It’s International Working Out Loud Week, also known as #WOLWeek. Working Out Loud is a relatively new term for me, picking it up from John Stepper in 2012. I have used the term, narrating your work, which to me is the same thing, though some may differ. My observation is that combining transparency (in the workplace) with narration (of work) results in increased serendipity, or more chances of fortuitous outcomes. My own working out loud on this blog has resulted in speaking opportunities and meeting interesting clients. The more you give, the more you get; though not in any way how you may have expected it. Simon Terry recently asked me, "Who inspires you to practice and learn as you work out loud?" Initial inspiration for PKM came from Lilia Efimova, whose blog was a view on her doctoral research into knowledge-sharing. Without Lilia’s insight, I may not have started on this decade-long sense-making journey. Dave Snowden’s views on complexity and knowledge management have informed much of my work, and I have watched his thoughts evolve over time, shared through his blog. I believe I found Dave through either Rob Paterson or Jon Husband, two fellow travelers along the road, freely sharing their experiences. My biggest inspiration has been the hundreds, and now thousands, of bloggers who have shared their thoughts and actions. The list is too long, but if you have been reading my blog, you will know who has inspired my thinking. Just follow the links. The examples of so many others has made it much easier to continue working and learning out loud in this little corner of what used to be called the blogosphere. I owe everything to my blog and the ability to participate out loud in a worldwide network. I also looked through my bookmarks to see what I have been inspired to collect on the topic of narration and WoL. Glyn Moody: Thinking and Working Out Loud (2006) In fact, I’d go further: blogging has become my notebook and general repository of digital bits and bobs. Whenever I find something of interest (to me), I usually bung it up; I hope that it will be of interest to others, but that’s really secondary. A blog is as much a very practical tool for my everyday work as an exercise in itself. Dan Brodnitz: An Interview with Bob Holman (2007) Well, you don’t even have to work out loud to hear. Do you see words pop up in front of your head? Only when I heard the poet Robert Creeley read did that work for me, because he placed each word in the air the way his words are placed on the page. Generally, as Whitman and Ginsberg have stated, the line in a poem equates to the breath. It is a physical thing. What I’m doing when I’m writing is, I’m hearing the words. Even if I’m not talking, I’m listening as I’m creating. Dave Weinberger: Public Learning (2012) 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. John Tropea: There’s no need to report on what you’ve been doing (2013) So let’s be clear on this … Your colleague is not "informing you" of the latest happenings on the task by leaving a reply on the task object. eg "so I contacted IT, they did this for me, but it wasn’t right, so we did this instead, and it worked". This is what we are used to, whether we hear it on the phone, read it in an email, or read it on a social software status update Instead your colleague is executing the raw work (conversations) on the task object. And you witness the conversation unfold. You don’t need your colleague to report to you a bunch of stuff they did, cause you witnessed all those bits in that bunch as it happened. There’s no need to report on what you’ve been doing, when we’ve seen you doing it. So why do we need meetings anyway? @gapingvoid

I spoke at the UNL Extension conference in Nebraska last week. The theme was on the changing nature of work as we enter the network era and how learning is becoming integral to individual and organizational success. I noted how the period of 1900 to 1920 saw a significant shift in the American economy, with manufacturing replacing farming as the dominant economic activity. The resulting demographic shift was millions of men leaving farms and moving to factories.  The Cooperative Extension program was created in 1914 while this shift was taking place. One hundred years later and we are witnessing a similar shift, from the industrial economy to the network era and a creative economy. For a deeper look at this phenomenon, see Nine Shift. Today, knowledge-based work is replacing manufacturing jobs. Robots and software are displacing routine work. Meanwhile, collaborative work is dominating both transactional and production work. The future of valued, human work is in addressing complex problems and coming up with creative solutions. One major difference between the 21st century and the work shift of the last century is that there are no jobs waiting for displaced workers today. One hundred years ago farm hands could move to the city and get a job. Today, the future of work is not in the form of a job. This may be a shock to those already in the workforce but it is an accepted reality amongst many younger people. With creative work, much of the knowledge required is implicit. It cannot be found in a manual or text book, and there is no training program to become creative. Informal learning, often with peers, is how how creative workers have learned through the ages. We need to take the best aspects of what the artist studios and artisan guilds offered and find ways to replicate these. Social experiments, such as co-work spaces and crowd-funded projects, are emerging in the creative economy. Networks are beginning to replace hierarchies as the organizational model to get work done and exchange value. Jobs are relics of hierarchies. In networks, there is no need for standardized and replaceable jobs. Every node is unique, which strengthens the overall network. In a network, relying on standard approaches only erodes trust, as it does not treat each node as an individual. Knowledge networks are built on human relationships and trust emerges over time. How can an organization like Cooperative Extension adapt to the network era? First, it needs to structure as a network because the initial design of the organization influences everything else. Creating the best, and most human, environment for people to get work done should be the only job of a CEO. Social networks have to be supported so that people can connect to do their work better. Frameworks such as  personal knowledge mastery ensure that everyone takes responsibility for sense-making and knowledge-sharing. By practicing PKM, everyone can engage in critical thinking. All workers should continuously question the contexts in which they are working. Active experimentation in the organization can be encouraged through constant learning by doing, as established best practices are useless in dealing with complexity. Everyone needs to be connected to the goals of the organization (network), not just doing their job.  Results will emerge from the entire network, when everyone is responsible in a transparent and open organization. A networked organization is more resilient and flexible. We do not know what the future will hold but it will be more complex. The ability to learn by doing will enable organizations to actively engage their communities and societies. Freedom will not be in independence but interdependence, which is something we can retrieve from 19th century America. The book, Democracy in America, is, I think, the most useful book I know to help understand who we are. And he [de Tocqueville] says, if I can summarize him in a rather gross form, that he came here and he found a society whose definitions and solutions were not created by nobility, by professionals, by experts or managers, but by what he identified as little groups of people, self-appointed, common men and women who came together and took three powers: 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. These little groups of people weren’t elected and they weren’t appointed and they were everyplace, and they were, he said, the heart of the new society - they were the American community as distinct from the European community. And he named these little groups "associations" . Association is the collective for citizens, an association of citizens. And so we think of our community as being the social space in which citizens in association do the work of problem-solving, celebration, consolation, and creation - that community, that space, in contrast to the space of the system with the box at the top and lots of little boxes at the bottom. And I think it is still the case that the hope for our time is in those associations. - The Careless Society, John McKnight

If you conduct workshops, finding activities that relate to your themes can be a challenge. I have used one activity several times, first in Toronto in 2011. A while later, over a beer in Copenhagen, I met Nick Martin, who was beginning to develop a new website, WorkshopBank, to share ideas on ice-breakers and other workshop/training activities. He liked my use of the equilateral triangles collaboration exercise and it is now posted. In perusing Nick’s site, there are at least two new exercises I plan to try out. Culture Triangle: A team building motivational activity that helps separate teams or organizations understand each other better with a view to improving collaboration. Prisoner’s Dilemma (aka Reds & Blues): Prisoner’s Dilemma is a fantastic team building game which demonstrates whether people display win-win (co-operative) or win-lose orientation (selfish competitive) in a fun situation which offers the possibility of both. If you have other workshop ideas you would like to share, contact Nick and join the community. I think this is a resource that many people will find useful.

