Keywords for 2010

Inspired by Chris Brogan, I share my keywords for 2010:

1. Value: I want to create more value for others and for myself. Value should be the key parameter for everything I sell, do or buy.
2. Clairvoyance: I want to see things as they are, preferably before they occur. This can only be achieved by eliminating distractions and setting aside regular timeslots for structured reflection
3. Well being: I found it hard in the last part of 2009 to keep up with the intended level of physical exercise, but with a few changes to my schedule I should be able to get back on track. For instance, bedtime at 23:00 provides extra time and energy in the morning for jogging.
4. Polyphony: My professional career is important, but so are relationships and passions. It is important that these different areas are coordinated and are stimulated to support each other rather than the opposite

Filed under: Uncategorized

Why virtual communities are not comon in the public sector

A reader recently asked me why virtual communities are not comon in public organisations.

As I have emphasized in previous posts, virtual organization is a broad term that covers natural as well as designed communities.
The public/governmental sector is traditionally associated with rigid, policy based structures. It is well known that bureaucracies (as described by Weber, and later – Mintzberg) are not particularly good at stimulating collaborative innovation and sharing of knowledge. Hence the limited number of natural virtual networks in public organizations.
However, the public sector is increasingly “copying” strategic development initiatives from the private sector. For instance, public organisations are increasingly introducing shared services models and even outsourcing, ie what you could call designed virtual organisations.
As far as I know, the studies of virtual teams / virtual organising within the public sector are very limited. My guess would be that the barriers for succesful introduction of virtual teams are at least as high as in other sectors if not higher. However, lets not forget that public servants are embracing various kind of open networks too, such as linkedin, facebook and even twitter. The big question is when public organisations will claim their space and start leveraging the immense opportunities hidden in developing and exploring internal and external networks

Filed under: Uncategorized , Virtual organization

Knowledge Management & Social Media

Since I wrote my thesis on Knowledge Management back in 1999 a lot has happened in terms of technology. However, my experience is that many organizations still struggle with the same basic challenges in terms of identifying, capturing, and sharing knowledge.

I recently gave a lecture on Organizational Learning at Copenhagen Business School. One of my favourite models is Nonaka & Takeuchi’s SECI Model, and during the lecture I had a great discussion with the students around “socialisation” which is the transfer of tacit knowledge in a tacit form.

The discussion made me realise an important point of why social media is increasingly being used in knowledge management: It’s ability to create trust and to transfer tacit knowledge through virtual socialisation.

I’d definitely like to learn more about social media knowledge management case stories…

Filed under: Uncategorized , case, learning, management, nonaka, social media knowledge, stories

Dismantling change management

It is time

Time to skip all the buzz words and lies

Time to throw out useless consultants and replace them with real people

Time to treat employees with the respect they deserve as human beings

I am talking about “change management”, one of the key consulting buzz words of the 1980s and 1990s that refuses to go away

It sounds good to good to be true, doesnt it – but that is maybe exactly why it is treated with suspicion by CXOs, employees – and even the consultants themselves.

For those unfamiliar with the term, the basic concept is that organizations need to ensure that when introducing changes to the way a business operates, it needs to ensure that stakeholders and employees understand, support and act upon these changes, and are equipped with the right skills to effectively deliver in the new situation.

Most consulting firms follow the same basic models of change management based on the works of people like John Kotter. In other words: Make a big fuzz, flash some important people, a lot of glossy buzz words that can fool people into feeling motivated, brainwash people with the corporate communication engine, bribe key people to support you, take credit for all good things and be stubborn as hell.

Though this approach may have had its moments of glory, the basic assumptions of change management are disputable, for instance:

* Top management and consultants know what is best

* Employees can be talked into believing that bad things are actually good

* Communication about change projects can be planned as one-way linear flow, and isolated from everything else

Social media has change the media landscape and massively affected communication patterns between people. So what are the implications for change management?

First of all, change managers cannot rely on gradually involving people – information about changes are spreading quickly across hierarchy and stakeholder groups.

Second, employees will increasingly expect involvement in decisions affecting their situation – real involvement and not the “weasely” focus group sort of thing that change managers rely on

Third, the wide availiability of collaborative platforms will in itself make it increasingly illegitimate to plan transformation program as top down consultant driven interventions – end users will have to be part of the process from the start, or the program will be doomed.

My best bet is that future change programs will be heavily influenced by so called “user driven innovation” programs, in which not only the way in which changes are implemented will be codetermined by the crowds – but the character of the transformation itself. This significantly changes the role of the CXOs, as well as the consultants – who have to adopt to process facilitation rather than managers of change.

The good news is that many of the typical change management problems – such as resistance to change, reversal, lack of engagement etc – will be eliminated if organizations succeed in making change a true collaborative task, rather than a question of implementation. I will elaborate more on this in my next post.

Filed under: Uncategorized , change management, social media, user driven innovation

Leveraging the dynamics of self-organizing networks (part 1)

As explained in previous posts, corporations and organizations that choose to outsource or organize across geographically separated units face a lot of risks related to communication, coordination and leadership.

The question is, can we leverage some of the dynamics of self-organizing networks or natural born virtual organizations to compensate for the lack of organizational glue?

I believe the answer is yes.

An old cliché tells us that the human capital is the most important asset of the firm. While not agreeing with this on a general level is difficult, I would propose that the social capital and the way it is applied is of equal importance to the skills and competencies of the individual level.

What good is a bunch of PhD’s if they dont communicate, interact and collaborate in an efficient and value-creating way? In fact, the value of social capital and its deployment applies not only to PhD’s but to all kinds of employees.

How can the idea of social capital be applied to companies that are transitioned from local to virtual?

