to be more social. As we look for our next way to earn a living, our résumés may be machine-readable, but our social networks will refect our real value. In the near future, our relationships will be predominantly informal & networked, doing work that derives from opportunity-driven & cooperative connections. The rest will be done by the machines.

[Almost] Every fortnight I collate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. Manage your time like Google invests its resources: 70/20/10 via @reuvengorsht Designers: 70% on the visual specs for upcoming features, 20% exploring new features, and 10% on wireframes for entirely new concepts/styles. Engineers: 70% building features and fixing bugs, 20% on prototyping fledgling ideas or exploratory data analysis, and 10% on speculative initiatives like a 10x performance improvement. Sales: 70% on closing deals, 20% on bigger I/Os for the next quarter, and 10% on long-term relationships with agencies and big advertisers. The Humbling Reason Why It’s Vital that You Encourage Autonomy at Work, via @marciamarcia "The rule is this: the very best of us only get product decisions right 60% of the time. The rest of the time, we’re wrong … When Savage realized the 60% rule, that made him realize how micromanagement harmed his company. Micromanagement means actively getting involved in decision-making where you’re detached from the problem and lack situational awareness. Under these disconnected conditions, your hit rate on making the right decision as a manager is much, much lower." How the next technological revolution starts "There has been, and continues to be, a lot of discussion about what sort of technology will change everything - 3d printers, AI, space. That is the wrong way to look at it. It is not technology that does the changing. Deep change comes from reorganizing ourselves around new principles in order to take the best advantage of the new technology." Humanity V The Automaton Corporate by @Indy_Johar "We have unwilling and unknowing let loose an age of global corporate automatons — without the safe guards of Asimov’s Laws. These automatons are increasingly systemically beyond governance and driven to optimise ghost share holders returns even if the development of those returns destroys the social & environmental capital essential for the viability of its eventual ghost like beneficiaries — us …" Sensemaking by Igor Kopelnitsky via @sebpaquet Image by Igor Kopelnitsky