We can learn a lot from open conversations with trusted colleagues who want to improve their professional expertise. My colleagues have these conversations regularly and I have learned a lot over the past two years that we’ve been together.

A professional is anyone who does work that cannot be standardized easily and who continuously welcomes challenges at the cutting edge of his or her expertise. ~ David Shaffer

When we updated the Internet Time Alliance website last month, a major component that Paul designed was the integration of our best articles into a single database, called Insights. Every page now dynamically generates recommended readings and we keep adding articles, so that we now have over one hundred.

We have also just curated a number of our thoughts into a single presentation that shows our perspectives on workplace transformation. It’s like an extended business card from all of us.

These days it’s more productive to think of organizations as organisms. Managers become stewards of the living. Their role is to energize people, empower teams, foster continuous improvement, develop competence, leverage collective knowledge, coach workers, encourage collaboration, remove barriers to progress, and get rid of obsolete practices.

Living systems thrive on values that go far beyond the machine era’s dogged pursuit of efficiency through control. Living systems are networks. Optimal networks run on such values as respect for people, trust, continuous learning, transparency, openness, engagement, integrity, and meaning. ~ Jay Cross

Do we really need managers? Is management as we currently practise it out of date for the networked era?

In social networks we can learn from each other; modelling behaviours, telling stories, and sharing what we know. This may not be highly efficient, but it it can be very effective. You will know you’re in a real community of practice if it changes your practices.

Education and training are shaping technologies. They reward successive approximations of the desired behaviour. Modelling, on the other hand, is the foundation of social learning:

Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory posits that people learn from one another, via observation, imitation, and modeling. The theory has often been called a bridge between behaviorist and cognitive learning theories because it encompasses attention, memory, and motivation.

If we look at how organizational training & development has functioned, it has been separate from the work being done and focused on shaping behaviours. There is strong evidence that we need to integrate learning into our work in order to deal with the increasing complexity of knowledge work. The valued work in the enterprise is increasing in variety and decreasing in standardization. I have suggested that communities of practice are the bridge between work teams and open social networks, with narration of work an enabler of knowledge-sharing, and of course, modelling behaviour.

The way that Triple Creek [I have no relationship with this company] positions its Open Mentoring platform is a current example of a tool that could enhance social learning (modelling) in the bridging area that communities of practice can offer.

As long as this type of tool is not tied to any team, project or supervisor, it could help connect members of a community of practice. The challenge would be in finding a balance between intrinsic and extrinsic goals. Too much shaping and not enough modelling could turn this into one more thing that has to be done (like annual performance reviews).

Communities are more like dance halls than factories. Platforms that have too much control will not be adopted on a community level. As a consultant, I would like to be able to recommend a variety of these platforms, that can inter-operate on some level, so that enterprise communities can choose the most suitable ones for their stage of development. All communities of practice are unique and will grow, mature and often die over time. No single platform will meet all community needs, but if it supports one of these principles for working smarter - Transparency, Narration of Work or Distribution of Power – it would be worth checking out.

This cartoon, by Hugh Macleod of GapingVoid, pretty well sums up my last few years.

The Internet has allowed me to self-publish at will and get connected to a growing network of people, several of whom I have had opportunities to collaborate with. There are no more hierarchies between creation and collaboration.

We live in a most interesting time in history. Never before has it been so easy to collaborate. Thanks, Vint Cerf, Sir Tim and everyone else who helped make the network era possible.

My blog functions as my outboard brain, a place to get half-baked ideas out in the open and work on them in public. It’s also a repository of thoughts and notes I use in my daily work. I often refer to a blog post instead of writing the same email a dozen times. However, it can be difficult to find a single post amongst the more than 2,000 here.

Recently I’ve been using Working Smarter Daily as a more intelligent front-end for my blog. WS Daily consists of what members of the Internet Time Alliance have identified as essential reading, assisted by the curation of Jay Cross and aided by a layer of intelligent filtering based on social signals. It’s more than a mere aggregation of blog feeds, though.The comprehensive topic search function yields interesting results from 42 different perspectives, on everything from culture to complexity.  You can also look at a single author (Source=Harold Jarche) and then filter. Filtering can be single or multiple terms. For example, here are my feeds for Innovation, Collaboration & Network:

This is one more, rather powerful, tool for my personal knowledge management processes that makes my life a bit easier. Getting things done is the final measurement in determining if any PKM system works. My thanks to Xyleme for sponsoring Working Smarter Daily again for 2012 and giving me and others another way to seek, sense and share.

