Organization in the Collaborative Age | The Fourth Revolution Blog

A glimpse into the developing world of online freelancing

ODesk, one of the online marketplaces for freelancers, released an interesting figure of the ‘long tail’ of freelancers, based on its database of job openings vs skills.

What this figure shows is that although the web-related specialties obviously dominate, a number of other skills are now visible on these marketplaces. What’s even more interesting is the emergence of more specialties including Engineering and Architectural Design.

An other interesting source of information on the freelance market is the ‘state of the freelance‘ study by Elance (an other freelance market place) in Sept 2012. Some of the data needs to be considered with caution as it is somewhat an infomercial, but there are some interesting observations:

lots of on-line freelance (38%) are from generation X, and not all are millenials!
most online freelance are full-time
overall, all these freelance marketplaces see a healthy grow in jobs and freelance revenue transiting.

It will be interesting to see how much this trend will spread in the next few years. While the number of skills will expand, my prediction and experience is that online freelancing is somewhat limited to simple tasks and cannot replace the need to organize a project team, which will remain the key competence, in particular if it comes to organize a project team of online freelancers!

More on the figure data origin and interpretation on the ODesk blog.

How Career Risk Management is about Enhancing Your Brand

Career risk mitigation lies entirely in developing your own personal Brand.

As I was lately discussing career management with an acquaintance employed by an international company that just decided to shrink the local office, the conversation came upon career risk management.

When you work as a full-time employee and devote yourself 100% to your employer, your risk is to be made redundant and lose your entire income. In today’s world, showing fantastic abilities and creating great value for your employer might not be sufficient to ensure a total risk mitigation – things might happen at the other end of the world which you can’t do anything about and affect your position independently of your competencies and skills.

There is only one thing you should do to mitigate this risk: develop your Brand and your visibility continuously. Make yourself visible to the outside world, and develop your brand in your industry and beyond. Have references of publications you can show. Ensure that a Google search on your name will yield fantastic references.

It might not be natural for an employee, but think about it: the time is past where organizations were emotional about you as an employee. You need to be ready to walk away or to be pushed through the door any time. Your Brand will shield you. Even as an employee, you need to take time and effort to brand yourself and develop it. If you present it well, your employer will even be grateful of your increased visibility which will shine (temporarily) upon them.

What’s your brand? What are you doing to develop it?

Another great picture from Hugh MacLeod at gapingvoid.com!

Why Risk Management is Really about Long-Term Survival

Age old wisdom: In investing and in life in general, avoiding fatal situations that kill us generally means that we can’t strive for the best possible returns. In other words, trying to follow the best strategies giving the highest returns can be seductive but generally also entails fatal risks – great on the short term but unsustainable on the long term!

Jared Diamond just published a new book, ‘The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies’, in which he describes in details those cultural traits of traditional societies that we should maybe consider re-introducing in our modern world.

age-old farmer wisdom — Do you follow the age-old wisdom of having numerous small plots of value-creation?

In the field of risk management, he reminds us of age-old practices of hunter-gatherers and farmers, that evolved through time for their resilience. For example, traditional farmers generally farm a large number of different small plots (7 to 15 depending on the cultures) in different areas. This is clearly sub-optimal in terms of work, effort and yield. Yet it is the strategy that survived generations because it is the only strategy that ensures survival: diversity in location of the land plots means that even the worst years, some plots of land will give some returns and the farmer’s family will not starve. The current strategy of large fields and unique crops can only work in a developed system involving money where food can be bought in the case of a poor crop.

We are attracted by the stars that produce temporarily incredible returns on investment, that have incredible short-term success. We only forget that it always comes with substantial risks including bankruptcy or starving.

Success on the long term is about survival, and if possible comfortable survival; not great spikes of success followed by abysmal failures. Remember this the next time you’ll feel some hint of envy looking at some other young overnight success. It is defined by luck and in most instances, it is just the premise of a fatal evolution the other way.

Success is just about survival.

Why Reserves are Key to Face Uncertainty

It is a well known fact in military command that Reserves are the key to success in the uncertain world of battle. As exposed by General Vincent Desportes in his book “Decider dans l’Incertitude” (in French), an excellent book about decision-making in uncertain conditions, reserves are the main tool to manage uncertainty.

empty fuel gauge — How often do you run without reserves? Is that wise?

The higher the uncertainty, the more courage the commanding officer must have in increasing the size of its reserves. According to Churchill, engagement of the reserve resources is indeed the utmost responsibility of the one in command (and it often makes the decision in battle).

Jim Collins and Morten Hansen, in the book “Great by Choice“, come to the same conclusion: those organizations that thrive on the long term have a far more conservative view on balance sheet and establishment of financial reserves. They don’t necessarily seek the just-in-time; they don’t over-borrow; they don’t extend themselves too thin, even if they find an opportunity to do so. They make sure they are resilient to uncertainty.

Individually and in our organizations, reserves are important. Even if it means some loss of efficiency, they can make the decision when it comes to the realization of specific, unpredictable situations. Not to mention that reserves gives peace of mind when facing the usual ups and downs. Having some reserves is an important approach I also use in my small start-up even in growth mode.

