Business meets connectivism
Gary Harpst defines a business as a fit between a purpose and its execution. The purpose explains the organization’s existence. It informs strategies and objectives and is generally defined (or refined) by a sub-group within the organization over a relatively brief time period. Execution, then, is the difficult part because it involves everyone in the organization, 100% of the time.
If you tie purpose and execution together you can end up with a very effective organization. This is where the connectivism comes into it: The more that people are connected to the purpose, the better they perform.
Unfortunately, a tight fit between the two is actually quite rare. This is true in small organizations as well as large ones if the leadership fails to articulate its purpose. It explains why individuals are so often abstracted from management decisions or unclear as to what is expected of them. Now, however, technology offers us a solution.
The network model helps here
Looking at purpose and execution as a network is beautifully simple. What’s more, we have the tools to exploit it and make information flow as it should. We also know that collaboration is not just a matter of simple data exchange. As Chris Yeh points out, with web 2.0, we can go way beyond that. For example, we have the ability to capture semi-structured data (the stuff that is in peoples heads) as conversations on blogs and wikis and share it as we wish. Add to that the emergence of mobile, cloud computing, etc, and a new basis for organizational behavior emerges that will radically change how we manage and collaborate. [See Venkatesh Rao and his concept of the cloudworker.]
Like all change, this one creates its own problems, and information overload is the most obvious one. The solution: a clear organizational purpose helps us identify information that is meaningful/revevant. The rest should be ignored.
Even org charts can be interesting
We see something similar at the level of the organizational chart. Omar Khan describes the org chart as a web of conversations that need to happen. With links, nodes, and stuff flowing through them it looks like a network again. From a conversational perspective, this makes sense, but it also poses a question: How do org charts as hierarchies fit into a flattened network?
I am not sure they ultimately do. Western management is grounded, to a large extent, in Frederick Taylor’s seminal The Principles of Scientific Management, published in, erm, 1911. Our management philosophies do not fit very comfortably with full-on network principles and this is a problem.
Eductional philosophy is not the only thing in need of change. Western management is being challenged by the network. When hierarchies meet networks, hierarchies lose. Its time to revisit some of the fundamentals of our management practices.
PS, you can hear both Gary Harpst and Omar Khan talk on these subjects on Anna Farmery’s excellent The Engaging Brand podcast.
Ken Carroll
December 27th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
I believe that Western management has always challenged Taylor’s organizational model; however, no matter what the metaphor (mechanistic seems to be the most popular one applied to Taylor), be it organic or otherwise, Taylor’s philosophy always seems to underpin most organizations.
That said, I had problems with the idea of “cloudworker” on several levels. First, I think the organization man died during the 1980’s, at least in the U.S. Leveraged buyouts and mass layoffs killed him. Almost all of my working life (29 years and counting), the emphasis has always been on learning skills on the present job that prepare you for the inevitable next one. In that sense, most of the traits identified by Rao are, I think, ones that have been around for many years.
December 28th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
From where I sit (admittedly in academia) we’ve got an amazing network of electronic journals, databases and professional meetings/associations. But these resources don’t begin to facilitate the kind of linkage between vision and action that you allude to. The network can catalyze the formation of synergistic relationships, but I’d still wager that the ‘rate-limiting-step’ will remain the creation of effective incentives linking the vision and the product. Until you can properly incentivize the ‘perspiration’ side of the equation, all you’ve got is the ‘inspiration’–regardless how much data you have and how well connected you are.
December 29th, 2008 at 1:24 am
TVan,
I agree that these individual traits are nit new, but it wasn’t possible to collaborate on a global scale before the tools emerged.
standuke,
To my mind, technology is just the plumbing - and now we have a whole new plumbing system. But it still takes leadership and vision to motivate and get people to collaborate, and execute day after day. The tech itself facilitates but it doesn’t motivate.
Ken