Category: Organization in the Collaborative Age

How Manufacturing Jobs Won’t Come Back, and We’d Better Look into Collaborative Age Occupations

There is an increasing number of papers, particularly in the US, on the fact that developed countries lose manufacturing jobs due to globalisation and trade rather than automation, such as this Quartz paper ‘The epic mistake about manufacturing that’s cost Americans millions of jobs‘. This is particularly trendy, of course, in view of the need to justify Donald Trump stance on the need for protectionism.

My view is that those papers raise an obsolete debate. They are missing the most important point: the economy transforms and the future is not in manufacturing jobs. We’ll never get them back. What’s the point in wishing those jobs to return? Of course in the previous century those were high value added, safe jobs for the middle class. But in the Collaborative Age, manufacturing jobs will become like what farm jobs have become in the Industrial Age: low value jobs.

The economy is changing, fast, and it might look like a “manufacturing job implosion” like the paper says. And this is certainly dramatic for many people. But those jobs won’t come back, even with some backward policies around protectionism. Their value is evaporating. Governments should better help people find new, high value added occupations into the Collaborative Age.

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How the Fourth Revolution Removes the Benefit of Industrial Scale Effect

This interesting paper in MITSloan review ‘The End of Scale‘ addresses the impact of the data revolution on the previous benefits of scale in industrial endeavors. “New technology-driven business models are undercutting the traditional advantages of economies of scale. But large companies still have strengths to exploit — if they move quickly“.

Industrial economy of scale

In the modern world a lot of services that were only available to large organisations are now available to all. Cloud-based applications are the latest, giving access for a modest fee to large technology platforms and services that previously could only be developed by large organisations for themselves. And scale becomes are drawback, as the organisation is much less flexible: “Business in the century ahead will be driven by economies of unscale, in which the traditional competitive advantages of size are turned on their head.”

Large organisations still have huge advantages, and in particular the financial resources that allow them to buy innovation and include them in their ecosystem. Some large organisations move fast to acquire lots of innovative small companies. However, whether their integration will be fruitful remains to be seen.

Anyway, the logic of scale has disappeared and small, innovative companies can make traditional models shake on their foundations.

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How the End of the Dilberts is coming

This is a striking expression from the head of the Bank of England, as reported by Bloomberg. He even mentions “the Massacre of the Dilberts“, meaning that many bureaucratic intermediate positions will be uprooted by the technology revolution.

Is bureaucracy going to disappear in the Collaborative Age? Probably not quite. Although it was a form of organisation made to manage large quantities of information at a time where there were no computers, bureaucracy will probably still exist even if many basic tasks will be carried out by computers and AI. Nevertheless, there is a question mark as to the many people currently employed by bureaucraties in intermediate jobs that may lose their job with the technology revolution. It may be that the issue would be even more acute in banks and in the finance industry, traditionally large bureaucraties.

The traditional office worker of the 20th century will have to re-invent himself or herself. On particular important job will be to deal with those cases which will be poorly treated by automated programs. But in general, middle-level jobs may disappear in proportion compared to low-level and higher-level jobs, causing a deep change in our societies.

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How the End of the Office and Meeting Rooms Looms

This is the end of the traditional office. Many people around me, even in management positions, have no assigned desk any more. They get available desks in an open space when they turn up in the morning. They are on the road anyway, or work remotely one or two days per week. I operate myself an office-less company (since we are mainly on the road to clients anyway).

Mitch Joel considers how meeting rooms are becoming obsolete too in his post ‘Walk it Off‘: “Laptops and connectivity have fundamentally changed the way we work and maybe this type of untethered work environment is also manifesting itself in how we physically think about the definition of a meeting. I know, that walking isn’t exactly new technology, but hearing that more and more business leaders are conducting meetings during walks feels like a new-ish trend to me.”

The trend is definitely against the traditional office and meeting room. Some more traditional organisations resists but the trend is definitely there. How do you fare? When will you transform your traditional office setup?