What about you? Do you have enough reserves to face uncertainty? What about your organization? What will you do about it?

How a Paradigm Shift is Happening in Management

Forbes maintains an interesting column by Steve Denning about the paradigm shift in management.

Steve Denning believes that there is a deep change happening right now, from a shareholder-driven organization towards a customer-centered organization (read: ‘Don’t Diss The Paradigm Shift In Management: It’s Happening!’). According to him, this will require change from a bureaucratic organization towards new management models that are more flexible, agile, and customer-focused. As readers of this blog you’ll know I even believe the change is much more fundamental as it is related to customer collaboration, nevertheless Steve Denning’s view is quite useful for organizations nowadays.

As with all paradigm shifts it will be tough and take time – read his excellent column comparing that change to the Copernican revolution – ‘Why The Paradigm Shift In Management Is So Difficult‘. This is entirely applicable to the Fourth Revolution changes.

A paradigm shift is certainly happening, that will take time to be realized by all those that are still in the Industrial Age mindset. Be a Fourth Revolution precursor and see how the new approach of business has the power to change the world!

How Flexibility is Essential in Confronting Uncertainty

It is amazing how the military problem of winning battle is close to the problems we face in our daily activities. Contrary to what most people think, successful armies are war are not organizations that are strictly centralized and hierarchical and wait for detailed orders to act.

Napoleon at war — Napoleon, a leader of the Collaborative Age? His behavior in battle was deeply delegative and collaborative!

History has shown repeatedly that battle is a case of unpredictability, where battle is conducted in a deep ‘fog’. Even our modern technologies do not manage to lift it, because it is all about predicting what happens in the head of the adversary. Periodically some approaches to battle or brazen Generals tend to believe uncertainty and chance can be reduced and believe that technology or intelligence should drive action; these approaches have led to the worst disasters of military history.

In military tradition, the most successful generals seem to have been those that have understood that they had to account for a large uncertainty. To do that, they only give the general direction and vision and let their subordinates take all the necessary initiatives based on what is happening in the field. Control by the general in command is thus not on the detail but only on the overall situation. This allows the necessary flexibility – exploiting opportunities where they appear and managing the unexpected where it occurs. This principle of delegation was typical of Napoleon, and inspired many successful armies in the next two centuries.

Flexibility of the organization and leadership at all levels have thus been for a long time the approach of successful armies.

How can we apply these teachings to our everyday life? We can’t expect to control everything that happens, because it depends on events and decisions by others, beyond our control. We need to give responsibility to those in the action, support them in terms of resources, and align them with a simple-to-understand vision leveraging on the organizational culture. We need to expect the unexpected and keep an eye on the general direction.

Reference made to General Vincent Desportes’s book “Decider dans l’Incertitude” (in French), an excellent book about decision-making in uncertain conditions.

How our decision-making is everything but rational

I’d like to share high recommendations for the book “The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk Taking, Gut Feelings and the Biology of Boom and Bust” by John Coates. This author is a former trader turned neuro-scientist and he explains how stress and hormones drive the behavior of traders, leading to irrational exuberance and well as irrational panic on the markets.

The interesting side of this book is how our physiology is influencing our decision-making, and how it can be contagious in a group. The book describes in minute detail the working of our nervous and hormonal system when we are faced with the stress of modern life.

If there is a proof that the rational approach of economists and market theorists can only be wrong, it is this book. In effect our primitive brain happens to drive a lot more of our actions than what we’d like to believe – and thus creates irrational behaviors that can have far-flung impact on our economy and our lives.

Read this amazing book to understand to which extend what we believe are our choices are in fact dictated by our deeper, primitive nature; how our physiology influences deeply our behavior and choices – and how seldom in fact our rational, evolved brain intervenes in our decision-making.

Welcome to the world beyond the rationalism of the Industrial Age.

Why Face-to-Face Meeting Will Not Become Obsolete Soon!

Recently, I have been working for a client who has deployed an advanced, high definition video-conference technique called Telepresence. It tries to simulate talking to people on the other side of the table.

I was amazed when a few weeks later I happened to meet physically with a person I had only seen before in video-conference and he announced we had already met. I was astonished. I had seen him, of course, but did I really “meet” him when I participated to this video-conference? I did not feel so.

Because a physical encounter involves much more than a video encounter – touching, reacting in a common environment, different perspectives on the person, a closer insight into his whole body language. Even in a few minutes you know more about the person than after 3h of videoconference! I also realize it is easier for me recognize people I have met physically than people I have only seen through video-conferencing.

The amount of data from a physical encounter with a person is still much higher than what technology can convey. Establishing a relationship at the emotional level can only happen with face-to-face encounters. And emotional connections are essential to work as an effective team. This is why I constantly recommend, in particular in the case of remote teams, to have teambuilding sessions involving most of the team, to build that emotional connection. Later remote work is then facilitated by the already established connection.

Face-to-face physical encounters with new people will always remain an essential need. Worldwide travel trends are not going to stop soon.

