Transforming The Enterprise - 13

Immense energy is needed to assure feedback in the conduct of interventions for superior application of Knowledge across the enterprise. All that is needed to transform IT to inexhaustible intelligent energy for driving transformation is a model that leverages human nature, and uses science to solve the problems of Knowledge work with technology, i.e., stradles both the internal and external worlds. Based on the remarkable performance of prototypes in demanding environments we can confidently assure a rise in Collective Ability to well over 50% of the potential. All round growth follows.

The image above gives a perspective of how our work delivers. The Ability possible with just IT takes Knowledge Management into account. It is eliptical, i.e., skewed because of non-uniform adoption across the enterprise. Total, i.e., uniform adoption of our work is assured because its primary use is a compelling means for the daily work and communication across the enterprise. Dialogue is a by-product.

Transforming The Enterprise - 12

Significance Of Our Breakthrough

Faith is an accepted human power. No problem is too big or a hurdle too high for Faith to overcome. The image shows David, immortalized by Michelangelo's sculpture created as a gift to the citizens of Florence, confronting his adversary Goliath. Goliath, the Phillistine champion warrior, had for forty days challenged the Israeli army to single combat and infused fear with his size and tales of prowess. David took up the challenge armed only with his sling ----- and Faith in the God of Israel. That he slew Goliath with his own sword after felling him with a slingshot is part of legend, and as excavations establish, history.

My work infuses Faith among personnel that they can get what they want:

• Replaces email for all interventions           

              Cuts anxiety: Leaders empowered to mentor
              Creates Time: Functions seamlessly offline.

• System manages Knowledge flow in chaos

             IT converted to intelligent energy for Dialogue

• Delivery of dialogue by IT rewrites the Wisdom

             Fosters Collectives, Feedback & Sense making.

• Faith develops: Compelling way --> Success

           Induced Culture heals  organizations from within.

Transforming The Enterprise - 11

Our Breakthrough

Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, declared in 1895. "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." And yet on December 17, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright successfully flew the first powered heavier than air craft. The right science can enhance the frontiers of possibility. My work too extends the frontier earlier articulated by Peter Drucker in 1990: "In Knowledge and service work partnership with the responsible worker is the only way; nothing else will work at all.”

The following defines the nature of the breakthrough and the facts that make it universally applicable:

• Focus on the worker and not the event
• Interventions are a necessity for decisions
• Team interventions: a product of evolution
• Norms decide next possible step of worker

             Enable a single knowledge process for events

             Integrate with a flexible organization structure.

• Process anticipates and conducts next step

             IT energy organizes communication for feedback

             Our IT engine transforms without disruption.

Transforming The Enterprise - 10

Transformation Objectives
Basis Intervention Control

 My next post shall address the all important matter of creating intelligent energy for establishing Dialogue/Feedback. Personnel energy is no longer sufficient to assure Dialogue across the modern extended enterprises. As stated earlier, the conventional wisdom believes it is impossible to harness IT for the effortless delivery of Dialogue.

Transforming The Enterprise - 9

Conventional IT Is Just A Tool

The governing wisdom of IT is 'if the user cannot organize Knowledge work how can IT do so?' Correspondingly, since IT is just a tool and the user must self-organize work, IT systems for Knowledge work are user driven. For all practical purposes we are still plodding along in the bullock cart age shown by the image above. The load on the user makes it next to impossible to tame interactions for responding to the irrational nature of Knowledge application. All that the industry can do is struggle along and hope as detailed below:

• No change in the Conventional Wisdom:

              Only personnel can organize and drive interactions

                      Incentives are essential for sharing.

              A single process for conversations impossible

                      IT is today a passive tool for knowledge interactions.

• Knowledge work focus: fixes, not reality

         Fixes are a temporary solution.

• Hope for taming interactions:

              Education/Leaders will foster Openness

              Personnel will willingly self-organize to share

                      They will use IT to invest energy/time/volition/discipline.

