Responsiveness, emergence and self-organization
March 21, 2010
I gave keynote speeches at two conferences this week. The organizers of the events did not suggest a (#) hashtag to be used by the delegates. There wasn’t any backchannel Twitter discussion going on in the audience. I felt strange.
I wasn’t able to listen and respond to real-time feedback. I was missing the self-regulation and self-organizing that social media make possible. This is what I have grown so accustomed to. I started to ponder on two questions: Is it becoming more common for responsiveness to be the missing ingredient in many communities? And can there be rules for responsiveness that help to create viable communities?
I know that there are problems with two-way communication. There are the people with a pre-set interpretative model. We all know the people who are grinding their axe at the back of the room. They are the know-alls and the one-point-of-view evangelists, the people who insist on bringing all conversations round to their particular issue.
I know that there are even bigger issues: All participants are never visible. Any given conversation on the Web may have a few active participants and several silent ones. This creates a fundamental imbalance in the system and gives the oddballs the opportunity to dominate the space in a way that would be much harder to do off-line.
What I felt at the conferences was a crucial disparity: they hear me talking, but I don’t hear them. The audience was both present and absent at the same time. A conference with a Twitter backchannel creates inputs from the official speakers and responses coming from the audience that is present, but also the online audiences elsewhere. The most important thing is that the primary inputs can then be further adjusted on the basis of the responses from the group. There is real-time emergent self-organizing going on.
Information flows are far too often unidirectional. The audience is present but in a passive, invisible way. The tyranny of the hatemonger results from this one-way flow and scarcity of feedback.
The volume is too high for any single individual to filter out the useless or plain repulsive. There are, however, ways to filter out the irrelevant and the obnoxious, but it requires people to respond. If you are a participant, you are also a moderator.
The quality control has to be handed to the community itself without any single individual being in control. The solution is fairly simple in theory. It is about responsiveness and a mix of negative and positive feedback.
You always rate what you see. The ratings coalesce algorithmically into something that is called karma in Slashdot. If your contributions are highly rated you get karma points. The karma you have earned means that your subsequent posts begin life at a higher level than posts by others. Your ratings also have a higher value than ratings given by people with fewer karma points. Dynamic rating is to posts what links are to websites.
The people worth following, the leaders, raise bottom up. Hierarchies in network architectures are natural and dynamic heterarchies. In fact this is the only way that there can be leaders in democratic systems.
One algorithm tracks the value of contributions; the other tracks the value of contributors.
The Web 2.0 gave the audience a voice. What is happening at the moment is much more radical. It is not about representation but gestures and responses leading to emergence and self-organization. It is not about the message or the media any more. It is more about the rules of responsiveness. In a simplified way, you can express those rules as positive and negative feedback moving the whole system towards a particular direction based on the behaviour of the participants.
The definition of what is quality and what is crap is a result of the responsive interaction. It is not groupthink however, because the ratings of people with high karma points weigh more than the assessments of the average members. The huge problem is that the majority viewpoints get amplified, while minority opinions get silenced.
This is why we need a new category to support quality. It is diversity.
Changing the algorithm to reward diversity of opinion means the emergence of a system that looks totally different. Instead of highlighting posts with high average ratings, the system could highlight posts that have triggered a high divergence of ratings. There are many +5 responses, but also many -5 responses. The posts that inspire strong responses either way, both positive and negative, could then rise to higher visibility. The system can thus reward controversial voices, not only popular ones.
A viable system needs to reward perspectives that deviate from the mainstream.
We need perspectives that don’t aim to please everyone. The oddballs would still be marginalized but the thoughtful minorities who attract both admirers and critics would have a visible place in the ongoing process of creating the future in responsive collaboration.
Thank you Steven Johnson
Complexity and the importance of links
February 4, 2010
The structures of the brain and the Internet look the same. In the brain there are neurons that link as a result of being active at the same time. This firing together creates a connection, “a wiring together“, that increases the strength of their connection. On the Internet there are servers and people that are linked in temporal interaction, sometimes as a result of being inspired and interested in the same topic, “firing together”. This short-term communication sometimes leads to a relationship increasing the strength of the connection. No neuron links with all the other neurons at the same time. No server links with all the servers at the same time, and no one interacts with all the other people at the same time. So all interaction is always local, whether in the brain, in an organization, or on the Internet. However, local here does not mean spatially local. The nodes in local interaction can be physically located in different parts of the world.
We often think of individuals as independent and self-contained. The view suggested here sees individuals as nodes of the complex networks they form when interacting with others, co-creating themselves and the reality in which they participate.
