The Projected Impact Of Collective Ability On The Enterprise Scale

Roberto Setubal, the CEO of Brazil’s Itaú Unibanco was aware of the hidden power of teams. Desirous of maintaining his company's edge over the competition he decided to unlock the hidden power in his organization. The following interview provides an insight into the goals, milestones, problems and impact of enterprise scale transformation to an open culture. The key requirement is vision at the top. Given that, it requires great driving energy, persistence and follow-up. We can confidently state that assisted by our infrastructure Itaú Unibanco would have gone twice the distance in half the time, with IT providing much of the organizing and driving energy apart from assuring the culture base.

Link: Transforming a high-performing company: An interview with Roberto Setubal

(As reported in The McKinsey Quarterly, dated April, 2009)

Direct Link:
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Organization/Change_Management/Transforming_a_high-performing_company_An_interview_with_Roberto_Setubal_2312

A new name for the black cat in .....

I used to describe my work as Intelligent Energy. It created problems. I was seen as presumptuous. Those that were charitable thought I meant something artificial and believed my time would come in the future. Only a few, a limited few sought clarification.

So, as a first step I shall give my infrastructure a moniker: waykm or the Way of Knowledge Management, pronounced as Wake'em.

As the second step I shall change its interpretation to Super-energy, This is not less than Intelligent Energy but more. It means my creation organises, anticipates and drives interactions to bring about diualogue on each event, and has the inexhaustible energy to perform the task 24x7.

Keep It Simple ......

I got a valuable Comment on my entry for Mahindra's 'Spark the Rise' competition. It reminded me that sometimes we complicate our thinking:

Pawan Kumar: In your project updates I read your answer to the simple questions: 1)" What exactly is your product? 2) Is it a service, a philosophy, a methodology, a software, or what? Your slide 4/6 gives the answer in two simple lines: 1) The Breakthrough: Intelligent Energy & 2) Converges: philosophy, personal & collective needs, technology. Perhaps the questioner wished to understand Convergence. Now, that may require an explanation of the concept of Intelligent Energy. I would say your update ‘Need for a war on the Obvious' (see last Update on Sep. 16, 2011) makes an excellent beginning. Let me clarify: 1) Killing the Obvious needs a superhuman energy for it is so omnipresent 2) An autonomous System, one with its own energy source, that works seamlessly offline and online for the conduct of administration is superhuman 3) Your work is an autonomous System. It is a Service, a Philosophy, a Methodology and a Software rolled into one. Perhaps I should add that ‘the One’ satisfies Personal and Professional needs because you have gone to great pains to establish it is compelling. For such a System transformation would be a sleight of hand. I would like to see it in operation.

My slide 4/6 referred by Pawan is repeated here:

Pawan inspired me to attempt an imaginary Q & A for the interested reader:

Just what are you doing?  

• I am engaged in assisting organisation personnel to align for emerging the reality behind the obvious and foster an innovative response.

Next: Now how do you accomplish this amazing feat?: 

• There is a proven philosophy to it that concludes Feedback will accomplish the job.

 Next: How do you manage Feedback? 

• By arranging all interactions as a discussion string with rich context.

 Aha. How do you manage the impossibility of capturing all interactions with rich context all the time w/o depending on the personnel and driving them crazy? 

• Easy. I have developed a single Knowledge process that is compelling for the conduct of interactions in daily work.

 But a single Knowledge process is an impossibility!! Knowledge is a possession. Its sharing is discretionary! 

• Yes. The one-size-fit-all process is impossible. I have got around that by creating the all-sizes-fit-one Knowledge process.

Now, how did you do that? 

• Teamwork has evolved. I have studied the norms of evolution and programmed them into software to offer a platform on net technology that replaces email with a facility 50 times more powerful.

Oh really? 

• Well, I should be saying 100 times more powerful cause it is not a dumb protocol like email insensitive to worker needs. I am not claiming that cause I am in the beta stage and am not a techie. Plenty of scope for improvement.

In my next post I shall introduce the new name Pawan has helped me conceive for my work. I thank him. 

What Is The Product?

It is possible that till Drucker came up with his famous question in the early 90s: “The first question in raising productivity in knowledge and service work has to be: What is the task? What do we try to accomplish? Why do it at all?,  the technologists had a field day in defining what they saw and declaring it a valid answer to the product question. Post the double loop learning concept of Argyris  made famous by Senge in the mid 90s, even Drucker was not enough. The person and his thinking became part of the problem.

My last post was the Drucker and Senge in me. Now I am going to attempt a conventional answer, touching all the bases I must.

My Post 'Transforming the Enterprise-3' of February 6, 2011 defines the nature of Knowledge and the force it creates to reduce the Collective Ability. The next post 'Transforming the Enterprise-4' of February 7, 2011 states the theory of Feedback for overcoming the Knowing/Doing gap. The post 'Transforming the Enterprise-6' illustrates Feedback on the net. It has to be far richer in categorisation to be useful within the enterprise. Not shown here is the relationship between Feedback and innovation defined by Nonaka by way of the Knowledge spiral.

My post 'A Perspective of the possible Service' of September 14, 2011 explains how Feedback operates to create the Knowledge force. Alignment is a by-product. Its importance is explained at the Project site:

Mahindra Spark the Rise | Activating Moore's Law for the Rise by creating Intelligent Energy

The goal of my product then is creation of Feedback to drive the Knowledge Force. The force  overcomes the Knowing/Doing gap to drive success and operates the Knowledge Spiral to foster innovation.