"I remember regularly reiterating the question, while out at the pub with fellow disillusioned colleagues, or after conferences with newfound allies from other dysfunctional NGOs, How have we ended up creating organisations that are meant to create good in the world, but make so many of those involved in them so miserable in the process?" - Liam Barrington-Bush Anarchists in the Boardroom, by Liam Barrington-Bush, is a comprehensive read showing how organizations can apply the 3 principles of ‘more like people’ organizations: Humanity: What can we learn from ourselves? Autonomy: Trusting ourselves and others to be brilliant Complexity: Moving from cogs to consciousness Anarchists in the Boardroom covers individual change, work change, and structure change in a very detailed manner. The intended audiences are non-profit organizations. The book describes 5 reasons why hierarchies suck: assume the worst in people; foster dishonesty; expect leaders to be superheroes; waste time; lack of context for decision-makers. It then goes on to show alternatives. "Humanity, autonomy and complexity can offer us some guidance as to the steps each of us might take to influence better working cultures. Complexity tells us that culture change cannot be orchestrated, given the number of interdependent relationships it would have to shift, but that cultures move based on any of those individual relationships changing themselves in a way that resonates more widely." The book finishes with practical advice on how to get started, and provides a long list of specific actions. The personal changes are pragmatic but the work and structural changes have to be done by those in power. While hierarchies may suck, they exist and they have great influence. This book would be best for people who have the power to change organizations. There are plenty of anecdotes and references in its 274 pages and it is worth adding to your inventory of organizational change books. Here’s one of the stories that Liam shares: Why an NGO funded a cock-fighting ring in Honduras So the story goes like this: An NGO wanted to build a school in a rural community in Honduras. Educational attainment was low there and the opportunities for schooling were minimal, so the choice seemed to make sense. But when it was proposed to the community, the women of the pueblo came out against it. The NGO staffers asked the women what they would prefer. Their answer? A cock-fighting ring. The staff got uncomfortable, but asked why a cock- fighting ring would be of more benefit than a school. Apparently, the next village over had a cock-fighting ring. On Fridays, after work, all the men in the village would take their pay and head to the neighbouring town and gamble away their income, often returning home empty-handed. Because of this the children had to work, otherwise the families often wouldn’t eat. So what would a school do, besides sit empty as the children made up for their fathers’ gambling habits? The women proposed they could run the local cock- fighting ring cooperatively, so their husband’s losses could be reincorporated into the community. With a bit more money staying locally, their children would not have to work, thus paving the way for education, once hunger was no longer an issue. Reluctantly, the brave NGO agreed, financing the new cock-fighting ring, and trusting the wisdom of the community, against their own - or their donors’ - best judgments from afar.

The best way to understand your markets in the network era is by learning together. If markets are conversations, then the quality of your conversations will affect your value exchanges. Your markets will learn with or without your company. But when you learn with and from your customers, marketing and learning become the same. This is often lost in one-way broadcast marketing messages that are not directly connected to customer service or even product development. Network era marketing can benefit from a new learning focus. Marketing has to be connected to the rest of the company as well as the entire value network. "People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products." - Cluetrain Work used to be fairly straight forward. You had a job, knew what to do, and were paid to do it. Then the Web appeared. Everybody got connected to almost everyone else. All these connections made things more complex. Some work was automated. Some of it outsourced. Much of it became more complex. Making sense of complexity, and developing ways to keep up, is the basis of personal knowledge mastery (PKM). PKM is a framework for individuals to take control of their professional development through a continuous process of seeking, sensing-making, and sharing. Organizational learning is greatly enhanced when everyone practices some form of PKM. Learning while working can also be the basis of market conversations. Learning together starts by consciously learning ourselves. As author Dan Pink remarked in his 2012 book To Sell is Human, in order to sell an idea, one must be able to distill its essence, or the one percent that gives life to the other ninety-nine percent - "Understanding that one percent, and being able to explain it to others, is the hallmark of strong minds". Marketing and education have certain similarities - gaining attention; getting your message across; and changing behaviour. Much of our learning is through conversations with others. Without conversation (oral, written, graphical, physical) there are no social transactions. Without conversations, there are no relationships. "Markets are relationships." - Doc Searls (co-author of the Cluetrain Manifesto) Learning-oriented marketing, internal and external, is both getting the message across and understanding the needs of others. A great example of this is at Intuit, where training is part of the marketing department and involves the customer directly. At Intuit, customers are paid to develop content, and as one person wrote in a chat comment, "The e-Learning has kept my CPA husband loyal to Intuit versus Peachtree, etc." Seeking is finding things out and keeping up to date. Building a community of colleagues is helpful in this regard. It not only allows us to "pull" information, but also have it "pushed" to us by trusted sources. We can then become knowledge curators for our networked markets. Sense-making is how we personalize information and use it. Sensing includes reflection and putting into practice what we have learned. Often it requires experimentation, as we learn best by doing. This is called working out loud and shows our willingness to learn from others. Sharing includes exchanging resources, ideas, and experiences with our network, making the network smarter. An important aspect of sharing is knowing when and with whom to share. As the writer Steven Johnson says in Where Good Ideas Come From; "Chance favors the connected mind." Therefore the more connections we make in seeking knowledge and sense-making, the more we will have to share when the opportunity arises. Personal Knowledge Mastery is a sense-making framework that has been developed over the past decade. PKM can help improve insights through increased connections, enhance the potential for coincidences, and develop a discipline of curiosity. The best professionals in the network era, including marketing and sales, are those who are open to new insights. The PKM framework has been used by the UK National Health Service, Domino’s Pizza, Bangor University, and hundreds of individual practitioners worldwide. Several workshops have been developed to practice the various skills that make up the discipline of PKM. Topics include critical thinking, curating, and working out loud. If markets are conversations, we need to learn from these conversations. "Co-learning can differentiate services, increase product usage, strengthen customer relationships, and reduce the cost of hand-holding. It’s cheaper and more useful than advertising." - Jay Cross