A complex system consists of a large number of agents/nodes behaving according to their own principles of local, self-organizing interaction. No one agent, or, a group of agents determines how the system as a whole behaves. Self-organization here means the agents interacting locally, following their own principles, rules and intentions, without any steering from outside that interaction. All influence takes place in the local interaction. No one agent in the brain or on the Internet, or in an organization, can be in control of the whole system and how it develops, as it develops as a global pattern.
There is control and there is development, all the time. Both control and development are emergent phenomena of local interaction. The interaction itself constrains and enables the people in the interaction. People cannot just do whatever they want in a relationship. Relationships create stability just because relationships always impose constraints. Relationships that are based on diversity and difference may enable development to take place without a plan for development. There cannot be novelty if people in a relationship are alike. Consensus leads to stagnation. What happens is a complex ongoing process of people relating to each other. This places links, or relationships, at the center of understanding life in organizations. The number of nodes comes third, if even that. The second most important thing is the diversity/quality of the nodes. The most important things are the links; the process of linking: wiring together as a result of firing together, in the brain, on the Internet, or in an organization.
One of the biggest promises of Internet-based work is the way it redefines local interaction, as Doug Griffin puts it. Global participation is possible, beyond anything we have experienced before. Mass production is giving away to short-term mass participation based on mass communication.
The human brain has more than 100 billion neurons. There are around 1.8 billion Internet users at the moment. So we are still far away from the potential of the brain when it comes to possible link combinations of local firing together. But it is high time to visit our beliefs. There can be control without somebody controlling. There can be development without a development goal and a plan as to how to reach the goal on a global level. This is how the brain works. And this is how we work!
Let’s fire together!
Thanks @venessamiemis for being the inspiration for this post. Thank you Doug Griffin for thinking together with me
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Life is a temporal pattern of networked emotions and intellect
January 15, 2010
Charles Darwin is reported to have written 15.000 letters during his career. The case of Charles D becomes interesting if we assume that he received roughly the same number of letters as he sent. Think about the time he spent reading and writing; think about the time he spent networking. Would we have advised Charles to limit his time spent on social media and stick to his productive work? Perhaps not.
The history lessons taught in schools and leadership case studies taught in management education classes see the properties and ideas of particular persons as the drivers of the events that unfold in the world. Even today, this reinforces the common notion that history is made by outstanding individuals. But is it really so that if Newton had never been born, we would still be ignorant about gravitation? The question we should ask is whether the great man theory of science and business really helps us to understand the world?
Alfred Wallace, the British explorer and anthropologist published his version of the theory of natural selection at the same time as Darwin, or, as many claim, before him. Wallace had an impact on Darwin and among other things, prompted him to publish his work. The interesting thing here is that a great idea matured in different places roughly at the same time. However, the idea had a history. Both Wallace and Darwin based their studies on earlier work by the Augustinian priest and scientist Gregor Mendel. To be really fair, we should of course continue the chain and know who the nodes in the network were well before Mendel?
So instead of talking about Darwinian evolution, we should really call it Darwinian-Wallacian-Mendelian-and-the-scientists-before-them, evolution!
People have always networked. Before the time of universities scholars depended largely on correspondence networks for the exchange of ideas. These communities, known as the Republic of Letters were the social media of the era, following the communication patterns of today astonishingly closely . Many researchers claim that one of the key success factors in science is the network of the scientist. This was also the case with Darwin. Historians claim that Darwin’s network was the decisive thing that tilted the focus towards him and not towards Wallace. The better-networked scientist is often the better scientist. The better-networked worker is usually the better worker. The better-networked student is always the better student.
The main difference from the time of Charles D is the efficiency of our tools for networking, meaning thinking together. This is what Darwin used letters for, to think together with his network of contacts. Over 6000 of those letters can be studied today at the Darwin Correspondence Project web pages. What is similar to the social media of today is the many casual, almost intimate letters Darwin sent, reflecting his life and the life around him. Darwin did not make a distinction between his professional life and his private life in his approach to communication with his network. Perhaps we shouldn’t either.
A “man of letters” may today be a man of tweets, blog posts and Facebook, but the principle is the same: the size and quality of the network matters. What matters even more than the network, is networking, the way we use the network. In trying to understand what is going on, we should shift our focus from independent events and independent heroic people to networked temporality. Even more than understanding networking, we should acknowledge the inherently creative commons nature of thinking and all development. Life is a temporal pattern of emotional and intellectual interaction. We are our interaction.
