Month: February 2014

Last week I looked at bridging the gap between theory and practice to generate new knowledge around organization design. I also said there are two other ways of generating new knowledge

• Looking and trends and fads
• Collecting bits and bobs of information that could connect dots to form new knowledge

So this week it's looking at the trends and fads that are 'out there' and thinking through how to learn or develop knowledge from them.

I see I've already got four blog posts related to trends and fads Trends for Talent Managers, Organizational Trends, Trend Spotting and Foresight, and Management Fads and Trends. Also I have a chapter in my book on Organizational Health on the topic. I think it's vital that organization design practitioners are alert to trends and fads and can make sound or at least considered judgments on whether/how to respond to them. (See February 2014's tool of the month that is about deciding whether to adopt a fad).

Note that a fad is different from a trend. As a said in my book 'A fad is something that captures the popular imagination and is adopted with wild enthusiasm for a relatively short period of time. Thus fads progress through a fairly swift lifecycle of introduction, growth, maturity, decline, and then 'death' (that is drop out of fashion) or 'mainstreaming' (that is absorption into the way things are done – losing the connotations of fad).'

A trend is a month by month or year by year movement of a metric. Trends in organizations are collected on performance-based data, obviously the financials, but also include customer satisfaction, company reputation, productivity, and employee engagement among others. Trends are often shown graphically as 'trend lines' drawn from quantifiable metrics collected over time.

Thinking about organization design – how should you treat fads and trends? Well, treat both thoughtfully and with skepticism. I like the critical thinking advocated by Stephen Brookfield who tells us to be reflective which involves identifying: truth, context, assumptions and alternatives. (See my blog on Reflection where I discuss this in more depth).

There are masses of websites doing trendwatching. A post on LinkedIn lists a selection of 18 of them. It's a nice eclectic list that covers a lot of ground but misses some relevant to organization design like demographic and workforce trends. The UKs Office for National Statistics is a mine of useful trends for the UK on these.

Consider the time period that makes something a trend rather than a fad. Sometimes things look like trends but they suddenly drop into the fad category. Take the sale of tablets as an example: Look at the sales trend over time from 2010 when they entered the market to end December 2013. Sales were increasing quarter by quarter until they appear to have peaked. Now read the piece Our Love Affair with the Tablet is Over .The point made is that 'What we are witnessing today is a merger of phones and tablets, not just at Netflix but everywhere, which is why this decade's attempt at tablets is nearing its death -— just four years after Jobs launched the original iPad.'

So what about organizations that have invested in tablets for employees? Were they sensible? Ahead of the curve? Misplaced in their thinking? Now having to justify sunk costs? Is the commentator who thinks our love affair with the tablet is over right or wrong? How would you find out? How could you identify the current and forecast truth, context, assumptions and alternatives around tablet purchase and use? If you could how would it affect the way you thought about your organization design in terms of things like workplace, technologies, workforce, and policies? What knowledge could we generate from the tablet example that would inform organization design activity?

One of the things that is very hard is making the sound judgment on trends and fads. There's a research project going on investigating how to improve forecasts because 'we can't even be sure that the forecasts guiding our decisions are more insightful than what we would hear from oracles examining goat guts. Worse still, we often don't know that we don't know.' (Tetlock & Gardner, 2013) Take a look at the website about this research tournament that is drawing on crowdsourcing to try and develop new knowledge about forecasting (and thus, perhaps onward to organization design). Any one can register to be part of round 4. The researchers say that 'participants can improve their forecasting skills through a combination of training and practice, with frequent feedback on their accuracy'.

Another way of developing new organization design knowledge is developing scenarios around trends. In his book The Art of the Long View, author Peter Schwartz said that 'scenarios are . . . the most powerful vehicles . . . for challenging our 'mental models' about the world and lifting the 'blinders' that limit our creativity and resourcefulness.' He suggests the point of scenario exercises is 'to identify the two or three factors or trends that are the most important and uncertain' and work with them. There are lots around now to choose from: robotics, bio sciences, climate change, demographic trends, political trends …

I think that scenarios could offer great scope for organization designers as an alternative to systems models as they foster strategic conversations 'that question whether that which has been impossible might become possible and which investigate how that which has been possible might end.' Thus strategic conversations around scenarios become 'a process of future oriented sense making that attends to cognitive, psychological and social aspects, surfacing the biases inherited from past or extant cultures and institutional norms and preferences in preparing options for choice in decision making. … these conversations in turn enable more courageous foresight.' (Ramirez & Wilkinson, 2013)

How do you create new organization design knowledge from trends and fads? Let me know

References
Ramirez, R., & Wilkinson, A. (2013, October 19). Rethinking the scenario 2 x 2 method: grid or frames? Technological Forecasting and Social Change.
Tetlock, P., & Gardner, D. (2013). Who's good at forecasts? The World in 2014, 81.