One of the great difficulties in shifting an organization from a hierarchical, command and control structure to a more networked wirearchical one is that you have to work both ends at once. Strategic guidance and high level models are rather abundant; for instance we generally know that organizations should be flatter, information should be democratized and risk & failure should be made more acceptable. Examining a business and looking at how it can be more social, innovative and agile is not really that difficult. From both inside and outside the organizations, most gaps are easy to identify. But the main challenge is what to do about them. Consultants, and even key internal staff, can often identify the problem (at the time) but then they move on to the next problem before much change has happened.

Complexity theory tells us that complex problems need to be probed through action before any sense can be made of them. Changing to a social business is complex. Dave Snowden has operationalized this with the Cynefin framework (Probe-Sense-Respond in complex environments).

But, as Dave has reminded me, over half of our probes will fail. That means we cannot create a plan for the organizational shift and then implement it. It has to be designed as a work in progress, or really a series of works in progress.

My experience, especially this past year, is that social business is just a different organizational culture. But you cannot directly change it or implement it. Culture is an emergent property of the many practices that happen every day. Change the practices and a new culture will emerge.

Communities of practice are often where work practices get developed. Even without formal approval, communities of practice exist and have a great influence on the organization. They can be a bunch of workers in the lunchroom or the CEO’s inner circle. They learn from each other by modelling behaviour. We may not even realize we’re modelling (and adopting) behaviours, but it happens all the time; like keeping your mouth shut when an executive says something really stupid.

So how would you re-focus an existing organization? First you need the frameworks and new ways of talking about business in place. These are based on the concepts Steve Denning, Gary Hamel, John Hagel and others talk about (radical management, management innovation, edge perspectives). Then you need to identify Probes, or what Dave Snowden calls safe-fail experiments. These are designed to be not so large that failure would seriously damage the company.

Next comes the trickier part. These probes have to be supported. How do you take a team that has never narrated its work and tell it to “be more transparent” or “share knowledge with customers”. New ways of doing things have to be practised, modelled and developed in a non-confrontational environment. It takes time. Not an inordinate amount of time with good support, but it doesn’t happen in a matter of weeks; more usually months.

For example, we’ve worked with distributed groups who are focused on improving collaboration. Everyone is onboard at the onset. But after an initial week or two we notice that nobody is sharing information. They say there’s no time to do it, but this is not a lack of motivation, it’s a lack of skills. However, developing these types of social skills require much more practice than theory.

During one of these probes, there can be lengthy periods of time coaching, cajoling and modelling, but at some point, things click with someone. This person sees how these new ways of working are really helping get work done. Someone else gets positive feedback from people outside the team. After a period of time there is no more need for outside help and the team becomes a model for the new business behaviours such as taking initiative in delighting customers. Ideas are supported, not shot down. People build on others’ ideas. One other thing; the end result of a probe is never what we thought it would be.

Like learning a new language, getting access to the right knowledge is only a small part of the solution. The best curriculum and best designed courses will have no effect if people do not practice. Formal instruction, or lecturing, is minimal in any of these probes. People need to do in order to understand. It’s social. Individuals practising on their own will not get the entire organization functioning in the new language either. It has to happen cooperatively. Getting feedback from experienced people, while engaging in peer learning, will help develop next practices in social business. But it requires time, effort and patience.

I’ve been told that you know you’re in a real community of practice when it changes your practice. It’s a good measuring stick.

There is no doubt in my mind that you need to work both ends at once: develop a flexible, contextual strategy but also practice new behaviours through a continuing series of probes. Supporting these probes and learning by doing are essential. Engaging in probes where failure is an option can be an extremely valuable learning process. It can even be transformational. Developing a strategy and then following the plan is just another 20th century “change management” process. It is backward looking, based on a plan that is outdated the moment it is published. In the 21st century, the aim is not to manage change, but understand and embrace change. It’s shifting to an acceptance of life in perpetual Beta.

Last week I commented that many people in the “learning” field are too absorbed in their own interests and not the businesses they are supporting. Working smarter in the 21st century requires the integration of learning into the workflow. This has become a necessity due to the increased complexity facing today’s networked business. Ericsson’s video, On the Brink, provides a good overview of this emerging networked society.

Learning is the work in a constantly changing landscape, and as mentioned in the video, the next 10 years will see more change than the past 15 years, since the creation of the Web.

Prior to the Web, the learning professions were focused on either delivering courses or some specific sub-set of learning. In the late 20th century we saw the rise of personality tests, learning styles and and dubious applications of Bloom’s taxonomy or NLP, among other practices not aligned with the business. With the Web, we went from training to e-learning course delivery, with an emphasis on technology, especially learning management systems (LMS) and rapid authoring. Today, businesses are beginning to realize that LMS are not really helping their organizations and most courses are disconnected from the real work. I have seen companies completely outsource all course design/delivery in order for internal staff to focus on informal and social learning to support collaboration. This makes business sense.