Crowdsourcing and the theory of the firm
January 4, 2010
A firm is normally seen as an entity that is separate from its members. After specific financial investments have been made, the firm is defined by the ownership of the physical assets and the power that the people who made these investments have. The owners choose their representatives, who choose the managers, who act as the “agents” of the “principals”/the owners. The managers then choose the workers. The most important role for the agents/managers is to serve the interest of the owners, the people who made the financial investment. As a result of this model, the relationship between the company and the contributors of financial capital is very different from the relationship between the company and the employees. Employees are seen as a resource, although a human resource, thus differentiating human beings from other resources serving the value chain. The role of the employee/resource is derived from the value chain architecture. The management target here is a close fit between the skill set of the employee, the job role description and the value chain. Because of this close fit, when major changes are planned to the value chain, it is more often good news for the investors than for the employees.
The system of selling and buying people in large chunks as a result of management decisions about “doing it inside the organization or outsourcing” is today explained as cost saving. In the 17th century the very same system was called slavery.
The modern firm has developed into a perfect vehicle for financial contributions and as a toolkit serves the needs of financial investors well, at least in good times.
As creativity and knowledge define success today, access to capabilities is as important for a firm as access to money. But, what if people mattered even more than money? What if it is going to get harder in the future to get knowledge workers’ contributions than to get financial investors’ contributions?
Should firms serve ideas and creativity more than they serve money?
Is the way we think about firms helping us to meet the challenge of the future or is the mainstream theory of the firm an obstacle for us? Firms are social and legal constructs. They are what we think firms are. Should we renew our old social construct of the firm being based on mass production and high capital costs to a newer version, a knowledge- and innovation-based view of the firm?
In the knowledge-based world we live in today, a knowledge worker is a knowledge worker because of a particular experience base. Being able to do knowledge work requires learning, very often a lot of learning, for a long time. Thus the capabilities of a knowledge worker can be seen as resembling accumulated capital, following the same kind of logic as we use when we speak about the accumulation of financial capital.
However, I use the term “human capital” here only as a metaphor in describing the new relationship between a firm and its employees. Skills are very different from money. Knowledge work is always contextual. It matters who does what and with whom. The skills of knowledge workers thus cannot be seen as homogeneous resources or as generalised labour. Knowledge work involves specific contributions to specific tasks. The knowledge-based view understands firms as contextual interaction, rather than seeing them as entities outside of interaction. Neither is it helpful to prioritise financial investments above human capital investments in the future. The knowledge-based view sees firms as continually evolving live networks of investments and interaction
Knowledge work is not job roles, but task specific contributions
A knowledge worker is thus always an investor. This means that in practice that we should not talk any more about the employer – employee relationship, when talking about knowledge work. Instead, it is an investment – investor relationship. The challenge for the firm is to be inviting to as many contributions/investments, as possible, from as many people as possible. Another difference from the industrial model is the growing need to cross organizational and geographic borders when trying to optimally match tasks and skilled contributions. The basic logic of knowledge work is thus Internet-based global crowdsourcing.
The firm of the future may be 100.000.000 people working together for ten minutes.
Crowdsourcing is not about the company consuming the information outsiders produce. By communicating and creating more relationships, the networked business increases its intellectual capital as the nodes of the network do the same. The network acts as an amplifier of knowledge.
The challenge for the knowledge worker is to take responsibility for the value and growth of her human capital and to plan her investment portfolio carefully. Work should always equal learning. As work requires interaction between people who need each other according to the context and the task, taking responsibility for human capital also requires taking responsibility for the value and growth of the human network.
Digitaalinen työ, tietoverkot ja johtaminen
December 8, 2009
Liikkeenjohdossa ei yleensä puhuta siitä mitä tapahtuu, vaan siitä mitä pitäisi tapahtua tai mitä on tapahtunut. Sille, mitä juuri nyt tapahtuu ei tavallisesti anneta aikaa. Mutta mitä jos juuri ajalla ja paikalla onkin huomattavasti enemmän merkitystä kuin olemme ymmärtäneet? Mitä jos toiminnan tuloksellisuus onkin merkittävällä tavalla kiinni intensiivisestä läsnäolosta juuri siinä tilanteessa missä ollaan? Mitä jos kontekstiherkkyys ja siitä nouseva ketteryys ovatkin liikkeenjohtamisessa huomattavasti tärkeämpiä asioita kuin aika- ja paikkariippumattomat yleistykset menestykseen johtavista kausaliteeteista? Mitä jos toiminnalla on aina parasta ennen päiväys? Mitä jos jälkikäteen tapahtuvalla mittamisella ei voi ymmärtää sitä mitä tapahtui, puhumattakaan siitä, että toimintaa voisi tehokkasti ohjata mittareilla? Mitä jos tärkeintä on intensiivisempi osallistuminen tilannetta rikastavalla tavalla?
