When do you start measuring yourself in terms of effectiveness?

Management means efficiency. Doing the things right. With minimum effort, waste. With maximum productivity. With less people. With less thoughts. With more procedures.
Efficiency was the thing of the Industrial Age. Produce more commodities for less. Minimize waste, increase quality.
Efficiency is the thing of the corporation.

Leadership means effectiveness. Doing the right thing. Create. Looking at the world, overcoming the fear, and doing it. Contribute to the world. Because it counts.
Effectiveness is the thing of the Collaborative Age. Maybe a computer programmer will only contribute once five lines of code to an open source software but his contribution will be decisive.

Effectiveness is the thing of the K.E.E.N, nomad between projects.

When do you stop measuring yourself in terms of efficiency? When do you start measuring yourself in terms of effectiveness, how you contribute to the world?

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How can an organization mobilize the power of the ‘long tail’?

We now know that the ‘long tail’ is an extremely valuable resource.

The long tail is this large set of followers that only contribute occasionally. The thing is, because they are many, the sum of their contributions is significant.

Wikipedia is a typical product of the long tail. Linux and other open source software also.

The successful organization today will know how to create and maintain a network of followers and supporters, and draw on their creativity and insights.

How to we do that in traditional business? Experiments have just started. Some ingredients are already identified.
The organization must have a strong purpose to bring something to the world (not just making money!) to enthuse the supporters and followers. The organization must give freely to the world in order to be able to receive. The organization must foster a tribe with a distinctive sense of belonging.

Not so many traditional organizations know how to give out for free. Maybe they should start doing that. Then, inevitably, return will follow, if they are flexible enough to receive it.
funny long tail
Even dinosaurs had long tails. Hope is not lost for old-fashioned dinosaurian companies of another age! But most of them will disappear in the tremendous transformation to come.

When do your organization start giving out for free and create a tribe?

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The organization needs to open itself

The organization of the Industrial Age was closed. Only insiders were allowed. Everything else was outside, in a dangerous world. The organization was a secret to be protected. External communication was carefully filtered.

The successful Collaborative Age organization will be open. It will need to be, because by doing so it can use ‘the long tail’: the suite of passionate, part-time supporters and followers that would be too expensive to maintain inside the organization but that might bring decisive a contribution.

organization in the Collaborative Age

Successful organizations today maintain a link and exchange with a wide network of supporters. Decisive improvements to Open source software are brought by users that maybe will do one single contribution in their life.

The successful organization of the Collaborative Age will use to the fullest the power of the long tail, the power of collaboration.

Organizations that will stay closed will be progressively overwhelmed by open organizations. The value and dynamism of collaboration will just dwarf them.

When do you open your organization?

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Why is personal purpose so important in the Collaborative world

In the Agricultural Age, purpose was often defined by society. You did was you were born to do.
In the Industrial Age, purpose was often defined by the organization. You did what the Corporation thought what was good for you.

In the Collaborative Age, nobody tells you anything. You choose in what direction you want to go. Personal direction and purpose is needed.

purposePurpose is closely linked to enthusiasm and motivation. Enthusiasm and motivation are central for accomplishment and success. Hence, personal purpose is the centerpiece of accomplishment.

Finding one’s purpose is one of the most difficult endeavors. Actually one cannot understand one’s purpose but on his last breath. As Richard Bach, a famous contemporary US writer says: “Here is a test to find whether your mission in life is finished: if you are alive, it isn’t”. Only at this point can life make sense.

We can still define intermediate objectives and temporary purposes that lead us on the way of our life. How do we do that ? Let’s listen to ancient wisdom:
“Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love” – Rumi, Persian poet, 13th century.
Whatever makes your heart beat, your thoughts develop enthusiastically, that can be a part of your purpose, and something worthwhile to aim into.

When do you start defining your present purpose?

When do you start living in accordance with your present purpose?

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Intellectual property will have to be deeply reviewed

Intellectual property is an invention of the Industrial Revolution.

copyright sign
It is a system aimed to promote creativity and publication of ideas, against a temporary monopoly on the usage of the invention.

Intellectual property is a very static protection. It works, but for incremental inventions.

