Organization in the Collaborative Age | The Fourth Revolution Blog

Stop disseminating the image of the factory worker as a representation of the economy!

Right now there are a lot of articles and communication in the media about employment and unemployment. I’m really struck how this topic is presented.

Did you remark how much this communication is reinforcing the “Industrial Age” view of employment? And, be it on TV or in the press, the images and videos associated are always showing factory workers.

For example the enclosed picture is just extracted from the New York Times. It was a paper about the Italian economy. But – the Italian economy is never going to recover through more factory employment!!

Let’s stop it! Factory workers are now becoming a minority. It’s not where the value lies, nor where the good paying jobs lie!

The media is still reinforcing the Industrial Age mindset of jobs being factory employment jobs. When will the media show people in a service environment, when will the media show K.E.E.N. at work without a tag mentioning how these are strange animals?

People are not cogs – a simple truth, so often forgotten!

Industrial Age Organization: People as cogs

In the Industrial Age, people were cogs. Manpower plans would be made, and the man-power adapted like the horse-power and the steam-power.

Today people are not cogs any more. Still many executives still forget that. Read this instructive post from the Harvard Business Review, people are not cogs.

Industrial Age culture was very much about considering people as replaceable production elements. Collaborative Age culture is about considering each person as a unique capability that might not be so easily replaced, in particular when it comes to team dynamics.

What do you observe in your organizations or environment? Do you see a trend toward the Collaborative Age view or do you feel the Industrial Age mindset is still very strong?

Soft power – the key to leadership in the Collaborative Age

“Soft power” is a concept which was invented by Joseph Nye in 1990 in the context of international relations.

Here is the definition of “soft power” by Joseph Nye – a definition given in a 2004 article of the Harvard Business Review:

To lead is to help a group define and achieve a common purpose. There are various types and levels of leadership, but all have in common a relationship with followers. Thus leadership and power are inextricably intertwined. I will argue below that many leadership skills such as creating a vision, communicating it, attracting and choosing able people, delegating, and forming coalitions depend upon what I call soft power.

What is astounding is that this definition applies equally to leadership in an organization and to leadership in the world.

For me, effective leadership beyond the Fourth Revolution is grounded in soft power. What do you think?

e-Choupal brings the Fourth Revolution in rural India

Have you heard about e-Choupal? Another example of the Fourth Revolution in action.

ITC, an Indian agricultural and food company, is revolutionizing rural India. By providing villages with access to a computer and internet, they give to the farmers unprecedented access to all sorts of useful information about weather, the market price of crops, best agricultural practices. By removing the traditional intermediaries they allow farmers to sell their crops a better price. They change considerably the social structure of rural India.

At the same time they create tremendous value for the farmers, ITC creates value for itself by selling its agricultural equipment, fertilizers and seeds, and getting much better quality products that it can use to manufacture world-standard food.

It also creates employment opportunity for the e-choupal village representative who handles the computer.

Summary: providing access to long distance interactive communication in rural india, a company changes the life of farmers, raises their revenue and at the same time creates significant value for itself.

The Fourth Revolution is indeed a Revolution. When do you start co-creating a joint future with your suppliers and customers, to unleash the value of the Collaborative Age for the benefit of all?

For more information on e-Choupal, ITC provides some nice high level explanations here and here. A long paper from the World Resource Institute explains the e-choupal system and its profitability.

Co-creation or the Fourth Revolution in action

I cannot recommend enough the book “The Power of Co-Creation” by Venkat Ramaswamy and Francis Gouillard.

The power of co-creation cover — The power of co-creation book cover

This book is a perfect illustration of the Fourth Revolution at work. It shows how companies and organizations are leveraging the power of co-creating with their customers, suppliers and other stakeholders to create unprecedented value. Value not just for them, but also for the entire community they create.

Furthermore the book is packed with case studies and examples from a variety of industries and types of organizations.

For those that would still doubt it just demonstrates that the future lies in open, fluid organizations that actively co-create with a community extending beyond their boundaries.

Read again part V of the Fourth Revolution Manifesto: the open, fluid organization!

When do you start co-creating the unprecedented value of the Collaborative Age?

A sure way to retain your employees

As knowledge and development is today a major part of the compensation package, then the one and only way to retain your employees is to give them more of: knowledge and development!

And you know what? That can be almost free if you take the time to develop them in the workplace.

Knowledge and development is part of the compensation package. If you don’t provide it you are not competitive and K.E.E.N. will leave. If you provide plenty of it you can pay less money.

And if you want to retain people, stop the stupid practice of the Industrial Age which was to cut all the training and development budgets as soon as the sea gets rough. Rather, increase it. Publicize that your company is a great place for development.

What’s more, if you leave people space for their own development the rewards to the organization will be plentiful and unexpected. The organization’s culture will be open and collaborative.