Organisaatioiden toiminta on toisistaan riippuvaisten ihmisten vuorovaikutusta. Vuorovaikutus on aina kontekstisidonnaista. Se tapahtuu aina ajassa ja paikassa, kontekstissa. Tässä vuorovaikutuksessa ihmiset sekä mahdollistavat asioita toisilleen että rajoittavat toisiaan. Samaten kontekstisidonnaisesti kutsumme ihmisiä mukaan, mahdollistamme osallistumisen tai jätämme ihmisiä ulkopuolelle, suljemme pois. Vallankäyttö verkostoissa perustuu juuri näihin muuttujiin: mahdollistamiseen – rajoittamiseen sekä mukaan kutsumiseen – pois sulkemiseen.
Johtaminen on vaikuttamista, joka tapahtuu kommunikaatiossa. Tämän johdosta johtajaa ei voi nähdä erillisenä, ulkopuolisena vuorovaikutuksen arkkitehtina, suunnittelijana. Ainoa mahdollisuus vaikuttaa on kommunikaation kautta – siihen osallistumalla. Johtajan tapa osallistua vuorovaikutukseen selittääkin merkittävällä tavalla organisaation menestystä tai menestymättömyyttä tänään. Johtaja on erityisen näkyvä ja arvovaltainen osallistuja kommunikaatiossa. Johtajalla on myös erityisen suuret valtuudet mahdollistaa asioita, jotka eivät muuten olisi mahdollisia tai kutsua mukaan vuorovaikutukseen tavalla, joka ei olisi kaikille mahdollista. Käänteisesti voimme kuvitella johtamisotteen, joka pelkästään rajoittaa tai estää osallistumista.
Johtaminen verkoston suhteiden ominaisuutena
Yhtä lailla kuin puhumme johtajasta vuorovaikutuksessa, meidän tulisi nähdä, että mahdollistamme ja rajoitamme toisiamme kaikissa suhteissa koko ajan. Johtaminen onkin suhteiden ja vuorovaikutuksen ominaisuus verkostossa yhtä lailla tai jopa enemmän kuin (johtaja)yksilön ominaisuus asemalähtöisesti.
Johtamista tuleekin tarkastella verkoston toiminnassa yhtä paljon tai jopa ensisijaisesti kun pyrimme ymmärtämään johtamista tänään. Vaikuttaminen ei ole vain aseman kautta syntyvä mahdollisuus. Verkostossa tapahtuukin aina paljon enemmän johtamista, ja harhaanjohtamista, kuin mihin esimies voi tai ehtii osallistua. Mielipiteet, joille annetaan arvoa, vaikuttavat samalla tavalla kuin mihin vaikuttaja asemastaan käsin pystyy.
Johtaminen vaikuttamisena syntyy samanaikaisesti johtajan suhteena alaiseen ja alaisen suhteena johtajaan. Esimiehen arvostus alaista kohtaan ja alaisen arvostus esimiestä kohtaan tarvitaan samanaikaisesti. Alainen tekee johtajan hyvin samalla tavalla kuin olemme ajatelleet johtajan tekevän alaisen. Esimies ei voi enää olla esimies ilman, että alainen haluaa olla alainen. Kielenkäyttömme liittyen vaikuttamiseen verkostossa on kuitenkin liian kapea ja stereotyyppinen. Kuvittelemme, että siinä on vain kahdenlaisia toimijoita: esimiehiä ja alaisia. Meiltä puuttuu sanoja, jotka paremmin selittäisivät verkoston toimintaa ja siinä tapahtuvaa vaikuttamista, johtamista ohi esimies – alaissuhteen.
Vuorovaikutuksen laatu
Kun ymmärrämme organisaatiot toisiaan tarvitsevien ihmisten vuorovaikutuksena kääntyy huomio vuorovaikutuksen laatuun. Johtamisessa korostuu tänään luovuuden ihanne. Vuorovaikutuksessa se tarkoittaa, että ihmiset hakeutuvat kohti niitä, jotka pystyvät luomaan merkityksiä syntyville, vielä epäselville, nouseville, uusille teemoille. Johtaja on silloin henkilö joka pystyy artikuloimaan sen, millä ei ole vielä hahmoa muiden mielessä. Käyttäessäni sanaa johtaja tarkoitan sekä mahdollisuutta vaikuttaa asemavallasta käsin että mahdollisuutta hajautettuun, emergenttiin vaikuttamiseen. Johtaja luovassa työssä on vastaavasti hän joka pystyy kestämään epävarmuutta kauemmin kuin muut ja hän joka mahdollistaa suuremman riskinoton luottamusta lisäämällä kuin muut.
