Category: Organization in the Collaborative Age

Why Organization’s Stability Should Be Used To Enhance External Disruption

Following on our latest post on the increase of the world’s unpredictability, Robert Branche makes also an excellent point that as nature designed living organisms that would dramatically increase the unpredictability of the world, it had to design organisms that were more stable inside. And actually, from plants to animals, to mammals, internal stability has increased dramatically with evolution.

storm and stability
A storm on stability

This is a very interesting contradiction: to enhance the world’s changes, internal stability is required. And this observation actually applies to many situations.

Robert Branche extends this observation to organizations: for him, companies or organizations are a way to build an internal stability to become able to transform the world. “Internal order and rules should not reduce uncertainty, but make its development and acceptance easier” states Robert Branche in the case of large corporations.

Organizations that would implement internal rules for the sake of increasing internal and external certainty are ultimately doomed. Organizations need to develop and nurture internal stability as a way to enhance their disruptive impact on the world.

What a challenge to all established organizations!

How does your organization fare? Is it really defending its stability to make a bigger, more disruptive impact on the world?

Reference is made to Robert Branche‘s latest book “les Radeaux de Feu” (in French). Visit Robert Branche’s blog (in French) for more about the author and his latest book.

Share

How to Overcome the Greatest Problem in Communication

“The greatest problem in communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished” – George Bernard Shaw.

Poor communicationI can observe every day in my consulting practice how this old quote is so true, in particular in large organizations. Top management often confuses the act of communicating with actual communication.

It takes a lot of effort and caring to ensure proper communication. That means actual, down-to-earth leadership, and consistency through time.

I like to think that this issue can be solve through enough caring: what is communication if you don’t care about how well the message has been received and understood? It is about acknowledging the emotional component and be emphatic to the actual reception.

Be open and listen actively to assess the result of your communication. Don’t just deliver a message: observe its effect and ensure ‘after-sales’ service in the form of emphatic listening!

Share

Why Quantity is not Quality for Reports and Presentations

I often experience that a thick-looking report, or presentation, benefits from a positive first impression, in particular in traditional corporate settings – notwithstanding the quality of its contents. This is wrong!

large, thick paper filePamela Slim in her latest book ‘Body of Work‘ mentions that “There is a conspiracy cooked up by marketing wonks, consultants, and executives to pay for words by the pound, and to question the intelligence of a corporate “professional” who does not create complex and obtuse presentations. They are wrong. Your instinct to keep things clean and simple is right.” She quotes an experience where she sat for a few hours through a powerpoint presentation in a corporate setting without being able to understand what it actually was about.

Sometimes, providing a long presentation is also a way to hide from the fear of having a real candid conversation about the issue at hand, making sure that the allocated time is spent looking at a content that has been carefully polished, and avoiding questions and debate.

While substantial evidence backups might need to be gathered separately (as an appendix), I believe that the presentation or report message needs to be clear and crisp and should ideally be delivered in less than 25% of time allocated for that particular discussion – or at the minimum leave time to elicit proper discussion while the material is presented.

The value lies in the confrontation of ideas and in the discussion. The quality of the presentation or the report is to act as a sound trigger for that discussion. Never judge the quality of their content separately from the discussion – and possibly the decision – that it will trigger.

Share

How Emotional Experience is Key for Overcoming Fear and Creating Change

Change creates fear. Titus said “We fear things in proportion of our ignorance of them“. Hence one of the easiest ways to help people and organization change would be to educate them. While it does work now and again, however, it has been constantly proven that this is a very ineffective strategy. Education does play a role, but it is personal experience at the emotional level that is important to effectively create change.

The Scream
Fear. Just Fear.

Fear is deeply emotional. The rational mind can tame some of it, but it is a long and difficult process. Educating people as a way to support change had long been quite a dismal strategy to elicit change (anti-alcohol and tobacco campaigns being good examples), although it is still supported by many rational minds.

Creating deep emotional experience is much more effective. Change management programs should probably aim at creating these emotional experiences as a way to support change rather than over-rationalizing what factors are at play to prevent change.

Creating emotional experiences can be tough to design in corporate environments, but are not impossible. They include leveraging on the connections between people and pushing people outside their comfort zone. They including pushing people to discomfort. Change management programs would need to include these elements but often do not for fear of rejection by the sponsors.

If you want real change, tackle it at an emotional level and make sure to create enough discomfort to elicit real transformation.

Share

How Negotiating is Different from Selling and Why they Should be Split

“When you are negotiating, you have to say no a lot. When you are selling, you are always trying to find the ‘yes’“, writes James Altucher in his book ‘Choose Yourself‘. He goes on to explain that it is difficult for the same individual to be good on the two roles.

negotiation is not the same as saleThis observation makes sense – negotiating means achieving a balanced agreement in which both parties’ interests are preserved and enhanced; it is quite different from the sale perspective which might be considered focused on bringing business – promising everything the client could want.

That is certainly an interesting perspective, because in most organizations I know, the sale people are also the ones driving as well the negotiations before the finalized contract is handed over to the rest of the organization for execution. This observation would mean splitting much more clearly than it is now, the sale function from the contract negotiation team, and make sure that the chief negotiator is not just trying to close the sale, but also has in mind other issues such as legal protection of the organization, actual feasibility of the agreement etc.

Who is facing the client in your organization? And how do you make sure you involve a negotiator before the sale is closed?

Share

How Joint Teamwork is Key to Success on the Long Term

“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships” – Michael Jordan. The star basketball player certainly experienced what he talks about.

winning-JordanOn the long term, team work and collective intelligence is the key to success. Even if on the short term, sheer talent or luck can decide the individual day.

I confirm this observation as well in large project teams. Effective teamwork, lack of a blame culture when there is an inevitable setback, that is what makes victory possible on the long term.