    No Philosophy --> No Method --> Status Quo

Transforming The Enterprise - 8

The Means For Dialogue Needs To Evolve

The image above shows the cycle as we know it today took close to a 100 years to evolve. The practice of Dialogue too has evolved. It has its norms that distinguish it from Discussion as summarised in my last post. Its use on the enterprise scale for remarkable results was celebrated by Drucker:

• Last use: the Indian colonial administration
• File based dialogue gave results despite

             Remote and inaccessible areas

             100 administrators reporting to one Principal.

• Drucker (1988): Its free form interactions and free-flow a model for the 21st century.

• Changes: culture, volume, spread & speed
• File system swamped. Personnel overloaded

             Evolution essential for Energy/Time/Volition/Will
          

Those who comment on web news stories may have already experienced the next step enabled by technology.

Transforming The Enterprise - 7

Interactions à Conversations

The image above illustrates that conversations are a product of interactions. There are two kinds of conversations:

• Discussion/Collaboration – practice today

               Usually synchronous, i.e., in same time and space

               Ignores feedback, patterns and systematic recording

               Poor control over wishes - ego can prevail.

• Dialogue – freedom to question the basis

               Fosters teaming regardless of distribution

               Assures feedback for emerging the Reality

               Builds force from within: taps deep drive to Learn.

• Only Dialogue develops Collective Ability

              Problem: The only mechanism for Dialogue is manual.

Transforming The Enterprise - 6

Just Interactions Create Feedback

The single actiivity for Feedback is Interactions . They are at the heart of any intervention by personnel. Their conduct on an event determines decisions and hence will influence the behavior of the enterprise, i.e., will decide the DNA of the enterprise. In the conception of the Knowledge mechanism, conduct of interactions is the single activity - the pedaling - that drives Feedback to propel the organization.

Transforming The Enterprise - 5

Mechanism To Follow The Path

The tandem cycle image above illustrates the need for a Knowledge work mechanism to follow the path. Cycling is very similar to Knowledge application. It is not enough to know cycling; one has to practice it to acquire the skill. Further, for the team cycle above, the individuals must not only know cycling but practice it together. This requires time and energy and volition. However, once this barrier is crossed, the simple act of pedaling the tandem mechanism is enough to unite effort and volition with the leader, and achieve greater force in the desired direction. The chain is the heart of the mechanism.

Based on the tandem cycle one may project the nature of the desired Knowledge work mechanism:

• Must drive members to learn as a team
• Must synch volition & effort with the leader
• Must focus individual on a single activity
• The single activity must drive feedback
• Delivery: Reality and concerted action.

 The 'pedal' for the mechanism ...........(next post)

Transforming The Enterprise - 4

Path For Superior Application
(The HOW is per 20th Century)

It is easy to snap a twig but a bunch of twigs is another story. The concept of unity does not easily translate to humans though the lesson is not lost in translation. The problem is humans need a reason to unite and remain so. Fortunately the reason emerges from the need for superior application of Knowledge to overcome the negative force or the Knowing/Doing gap for driving success.

The way to success was clearly known as far back as 500 BC. It was recorded by Sun Tzu:

If you know the enemy and know yourself,

You need not fear the result of a hundred battles

i.e., Success follows emergence of Reality

In 1990 Peter Senge identified emerging the reality needed the following skills: 

• Surfacing assumptions and generalizations
• Team Learning and Team sharing
• System thinking to define and solve problems.

Senge concluded Feedback for Constructive Disagreement developed the skills

• Feedback = Knowledge free-flow in context

                         = Coordination of interventions

                         = Trust and Teamwork.

Success makes Feedback a lasting glue for forming a Collective

 

In brief: Feedback creates the Collective. The success achieved provides the Collective the reason to remain unified. Free-flow in context is a property of Feedback. It implies exchange of Knowledge with capture of content alongwith all references to define context. Organization for its delivery has proved to be a major stumbling block that IT has yet to cross.