Johtaminen tarkoittaa myös toistuviksi ja kapeiksi muuttuneiden aiheiden uudelleen määrittelyä vuorovaikutuksessa. Kaikki ihmisten välinen toiminta on kommunikaatiota. Johtaminen parhaimmillaan syventää, laajentaa ja rikastaa vuorovaikutusta. Tämä on erityisen tärkeää organisaation pyrkiessä parantamaan tuottavuutta, tai tilanteessa jossa vanhentuneet, liian kauan jatkuneet toimintamallit ovat kriisiytyneet. Tarkasteltaessa kriisiytynyttä tilannetta, on hyvin tavallista huomata, että vuorovaikutus on joko loppunut, sitä ei ole ollutkaan, tai se on kapeaa, samoja asioita neuroottisesti toistavaa ja samaa kehää kiertävää uudelleen ja uudelleen. Dominoiva osallistuja myös vaientaa helposti keskustelun ja siten jumiuttaa organisaation paikalleen. Johtajan tärkeä tehtävä on saada paikalleen juuttunut tilanne liikkeelle tuomalla vuorovaikutukseen uusia elementtejä tai kutsumalla mukaan uusia näkökulmia.
Tietoverkko mahdollistaa jatkuvan organisoitumisen ajassa
Toisiaan tarvitsevien ihmisten vuorovaikutus on yhä useammin perinteisiä rajoja ylittävää. Toisiaan tarvitsevuus ei ole ainoastaan fyysisesti paikallista. Tietoverkkopohjainen vuorovaikutus määrittelee uudelleen aikaisemmin fyysisesti paikallisen vuorovaikutuksen digitaalisesti kontekstuaaliseksi ja sitä kautta määrittelee myös uudelleen sen mistä puhutaan, kun puhutaan kilpailukykyisestä toimijasta globaalissa kilpailussa. Ei ole välttämättä hedelmällistä nähdä maata kilpailemassa muita maita vastaan, tai puhua monoliittisesta yrityksestä kilpailemassa muita yrityksiä vastaan. Vaihtoehtona voisi olla kilpailun ja yhteistyöverkostojen jatkuva dynaaminen, ketterä muodostuminen. Tavoitteena olisi nähdä elinvoimainen toiminta jatkuvana, joustavana organisoitumisena ajassa, jossa vuorovaikutukseen osallistuvat muodostavat koko ajan muuttuvia, eläviä ryhmiä digitaalisessa verkossa ja sitä kautta koko ajan muuttuvan ja kehittyvän hahmon ja elinvoimaisen, dynaamisen identiteetin.
Miltä liikkeenjohtaminen näyttäisi jos se keksittäisiin tänään?
December 7, 2009
Liikkeenjohdon tematiikka, leadership/management, niin kuin me sen tunnemme tänään yritysten ja organisaatioiden maailmassa, syntyi 1800-luvun lopulla ja 1900-luvun alussa. Liikkeenjohto uutena tieteenä haki olemassa ololleen validiteetin tuon ajanjakson tieteellisestä paradigmasta. Erityisesti luonnontieteissä aika oli voimakkaasti kiinni valistuksen ajan ihanteissa ja Newtonilaisessa fysiikassa. Elettiin insinööritieteiden kulta-aikaa. Todellisuus ymmärrettiin objektiiviseksi, todeksi todennettavaksi maailmaksi havaitsijan ulkopuolella. Jos käytettiin oikeita havaitsemisvälineitä ja ajattelua, tuo, joskus hyvinkin monimutkainen maailma voitiin mallintaa ja siinä voitiin havaita rationaalisia syy- seuraussuhteita, jotka antoivat mahdollisuuden löytää oikeat tavat vaikuttaa.
Johtaja on tässä maailmassa rationaalinen toimija ja päätöksentekijä, jonka tehtävänä on tietää mitkä kausaliteettien ketjut tuovat organisaatiolle sen tavoitteleman menestyksen. Samalla tavalla kuin reduktionistinen tiede toimi, organisaatiot voitiin parhaiten ymmärtää niiden osittamisen kautta. Erilliset osat muodostivat puolestaan mekanistisen, systeemisen aktiviteettien kokonaisuuden, joka toimi johdon suunnittelemalla tavalla. Huomio johtamisessa tuli tämän ajattelutavan mukaisesti kohdistaa niihin olemassa oleviin ja tarvittaviin syy – seuraussuhteisiin, jotka toteuttavat organisaation menestyksen parhaalla mahdollisella tavalla.