For those in the learning professions (KM, OD, Training, Instruction, Education) there will be a sea change in how they work over the next decade. They will have to become part of the business (or organization, or network) or be completely marginalized. In my article, So you you want to be an e-learning consultant? (2007) I showed the different types of work, and associated remuneration, available in the field.

Note how business and technology-oriented work pay much more than pure pedagogical work. This trend has not changed since 2007 and will continue.

I have met many people in learning professions over the years who have the technological savvy but lack business skills. People with expertise in all three areas are few. The L&D folks often do not get a seat at the table because they don’t have a direct impact on the business. My advice to anyone in a learning-oriented field is to get up to speed on networked technologies but also understand the business you are supporting. There’s no more hiding in the shadows, as the network exposes everything and everyone. Narrating work and being transparent are great opportunities in the networked era, but that means there’s no place to hide. It’s a global village and everyone is interconnected. The opportunities are at the intersection.

My blog acts as part of my outboard brain. It’s where I can rough out ideas. Narrating my work in public helps keep me connected to reality. I connect to my other web media from my blog. Bookmarks, photos and activity streams may change, but my blog is home base. I search my blog almost daily, looking for something I wrote during the past seven years, so that I can reflect on it, re-use it or modify it.

Regular blogging has sharpened my writing and thinking skills. Some of my blog posts have been expanded and turned into articles, published in a variety of venues. Most of my thoughts on complexity, organizational learning and technological change have been formed here. I have also expanded from a focus on learning, work & technology to leadership, networks and other areas.

I’ve met some close friends though my blog. Blogging connected me to Jay, my business partner at the Internet Time Alliance and subsequently to Clark, Jane, Charles and Paul. I met Jon Husband and was introduced to wirearchy through blogging. I now have people I would call friends on every continent. Contrary to what many social media pundits have said, blogging is not dead, at least not for me.

So why is this post called P2K? Because it’s number 2,000 [inspired by @cbmackay].

Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to comment and create another connection on my blog’s neural network!

In organizing for diversity and complexity, I discussed structural changes that are needed in our institutions. Kevin Wheeler has a great slide presentation on leadership in complexity that looks at what is required in such a diverse and complex work world. In the future of leadership development, Kevin describes some new core leadership skill sets (Slides 17-21):

• Dealing with Ambiguity
• Dealing with Complexity
• Dealing with Interdependencies
• Fostering Creativity
• Challenging Assumptions

Two shifts are driving the need for a new type of leadership: 1) networks are giving workers the freedom to act and cooperate and 2) the optimal control structure for complex environments is loose hierarchies and strong networks. Leadership, and organizational support functions, need to move from command & control to enable & encourage.

Kevin’s presentation aligns with several of the ideas I’ve been working on. Using terms from his presentation, I would say that a transparent, flexible and open organizational model is necessary so that leaders can listen to and analyze what is happening in real time. In turn, leaders can help set context and build consensus. This is 21st century leadership.

When we got together as the Internet Time Alliance it was rather obvious that we were not going to be your usual consulting company. We are five principals and one associate, spread across nine time zones, who share a passion for our work. Status quo and cookie cutter solutions are not our business. Jay likens us to a group of artists who share the same gallery. That’s not a bad metaphor. We communicate pretty much every day, using all types of what are now called social media, but we remember the days of computer supported collaborative work (CSCW) and many other terms that have been cast aside. There are a couple hundred years of experience at the Internet Time Alliance.

One thing that differentiates us is our approach to wired work. Our interlaced networks are dominated by innovators and early adopters. Most of us are early adopters in that we put into practice much of what we recommend. We tried out that new blogging thing a long time ago. We’ve been on Twitter for several years. When we suggest ways to work smarter, we’ve done them. When clients are ready to cross the technology adoption chasm, we’re the pathfinders. That means we’ve failed several times already. We’ve learned from those mistakes. We don’t wait until the early majority is ready and then launch packaged services for that market. We’re already on to the next challenge, staying ahead and testing the waters.

Our networks are an essential part of our business.

“What the Internet Time Alliance brought to the table in our engagement was not only their extensive experience but their networks as well. While we in our organization have networks of our own, the quality and extensiveness of the ITA network added a value that we would not have been able to tap alone, and led us to a superior solution that will better serve our customers.” (Corporate University Manager within Fortune 500 Health Insurance company)