Here are some observations and insights that were shared on social media this past fortnight. I call these Friday’s Finds. @doctorow - "Once you admit that luck was crucial to your success, you have to confront the terrifying possibility that your luck may run out someday." @Mintzberg - "How many of us now realize the extent to which we have become the victims of our own economic structures?" It is telling the extent to which economic vocabulary has infiltrated our everyday speech. Are you a human resource? a human asset? human capital? I am a human being. I do not "maximize value", whatever that means. (Trying to maximize anything is perverse.) I have no intention of competing, collecting, and consuming my way to neurotic oblivion. And if I am not cooperative alongside being competitive, selfless alongside being selfish, I am nothing. BrainPickings.org on Anne Lamott’s ‘Small Victories’ via @SandyMaxey The parental units were simply duplicating what they’d learned when they were small. That’s the system. It wasn’t that you got the occasional feeling that you were an alien or a chore to them. You just knew that attention had to be paid constantly to their moods, their mental health levels, their rising irritation, and the volume of beer consumed. Yes, there were many happy memories marbled in, too, of picnics, pets, beaches. But I will remind you now that inconsistency is how experimenters regularly drive lab rats over the edge. How Ayn Rand Helped Make the US Into a Selfish, Greedy Nation via @ross917 While Harriet Beecher Stowe shamed Americans about the United States’ dehumanization of African Americans and slavery, Ayn Rand removed Americans’ guilt for being selfish and uncaring about anyone except themselves. Not only did Rand make it "moral" for the wealthy not to pay their fair share of taxes, she "liberated" millions of other Americans from caring about the suffering of others, even the suffering of their own children. @orgnet - Downsizing without social network analysis is like surgery in the dark I can’t tell you how many times I have seen this situation: company downsizes/rightsizes, becomes more "lean and mean", and then in a few months, management scratches it’s collective head when things start to fall apart. @hrheingold - Look who’s talking "If we decided that community came first, how would we use our tools differently?" "We don’t want to be the kind of people who will interrupt a conversation at home to answer a telephone. It’s not just how you use the technology that concerns us. We’re also concerned about what kind of person you become when you use it." - Amish man @SimonHeath1 - Ceci n’est pas un tweet Image by Simon Heath

Finding Perpetual Beta is now in production. This new ebook is part of the continuing journey to understand how individuals and organizations can manage fundamental changes in networked society, business, and education. It is a series of reflections on the themes presented in Seeking Perpetual Beta, published in April 2014. It questions the status quo of how organizations are structured in order to get work done. In addition, there is an expanded Part 2 on personal knowledge mastery (PKM), a foundational discipline for working in the network era and a creative economy. Here are some highlights, covering the main themes in Part 1: The Network Era. Today, knowledge-based work is replacing manufacturing and information processing jobs. Robots and software are displacing routine work. Meanwhile, collaborative work is dominating both transactional and production work. The future of valued, human work is in collaboratively addressing complex problems and coming up with creative solutions. 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. A new model for work is required. Hierarchies, simple branching networks, are obsolete. 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. We are at the beginning of a management revolution, similar to the one that created modern business schools and their scientific methods. There are many examples today of companies testing out new management models such as the social enterprise, democracy in the workplace, self-organizing work teams, and networked free-agents. While there are no clear answers, it is fairly certain that standing still will lead to failure. Giving up control is the great challenge for management. Another challenge for organizations is getting people to realize that what they know has diminishing value. How to solve problems together is becoming the real business imperative. Sharing and using knowledge is where business value lies. With computer systems that can handle more and more of our known knowledge, the network era worker has to move to the complex and chaotic edge of the organization to do the valued work of exception handling. We are seeing growing complexity both inside and outside the enterprise. In this complex and connected world we cannot predict outcomes, but we can engage our environments and markets and then learn by doing. This makes constant learning a critical business skill. It requires do-it-yourself learning as well as social learning skills. 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. Part 2: Personal Knowledge Mastery: The Seek > Sense > Share Framework PKM Tips PKM and the Future of Work — I am starting to plan for the third ebook in this series. My intention is that it will be based on a series of interviews to understand what people are doing differently this past decade, such as working in non-hierarchical organizations, or how they are practicing some form of PKM. Interest in these themes is growing. For example, students in a US education doctoral program will be using these ebooks for one of their modules. A community of practice of Canadian training managers will also incorporate these books into their 2015 professional discussions. Many people are seeking, and hopefully finding, perpetual Beta.

Is this the journalism of the future? "We can conjecture, for example, that the journalism of the future will be distributed  — with every individual in society playing a continuous role in providing the function. Indeed, given the primary importance and power of True Information to a well functioning Abundance Society, we might well expect that providing honest and thoughtful evaluation of experiences will become one of the principal activities in the future. Perhaps a main portion of the economy of Abundance will involve having experiences, evaluating them and curating them in a collective effort to ensure that every member of society is consistently presented with the best possible set of experiences for them to encounter at every moment." - Reinvent Everything We made the news! Jordan Greenhall paints a very clear picture why distributed journalism is likely to happen. It is an accepted fact in some jurisdictions. As the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on defamation in 2009, all citizens can be viewed by the law as journalists. "However, the traditional media are rapidly being complemented by new ways of communicating on matters of public interest, many of them online, which do not involve journalists.  These new disseminators of news and information should, absent good reasons for exclusion, be subject to the same laws as established media outlets." As distributed and shared sense-making pervades society, it is quite likely a similar pattern will emerge inside and across organizations. We will all have to be sense-makers and curators of knowledge in our increasingly distributed workplaces. Evidence of one’s knowledge-sharing and sense-making may become the new résumé. It would be up to date and multifaceted, showing activities across multiple networks. It might even replace the useless annual performance review. In the network era, where work is learning and learning is the work, would it not be better to find out how people are actively learning?  It would be good to see questions like the following in workplace conversations and interviews: How do you keep your learning up to date? With whom do you learn? How do you capture your learning? How do you narrate your work? Please show us an example … How do you stay current in your field? How diverse is your network? Could you give us some examples? How would you begin to look at the following problem, which is out of your normal scope of work … Describing how we stay actively engaged in our learning is a better indicator of future performance than a list of past achievements. In a world where many answers do not lie in the past, but in how we manage to make connections with the present, our thinking has to remain relevant. In the network era people need to re-skill and address today’s and tomorrow’s problems, not yesterday’s. We need to think more like artists and look at creating new ways of working, not polishing our previous successes. Showing how we learn and manage our knowledge keeps us focused on the present and ready for the future. Practicing sense-making, such as with the PKM framework, is a solid way to get people ready for the future of work.

The five most-viewed posts here this past year provide a good synopsis of the over 150 articles I have written since January. They cover the main themes of organizations, work, and learning, that I have been discussing on this blog since 2004. The Seek > Sense > Share framework This article was published by UK-based Inside Learning Technologies & Skills magazine. It is an overview of personal knowledge mastery (PKM). Key point: The mainstream application of knowledge management and learning management over the past few decades is mostly wrong; we over-managed information, knowledge, and learning, because it was easy to do so. Four basic skills for 2020 This is another post related to PKM, that focuses on 4 of the skills critical for success in the emerging network era workplace, as identified by the Institute for the Future. Key point: Knowledge in a networked society is different from what many of us grew up with in the pre-Internet days. The post-hierarchical organization This article describes the limitations of hierarchies and asks: What does a post-hierarchical organization look like? Key point: Organizations have to become knowledge networks. Organizational learning in the network era This post states that organizational learning is more than training. People in today’s workplace need ongoing, real-time, constantly-changing, collaborative, support. They can only work effectively if barriers to organizational learning are removed. Key point: Systemic factors account for most organizational problems, and changing these has more potential for improvement than changing any individual’s performance. Management in networks This article asks: What are the functions of management in the network era? Key point: The company no longer offers the stability it once did as innovative disruption comes from all corners. Economic value is getting redistributed to creative workers and then diffused through networks.