Yhtä tärkeää oli motivoida mukana olevat ihmiset yhteisiin, johdon luomiin tavoitteisiin, sekä prosessien säätelemään vuorovaikutukseen. Organisaatioihanne jäljitteli konetta vaihdettavine osineen. Koneen toiminta taasen perustui tehokkaisiin input – output suhteisiin, joissa resurssit muuttuivat suoritteiksi. Työtä tekevät yksilöt olivat tässä maailmassa yksi resurssi muiden resurssien joukossa.
Organisaation rakenne ja prosessit kuvattiin tässä lähestymistavassa tavallisimmin yleistyksinä. Yleistäminen tarkoittaa, että rakenteet ja (vuorovaikutus)prosessit eivät ole tilanteesta, kontekstista, riippuvaisia, vaan yleisesti päteviä aikariippumattomalla ja tilanneriippumattomalla tavalla. Kontekstilla ei ole merkitystä. Yleistävästä ajattelusta seuraa myös, että tavallisesti voidaan löytää, usein organisaation ulkopuolelta uusi, paras tapa tehdä joku asia. Tämä uusi tapa voidaan sitten siirtää tilanteesta toiseen ilman, että historiasta tai paikasta tarvitsee välittää.
Epävarmuuden maailma
Arkikokemuksissamme korostuvat yllätykset, muutokset ja kehityskulut, joita ei ole voitu ennustaa tai joita ei ole edes suunniteltu kenenkään toimesta. Epävarmuus on elimellinen osa yritystoimintaa ja osa elämää. Epävarmuus ei liity pelkästään siihen mitä tapahtuu seuraavaksi, vaan myös siihen mitä juuri nyt tapahtuu tai hyvinkin erilaisiin tulkintoihin siitä mitä on tapahtunut. Yhteisten, ”ylempää annettujen” tavoitteiden ohella yksilöiden omat tavoitteet, omat agendat, arvot, tulkinnat ja suunnitelmat ohjaavat ennakoimattomalla tavalla sitä mitä tapahtuu. Rationaalisuuden ohella tunteet ja poliittiset päämäärät ohjaavat toimintaa ja päätöksiä. Väärinymmärrykset ja väärät tulkinnat vaikuttavat yhtä paljon kuin oikeatkin. Suunnitelmat toteutuvat hyvin harvoin juuri niin kuin oli tarkoitus tai kuten oli suunniteltu.
Johtamisen taustalla olevan rationaalisen, lineaarisen kausaliteetin ihanne on hyvin kaukana siitä arkitodellisuudesta, jonka tunnistamme. Näyttäisikö liikkeenjohtaminen erilaiselta jos se ottaisi lähtökohdaksi toimimisen epävarmuudessa ja jos sen tieteellinen maailmankuva päivittyisi tämän päivän tasolle?
Johtaminen kompleksisessa ympäristössä
Yritystoiminta on aina toisiaan tarvitsevien ihmisten vuorovaikutusta. Miltä johtaminen näyttäisi, jos lähtökohta olisi, että ihmisten välisessä vuorovaikutuksessa kausaalisuhteet ovat aina ei-lineaarisia: osittain tiedämme mitä tapahtuu seuraavaksi, osittain emme. Osittain voimme ennustaa, osittain emme. Toiminnassa on aina mukana epävarmuus, jota ei voida poistaa. Johtaja voi suunnitella mitä itse tekee seuraavaksi, mutta ei voi koskaan täysin tietää mitä muut tekevät seuraavaksi. Johtajan pyrkimykset kohtaavat kaikkien muiden, aina osittain samanlaiset, osittain erilaiset pyrkimykset. Mitä tapahtuu, on seurausta kaikista näistä toisiinsa vaikuttavista erilaisista pyrkimyksistä. Se, mikä on tulema kun erilaisten ihmisten erilaiset tulkinnat, pyrkimykset ja toiminta vaikuttavat toisiinsa on aina enemmän tai vähemmän piilossa ja epävarmaa. Kukaan yksittäinen toimija ei voi kontrolloida sitä, mitä lopulta tapahtuu, vaikka siihen voikin vaikuttaa.
