Organization in the Collaborative Age | The Fourth Revolution Blog

Why We Should Stop Treating Our Organizations Like Machines

“These days, a different ideal for organizations is surfacing. We want organizations to be adaptive, flexible, self-renewing, resilient, learning, intelligent – attributes found only in living systems. The tension of our times is that we want our organizations to behave as living systems, but we only know how to treat them as machines” says Margaret Wheatley.

fourmis de feu — Those Amazon basin ants self-organize as floating rafts to survive the periodic tropical inundations. A powerful example of collaborative organization in an unpredictable environment.

This is an absolutely powerful way to expose the tension that increases nowadays between the Industrial Age’s process-driven, “machine-like” organization and the Collaborative Age’s network that serves to produce value.

Comparing the Collaborative organization to a living system is clearly spot on. It is an ecosystem that achieves results through temporary collaboration, creativity through serendipity and random encounters.

Alas, the mechanistic view of organization is still very present. This creates huge waste and low satisfaction of those who participate in these organizations. This tension will increase in the next few years in all traditional organizations until it will resolve either through a crisis or through a transformation.

And you, are you ready to consider organizations as living systems?

Hat tip to Valeria Maltoni for the quote and Robert Branche for the image (on the cover of his new book, “les Radeaux de Feu“).

How Crowdfunding Demonstrates the Power of the Long Tail

Kickstarter, a leading crowdfunding site, released very interesting statistics about the crowdfunding activities it supports. On this site, 1 billion dollars of funding will be reached early 2014 with more than 5 million total backers!

What is particularly interesting is that the long tail, so typical of the Fourth Revolution, is at work everywhere: in the distribution of the value of successful projects (75% of projects have a value of less than 10,000$), in the distribution of the number of projects backed by backer (71% only backed a single project and this represents a stunning 40% of the total amounts spent).

This serves to confirm that crowdfunding does leverages the contribution of individuals in a fully distributed manner. As the US federal government and Security Exchange Commission is finalizing regulations that will allow companies to be funded by crowdfunding within certain limits (read this excellent article on the subject, “The promise and perils of equity crowdfunding“), we do observe a definite shift in the capability of individuals to influence projects and even companies on a global level and a decisive manner.

This is a definite shift in the economical power of our societies. Watch for the creative stuff that will ensue!

How to Overcome the Stockholm Syndrome of Traditional Employment

Following on our blog “What is so Awful About the Disappearance of Hierarchy?“, and the fact that many people feel attached to traditional hierarchical organizations as a kind of comfort anchor, I find that an interesting phenomenon to prompt thinking is the “Stockholm Syndrome”.

This psychological syndrome appears after hostage-taking situations, where the hostage might have developed a comfort feeling from small attentions the hostage taker might have had for him/ her. In spite of an overall terrible and violent picture of an hostage situation, it happens that a very strong emotional connection develops, where the hostage defends the hostage-taker. The hostage feels like the hostage-taker cares, whereas this is absolutely not the case.

It might be a stretch, but would it not be a similar case regarding the attachment of many people to traditional, hierarchical organizations? Employees are the first to complain loudly how they feel mistreated, poorly recognized, and how work is a burden; and at the same time, presented with alternative types of organization, they defend the traditional hierarchy because of the comfort provided and the small attentions given from time to time (gifts, bonuses and other recognition material).

We know when we are taken hostage in everyday life when we feel vulnerable, powerless and at the mercy of other people. Don’t let it happen to you even within normal employment: find your freedom space, including financially, and don’t feel at the mercy of your employer. And avoid absolutely the Stockholm syndrome!

What is so Awful About the Disappearance of Hierarchy?

As I was giving a conference in Singapore I talked about how the Fourth Revolution will certainly lead to the disappearance of traditional hierarchy in organization.

The reason is that Industrial Age hierarchy was justified by the scarce and expensive communication capabilities. This resulted in the pyramidal organization, which minimizes the number of links between individuals. Today with cheap and plentiful communication, organizations should become much flatter and networked.