Why a tight co-located core is still required in organizations

Following on our post Why Face-to-Face Relationships Are Still Essential to a Creativity Culture, we need to recognize that some successful collaborative endeavors have flourished across continents in the past few years, using the tools of the Fourth Revolution: Linux, the Anonymous, Wikileaks, to name a few. Some high-tech companies like the acclaimed software company 37signals leverages a worldwide community of programmers, and it has become common practice to hire remote contractors anywhere in the world.

What is then the difference between those organizations which can work collaboratively and remotely, and those that require co-location to create the appropriate context for creating their value?

The actual difference is between the core of the organization and the collaborators. The core of the organization always requires tight collaboration, that always leads to co-location and face-to-face relationship. It is the only way to create effective teams that create incredible stuff. And when one looks at the great examples of remote collaboration, there is always a co-located core of the organization.

Around this core it is possible to leverage a more or less tightly knit network of (occasional or permanent) remote collaborators.

The size of the core depends on the activity, the type of project and the endeavor. Sometimes even it can remain at the level of one or two individuals for simple and straightforward creations. This is why it looks like sometimes it is pure remote collaboration.

The incredible value is always created in a co-located core of the organization. Where is your core?

Why Face-to-Face Relationships Are Still Essential to a Creativity Culture

When Marissa Meyer, the new CEO of Yahoo, banned full-time work from home last February she ignited a lot of criticism.

(see for example the Guardian’s article “Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s work-from-home memo is from bygone era“).

At the same time Apple is building a 3 billion dollars’ (now gone up to 5 billion dollars’) specially thought headquarters to lodge their employees and promote maximum collaboration.

Even with social networking and all these tools that make long distance interactive communication so present in our lives, does tele-working allow the right culture and collaboration to develop?

New Apple Headquarters — The new Apple headquarters: like many creative companies, Apple invests heavily in physical infrastructure to enhance collaboration

In the case of large companies like Yahoo and Apple, or even Facebook, it does not seem to work. Face-to-face collaboration, nurturing chance physical encounters on a campus seem to be the best way to foster creativity and productivity from collaboration. In the case of Yahoo, after one week of shock, papers started to appear showing that possibly, taking this decision was the only way to allow a new Yahoo culture to develop and flourish (see for example the paper “Marissa Mayer Got It Right — You Can’t Fix A Broken Culture When People Aren’t In The Office“).

The power of face-to-face relationships, their intensity and the unconscious exchanges that occur, are still central to collaboration. Or are they? In the next few posts we will explore the conditions in which collaboration can still happen remotely.

How 3D-Printing Is Redefining our World Quicker than We Imagine

You will not have missed a few events that shook the news in the past few weeks and which are related to 3D printing, a new Fourth Revolution manufacturing technology (refer to our post on POD (print-on-demand) and 3-D printing):

the issues around 3D printing of guns and the availability of those drawings on the net to anyone, which by-passes all the weapons-control regulations that were based on conventional manufacturing traceability – see for example an Australian reaction here,
the fantastic rescue of a toddler with an artificial trachea that was 3D printed and will dissolve itself progressively as tissue will build around it (more on this here, here and here; the technique is not really new but always impressive: re-view also this great TED talk mentioned in our post Manufacturing Revolution reloaded: 3D printing of human organs is real!)

Like every new invention we can see here, almost at the same time, the two sides of it – the most beautiful at the same time as the ugly, destructive side.

But for the moment, is there a better proof that this new distributed manufacturing technology starts to shake the world as Chris Anderson predicts in his latest “Makers” book?

Remember the time where computers were huge expensive machines and people thought the personal computer would never happen and never be found useful? If you are working in a manufacturing industry, you’d better beware of what is going to happen as manufacturing becomes personal and decentralized!

How humans intervene in Internet’s workings

“There has been a shift in our thinking,” said Scott Huffman, an engineering director in charge of search quality at Google. “A part of our resources are now more human curated.”

Brain in a computer — Which is really the brain of internet: humans or chips?

This is an except of an interesting paper, Computer Algorithms Rely Increasingly on Human Helpers. Where you discover that humans are increasingly being used to increase the relevance of some choices where algorithms struggle.

According to the paper, there would be an increasing trend in putting humans at the core of certain processes to enhance them. Is that a temporary fix until new algorithms appear that would be better or is it a durable trend? Actually there seems to be two types of human intervention:

those that do systematic data churning like the Facebook and Google Indian offices that administer part of the services – they will be replaced someday by a machine (like we had mentioned in our post on Google Maps, there are armies of people behind many of the internet services we are using daily, that link or correct information that machines cannot link or understand properly.)
those that work to improve the machine (algorithms), which are those mainly described in the paper and which number will remain steady or increase in time.

Internet is an ever complex machine that needs engineers and technicians to improve the tools. When it comes to the borders of human nature and psychology, humans will remain for long at the core of the design of the machine.

Of course, the internet algorithms are still designed by humans. And as requirements become finer and finer, edging to psychology, humans are still indispensable, with an ever higher level of knowledge. And humans will remain so. Machines are not yet fully in charge!

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