Tästä seuraa että emme voi enää pitää erillään, eri vaiheina suunnittelua ja tekemistä, ajattelua ja ajattelun ”jalkautusta”. Suunnittelu ja toteutus eivät ole käsitteellisesti kaksi erillistä vaihetta ajassa, vaan saman asian kaksi puolta samanaikaisesti. Suunnitelma on suunnitelma, vain siinä määrin kuin se toteutuu. Tämä johtaa tilanteeseen, jossa suunnittelu on ehdottoman tärkeää, mutta joustavuutta vähentävät suunnitelmat eivät. Paradoksaalisesti, mitä paremmin suunnittelemme, sen paremmin voimme tarvittaessa toimia ketterästi muuttuneissa tilanteissa. Mitä paremmin osaamme ja tiedämme sen paremmin voimme improvisoida.
Koska emme voi perustaa toimiamme ja päätöksiämme täydelliseen tietämiseen, pitäisikö meidän paremmin ymmärtää miten toimimme silloin kun emme tiedä? Vaikka emme voi poistaa epävarmuutta, voimme varmuudella tietää miten toimimme, kun pyrimme elämään epävarmuudessa.
Jatkuu postissa: digitaalinen työ, tietoverkot ja johtaminen
Interactive value creation
December 4, 2009
The division of labor reduces organizational effort and the cost of work. The division of labor also increases the quality of efforts through specialization. For this reason all societies and all enterprises are heading, at least to some extent, towards specialism. The assumption has been that the further the division is carried, the greater are the savings and the better the quality of the contributions. This has led managers to focus on the efficiency of activities separated from other activities and organizational design and management are seen as the planning and execution of a collection of independent activities forming the organizational system.
The function of the line manager was accordingly to be the representative of his box, his domain of action and resources. The manager enjoyed a high degree of autonomy and was accountable only for that domain. The grounding principle in practice was: “Don’t tread on my grass, and I won’t tread on yours”.
From action to interaction
As demands for higher value and creativity are the norm today and the complexity of offerings has grown, we have begun to see that the division of labor has reached its point of diminishing returns. What managers have learnt is that the division of labor always implies a scheme of interaction by which the different divided activities are made to work together. The lines between the boxes are starting to matter more than the boxes! Complex value creation is impossible without interaction. This is because any higher-value activity involves complementary, often parallel, contributions from more than one person or one team. In fact, the more complex the offering is and the more specialized the resources needed, the greater the demand for the amount, quality and efficiency of communication, because of the inherent interdependence of the activities.
One-dimensional approaches to interaction have involved top-down command-and-control or sequential workflow-based communication, where the action of one part is meant to set off the action of another. Interaction has thus been seen as one-way signals, a system of senders and receivers (Shannon and Weaver 1948). These approaches seemed to work in simple, low-value environments, but are not creating the desired results any more. What managers have lately found out is that in the pursuit of higher value and when facing the growing demands of complex offerings the value of actions is limited by the value of the interaction. The two are mutually dependent
Activities and interaction are mutually dependent
A system of partial activities that go into the completion of the total offering always implies a scheme of interaction among the persons concerned. If the scheme of activities changes, even somewhat, the scheme of interaction should change too. As the two are mutually dependent, it means accordingly that if there are changes in interaction, so the activities will change.
The mainstream management paradigm is based on the presupposition that activities are the independent, governing factors and the scheme of interaction conforms to the planned division of labor as a secondary feature. The organizational structure, as a number of independent activities, comes first. Then an appropriate system of co-ordination and communication is put into effect. If, however, action and interaction are mutually dependent, it means that low-quality interaction leads to activities that are poorer than planned, just as enriching, high-quality interaction may lead to higher-value activities than planned.
We need to understand how the present ways of dividing labor have been historically based on a very different communications environment than the one we are living in at present. The earlier high cost of coordination and communication is the reason behind many of the organizational forms that are taken for granted and which we still experience. The digital world we live in today is totally different when it comes to the transaction costs associated with coordination and communication and allows us to experiment with totally new value creation architectures.
Managing the scheme of interaction – creating a social media/communication strategy
The activity systems and units of activity can no longer be seen as a collection of independent activities and independent high-performing specialists. There are, however, many challenges ahead if we adopt the way of thinking of seeing interaction as the governing factor in organizations. One of the challenges is our language. That is the way we speak about work following the system of subjects and predicates. Our language of work is geared towards handling one independent factor and one dependent factor at a time: “someone is doing something to somebody”. Linear causes and effects, rather than thinking in terms of mutual interdependence and non-linearity, are built into our management speech. And yet, a situation that can be described accurately in terms of linear, rational causes and effects is the least common one in social contexts. An organization consisting of people is always a social network following a different logic – complex causality. Organizations as social activity processes are about interdependent people working in complex interaction.