Every fortnight I collate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I post the best as Friday’s Finds. Here are the best of 2014. "The nature of work is changing. People’s relationship with work is changing. The changes to society will be vast." - @gapingvoid "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, & eventually degenerates into a racket." —Eric Hoffer - via @tom_peters "Again, while enlightened animal trainers are recognizing the danger of a purely behavioral / Skinner approach, VC’s [venture capitalists] are funding it for humans." - @SeriousPony "Humans require the difficult and messy social routing protocol of trust." - Valdis Krebs @orgnet - via @voinonen "The Industrial era was based on the principle that an organisation produces, not the individuals, so the workers cannot produce without an organisation." - @EskoKilpi "How do we evaluate teachers? We never speak of this. It is irrelevant in our country. Instead, we discuss, ‘How can we help them?’" - Pasi Sahlberg, Finnish Educator, via @PascalVenier The Leadership Paradox - Leadership is … an activity or behavior that can arise anywhere in a human system. The overall conclusion of this research was that the leaders of successful organisations did play a key role in radical transformations of those organisations, but not by specifying it or directing it but by creating the conditions which allowed for the emergence of such change. Liz Ryan: ‘If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Manage It': Not True - Forbes Luckily, humans are very good at reading energy and responding to it. It’s always been human energy and mojo that have powered everything good that’s ever happened in business or institutional life. We delude ourselves when we pretend that the yardstick and the milestone matter … More measurement won’t do anything except clog the pipelines through which your company’s mojo flows. The secret to the Uber economy is wealth inequality - via @MarkFederman It did not take technology to spur the on-demand economy. It took masses of poor people … All that modern technology has done is make it easier, through omnipresent smartphones, to amass a fleet of increasingly desperate jobseekers eager to take whatever work they can get. Deming & Me by @Tom_Peters - "High potentials" will take care of themselves. The secret is improving the performance of the 60% in the middle - via @TomGram1 W. Edwards Deming, the quality guru-of-gurus, called the standard evaluation process the worst of management de-motivators. I don’t disagree. For some reason or other, I launched several tweets on the subject a couple of days ago. Here are a few of them: Do football coaches or theater directors use a standard evaluation form to assess their players/actors? Stupid question, eh? Does the CEO use a standard evaluation form for her VPs? If not, then why use one for front line employees? … WSJ: Drop the nature vs nurture debate But new research has led biologists to a different view. We didn’t adapt to a particular Stone Age environment. We adapted to a newly unpredictable and variable world. And we did it by developing new abilities for cultural transmission and change. Each generation could learn new skills for coping with new environments and could pass those skills on to the next generation. As the anthropologist Pascal Boyer points out in his answer, it’s tempting to talk about "the culture" of a group as if this is some mysterious force outside the biological individual or independent of evolution. But culture is a biological phenomenon. It’s a set of abilities and practices that allow members of one generation to learn and change and to pass the results of that learning on to the next generation. Culture is our nature, and the ability to learn and change is our most important and fundamental instinct. Social Networks: What Maslow Misses | Psychology Today - via @mslogophiliac Humans are social animals for good reason. Without collaboration, there is no survival. It was not possible to defeat a Woolley Mammoth, build a secure structure, or care for children while hunting without a team effort. It’s more true now than then. Our reliance on each other grows as societies became more complex, interconnected, and specialized. Connection is a prerequisite for survival, physically and emotionally. @amyburvall - Difference between collaboration ( directed) & Cooperation ( open, participatory) #PKMastery Cooperation & Collaboration by Amy Burvall If you have liked my articles and Friday’s Finds over the past year, consider purchasing my ebook, finding perpetual beta

Power and Leadership The TIMN [Tribes + Institutions + Markets + Networks] model shows how society grew from a collection of tribes, added institutions, and later developed markets. These aligned with revolutions in communications: from oral, to written, to print. The network era began with the advent of electric communications, though it is by no means completely established. Each type of societal structure has required different types of leadership. Alexander the Great was probably one of the best tribal leaders. He led his armies from the front and created an enormous empire. After his death, some of his generals created long-lasting institutions not based on military tactics. Ptolemy’s library at Alexandria is one example. Later, institutions like the Catholic Church dominated more through soft institutional power, rather than wielding swords. Others did that for them when necessary. As a market society developed, new types of power were exercised by the Fuggers and the Hanseatic League. Later, captains of industry such as Andrew Carnegie, would dominate in their markets, often circumventing institutional power. As we enter the network era, we see companies like Apple dominating, often ignoring Wall Street pundits. With network effects, Google can control the online advertising market, making market competition almost irrelevant. Power shifts as a society’s organizing principles change. Niels Pflaeging states that, "All organizations know three kinds of power, and two forms of leadership". Hierarchy is necessary for (and only for!) building compliance. It is not networked. As formal power, It is not a form of leadership - but of management. In the presence of formal power, leadership is actually quite impossible to happen. Influence is necessary for social density and connection. It is networked. It is a form of leadership. Reputation is necessary for value creation. It is networked, as well. It is the second form of leadership. In almost all organizations today, positional power is alive and well. For some managers, this is all the power they have, and they are at the mercy of the hierarchy. If they lose their position, they lose their power. More effective leaders influence people through their social leadership abilities. This is what most modern leadership training programs focus on developing. In the network era, effective leaders also have to build their reputational power through networked leadership. Like the TIMN model, social and networked leadership can build on each other. One major change as we enter the network era is that positional power (based on institutions and hierarchies) may no longer be required to have influence in a network society. This may change a lot about how we think about leadership. I call this connected leadership: the combination of social and networked leadership. Leadership as Craft Leadership training usually does not work. In most cases, leadership coaching and mentoring is not that effective either. Perhaps the problem is the nature of leadership. Is it a skill that can be fairly quickly developed, or rather a craft that takes time to develop? When it comes to crafts that require much time and practice, modelling may be a better method than shaping. Education and training are shaping technologies. They reward successive approximations of the desired behaviour. Modelling, on the other hand, is the foundation of social learning. Trying to directly shape behaviour can work when the task to be done is straight-forward, time is of the essence, and the learner is ready. For complex behaviours like leadership, consisting of several skills, modelling may be best, as there is much implicit knowledge to be learned, which takes time. Education and training usually don’t provide the time for enough reflective practice. As long-time Canadian painter Stephen Scott has noted, most of what he knows about the technique of oil painting he learned on his own after leaving university. Management and leadership are similar types of abilities. If we look at how organizational training and development has functioned over the past half-century, it has been mostly separate from the work being done and focused on shaping behaviours. But the valued work in the enterprise is shifting, as it increases in variety and decreases in standardization. There is strong evidence that we need to integrate learning into our work in order to deal with the increasing complexity of knowledge work. Modelling is integrative, while shaping is usually external and out of the work context. Consider also that as knowledge expands and new information is constantly added, who has the base knowledge to do the shaping anyway? In our networked world, modelling behaviours may be a better strategy than shaping on any pre-defined curriculum. With modelling, the learner is progressively supported. In connected leadership, people can be both teachers and learners. Therefore neither training programs, nor coaching, are enough. Leadership by example becomes the key. Leadership in Networks Connected leadership is not the status quo and it is not based on great man theories. As organizations, markets, and society become networked, complexity in all human endeavours increases. There are more variables as a result of more connections. In complex adaptive systems, the relationship between cause and effect can only be known after the fact. This makes traditional planning and control obsolete. Connected organizations must learn how to deal with ambiguity and complexity. Those in positions of leadership have to find ways to nurture creativity and critical thinking. The connected workplace is all about understanding networks, modelling networked learning, and strengthening networks. In networks, anyone can show leadership, not just those appointed by management. A guiding principle for connected organizational design is for loose hierarchies and strong networks. As networked, distributed work becomes the norm, trust will emerge from environments that are open, transparent, and diverse. Strengthening professional social networks will ensure that knowledge is shared and contributes to organizational longevity. Connected organizations need to learn as fast as their environments. As a result of this improved trust in the workplace, leadership will be seen for what it is — an emergent property of a network in balance and not some special property available to only the select few. This requires leadership from everyone — an aggressively intelligent and engaged workforce, learning with each other. In the connected workplace, it is a significant disadvantage to not actively participate in social learning networks. Leadership in networks does not come from above, as there is no top. To know the culture of the workplace, one must be the culture. Marinate in it and understand it. This cannot be done while trying to control the culture. Organizational resilience is strengthened when those in leadership roles let go of control. Building Trust The connected workplace requires collaboration as well as cooperation. Both collaborative behaviours (working together for a common goal) and cooperative behaviours (sharing freely without any quid pro quo) are needed, but most organizations today focus their efforts on shorter term collaboration. However, networks really thrive on cooperation, where people share without any direct benefit. Modelling cooperation is another important leadership skill in the connected workplace. Connected leaders know that people naturally like to be helpful and get recognition for their work. But humans need more than extrinsic compensation, as our behaviour on Wikipedia and online social networks proves. For the most part, people like to help others. Cooperation makes for more resilient knowledge networks. Better networks are better for business. Research shows that tacit knowledge flows best in trusted networks. Trust pro- motes individual autonomy and this becomes a foundation for more open social learning. Without trust, few are willing to share their knowledge. An effective knowledge network also cultivates the diversity and autonomy of each worker. Connected leaders know how to foster deeper connections which can be devel- oped through meaningful conversations. They understand the importance of tacit knowledge in solving complex problems. The power of human social networks, like electricity, will inevitably change almost every business model. Those who are trusted as leaders will need to understand the new connected workplace. Connected leadership starts by organizing to embrace networks, manage complexity, and build trust. Servant Leadership Managers, acting as servant leaders in a connected enterprise, should spend much of their time focused on complex situations, where the relationship between cause and effect can only be seen after the fact. Actively listening requires an engagement with networked contributors who are closely in touch with their environment. Everyone should continuously question the contexts in which the enterprise is working. Appointed servant leaders have an even greater responsibility to look at the big picture, not manage the contributors, who for the most part can manage themselves when everyone’s work is transparent. Leaders can then propose changes and build consensus around suggested responses. Connected leadership is helping the network make better decisions. — You can support my writing by purchasing my latest ebook: finding perpetual beta