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How Developing Leadership in the Team is the Way to Success

Robin Sharma states: “The quickest way to build a superb business is to swiftly develop the leadership potential of every teammate.”

Developing an effective team is not just making sure the team works together as an integrated, effective manner. It is also to make sure that each team contributor behaves as a leader, and knows how to take leadership when a tricky, unexpected event occurs. This is particularly important in uncertain, complex situations

Developing the leadership capabilities of the people in the team is a major accountability point for the team leader. This means embracing some level of risk and failure as each team member goes through his leadership learning curve.

And as Jack Welsh writes, developing others becomes your prime responsibility when you make it to a management position.

When do you start developing leadership in your team?

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How the Most Productive Teams Are the Most Social

A very interesting book and very recommended as en eye-opener on the drawbacks of the increasing usage of algorithms in our societies is ‘Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy‘ by Cathy O’Neil.

She mentions a very interesting study: “A few years ago , MIT researchers analyzed the behavior of call center employees for Bank of America to find out why some teams were more productive than others. The researchers found , to their surprise , that the fastest and most efficient call center team was also the most social . These employees pooh – poohed the rules and gabbed much more than the others . And when all of the employees were encouraged to socialize more , call center productivity soared.” And algorithms to drive the work of people in the call center were not the prime factor for productivity.

In call centers like in complex project endeavors, I observe again and again that overall effectiveness and productivity is highly correlated with an effective, social team. How long will it take for this fact to permeate management culture?

Making sure a team develops into an effective team is the single best investment that can be done. It does not much, it requires leadership. When will this become mainstream?

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How I Believe That Building Slowly, On the Long Term, Is the Way

Following up on our post ‘How Entrepreneurship is Not a Rich Quick Scheme‘, I do believe in entrepreneurship building slowly, on the long term, the foundations of a new business, at least until there is such an adoption of their product that scaling becomes the main issue.

Like Richard Branson says, “there are no quick wins in business, it takes years to become an overnight success“. I am always amazed at how start-ups try to develop quicker than the natural development time of their product, boosted by substantial investments from rapacious investors.

It might be that I am excessively on the safe side, favoring minimum external investment and self-development (which is also a way to remain free), and that my ventures could benefit from some injection of cash to grow quicker. At the same time, I am a firm believer that new approaches and products need some time to get adopted and understood and that there is a limit to the speed of development, at least until they reach a stage of adoption where scaling becomes an issue.

I am interesting in building stuff of quality and that will be viable for the long term. It takes time and that’s normal. So let’s assume it and avoid again those ‘get rich’ scheme delusion.

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How Entrepreneurship is Not a Rich Quick Scheme

The entrepreneurial world is full of the delusion of the ‘quick success’ scheme, and many would-be entrepreneurs and investors are addicted to the ‘rich quick’ delusion. This creates behavioral problems and disappointed expectations.

Of course there are famous and visible examples of start-ups that have had stellar trajectories, but they represent less than a fraction of a percent of all the entrepreneurial initiatives.

In reality, entrepreneurship is tough hard work, week and week-ends, to build something new. It will take years to build something strong enough to be worth being re-sold. All of this in an uncertain context where it is not sure the organisation will still be around in a few months time.

And on the investor side, there is no guarantee that a start-up investment portfolio will be a rich quick scheme either. There will be more disappointments than successes, and disappointments will also happen earlier, with sometimes disastrous psychological consequences.

Entrepreneurship is not a rich quick scheme. It is another way to look at work with an objective to change the world. And in most cases, it will end in disappointment.

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How To Respond to Entrepreneurial Failure or Disillusion

As noted in a previous post ‘What Makes an Entrepreneur Different‘, embracing the work of doing things that might not work is an essential trait of the entrepreneur. That’s nice, but how should we respond when failure happens? When associates scream at each other seeing their investment disappear?

Failure does happen in the life an entrepreneur because we try things and statistically they won’t all work. And often at these occasions, the nice agreement with partners and shareholders suddenly becomes tense and difficult. It then requires a lot of emotional work to keep steady through the management of the tough moment.