If we take this view, it means that people and actions are simultaneously forming and being formed by each other at the same time, all the time, in interaction. Instead of thinking in terms of spatial metaphors, of organizational levels, boxes and lines, this explanation focuses attention on how the actions of people create patterns in time following a very different approach to communication than the sender receiver model.
Organizations seen as patterns of interaction
Organizations can be described as patterns of communicative interaction between interdependent individuals. All interacting imposes constraints on those relating, while at the same time enabling those people to do what they could not otherwise do. Supportive, inspirational, energizing and enabling patterns of interaction are the most important raison d´être of working and being together. If we see interaction as the governing factor and see organizations and organizing as relationships between interdependent people, our methods of sense making need to change. Social interaction does not follow linear causality, seen as a system of senders and receivers, but is fundamentally non-linear, responsive and complex. Following this logic, organizations today and information-based value creation in general can only be understood if seen as complex, communicative patterns of mainly digital interaction.
Back from interaction to action
Resource allocation has always been one of the main tasks of management: planning what is to be done by whom and by when. In integrated systems and with homogeneous resources, this allocation can easily be performed top-down and in advance. Planning can take place separately from action. When knowledge resources are the decisive factors of value creation and when work takes place in digital, global, decentralized environments, this top-down process is increasingly inefficient. A manager cannot know who knows best or where the most valuable contributions could come from. The solution has been so far to try to “know what we know”, and, even more importantly, try to “know who knows”. Neither of these approaches has quite fulfilled expectations. Knowledge databases have not met the situational needs of their users. Accordingly, people have not been able to explain what they know to others or even to themselves in a meaningful way
Because of the aforementioned growing needs in daily organizational life a new, different approach has to be adopted. One could even claim that a new mode of knowledge based production is now emerging in, and because of, the digital networked environments. The most important platforms for the new production systems are social media platforms.
This new production method refers to a new economic phenomenon: people from the whole network contribute pieces of their time and expertise to tasks, emergently, according to their interests, availability and experience, working in a transparent, open environment. This method has systemic advantages over traditional production hierarchies when the work in progress is mainly immaterial in nature and the capital investment involved can be distributed. For most knowledge-based products and services, this kind of production is the most efficient method of creating value from a resource allocation point of view.
The system is developed as much in a bottom-up manner as a top-down one. In a top-down system everything is created and provided by the organization to the user. The user has no or very little control over what services, information and people are available to him. Instead of forcing people into predetermined groups in the way groupware does, social media facilitate the natural formation of groups based on spontaneous, contextual needs for interaction. In social media, people affiliate through personal choice and need. Understanding this difference in community formation is crucial for building self-sustaining, dynamic communities.
A Wiki is a typical knowledge production medium, a platform for interdependent people to work in parallel interaction. A Wiki provides the most efficient way for a group of people to contribute, edit and interact with information that is meant to be shared. A Wiki can be seen as a way to create and iterate collective information, thus developing shared iterative learning. It’s about making visible what has been learnt and the road that leads to it. This leads to a better sharing of experiences, use of skills and utilization of the total number of brains in the network.
The primary goals are increasing the value and quality of information and the value and quality of interaction and at the same time lowering the transaction costs associated with information and interaction. Even more importantly, open interaction platforms such as Wikis are a medium for sharing what we would like to know next, where we would like to go, and what we would like to explore. A Wiki is a medium for continuous, creative learning. This thinking is based on a belief that everything can and should develop in iterative interaction among the network of users. In practice it means voicing questions and concerns for others to answer of their own free will: the small deviations, the small questions that we don’t normally pay much attention to or have time to explore. These are, however, the starting points for change, improvements and learning. There is a shift in thinking from sharing what we know to sharing what we don’t know.
All organizations essentially operate like Wikis. Every organization has it’s own language, resulting in a unique, iterative understanding of concepts, terms and ongoing sense making. There is always a lot of information that is continuously evolving in the “encyclopaedia” of an organization. The articles are things like strategies, customer databases, product information and manuals.
Interactive, iterative work
In these kinds of contexts, information artifacts that don’t connect with ongoing live conversations are often of less value, even obsolete and most probably out of date. Because of this, we are now moving away from a focus on content to a focus on conversations. Content should be seen as the by-product of conversation. Perhaps in the future of digital work IT will not mean Information Technologies, but Interaction Technologies.
This view focuses attention on the way in which daily, mainly digitally mediated communication between people organises value creation and, at the same time, creates value. An organisation should today be understood as complex, self-organising, iterative patterns of interaction, through which both continuity and innovation emerge as patterns in time.