The final section of the entry I'm writing for the encyclopedia 'Design and form: Organizational' for the 2nd edition of Elsevier's Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences is on explaining major directions for developing new knowledge about organization design and form. This has been incredibly challenging and I've been struggling with it all week and haven't been helped by feeling pressure from the deadline which was January 31 – so I'm a week late right now. However, I've finally come to the conclusion that there are three ways to think about directions for new knowledge:

• Bridging practice and theory – that I'll talk about in this post
• Looking at trends and fads that are 'out there' and potentially learning/developing knowledge from them. 'Neuro' is one that falls into the category of fad right now. See the blog Neurobonkers. But will it stay that way?
• Scanning, listening and looking out for bits and bobs of information that aren't a trend or a fad but could have a big impact on 'connecting the dots', or getting a completely new insight or perspective that developed new knowledge. One item that caught my eye this week was on Bitcoin , 'Peek into the future, and it's possible to envisage this sort of technology being used to cut intermediaries out of trades of many kinds – beginning with payment systems such as Visa and moving on to banks, real estate and more. Transactions could be arranged, executed, verified and publicly recorded automatically'. Think of the organization design implications of that scenario.

I'm going to duck discussing definitions of 'new knowledge' as it's too difficult to determine what is 'new' and what is 'standing on the shoulders of giants' (as Google Scholar is taglined). And, as I said, this week I will look at just the first direction: In the next two weeks I'll discuss the other two directions. (After I've submitted the encyclopedia piece?!)

Bridging practice and theory
There is an ocean of research on organization theory. I'm surprised to find after looking along my bookshelves that I own eighteen academic/research based organization theory books – a drop in the ocean, but still. Some of these have a lot of highlighting and notes I've written but I have no recollection of doing this – and that memory failure made me wonder how one gets 'knowledge'. Have I integrated all the highlighted stuff so it's become part of what I know or, once highlighted, did I instantly forget it? Have I bridged the gap between theory and practice?

In any event as I was reading (or maybe re-reading but I don't know in some instances) I found some of it very heavy going e.g. 'Under norms of rationality, organizations and others assessing them prefer efficiency tests over instrumental tests, and instrumental tests over social tests. But efficiency tests are not possible when technical knowledge is incomplete or standards of desirability are ambiguous'… This is on page 97 of Organizations in Action: Social Science Bases of Administrative Theory in case you are thirsting for more like this.

Reading this sort of thing I am reminded why many managers I meet with hate 'theory' and 'ivory tower thinking' and just want something practical they can do to improve performance or achieve whatever it is that they are aiming for. And from the other side of the fence I can see why academics are rather dismissive of fads and quick fixes which are not underpinned by rigorous and validated research.

My impression is that in general academics tend to fight shy of discussing what will make the theories actionable in day to day organizational life. I don't know why this is since my experience of universities and other higher education institutions is that they would enormously benefit from any lessons on organization design that their own employees – faculty and administrative – could bring them.

But this reticence leaves a big gap between theory and practice attributed to a number of possible causes which one researchers suggests is due to academic 'fragmentation', 'self-absorption' and 'living in a self-indulgent state' (Starbuck, 2003). Further, although it is obvious that 'there is a very large body of [theoretical] knowledge about organizations and organizing , examples of effective applications of this knowledge in designing real organization are few and far between'. (Meyer, 2013).

Managers, as a wild generalization, don't help develop new knowledge because they tend to be lured into fad adoption. I suggested some reasons for this in my book Organizational Health:

Organizations are likely to be attracted to a fad if it is:

1. Simple to understand, easy to communicate and associated with buzzwords and catchphrases
2. Prescriptive in its approach – it tells manager what to do in things like seven steps, or five phases
3. Encouraging of the successful outcomes by raising hopes even if there is little in the way of evaluative process attached to the sales pitch
4. Universally relevant or one-size-fits all as shown by exemplars who have already adopted the fad.
5. Easy to apply in practice or even partially apply by taking some elements of the method – this makes it easier to graft on to existing operations without whole scale change
6. Able to speak directly to business issues of the day e.g. to downsizing in a recession
7. Interesting because of its novelty but not so radical as to disturb the underlying status quo
8. Given legitimacy by consultants or and their successful devotees – an endorsement by a management celebrity and/or their followers goes a long way even without any evidence of true results (Miller & Hartwick, 2002)

From both perspectives the lack of actionable learning going on between academics and managers is a pity because there is a lot that they could learn from each other. And this was recognized in the Organizational Design Community's 2013 Annual Conference. As Alan Meyer reported participants there (I was not present) 'faced the challenge of making organization design knowledge actionable'.