Transforming The Enterprise - 3

  Nature Of Knowledge Application

The image above shows three photos:

• Image of an Apple and an Orange sewn together (Photo source - http://www.nextnature.net/tag/hypernature/page/10/): Assumptions, mental-sets, wishful thinking, laziness and biases lead to multiple interpretations as different as Apples and Oranges for any set of facts. Such is the nature of perception among humans. It was termed Maya by the ancient Indian philosophers. Stitching together an Apple and an Orange does not create a new fruit, i.e., a single interpretation for cohesive collective action.
• Photo of a Mist (Photo source - http://www.netstate.com): Only the nearest trees are clearly visible. Much like the rapid fading of trees with distance past events lose recall as they recede in the mist of time. Also, the obvious present dominates the fuzzy future.
• Pool Photo (Photo source - http://www.britainexpress.com): The pool is bounded. Algae, if introduced, will grow rapidly till the boundaries. Thereafter, growth will be highly disproportionate to any accelerator, e.g., fertilizer. Similarly, hunger for Power, Self-interest, Desire, Defense reactions and Learning disabilities compounded by scarcity of energy and time limit appreciation of problems for collective action. Senge (1990) observed personnel live in comfort zones to cope with the huge demand on their limited resources and abilities.

The photos drawn from nature explain the nature of Knowledge.The nature in fact leads to the prevalence of a negative force in the business place among decision makers variously called irrationality or collective folly.  It creates the Knowing/Doing gap that lowers the collective ability.

Transforming The Enterprise - 2

Anatomy Of Knowledge Events
(What is constructive thinking?)

The application of Knowledge is very personal and hence not rational. This is why the same facts give rise to multiple interpretations making it essential to deduce the reality behind the facts, i.e., the root. Unless the root is diagnosed there will be only fixes and temporary solutions. The symptoms will reappear and mistakes will be repeated. The ability to reach the root of problems and take corrective action defines the Collective Ability of the Organization. It is determined by the ability to think and act constructively.

Transforming The Enterprise - 1

The Transformation Challenge

The dual image above manifests the universal goal of transformation. The common desire is a paradigm change with the application of technology to knowledge work. It is rarely achieved for the technology focus is only on the external world whereas Knowledge straddles the internal world as well. Facts are processed by our Comfort Zone and Knowledge passes through our internal filters before it is applied. Because of this process Knowledge has a nature and its application is not a rational exercise. The personal internal world is ignored by technology and therefore mere application of technology is fruitless. The followng points summarise the prevailing state of affairs:

•  Transformation entirely dependent on the leadership

                   Manage Knowledge, Competencies, Attitudes, Trust, etc 

• No Process To Raise Knowledge productivity

                  Collective Ability between 5 and 30% since 1900

                  Manufacturing productivity has grown ~ 50 times.

• Assumed: no Knowing/Doing Gap. Unreal.

                  Nature of Knowledge work ignored
                  Change focus from external to internal world .

Unlocking hidden potential

 Unbelievably, it is four years since I began this blog. I have had few comments but the blog has helped immensely to articulate just what is missing in the pursuit of success by enterprises.

McKinsey have found successful enterprise transformations are limited to a mere 8%. It is clear administrations are not benefiting from technology for the rate of change rendered by technology is exponential. Genetics is an example. The Human Genome project had a delivery target of 13 years or so. At the end of seven years just 1% of the project was complete. But the delivery doubled each of the following seven years for completion about the target date. After well over two decades of IT networking the value of the benefit delivered by IT is still mired in controversy.

The purpose of IT is to create Energy/Time/Volition/Will for following a known path. Over the next 13 posts I shall explain why IT has failed expectations for Knowledge work. I shall go on to define a philosophy for assuring the transformation possible with technology. My insight is based on my success in harnessing technology for raising the collective's ability to think constructively. Today no reliable means exists to achieve this. The collective ability has stagnated. My work has the power to raise the Collective Ability of any enterprise with the same personnel by a factor which could be as high as ten. Read my Transforming The Enterprise series of posts that follow to understand constructive thinkling and why my work succeeds.