Today in the Fourth Revolution, giving more knowledge and personal development opportunities is the secret recipe to employees retention.

Knowledge and development is part of your compensation package

What is your current compensation package?

I’m sure you’ll answer with a number, plus maybe some comments on social security and additional perks of monetary value.

Well that’s not what is the most important in your compensation package.

In your job, do you get to develop your knowledge? Do you get to develop your networks? Are you developing yourself by being stretched beyond your comfort zone in a safe environment?

That’s also part of the compensation package. The K.E.E.N. expects to be able to develop his knowledge, her value, to be challenged.

Actually in the Fourth Revolution, beyond a minimum salary, knowledge and personal development should probably be the majority of your compensation package.

Look at your situation. Is that the case? Will you ask an increase… in knowledge and development? Act now. That’s urgent. Do it.

Modern collaboration tools… going against the Fourth Revolution!

There is an amusing contradiction.

We could think that all virtual collaboration tools should be bringing us toward the Fourth Revolution, into the Collaborative Age. On the contrary, some virtual tools do in fact keep us in the Industrial Age mindset.

distributing work to be done (old fashioned)

Most tools that have been developed to enhance long distance collaboration, in particular when it comes to project management, are in fact deeply ingrained into the Industrial mindset. Look at most tools for virtual collaboration: they enhance this tendency to breakdown the work into tasks and asking individuals to address them based on their competency.

This will never lead to the incredible creativity of people working together, closely, emotionally connected, toward a challenging goal. This makes real, effective teams an impossibility. This makes creating technological ruptures and devising astoundingly clever ideas completely impossible.

Amazingly, a vast array of virtual tools continue to propagate the Industrial Age mindset. When will it stop? When will we understand that these tools are obsolete when it comes to creating the real value of the Fourth Revolution?

How to measure the degree of bureaucracy of your organization

How bureaucratic is your organization?

Stack of procedures — bureaucracy at work

Here is the ultimate test.

It’s fairly simple.

It’s based on the fact that bureaucracy is the triumph of the means over the end.

So, take the objectives of your organizations, of your department, or your personal objectives in the organization. What proportion of these objectives are about producing means, for keeping busy (for example, write a policy about… write 3 procedures about… produce one press release every so and so…)

Conversely, what proportion is about real results that matter to other people (clients, stakeholders). Like: increase satisfaction level by so many %, deliver under 3 days…

The proportion of objectives related to means is a good measure of how bureaucratic your organization is. Experience shows that it is generally fairly consistent across the organization, except maybe at the top.

Move! Make sure most of your own objectives are result-driven and that you’re left the choice of the means. And you know what? It’s much more fun!

Keep out of the dinosaur area

That’s probably the sign we should put on the fence of the large Industrial Age companies.

For two reasons.

One, you’d better keep out because that’s not going to be fun when they will be overwhelmed by the value generated by the Fourth Revolution. They will resist and fight and destroy what’s too close.

Second, if there is a fence around these organizations, for sure they are not open organizations. And they cannot benefit from the value of collaboration.

So keep out of the dinosaur area. They’re going to be wiped out. The more adaptable and flexible will prevail.

Talent is overrated

I just read a great book: Talent is overrated, by Geoff Colvin.

It explains where the greatest achievers find the source of their talent. And that’s not from some innate capability or just sheer hard work.

Geoff Colvin identifies the concept of deliberate practice as the key to sustained excellence. Deliberate practice is hard work, because it is still required to go through thousand of hours of practice. But it is more than that:

deliberate practice follows a program specifically designed to improve performance by working on what is difficult
deliberate practice is repeated a lot
feedback on the results is continuously available
it is demanding mentally and is not much fun

So it is not just the hours of practice that count. It is also how practice is focused on improvement, it requires feedback to be constantly available. It generally requires somebody else to design the practice program and give the feedback.

coaching in action — Even great sportspeople need a coach for deliberate practice

It is quite straightforward to understand this in the field of sports. What about the field of leadership in an organization? How often do you stretch yourself, repeat difficult actions, and do you get continuous feedback? Do you have a coach to design and force you through the process?

Yet without these elements, excellence will be impossible to reach.

Think about it. Design a deliberate practice program to become the best in what you want to do. That’s worth it.

What’s a resume for?

The resume is an outdated concept.

It is at most, just one way to communicate one’s brand. Today it is just one way amongst many others.

Prospective employers will scrutinize your LinkedIn, Facebook and other Internet-based information. They will google you. The way you communicate your brand overall is more important than your resume.

But then, why do you want to be in a situation where employers scrutinize you? Where you put your bets in how the prospective employer slept last night?

You should already have marketed yourself in your social and professional network, so that they say: I have this problem, get me this guy, I know he knows what to do.

And then nobody should ask you for your resume.

That’s it: you’ll know you are successful in your personal branding when nobody will ask you for your resume any more.

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