In his useful article Emerging Assumptions About Organization Design, Knowledge And Action (that I mentioned in a previous blog about the conference) Meyer, observed that 'most established design efforts are rooted in a rational model of action … scholars should understand organizations, consultants should translate scholars' understandings and practitioners should take action based on understanding' but noted that several conference participants 'offered support for a model of action that accumulates knowledge through feedback from experience instead of through analysis and anticipation. … In this model action becomes the basis for understanding'. (Meyer, 2013).

He presents a table of assumptions on the relationship between knowledge and action. One of the emerging assumptions is that 'Designing should unfold as an iterative sequence of experiments in which scholars, consultants, and practitioners collaborate in acting, evaluating, and designing.' I think this is an excellent assumption to test – the immediate challenge being to set this in motion, perhaps through through evaluation of the fad(s) in practice, scenarios, or metaphor development, or working as a multidisciplinary team on real organizational design issues to get to a solution and simultaneously develop theory around it.

How would you bridge the theory/practice organization design gap? Let me know.

References
Meyer, A. (2013). Emerging Assumptions about Organization Design, Knowledge and Action. Journal of Organization Design, 2(3), 16-22.
Miller, D., & Hartwick, J. (2002). Spotting Management Fads. Harvard Business Review(October), 26-27.
Starbuck, W. H. (2003). Shouldn't Organization Theory Emerge from Adolescence? Organization, 10(3), 439-452.

"A social business is one that invites mass collaboration utilizing social media platforms to enable their employees, customers, suppliers and all other stakeholders to participate directly in the creation of value." (Eeswaran Navaratnam)

Several discussions through various channels have focused my attention on 'social business' this past week. I listened to a discussion with Lisa Gansky on what she calls 'the Mesh, [that] is taking root around the world in the form of thousands of businesses and organizations that understand and cleverly exploit the perfect storm of mobile, location-based technology, social networks, and an evolving ethos of community and citizenship.

I had a conversation with someone from Change Agents Worldwide on the current or future value of things like job evaluation, performance management systems, and other infrastructure processes common in the pre-social business world. (See their white paper Toward Higher Rates of Adoption for Social Business Platforms through Adaptation and Exaptation.) And I came across various other aspects of social business which turned into tweets: see below.

• Fascinating blog/infographic ranking airlines for social. http://dld.bz/dgM2n . Does social #design convert to revenue gain? via @dachisgroup
• Interestng graphic rankng city gov social media use. http://dld.bz/dgJZ8 .Barcelona 1st. London last. Time for new #design 4 London gov?
• Millennials as leaders how will they #design orgs? Interesting info http://dld.bz/dgB7v via @forbes
• Just re-found Galoppin on social architecture http://dld.bz/dg7zs useful ideas to help rethink org #designs.via @sharethis
• Exlnt essay on promise of social media http://dld.bz/dgBwD how it cld re#design social research via @Demos

The Galoppin manifesto (and he has a free e-book on the topic) opens with the words, 'This manifesto is aimed at any organizational leader or citizen interested in promoting change. In this manifesto I argue that the digital economy has shifted the point of gravity from control to co-creation. As a consequence, the laws of nature that determine the dynamics of change management have shifted as well.

Successful organizations are those who are aware of that shift and tap into the new literacy of collaboration that social media has brought us. The result is a new balance between hierarchy and community that is called social architecture.'

This 'new literacy of collaboration' is reflected in the Ten Tenets of Social Business proposed by by Dion Hinchcliffe and Peter Kim, in their book Social Business by Design (and here replicated from Noort Social Business ). We are told that:

[These] tenets represent a fundamentally open, participative, scalable, and rich way of living, working, and otherwise connecting and engaging with the world."
1. Anyone can participate.
2. Create shared value by default.
3. While participation is self-organising, the focus is on business outcomes.
4. Enlist a large enough community to derive the desired result.
5. Engage the right community for the business purpose.
6. Participation can take any direction. Be prepared for it, and take advantage of it.
7. Eliminate all potential barriers to participation. Ease of use is essential.
8. Listen to and engage continuously with all relevant social business conversations.
9. The tone and language of social business are most effective when they're casual and human.
10.The effective social business activities are deeply integrated into the flow of work.