Anyway I must have touched a ‘hot button’ because my remark did spur a lot of questions. Attendees seemed terrified by the perspective of the disappearance of traditional hierarchy. It might be because it gives some comfort and single point of reference (the boss) which makes it a more comfortable situation to be in compared to being in the midst of a network with uncertainty as to what needs to be done and how. Still some organizations do manage to be successful that operate in a fully non-hierarchical manner (see the blog post on the company Valve).

Removing hierarchy requires each of us to determine its objectives and be self-directed when it comes to what needs to be done. I fully understand that proposition might look scary to those used to work in a traditional environment. Still isn’t it an interesting value proposition that includes more freedom? Is it worth it? Can everyone adapt to this new organization? What do you think?

How to Overcome the Struggles of Unstructured Collaborative Organizations

There has been lately some noise about the transformations of the organization behind Wikipedia, and in particular how the ecosystem of volunteers is changing dramatically, and not necessarily for the best – shrinking considerably, becoming more closed, more conservative and defensive of established positions.

An excellent article on the matter – although a bit long – appeared in the MIT technology review: ‘ The Decline of Wikipedia‘.

Wikipedia can be considered as an interesting experiment of unstructured organizations that will be increasingly typical of the Collaboration Age. And the way the Wikipedia foundation reacts to the challenge – by changing the software platform that supports this collaboration in a way that conforms to its goals and interests – is an interesting management response to this problem. Instead of dealing with people in the organization, they act on the very platform that supports their activity!

All in all, in spite of all the issues described in the recent studies on the Wikipedia phenomenon, it seems more that Wikipedia is maturing as an organization rather than a fundamental crisis. Faced with increased bureaucracy it needs to reinvent itself to achieve a stable and sustainable model. And it still needs, and will continuously need, a lot of editing as the cartoon on the left suggests!

Let’s continue to watch Wikipedia and how it faces its challenges to learn how to make the self-organizing communities of the Collaborative Age work better.

How to Implement and Use an Internal Social Network in Organizations

For those of you faithful followers of the Fourth Revolution, you will remember that one of the forces that pushed me in that direction was to consider how internal social networks could release the creativity and productivity in organizations.

spider web network — Where is your organization’s network?

Since 2010, the development of effective internal networks has been slower than I would have expected. Resistance to internal social networks has been stronger than expected. Professional communities tend to meet on public networks. Still, silently and in the background, it happens. And small and large companies that do implement them see a great difference in how they operate.

This excellent post on Social Media Explorer, ‘using an internal social network to solve real business problems‘, provides a good summary of what can be achieved with internal social networks. The entire piece is very interesting, I would just like to highlight this quote:

“Every company has a wealth of talent and knowledge internally that goes untapped. Just imagine for a second that employees were able to propose projects they want to work on and what talents they could bring to a cross-functional team.”

Indeed that would be a great business opportunity and would release organizations from the current great waste of talent.

When, at last, will you implement an internal social network to boost your business?

How We Moved from Analytic to Appreciative Thinking

Peter Block in his book “Flawless Consulting” – one of the bibles on consulting – makes the point that between the different editions of the book which spanned from the early 1990’s to the 2010’s, the following evolution happened in consulting – and more generally in problem solving:

Appreciative Improvement at work: the 4D. Starting from what works instead of from the problem

in the 1990’s (and before) it was all analytically driven
in the 2000’s it was about “whole group participation”, i.e. getting groups of people transverse to the organization and representative of all levels defining and implementing solutions (in a very Total Quality Manner)
in the 2010’s it is about “positive deviance” – also called appreciative inquiry, i.e. finding those few areas which work much better (instead of focusing on the problem) and figuring out what is making the difference. This has spread in coaching as well as more general solution finding and implementation.

This is an excellent summary of how we have moved into the Fourth Revolution: from the analytic perspective of the Industrial Age into increased collaboration and finally into creative development of isolated successes.