Corporations were created to give limited liability to organizations that were taking on large, capital-intensive projects, like building railways. Today, most corporations have little physical capital and instead derive their value from intangible goods and services. Such a significant economic shift should make us question the value of putting so much value into the corporation, when most of it now is created by workers. Do we still need a corporation to enable wealth-creation for a post-industrial, and more importantly, a post-job, economy? For example, the open source model has shown that software can be developed faster and cheaper (and many would say better) without a corporate, hierarchical structure. There are alternatives. A network economy can retrieve artisans and guilds, distributing power to those who do the work, and reconnecting thinkers and doers. This can extend human value through the economy, distributing value so it does not only accrue to the top of the hierarchical pyramid. Corporations, as we know them, are obsolete for a network economy. However, they could still re-emerge in the form of platform capitalism, masquerading as the sharing economy. Post-job Economy The "job" was the way we redistributed wealth, making capitalists pay for the means of production and in return creating a middle class that could pay for mass produced goods. That period is almost over. America has hit peak jobs TechCrunch informs us. The New York Times calls it  the rise of the permanent temp economy. The recession, combined with technology, is killing middle class jobs, reports the Associated Press. Knowledge Artisans An artisan is a skilled worker in a particular craft, using specialized tools and machinery. Artisans were the dominant producers of goods before the Industrial era. Knowledge artisans are retrieving the older artisan model and re-integrating previously separate skills. Knowledge artisans not only design the work but they can do the work. It is not passed down the assembly line. Many integrate marketing, sales, and customer service with their creations. To ensure that they stay current, they become members of various Guilds, known today as communities of practice or knowledge networks. One of the earliest guilds was the open source community which developed many of the communication tools and processes used by knowledge artisans today: distributed work; results only work environments (your code speaks for you); RSS, blogs, wikis, etc. Platform Capitalism Companies like Uber are not part of a ‘sharing economy’ but are rather  ‘platform capitalists’, the new robber barons of the 21st century. 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 and Facebook are dominating advertising, and telecommunications companies are using their control of the pipes to directly compete with service providers. Uber is going after the taxi and car rental industries, getting to be larger than established rental car brands, with none of the overhead. All of these companies may provide initially good services to customers. But over time their monopolistic tendencies kill competition and the entire ecosystem of innovation. Wirearchy We should be looking at alternatives to the corporate model in a market economy. Networks are not markets. Networks require structures that are more flexible and can respond faster to change than hierarchical corporations. Work in complex environments requires faster feedback loops. Social networks, which are comprised of people that we trust in some way, can speed up knowledge feedback loops at work. However, to do this, we have to already have that human connection. The post-corporate organization has to incorporate social networks as part of its structure. This can be the first step in developing a wirearchy: giving explicit permission to engage in social networks and bypassing, or even obsolescing, the formal communications structures.  If the work still gets done, you don’t need the formal structure any more. Let’s make 2015 the year of the wirearchy. — If you like my writing you might want to purchase: finding perpetual beta seeking perpetual beta

Platform capitalism is beginning to define the economy for the second Gilded Age we seem to be entering. It requires 4 contributing factors, which when combined, create a perfect opportunity for the "uberization" of almost any industry. A platform: a mobile application delivered through an oligopoly like iTunes or Google Play. A critical mass of users: upwardly mobile knowledge workers, especially those in Silicon Valley or the tech sector. Desperate service providers: people with no ability to organize due to weak or non-existing trade unions in their field, who see opportunities for better cash flow. Lack of regulations and oversight: bureaucracies that either cannot keep up with technology advances, or political leadership that condones poor working conditions in the name of progress. Platform capitalism is not just affecting the taxi, cleaning, and hotel businesses. Many professions are getting "uberized". Elance-oDesk offers 4m companies the services of 10m freelances. The model is also gaining ground in the professions. Eden McCallum, which was founded in London in 2000, can tap into a network of 500 freelance consultants in order to offer consulting services at a fraction of the cost of big consultancies like McKinsey. This allows it to provide consulting to small companies as well as to concerns like GSK, a pharma giant. Axiom employs 650 lawyers, services half the Fortune 100 companies, and enjoyed revenues of more than $100m in 2012. Medicast is applying a similar model to doctors in Miami, Los Angeles and San Diego. Patients order a doctor by touching an app (which also registers where they are). A doctor briefed on the symptoms is guaranteed to arrive within two hours; the basic cost is $200 a visit. - The Economist Individuals can counter this movement toward the commodification of labour, but it won’t be easy. It means looking at all your skills and abilities and determining which ones are commodities. Any work that can be billed by the hour is probably a commodity. Any work that can be standardized is a commodity in the eyes of platform capitalists. Any work that can be represented as a flowchart, and eventually put into a software program, is a commodity. What’s left is work that is creative. Solving complex or wicked problems is another area for human work. Dealing with people as individuals, requires human compassion and empathy. What kinds of skills do you have in these areas? It would probably be a good idea for all of us to start improving them now. These changes in the relationship between labour and platform capitalism are happening so fast that many people do not see them. They may only notice once they have lost their full-time job. Driving for Uber while renting out their house on Airbnb could be their only way to pay the mortgage as they seek gainful employment that may never come. Now is the time to prepare for an alternative to turking for the platform capitalists. Tomkins Square Riot 1874