One outcome of working towards these tenets is, as one blogger noted, that They [successful brands] have started to see proof that social conversations have an impact upon the whole organisation and therefore teams are getting bigger and more departments are working together.

But the more people are 'social' the more they are releasing data which can be used in various and/or nefarious ways. So parallel tracking with the social business enthusiasts are the social business red flag wavers. Watch Mikko Hypponen on the design of the surveillance state or read Evgeny Morozov's argument for caution in which he makes the point that Big data, with its many interconnected databases that feed on information and algorithms of dubious provenance, imposes severe constraints on how we mature politically and socially. Or read Jaron Lanier's book Who Owns the Future? In which in the words of one reviewer he continues his war on digital utopianism and his assertion of humanist and individualistic values in a hive-mind world. Or read about Dave Egger's novel 'The Circle' to shrink at the thought of a world where "privacy is theft". (Better, read the novel itself).

Thus for an established organization social business raises a number of challenges:

Challenge 1: Fast enough adaptation
This challenge is to adapt fast enough to keep pace with newborn competitors who are entering the field already designed as social businesses. Having a digital strategy as, for example, the UK Government has is only one element of becoming a social business. As my conversation with the person from Change Agents Worldwide highlighted, the systems, processes, policies, and ways of working in an established organization have to be completely re-configured and this in an environment that is constantly moving. Take a look at one of the many images of 'one minute on the internet' to get an idea of the scale of what this looks like or watch a YouTube video ande read the blog Social business: A multi-billion dollar industry to realize that becoming a social business in the broad sense of the definition above should be a non-negotiable part of any organization's strategy.

Challenge 2: The informal organization
The challenge here is to pay attention not only to the formal aspects of the changes necessary to become a social business but also to the informal organizational aspects – language, styles of interaction, culture, informal politics, ways of working, relationships, and so on – and work out how to change established patterns. These are the types of things that Galoppin talks about as social architecture. I sent Galoppin's blog to a friend, Terry Huang, who returned some excellent points and questions:
Even in an industrial economy situation – for instance, making a car or computer – there has been evidence that collaboration/co-creation can improve quality and productivity. Both car/computer manufacturers have found that a team building a car instead of a manufacturing line adapts to changes and quality issues earlier and in instances produces goods faster. However, it requires very skilled and experienced workers who are often devoted to the craft to have that model be successful. What if you don't have the right people to apply a co-creation approach? (Or the company isn't compensating enough to attract the right people?) What if the person is just there to go through the motions and to get a steady paycheck? What if the person simply isn't smart enough? We shouldn't design to the lowest common denominator but we do have to.

Ultimately, isn't personality a huge factor? Let's say we are in an accounting firm. I wouldn't count on accountants to mobilize for change… Perhaps there needs to be a "minimally-viable-change-agent-ratio" in order for change to be successful in an organization. 30%? 40%? If the nature of work for an organization attracts 80% non-creative, non-motivated, temporarily-dedicated, process-oriented, passive people, how do you apply social architecture?

Challenge 3: Managing the positive of social business and its darker side
It may be the biggest challenge to manage the positive elements of social business (co-creation, community, etc.) with the darker side of privacy intrusion, surveillance, and 'algorithmic regulation' which Tim O'Reilly in his book Beyond Transparency comments on: The use of algorithmic regulation increases the power of regulators, and in some cases, could lead to abuses, or to conditions that seem anathema to us in a free society. "Mission creep" is a real risk. Once data is collected for one purpose, it's easy to imagine new uses for it. We've already seen this in requests to the NSA for data on American citizens originally collected for purposes of fighting overseas terrorism being requested by other agencies to fight domestic crime, including copyright infringement!

Challenge 4: No maps
Here the challenge is to take the path towards social business with no well proven theories, methodologies, frameworks, good practice, benchmarks or tools to help. However, this presents great opportunities for organizational experimentation, innovation, and use of social media to take them down the path. (Altimeter has a survey report The Evolution of Social Business: Six Stages of Social Business Transformation which found that 'Although only 28% of organizations surveyed felt they have achieved a holistic approach to social media, that is the ultimate goal: to become a truly social business that is formed as a result of cross-functional and executive support, where social strategies weave into the fabric of the organization. The survey reports offers some high level guidance on stages to becoming a social business').

So can established organizations manage these and the many other challenges of becoming social businesses – and what will become of them if they don't? Let me know.