It does not work for inventions that create a rupture. Patents were an impediment to the development of aircrafts and cars at the beginning of the 20th century. Ford had to fight against patent holders for the ‘automobile’ that wanted to keep the price of cars high.

There is an other way to take advantage of one’s innovation. It is to innovate faster than the competition. It is a dynamic protection. It requires forward movement all the time.

Beyond the Fourth Revolution, dynamic innovation will be key. The static intellectual property regime will have to be deeply transformed, or it will become useless.

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Career is an obsolete race in scarcity

Career comes from a Latin word meaning ‘competitive race’. It suggests competition, it suggests scarcity, it suggests linearity of the racing track, it suggests winners and loosers.

In the bureaucratic, hierarchical of the Industrial Age is was all about the race to the few coveted top positions. It was all about a linear work life in the same company, going higher or stabilizing at one’s “incompetence level”.

In the Industrial World it is all about the “rat race”. More money, more physical objects, more loans, requires more money, more work. Where is the enjoyment?

Beyond the Fourth Revolution we won’t even be able to understand the concept. It is all about going sideways, following one’s purpose. It is about a world of opportunities, a world of abundance. It is about a personal quest.

It is not any more a race in which only the elusive end result imports. It is all about the journey and enjoy it. The quest is more important than the goal.

When do you step down from the race?

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Leaning into the Revolution is a choice

Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, is a buzzing modern city. The skyline is bright.

A mere 20km East from the city center, steep hills are covered with primitive impenetrable jungle.

Impenetrable to all except the Orang Asli, the original inhabitants of the land. They continue to choose their life of hunter-gatherer. They are the only ones to understand the jungle, it’s paths and it’s life.

Today their children continue to choose to continue this hunter-gatherer life. They are poor by our standards but rich in spiritual connection with nature. They are happy.

What might they think when they see us hurrying amid the flow of artificial lights and pleasures?
Kuala Lumpur by night skylights
It is possible to decide not to lean into a new Age, into a new society. As long as this choice is conscious, it is respectable. Life can be fulfilling.

The worst is not to make any choice.

Will you choose to stay in the Industrial Age, or will you lean into the new Collaborative Age?

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The third Revolution is not industrial

The Revolution that happened in the 18th century is commonly named Industrial Revolution.
Newcomen machine
But Industry is just the result of a deeper Revolution, the Third Revolution: the Revolution of Broadcasting.
Broadcasting is sending out ideas to the world, in numerous and cheap copies. The first technique was mobile-font printing.
Broadcasting leads to literacy. Literacy leads to many more inventors, explorers and scientists.
The inventors of the Industrial Revolution were not from the rich aristocratic class. James Watt was just an instrument maker.
Because they could benefit from the ideas of Broadcasting, they took initiative and created the tools that revolutionized the world.

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Manufacturing will become subsidized

In the world beyond the Fourth Revolution, Manufacturing will become subsidized, as Agriculture is subsidized today.

manufacturing assembly line

This is because Manufacturing will still be needed, but it’s relative value will be very small compared to the value created by long distance collaboration.

Workers of the Manufacturing industry will probably still represent a strong social force, like farmers today.

But the value they will create will diminish relative to the new value creation. For manufacturing workers to maintain a minimum standard of living, manufacturing will have to be subsidized.

Deindustrialization as an effect of globalization? It is rather an effect of the Fourth Revolution.

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The second Revolution: Writing

The Second Revolution was related to the invention of Writing.

Babylonian clay tablet
Writing is a technology that allows to transmit knowledge over long distances and long times.

Very soon Agriculture and raising of cattle would change the face of the world. Population settled and grew.

Scholars developed knowledge, and transmitted it down the generations and across continents.

We are still reading from the writing of the Ancients.

It changed our world.

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A new leadership style needed: ‘mutual learning’

mutual learning leadership
The Fourth Revolution will bring in a new type of leadership. Beyond the previous types of leadership:

  • command and control leadership,
  • rational leadership,
  • tranformational leadership,

the new leadership style will be ‘mutual learning’. In this style, the leader is not supposed to be the reference for the Vision, or giving the direction. The team is mutually accountable and defines together their Vision.

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