Now that I have had some of these, I have decided to stick to some principles to drive my conduct in those moments. They are not applicable to everyone, but they are aligned with my values:

  • Anticipate failure to keep some reserves even when things don’t work. This means always accounting for the worst case, and making sure you react before all resources are exhausted to keep some margin for the response
  • Put people first. Find solutions for employees to keep their payroll running, even if that means for them doing other things than was planned. It helps being involved in a few other ventures to find some opportunities for them. If needed, find solutions outside through your network
  • Show commitment to finding a solution. Fleeing from the scene as an investor is not the solution. It might take years to recover from a business attempt that fails, but that is always possible. The priority is to stabilize the situation, so as to be able to assess it, learn from it, change what needs to be changed.
  • Demonstrate your commitment to the people and to stabilization if needed by putting in more money or buying out fleeing investors
  • Looking for a providential investor is not the solution. You will be in a weak negotiation position, who would invest in a failed venture, and you have other things to do (this does not apply, of course, to situations where the activity works but the start-up is short of cash runway).

There is always good learning and good stuff to learn from a failing company, and ways to recover by changing things. I believe it is important in any case to show a responsible behavior as an interested investor in particular to the people in the team who have often worked intensely during months.

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How to Overcome the Challenger Syndrome

In my consulting work I am mainly working to help market challengers become better, or tackle more complex and larger contracts by applying best practice approaches. Some of my clients aspire to become leaders in their market. But often they can’t break through the psychological ceiling they put on themselves: behaving like a leader is very different from behaving like a challenger.

As a market challenger, you promote your reactiveness, your flexibility to accommodate client wishes, the ability to respond to tricky out-of-the-normal situations. You show you deliver under the most challenging circumstances.

As a market leader, you promote that you deliver the golden standard, and you promote volume gains that are acquired through standardisation of ways of working or of products.

It is extremely difficult for a challenger that has promoted adaptability and flexibility for years to change behavior and enforce standardisation on its clients. This is a difficult psychological barrier. Only by changing behavior can one become a leader in its market. It takes vision and guts to behave like a market leader when one is still small with a limited market share. But that is what it takes to eventually become a market leader.

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How to Leverage Randomness for Effectiveness

Amazon warehouses – the backbone of its effectiveness – have from an early stage been built completely random: stuff is stored wherever there is space. The computer system tracks everything and the company has found that it is more effective that way – less time to find where to put things, and more change to have a set closer when picking it up. It also saves space and makes space utilisation more efficient.

This Quartz post explains it all: ‘Amazon: This company built one of the world’s most efficient warehouses by embracing chaos‘.

This story is quite similar to what happened with emails: while in the past I used to sort painstakingly my emails in various folders, I just leave them in a dump nowadays and use powerful search features to find what I need. Email sits there in a random order, and I use another way to access the information I need.

With the increased power of mobile computation and networks, more and more applications will pop up for intelligent randomness. There are still a lot of areas where we do take the effort to sort things by categories; it is useful to consider whether this still makes sense nowadays.

It is amazing how randomness can be leveraged for increased efficiency and effectiveness!

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How to Make a Team Effectively Achieve More for Global Teams

TEAM is a nice acronym for Together Everyone Achieved More. But as experience shows, this not always the case. What are the conditions for this to happen?

There are quite a few models of team development that show the different stages required before a team reaches full effectiveness. Nevertheless, the composition the team is also an essential ingredient.

I just want to share a few keywords that are essential from my perspective, in particular for global project teams that are becoming more and more frequent:

  • Diverse (in the way to approach problems and issues in particular)
  • Well-travelled (open to other cultures)
  • Co-located (or, if not possible, at least frequent face-to-face meetings)
  • Accepting difficult conversations
  • Respectful of each other and the outside world
  • Able to do emotional work and support each other in the face of adversity.

Do you have any more to suggest?

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