I doubt that students at Stanford thought they would become sadistic prison guards when they entered that university, primed for higher learning. I doubt that the teacher who gave electric shocks to a "student" had planned that as part of her day. I doubt that when budding physicians enter medical school, any plan on torturing people through rectal feeding. Why do good people do bad things? In most cases, it’s the system. Leadership is not getting people to do things for you. It is not being in charge and making decisions. Real leadership, the only leadership anyone should aspire to, is making more human systems. This can be a company, a non-profit organization, an institution, a government agency, or your family. Anything less than working on creating a better system for people is not leadership. It may be self-aggrandizement, vanity, or even custodial work, but it is not leadership. Good leaders prepare for their departure. All that is left when they depart are the structures and systems they have helped put in place. The measure of a leader is his or her legacy. If they get a performance review, it should be given years after they leave. I wonder how many of our current leaders would get a positive review in retrospect. Probably not very many, if 19 alumni of Harvard Business School who made it to the top, are any indication. "A majority, 10, seemed clearly to have failed, meaning that the company went bankrupt, they were forced out of the CEO chair, a major merger backfired, and so on. The performance of another 4 we found to be questionable at least. Some of these 14 CEOs built up or turned around businesses, prominently and dramatically, only to see them weaken or collapse just as dramatically." - Henry Mintzberg

Major technological advances, like the printing press or the Internet, create economic volatility. This in turn changes the existing social contract. A common assumption for the past century has been that with education and effort, you can get a job and earn a decent wage. This is no longer the norm. Consider that some or all of your current work will be automated in the next five years, probably to be replaced by software. As with agriculture last century, fewer people are needed to do manufacturing, information, or service work today. We are entering a post-job economy. Our careers will be shorter as our lives get longer. Companies are no longer the stable source of employment they once were. "Half a century ago, the life expectancy of a firm in the Fortune 500 was around 75 years. Now it’s less than 15 years and declining even further." - CS Investing In the next five years, many professionals will have to change not only who they work for, but what they do. Are you prepared? There is no guaranteed way to avoid obsolescence but we can be sure that the ability to learn will be a definite asset. How well you are connected outside your current organization will help in finding new opportunities. Tom Spiglanin shows in this image that individuals (I) need to connect their work with the outside world. Connecting people and knowledge is the focus of personal knowledge mastery (PKM). In a post-job economy, we all need to  increase our connections, find meaning, and enhance our autonomy. The depth and diversity of our professional networks is the new version of job security. One of the reasons I started working on PKM, in 2004, was to stay current in my profession. I became quite interested in understanding the network era and how the world of work will change. I tested out new models of co-learning, such as when Michele Martin and I ran a six-week ‘MOOC’ in 2008 on what we called ‘network literacy’, with over 900 participants. "Gone are the days when you could let the company take care of you and you could rely on stable jobs and predictable career paths. Situations are changing quickly and these questions can help you keep up. Today’s careers are about being entrepreneurial and continually preparing yourself for and seeking the right opportunities." - Michele Martin For the past year, I have hosted several forty-day online workshops focused on taking control of your professional development and creating a diverse knowledge network to stay current in any field. We have had participants from 17 countries. Like any discipline, PKM takes time to master. The 40 day program, with 18 activities, can get you started. Join us for PKM in 40 days, a journey in seeking, sense-making, and sharing knowledge. We start on 12 January.

I wrote in the post, knowledge is personal, that pretty well everything  I have achieved professionally is a result of my sharing online, especially through this blog. I still learn a lot by sharing ideas and engaging with others who do as well. But I am wondering if there is a law of diminishing returns on sharing. The platform capitalists may be winning. My posts are shared and copied a lot: 15,905 times in 2013, according to one source. Many of my models and presentations are used inside organizations. Salaried workers and consultants use what I give away in order to earn their livelihood. For the most part, I am fine with this, as it raises my profile and the level of engagement. But it seems we are entering a time when people expect to get whatever information they need for free and feel no obligation to support the people who create it. I am beginning to question my current business model. Last week I was twice asked to work for free. In each case the person asking me to work for ‘exposure’ was a salaried employee. My bank has yet to accept exposure as a form of payment. Like they say, entrepreneurs have to work on their business and not in their business. Peter Drucker said that, "The purpose of any business is to create and keep a customer." Customers are not people who ask you to work for free. I call these charities, and I support several. Perhaps there is a glut of speakers, writers, and consultants in my field, and price is tending to zero. In that case, any smart business person would change their business model away from these services. I am going to seriously re-evaluate my business model, which is always a good thing to do from time to time. As for my blog, there may be more short posts and fewer fully-formed articles. I may move my journal to one of my private communities and keep Twitter for public conversations, limited to 140 characters at a time. I was recently invited to the Tsu platform which shares revenues, and maybe I’ll put my writing there. For now, I’ll keep working and learning out loud here, but I’m feeling it may be time for a change. Feeding crowd-milking platforms is not a sane business model.

Training, and education, are often solutions looking for a problem. But good training and education can have a huge impact on behaviour and performance. Remember that great teacher who inspired you? Did you ever have a coach who got you to a higher level of performance? But throwing content at someone and hoping for learning to happen is not a good strategy. This is how far too many courses are designed and delivered. "As I’ve been working with the Foundation over the past 6 months I’ve had the occasion to review a wide variety of elearning, more specifically in the vocational and education space, but my experience mirrors that from the corporate space: most of it isn’t very good.  I realize that’s a harsh pronouncement, but I fear that it’s all too true; most of the elearning I see will have very little impact." - Clark Quinn But if courses are all you know, that’s what gets built. Moving from Training, to Performance, to Social can sum up my professional journey in supporting organizational learning. All are needed, but too often the easiest solution is the course, designed to disseminate the approved content. There are ways to improve course design, support work, and improve collaboration, as Clark Quinn has written about very well in his book, Revolutionize Learning. Much of workplace performance improvement comes from better designed ways to get things done. People can get help with the right tools at the right time. How to do this is the realm of human performance technology (HPT). It’s often more a case of removing barriers than training people. Solving problems together is what a lot of us have to do at work. Social learning is a key part of this. It’s about learning with and from our peers. From Training, to Performance, to Social I am now offering a three-week online workshop on Workplace Learning. It is focused on nine practices for organizational performance improvement. The workshop provides examples and exercises to cover more than courses. It  addresses three ways to enhance training, three performance support approaches, and three methods to support social learning. It’s hands-on and practical, with a handy job aid provided to all participants at the end. If you are involved in designing or supporting any aspect of workplace learning, this may be just what you need. The first workshop of this series begins on 9 February 2015. #ITASHARE