Even when there is a setback, concentrate on teamwork and getting clever about the situation. Let yourself not be beaten by bad luck or insufficient talent. You can still win on the long term, if you rely on the joint effort of the brains of your team.

Share

Want to Change the Culture? Change the Conversation!

“If you seek to change the culture (or a tiny tribal element of the culture), your timeframe and what you measure have to be focused on the conversation” – says Seth Godin.

Culture_conversationThis is quite a powerful statement that can apply to a variety of organizational situations – in particular when it comes to organizational transformations.

Changing the conversation means in particular:

  • changing the words (and what they convey)
  • changing the conversation’s topics and dynamics
  • changing the conversation’s participants

Looking at it this way, organizational transformations take another shape and seem less daunting.

Change the conversation. And you’ll change the world!

Inspiration for this post from Seth Godin’s blog post The tribe or the Person?

Share

How Holacracy responds to the challenges of the Fourth Revolution organization

Breaking news in January: Zappos, the famous online shoe store, gets away from traditional management organization to embrace Holacracy, a new organizational model without middle managers! This experiment is noted in many press articles as an experimental transformation.

holacracylogoHolacracy is an organizational framework for organizations with a strong purpose and that can be described as working in loose project teams, with distributed authority. This new experiment will be very interesting to follow, as Zappos has already a very strong, decentralized company culture that might make this model successful in that particular context. Read (or at least consider) the (very long and comprehensive) constitution of holacracy!

What is extremely interesting is how many companies do experiment more and more with new organizational models that promote self-responsibility of the employees and encourage creativity. At the same time, these models get rid of the middle-class of intermediate management, or at least sort-of (in holacracy there are still some people more in charge than others apparently: ‘partners’, ‘lead links’, ‘core members’, but it is not linked to direct power and authority).

Let’s observe this experiment and learn further how the organizations will change in the Collaborative Age!

Share

How to Better Understand the Hardware Movement Through a Novel: Read ‘Makers’ by Cory Doctorow

I had an excellent read with ‘Makers’ by Cory Doctorow. Cory Doctorow hovers generally somewhere between science-fiction author and defender of free collaborative work over internet. His fiction books are never too far from what could happen in our societies.

makers-cory-doctorowIn this semi-fiction book, Cory Doctorow imagines what will happen in the world when the capability of 3D-printing and of toying around with all the available electronics will allow decentralized goods production. This leads to severe battles between large companies that can be regarded as real institutions and a loose network of creators.

Of course as always Cory Doctorow tends to support the idea of networks of disinterested creators in the vein of open-source. Still this book explains very well what could happen in a few years’ time if the hardware movement continues its development up to the point of upending significant existing organizations.

Apart from its entertaining aspect I recommend this book to better understand the current transformations of the world. And amazingly this book was originally published in 2009!

I also strongly recommend “Little Brother” by Cory Doctorow, his best seller so far, about how the state could implement a deep surveillance bordering to a police state. Quite premonitory in view of the NSA scandals.

Share

Why You Should Better be a Big Fish in a Small Bowl

In his latest book David and Goliath, bestseller author Malcolm Gladwell makes a dramatic point about the fact that we’d better be a big fish in a small bowl than a small fish in a large bowl.

fish_jumping_bowlHe expands this thought through the story of people who choose their universities: “We spend a lot of time thinking about the ways that prestige and resources and belonging to elite institution makes us better off. We don’t spend enough time thinking about the ways in which those kinds of advantages limit out options“. And indeed his examples in the book show that people would probably have been better off in smaller, less known institutions than failing (relatively) in large and more elite institutions.

This thought can of course expand to many areas of life beyond education: the organization in which you work, and even the social community groups you join.

I do fully agree with this statement, which is also at the basis of the concept of niche when it comes to entrepreneurship: better be widely recognized in your specific niche than try to get known in a too wide and crowded segment!

When it comes to you, what choices can you make to be a bigger fish in a smaller bowl?

Share

Welcome to the Era of the Hardware Movement

The Hardware Movement – creating hardware in a decentralized, low risk and low series way, is starting to get some real grip. This post “The Long Tail of Hardware” exposes some latest thoughts on this topic.

self_replicating_printer
This printer is able to produce most of its own parts and replicate!

While funding for hardware startups does increase significantly, it has not yet reached the point where it becomes a global sensation and where former manufacturing institutions get in trouble from the competition. Still, 3D printing redefines our world quicker than we imagine. I have seen 3D printer in the offices of most of my engineering clients for prototyping. It seems that an ecosystem of garage hardware developers is developing. The tipping point could be close.

There are some legal implications of course, and open-source hardware is a concept that is maturing with a variety of licensing arrangements.

This movement needs to be watched as it may take the world by storm, although it might take a few additional years.

Share

Why we Need to Become Used to Failing

Following up from our previous post “Why We Should Stop Treating Our Organizations Like Machines“, let us consider for a moment the consequence of looking at organizations like living systems: Darwinian evolution.

frog catches prey
Another victim of natural evolution!

Darwin has shown that progress and adaptation in living systems come from the evolution of species, whereby the most adapted individuals transmit their genes more effectively than others. In actual terms, in nature, there are a lot of fatal failures. Those who don’t make it through their lifecycle can’t reproduce. Many adapted creatures don’t make it either, possibly through tough luck.

Natural evolution is all about lots of failures and only a few successes. It is tough. That is scary thought for our societies and for us as individuals. Yet successful companies of the internet know how to nurture many initiatives even if a majority will turn out to be failures. Many other organizations don’t know how to do that, leading to people not taking initiatives at all.

The only way to be successful in the Collaborative Age is to expect failure, or at least lack of success, in the majority of our endeavors. This requires a significant mind-shift. Are you ready for it?

Share