The Google lesson for management
February 13, 2010
Eugene Garfield founded the Institute for Scientific Information in 1960. His pioneering work was in citation indexing. This allows a researcher to identify which articles have been cited most frequently and who has cited them. Garfield’s studies demonstrated that the number of citable items, i.e. the number of papers, together with the frequency of their citation, meaning how many scientists link to the paper, is a good measure of scientific success. Nobel laureates write more papers than other scientists and these papers are more linked to than other papers. The system effectively measures quantity and quality at the same time.
Links on the Web are also citations, or votes, as the founders of Google realized. The whole Web is a densely interconnected network of references. It is no different to the age-old practice of academic publishing and citation indexing.
The observation of Larry Page and Sergey Brin that links are citations seems commonplace today, but it was a breakthrough at the time Google started on September 7, 1998.
What Google did was essentially the same as had been done in academic publishing by Eugene Garfield. At this time, relevance and importance were measured through counting the number of other sites linking to a Web site, as well as the number of sites linking to those sites. The PageRank algorithm includes other variables as well, but the measurement of links is still the core functionality of the system.
What Google has proved to managers is that people’s individual actions, if those actions are performed in a transparent way, and if those actions can be linked, are capable of managing unmanageable tasks.
Collaboration and collective work are best expressed through transparency and emergent, responsive linking. The mainstream business approach to value creation is still a predictive process designed and controlled by the expert/manager. This is based on the presuppositions that we know (1) all the linkages that are needed beforehand, and (2) what the right sequential order in linking and acting is. Neither of these beliefs is correct any more. The variables of creative work have increased beyond systemic models of process design.
It is time to learn from the Web.
By relying on the uncoordinated actions of millions of people instead of experts/managers to classify content on the net, Google democratized scientific citation indexing. To be able to manage the increasingly complex organizations of today, the same kind of democratization needs to take place in the corporate world. Companies are transforming themselves from industrial mass production to creating value in wide area networks of mass communication. The transparency of tasks is the corporate equivalent of publishing academic articles. Responsive linking, rather than predictive linking, acts as a measure of relevance and is the guarantee of quality. This has served the academic community well. It made Sergey Brin and Larry Page billionaires. Now is the time to do the same in the corporate world. Complex, creative, knowledge-based work requires new approaches. The Google lesson for management is, that the more work is based on responsive processes of relating and the more organizing is an ongoing process in time, the more value we create!
Thank you Jeff Howe and Ralph Stacey
The problem of strategic choice
December 5, 2009
Either or thinking in strategy arises from the Aristotelian logic, which requires the elimination of paradoxes and dilemmas. Examples of these dilemmas are competition and collaboration or saving money and creating more value – at the same time. These dilemmas, if not resolved through choice and decision were seen as a sign of faulty thinking.
As an alternative one could think of the problem of competition and collaboration or saving and providing a better service as a creative dilemma and a positive paradox.
There are many different definitions of a paradox. It may mean a contradiction, a situation in which two conflicting elements exist at the same time. A paradox in this sense can be removed by choosing one side instead of the other or by reframing the problem to remove the contradiction. A paradox may also mean a state in which two opposing needs are simultaneously present, neither of which can be eliminated. There is therefore no possibility of a choice between the opposing poles or possibility of locating them apart without halting the process in time.
The necessity of conflict
What is then required is a different kind of logic, such as the approach of Hegel instead of Aristotle. In Hegel’s thinking, the word paradox means the natural, and necessary, presence of conflicting ideas at the same time. A paradox is then the essential requirement for creativity and transformation. Paradoxes are a requirement of life.
We live in a time when we have compartmentalized ourselves into disciplines, using engineered processes. Instead of these separations, we need to cross boundaries and interact to make new connections and insights. Crossing boundaries is always about working with differences. Differences are potentially conflictual in nature, and this is something we should now welcome.
Conflicts give rise to the possibility of innovation and the potential for finding new solutions. Another example of this is the mathematical concept of chaos in the sciences of complexity. There the edge of chaos is a dynamic pattern in time that is stable and unstable at the same time. Stability and instability are inseparable. The dynamic is paradoxically both predictable and unpredictable. It is about predictable unpredictability or unpredictable predictability, stable instability or unstable stability. The contradiction and dilemma between stable and unstable cannot be resolved, but gives rise to the potential for creativity and innovation. It is time to refresh our thinking about strategic choice. It is time to embrace complexity and the enormous creative potential of live paradoxes.
Thank you Doug Griffin, Tomi Laamanen and Ralph Stacey