If we look again at some of the problems that these organization are typically facing, we find that many of them can be applied to the lack of or inefficient deployment of social capital.

Therefore, what we need to do is to start with the employees themselves. What are their motivation for being in the organization? Is it for a monthly pay check, because of career opportunities, or just for the fun of it?

A self-motivated workforce is not something we can build over night, we can build structures and procedures that incite a culture of self motivation.

Lets take an outsourced IT support function as an example. What we could do is to put in place an solution-exchange in which IT supporters can post problems and solutions, and rate the contributions delivered by other contributors. If we were really brave, we would let the customer end users rate the solutions delivered.

Suddently, customer satisfaction is built in to the system and on the minds of the supporters in every thing they do. Employees are crediting eachother for contributions in an direct and very rewarding way.

We could build the use of the solution-exchange in to the career plans and performance measures – but this may not even be necessary as the social capital put into the network is already at work and gaining momentum.

Structures, procedures and solutions do not solve all problems, but they can make a difference. If you want a picnic, build a park, not a parking lot

Filed under: Virtual organization

The features of virtual organizations (part 2)

In the last blog post I elaborated on the features of virtual organizations from a Mintzberg / structural perspective.

To sum it up, natural born virtual organizations (NVBO) rely on shared goals and values as the prime organizational glue. They have no central management team, no middle management, very limited technostructure (such as moderators) and support staff (such as IT support)

They are non-hierarchical, but tend to promote those individual contributors in the operational core who appear to leverage their social capital in the most beneficial way.

This has vast implication for strategy, operations management and change management, which is something I will get back to in future posts.

But how about the organizations that “go virtual”? What similarities and differences are there in comparisson with the NBVO?

Organizations that “go virtual” are very different from the NBVO. Based on a traditional bureaucrazy / divisionalized / matrix organization, they are basically virtual only in the sense that they are structurally segregated from the “mother-organization”.

This segregation is often related to outsourcing, shared services and the like, and part of a corporate strategy to reduce cost and focus (administrative) competencies.

As a consultant I have been part of this essentially painful journey a number of times. The issues that typically arise include:

• Mismatch of expectations between mother organization and offshore units leading to internal customer satisfaction issues
• Vast communication issues between onshore and offshore
• Cultural conflicts, including the formation of a “us vs. them” mentality
• Lack of flexibility in Service Level Agreements can lead inefficient shadow structures appearing over time
• Employee retention issues
• Increasing travel costs

So are their no similarities at all with the NBVOs?

Well yes, both types of organizations rely on IT as primary communication channel.

In the next blog post I will try to elaborate more on how the insight into the dynamics of the NBVO can be used to better facilitate the transition towards virtual effeciency

Filed under: Virtual organization

The features of virtual organizations (part 1)

According to Wikipedia, virtual organizations can take one of the following forms:

• an organization that outsources the majority of its functions
• independent organizations that share resources to achieve their goals
• an open business

Put in another way – some organizations become increasingly virtual over time – whereas others are born virtual.

This is in fact an important distinction, as the “organizational glue” in the case of the legacy firm needs to be replaced by artificial structures – embracing people, who have essentially not chosen to operate in a virtual way, but are forced to do so as a result of a corporate transformation program.

The questions is – could the mechanisms of the natural born virtual organization (NBVO) be analysed and assessed as possible strategies for change management in the virtualization of traditional organizations?

Henry Mintzberg has provided a good framework for analyzing organizational structure. In the following, NBVO’s are analysed based on Mintzbergs organizational elements:

Ideology:

Ideology is the traditions and beliefs that make an organisation unique.

The NBVO are clearly driven by shared values and codes of conduct. These norms maybe explicitly stated or part of a tacit belief system. For example, there are integral codes of conduct on online communities like myspace and facebook that regulates the style of communication between users.

Operating core:

The operating core is defined as the people directly related to the production of services or products.

This is true also in the case of a virtual organization -  it is here it all happens. The success of its operation is defined by the level of contribution and interaction, which is again determined by the contributors themselves.

The key forces of motivation are burning excitement around the area of contribution and the social capital acquired through contribution. In some cases, this explicitly awarded, as contributers rate each others contribution, showing their appreciation through symbolic gestures of accreditation.

Some communities may also introduce “user levels”, in which users can gain promotion to a more exclusive user status through contribution over time.

Strategic apex:

The strategic apex serves the needs of those people who control the organisation.

This is non-existing in a virtual organization, as the direction of the organization is decided entirely by the contributors. There might of course be an “owner” of the network, but these owners are bound to loose control of the organization over time, which can be seen in the case of Facebook.

Middle line:

A NBVO is essentially non-hierarchical in the traditional sense, and therefor has no middle line. Hierarchy in virtual organizations is replaced by a mechanism akin to natural selection -  the advancement of those contributors, who are tacitly embraced by the community as the focal points of contribution and interaction. In other words, the contributors who leverage and grow their social capital in the most efficient way, become the focal points of the organization

Technostructure:

While traditional organizations may have a rather rigid technostructure, this is more or less completely missing in the case of the NBVO, which are often driven by lay people rather than experts

Support staff:

Support staff are the specialists who provide support to the organisation outside of the operating core’s activities.

In a NBVO, the support staff is often very limited due to the non-profit character of collaboration. However, as these organizations are often ICT based, IT support and basic adminstration is needed at a certain level.

Filed under: Virtual organization

Virtual organizations – a few questions

What are the key features of virtual organizations?

How do they form – and why?

What are the stages of their life cyclus?

How are they managed?

What are the principles for making a career in a virtual organization?

How are changes introduced and managed in virtual organizations?

These are questions that will be addressed on this blog – input and comments are welcome…

Filed under: Virtual organization