The core premise of finding perpetual beta is that the digital world is bumping against the analog world and we are currently caught in-between. Changing How We Organize 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. Changing How We Work 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. Changing How We Learn 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. Watch  the slideshow More on Slideshare  

I was recently asked what I thought about content management systems (CMS); how content should be developed; whether generational differences should be considered; and how to keep content relevant. The best example of a CMS is the Web. There is relevant and irrelevant content. The relevant content is often found through referrals. This may be in terms of ratings, curation by a trusted party, or from a known source. Referrals can be pushed, through something like a subscription service, or pulled from knowledge networks when there is an immediate need for information. People with more diverse and deep knowledge networks get better information. So what does a CMS have to do with it? Not much. I was also asked about the best ways for "creating and gathering internal enterprise content, organizing and maintaining that content and making it easily accessible to employees and other stakeholders". The CMS does not really enable any of this. It’s all about people: those who seek knowledge, make sense of it, and share it. The better they do these three components of PKM, then the better content an organization will have. I have explained this in a simpler approach to knowledge management. It is also a simpler approach to content management. Just let people do it. Using the example of the web, enable all workers to use easy content creation and sharing tools. Put the internet inside the organization. Focus on removing barriers to knowledge-sharing, like Twitter. Nurture a culture of learning out loud, sharing knowledge like YouTube. Appoint staff to work as curators, like Wikipedia. Let people comment upon and rate content, like Amazon. Focus on the visual, like Pinterest or Instagram. While good content management cannot be done without technology, it’s not about the technology. It’s 90% people.

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 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. PayPal is an example of facilitating small financial transactions between parties in different countries because the banks were terrible at it. PayPal facilitates small businesses to engage in  e-commerce. Uber is disrupting taxi monopolies. Uber enables car owners to make some extra money and eases payment for passengers. Airbnb is taking on the hotel industry and its practices. Airbnb provides an easy way to rent out extra space in your home by connecting you to a global market. At some point, network effects kick in. This is the hope of the investors in these platform companies. Once they dominate a sector, it is almost impossible for a competitor to compete directly. Facebook has achieved this for social networking; Amazon is getting there for online retail sales; and Google controls online advertising. The wealth that is created for the users pales in comparison to the value for the platform owners. For instance, it is very difficult for any site to make significant revenue from Google ads. Once the platform capitalists achieve dominance, they act like any monopolist. This can be seen by looking at consumer complaints about PayPal, driver and passenger abuse at Uber, and how dependent we have become on Google.  These companies shift from rebels with a cause, to the 800-pound gorilla you cannot get away from. So what can the average person do to uber-proof their labour in a post-job economy? As they say on the Web, if you are not paying for the service, then you are the product. We need to be careful about what free services we use and understand the total cost of use. Once our data are trapped in a system, it is tough to get them out. With all these new platforms being launched, any independent, small, or medium-sized business needs to play the long game. Determine what 5 or 10 years of use and growth will look like. Something cheap at the onset may be expensive later. Never build a business model on their platform, unless it is short-term and you have an exit strategy. Sites that are dependent on Google’s ads now have to ride every change to the system, with no control. The famous long tail helps nobody but the platform owners. Collectively we should put more energy into the real sharing economy. There are already cooperative models that work, like Mondragon with 74,000 members. Seb Paquet said that the Web and social media enable ‘ridiculously easy group-forming’. Use this to join with peers and develop new ways to create wealth together, outside traditional organizations and beyond the platform capitalists. We have been experimenting at the InternetTimeAlliance since 2009, and I am now engaged with EthosVO, a new way of creating and exchanging value amongst peers. As we go through this next phase of the Internet economy we have to avoid the easy money, and play the long game.

Every fortnight I collate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. Beans & Noses by @jmspool The idea is blindingly simple, actually. Every so often, you’ll run into someone with beans who has, for no good reason, decided to put them up their own nose. Way up there. In a place where beans should not go. Now, there is no logical explanation for this. There is no way to say, "Yes, I can see exactly why you’d want to do that." They came to this decision all on their own. The way they got to this decision defies logic. Yet, here they are. Waiting for the moment when the bean goes up the nose. @Rayke - "No one is as happy as they seem on Facebook, as depressed as they seem on Twitter, or as employed as they seem on LinkedIn." What wine pairs well with your innovation strategy? What One Winery Can Teach You About Innovation - via @gregverdino What are your most important, labor-intensive, or expensive processes? This is where you should start innovating. Imagine looking out over 180 acres of grapes. All of those vines have shoots that must be repositioned within a few days to allow the grapes to grow. It would take a crew of 30 people a week to complete this process, and with Missouri’s higher labor costs in relation to crop value, this process is an expensive one. But our team created and applied a new innovation that allows us to get this done mechanically in just a day. As soon as we implemented this real-time system, there was an immediate impact on our cost per acre. Why Finland is finished as role model for education by @DonaldClark [read the comments too] It comes as no surprise that Finland is flaunted as being the ideal by educationalists, because it sees teachers as the sole key to success. We may have to rethink this. If true, why then have they performed poorly in TIMMS? Teachers alone are not a sufficient condition for success. In fact, Strahlberg doubts that the Finnish system is easily transferable at all. Holacracy at Zappos via @jesselynstoner Some critics charge that the shift to Holacracy is more about Zappos marketing itself as an innovative company than fundamentally changing how it is run. "If you look at the system, the lead link is really almost like a manager," says the former senior-level employee. "There was a disconnect between what was being represented internally and externally. You can say all you want, but within Zappos, if you look deeper, the inner circle still dictates." Predict & control vs sense & respond. Cartoon inspired by @fred_laloux #rsasoulful by @voinonen Image by Virpi Oinonen    

Wirearchy is "a dynamic two-way flow of  power and authority, based on knowledge, trust, credibility and a focus on results, enabled by interconnected people and technology". It is a medium for organizing how people work together. Wirearchy is a new way to work. Viewing wirearchy through the tetradic laws of media might give some clarity on what it can be, and what we need to beware of.  