In what stage is your organization and life at the moment? What about moving into appreciative improvements?

Culture Is The Way We Do Things Around Here When No-One Is Looking

This is a great definition given by Des Power, the HSEQ director of one of my clients’, during a workshop. I love it.

It just reminds us that culture is complex, difficult, but that it is all about behavior and in particular, behavior when no-one is looking.

Re-read our post on a great sample of applied Fourth Revolution culture for a refresher on how that can be achieved in advanced organizations!

Hat tip to Des Power and Hugh MacLeod for the illustration

It’s not about Work-Life Balance, it’s about Work-Life Integration

This is a quote of Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO, as related by Hugh McLeod. Hugh continues: “Work and personal life seems to meld together in a way that can be either enhancing or debilitating – and it is up to each person to structure what works in their life and in ways that allow them to be their best in work and at home. What is interesting is that this is a new phenomenon, borne out of technology.”

Work-Life balance is a typical concept stemming from a time where work and life were happening in different environments, separated by the barrier of commuting. This geographical border has now been abolished by technology. Work has already heavily invaded our private home, and life increasingly (but with more difficulties due to old habits) invades a bit our work.

Visionaries try to develop new spaces where life and work could co-exist harmoniously (this seems to be one of the objectives of Tony Hsieh’s Las Vegas downtown project that allies urban and social experiment).

We need to stop these obsolete and pervading considerations about work-life balance and concentrate on how we can integrate these two activities. In fact, they are not antagonistic but in synergy and we need to recognize that better. Once we look at it that way, a world of possibilities opens.

What about you? What do you see when you consider that work and life are in fact integrated and will become ever more integrated?

Re-imagining Work – Fourth Revolution applied (Video)

This excellent video from RSA Animate features Dave Coplin, Chief Envisioning Officer at Microsoft, explaining the future of Work – how it shifts with the digital revolution.

This video gives another perspective on the fact that Work as we were envisioning it in the Industrial Age is going to be deeply transformed by the Fourth Revolution: “The ways we live our working life today has become outdated“. And, it mentions how the concept of productivity is obsolete – not only obsolete – “it is fast becoming the problem“. The video also presents some interesting considerations on office space!

Plus, you’ll really enjoy the great illustrations as usual with RSA talks!

If you can’t see the video, follow this link.

Hat tip to Valeria Maltoni for this nugget. In her post she adds more comments on how she sees the future of work – in particular, that “One thing is for sure, a culture of openness remains scary for most organizations, as well as the people who work in them.” Interesting thought!

The Job of a Leader is to Grow More Leaders

It is the first point of Robin Sharma’s ‘the top 10 things amazing leader do‘ post.

Seeing the mighty oak in the acorn — As a leader, do you recognize the mighty oaks in the acorns around you?

Actually this is so true that I deem leaders who fail to groom successors and can’t pass on their steering wheel utter failures at leaders. Even if their organization had been successful under their helm.

What serves to deliver great results if they can’t be sustained after you are gone? When you have an unfortunate accident? It is just so true that one of the prime roles of leaders is to develop more leaders. And it is something you can see and touch readily in organizations. It is never a secret to know if the leader is coaching and mentoring others to grow and become successful as leaders. This practice, when it exists, pervades an entire organization.

It remains even more so in the Fourth Revolution, within the smaller core of organizations. At its core, movement leadership only does its job if it grooms future leaders. If the leader knows to step aside to leave younger generations take over in time.

Be a leader. Grow leaders!

How to create disruption for billions in 18 months

Disruption happens ever more quickly. According to this excellent post on Asymco, Android is the third platform to reach 1 billion users.

Only that according to the graph, Android took 1.5 years to get there; Facebook took 3 years and Windows (two decades ago) probably something like 5 years.

1 billion user is planet-wide disruption. And today it only takes a few month for successful ecosystems to disrupt the planet and change our habits.

Do you remember the first version of the iPhone went on sale mid-2007? 6 years ago ONLY?

Food for thought.

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