This article appeared in Inside Learning Technologies & Skills Magazine, January 2015 Harold Jarche issues a challenge to L&D professionals in an environment where getting the work done is more important than learning anything new. In the mid 1990s I became involved with my most expensive learning project. I was then serving as a Training Development Officer with the Canadian Armed Forces, working in tactical aviation (helicopters that support the Army). We had just purchased 100 helicopters. A $25 m full-motion combat simulator had been thrown in with the $1 bn budget. I was able to watch as the new simulator was installed at our training unit, as my office was next to it. As it was tested, discussions began on how best it could be used. As the ‘training guy’ I started researching best practices in flight simulation, and was able to see what our NATO allies were doing. My work also involved research into the use of other simulators, such as cockpit procedure trainers and maintenance trainers, which were much cheaper than the one we had purchased. These lower-fidelity simulators had not been part of the original budget as it had been assumed that one comprehensive simulator would be enough. Unfortunately, a single simulator creates a bottleneck as only two pilots can be trained at any time. It also creates a potential single point of failure. I wrote a paper on the need to develop an integrated approach to specifying what type of simulation was most suitable for any training tasks. For example, teaching start-up and shutdown sequences does not require a full-motion simulator, as those actual tasks occur while the aircraft is on the ground. They require switches, gauges, and dials that act like the real things, though. I suggested we develop a decision- support tool that looked at both physical and functional fidelity, and integrate this into the training system documentation. My recommendations were based on current practices with several other armed forces. Without such a documented process, decisions to purchase expensive simulators would continue to be made on a best-guess basis. We needed a way to clearly specify our training resource needs at the onset of a project, as millions of dollars were at stake and it was difficult to purchase any extra equipment once the main capital project had been funded.   HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF After retiring from the military, and almost ten years after writing my internal military discussion paper, I was hired by a defence contractor to look at how training could be analysed to determine the optimal maintenance training for helicopter technicians. The focus was on specifying a maintenance simulator which could develop trouble-shooting skills. Upon asking for the available military documentation on training analysis, I found that there was still nothing that addressed simulation. There was no guidance on what type of simulator to purchase to meet training needs. I wrote another paper on behalf of my client, explaining the need for a decision- support tool that connected simulation fidelity with both human learning and the operational tasks. The main question I tried to answer was: How do we specify the optimal level of simulation fidelity for any task? I could only suggest a general path forward, as I lacked all the data and research to go further, but it was obviously feasible to do so. Several years later, in 2013, I met with representatives of the same contractor at a military training and simulation conference. One of the themes was how the military needed to make better uses of simulation and emulation for training. Presentations by military staff confirmed that they had no clear way to specify to industry what level of simulation was required to train personnel on a new piece of equipment. Again, millions of dollars were at stake. Not only had none of my recommendations been implemented, but my ex-client also had no record of my report. Nothing had changed. It was not just that my paper had not been used. The documentation on how to analyse tasks for training still did not include any discussion of the use of simulation. Training simulation analysis and design was continuing to be done on an ad hoc basis, usually as an afterthought to a major equipment purchase. I learned from this series of events that training will always be a secondary player in the enterprise landscape.   WHAT OTHERS SEE Good training analysis and design, in the larger scheme of organisational management, does not matter. Capital projects consider it a mere add-on. The training world can come up with better instructional design or new standards, but the folks who make the real decisions will continue to ignore them. It is important for the learning and development world to understand the mindset of those making the big enterprise decisions. Training and learning are of little importance to them. However, acceptance of this fact can put the L&D profession in the right position to advance learning and development. They must be prepared to sell the idea behind anything they need to accomplish. L&D professionals have to become internal marketing specialists.   ACADEMIA AND EDUCATION Those who read this magazine may talk about the importance of learning, but for the most part, organisations do not actively support learning. Let’s start with schools. Schools tend to focus on weaknesses instead of strengths. They also focus too much on content dissemination. Our institutions have failed to foster the love of learning, and often do not motivate students to learn for themselves - in many cases it’s the opposite. One problem is the continuing focus on subject-based curriculum. It separates education from reality. We do not live our lives in subject areas, and no workplace is subject-based, but almost all of our curricula are stuffed into subject silos. For anyone who does not enjoy school, this sets up learning as something to avoid later in life. In addition, mastery of the curriculum (content) is what the school administration assesses. Once again, this separates the school from outside reality. Our educational models disconnect school (learning) from business (work). I remember as a young infantry officer arriving at my new unit, and being told to forget everything I had learned in training. Now I would have to learn how things really worked. This kind of attitude exists in many workplaces, attesting to how the education world is perceived.   LEARNING IS THE WORK Our workplaces are becoming highly networked. The transmission of ideas can be instantaneous. There is no time to pause, go into the back room, and then develop something to address our learning needs. The problem will have changed by then. We need to learn as we work. In an era of exploding knowledge in all fields of science and technology, taking care of business should mean taking care of learning. Learning has to be part of work. We have to make it everyone’s job to share what he or she learns. But in many businesses, getting work done is more important than learning anything new. Short-term thinking starts with quarterly market results and drives down to individual performance management. Learning something new hardly has a chance in the busy workplace. Look at how corporate e-learning is usually developed. Often it’s a case of putting content online and hoping some of it sticks and translates into changed workplace behaviour. It’s easy to build a course based on defined content, as there are no messy, individual, radical learners to get in the way, only a fictional, generalised target population. My experience is that neither the public educational system, higher education, nor the corporate training business have made any great achievements in facilitating learning during the past two decades. The greatest advances have been in people learning for themselves as they connect via the Web. We know that people learn socially. We learn through observation and modelling. Promoting learning is not the same as promoting education and training. Individual and peer-to-peer learning is a key part of workplace learning. I developed a personal knowledge mastery (PKM) framework to support this kind of learning for professional development. I have worked with universities to include PKM as part of their curriculum, as well as companies who incorporate PKM into their leadership programmes, or make it a core component of work competence. Getting individuals to take control of their workplace learning then frees the L&D field from filling orders for training courses. Instead, they can respond to workplace needs.   REMOVING BARRIERS Practices like PKM are only the first step. Systemic barriers to learning also have to be removed. Imagine a research intensive organisation where scientists should be sharing what they learn, and the official company policy is to share information and expertise among public and private partners. However, the company is ‘downsizing’ and layoffs are based on performance reviews. If one scientists helps a peer develop a patented product, and as a result the peer gets a better annual review, then the former may end up losing his job during the next round of layoffs. Sharing knowledge is not a good personal strategy in this work environment. So, we see that government policies, like intellectual property regulations, can drive business practices, like financial rewards for patents, which can impede learning, and in the end we all lose. In complex systems, the solutions are never simple, but our only hope is learning how to learn better and faster - individually and as a society. If we want to promote learning we should first look at what is blocking it. L&D professionals have to think bigger than training and courses in a world where everything is connected. Removing barriers should be the focus of the learning and development professional, not delivering content. It is time to stop being takers of orders and become better diagnosticians. Solving problems will help L&D be seen a valued part of the enterprise. L&D professionals therefore have to master their own field as well the business they support. In addition, they have to understand that few outside L&D think what they do is important. It’s a big challenge, but learning is becoming critical to all businesses. It is up to L&D to be part of this.

The performance analysis used in HPT, is a good tool to find barriers to workplace performance. For example, a lack of skills & knowledge usually requires formal instruction or job aids. A lack of appropriate tools may require better processes and support. Training is expensive, so it is best to use it only when needed. Combining HPT with instructional systems design, ensures that training is designed only when there is a clear lack of sills and knowledge. Other non-instructional interventions, like job aids and checklists, can then be developed to reduce other barriers to performance. Using HPT methods can save resources and make for more efficient and effective workplaces.