As of today no means, mechanism, philosophy or system exists to achieve Feedback in the modern workplace. The Colonial administration had achieved it in the past with its paper systems.

The main components of my product to deliver Feedback are as follows: 

1. A single Knowledge process. All Knowledge flows on an event are composed of a finite number of repeatable Actions that drive its circulation for decision-making. Universal norms derived from evolution of teamwork assemble the repeatable Actions that progress circulation. The Actions possible on an event are anticipated given the history of Actions already assembled. 
2. Design of the flexible organization. Task forces, the basic work units of the enterprise, report to a specific Post within a Community at each level of a hierarchy. The concept aids flexibility of assignment and also offers a ready support group for Socialization. The structural flexibility is built in by enabling swift reallocation of the reporting hierarchy for the task forces. According to Nonaka (1996) the bureaucratic structure defined by the hierarchies efficiently accumulates and exploits new knowledge through Combination and Internalization, while the Task force is indispensable for creating new knowledge through Socialization and Externalization. He concluded that a dynamic synthesis of the two structures, termed by him as the hypertext organization, reaps benefits from both. The organization can be as flat as desired. 
3. Categorization of the Knowledge event. The Reasons why decision events arise in an enterprise are mostly known in advance. Additions may be captured on-line. These Reasons are distributed amongst the task forces. The distribution creates a framework that may be applied to the event for defining its owning task force and meta-data. The data aids conduct of the norms governing collective action. The unstructured part of the event may be a word file, a presentation, a work sheet, email, etc., or their combination. It is captured as a document in its environment. 
4. The conduct of the Process. The event is categorized and captured with the aid of the framework. The routing is decided by the Action selected from among those possible per the norms. The Actions circulate the event among dynamic team members selected from the organization structure per the logic of the Action. The circulation defined by the Action may either be in series to a single recipient or in parallel to multiple recipients. The recipients may be across boundaries. The User may record an opinion before executing the selections. All meta-data along with the expectation of the Action selected is recorded for organizing a dashboard to select a particular event for working. The process assembles the Knowledge of the Collective on the event in the Feedback format of Post-6 above. The process coordinates the ad-hoc team working on an event regardless of space, time, connectivity and chaos. This makes it over fifty times more appealing, powerful and relevant than email for business communication. Its implementation is non-disruptive.

Each of the components stated above solves a hitherto intractable problem. The Knowledge process alone changes the IT paradigm from a tool to energy. The concept of Intelligent Energy is explained in the referred project. I should be calling Intelligent Energy the product for it is the means for the produce – the transformation - but the problem is it cannot be seen and can be felt only by the initiated. The system assures its own adoption because it is the most painless way of working to circulate events, a daily necessity for the Knowledge worker. The system leverages this circulation and the intelligent categorisation for the flow and systematic capture of all Knowledge exchanged. The Knowledge exchange is represented in the Feedback format to generate the Knowledge force that creates alignment and drives the collective towards the vision.

The Anonymous 'Tip Off'

On Sep. 14th I got a genuine feedback: 

• " What exactly is your product? 
• Is it a service, a philosophy, a methodology, a software, or what? 
• Some concrete example will do wonders for the readers who want to understand what you are trying to do. I have glanced through your posts and all I see are some musings on various management related issues, all heavily infused with management speak." 

I responded: 

• Product: Transformation of the enterprise with culture induced by technology.

 That was loose. I ought to have said ‘Produce’ instead of 'Product'. But at the frontier one does tend to engage in the spirit and not the semantics. I developed my last post to define and explain the delivery. Back came the banana skin I had left lying around: 

• Transformation is the end result; it cannot be the means - which is what I mean by product.

 My transformation relates to metanoia or the change of the mind. It is a produce that deals with the world within a person. It cannot be seen for it has to do with better judgments and execution. The nature of transformation must first be understood for it is a by-product. Since it follows from philosophy it cannot be understood from a grasp of the product.

There is little to grasp from the product for it is a system for the daily interactions. Its USP of compelling adoption and delivery of Feedback can be comprehended only if the nature of transformation is understood. The audience must know what they are looking for.

Transformation is like talking of God. He lies in the story. My last post is a story. It is difficult to define God for those who have not experienced his roots. For 5000 years man has progressed in the belief there is no God in the organisation. People like Sun Tzu and Senge talked of him but could not create him. Man still had to drive success with battle plans and principles. There was no Faith. This explains the mess today.

It took me five years to create the product but thereafter ten years to understand the nature of transformation. I would still have been struggling had it not been for Deming and Senge. They have gained fame for their understanding of Knowledge but not flourished cause they could not create the organisation and energy to drive transformation. They failed to create Faith. I have created the intelligent energy to organise and drive the Knowledge force that brings about transformation or change of mind for better working and action and emergence of reality as well as Collective Wisdom. The product or the means is the infrastructure I set up. It operates a compelling process for the daily interactions. Transformation in thinking follows with the Feedback created.

I have an academic paper coming up in a renowned systems journal on the subject of transformation and how it follows from interactions. The emphasis is on the specific properties of the interactions. Collaboration is also interaction but it is incapable of delivering transformation except in very very rare cases. That is why Enterprise x.0 will fail like E 2.0. Till the paper is published I would urge the interested reader to see my project description at:

http://www.sparktherise.com/projectdetail.php?pid=497

The project is the end product of years of philosophy development, remarkable success with a prototype and ready software for an enterprise scale pilot. I need the pilot to establish the new reality. Words and pictures cannot reveal the possible to the uninitiated. For new Knowledge one has to make up the mind: is the possible desirable? If the answer is yes then one has to follow Einstein:

•  “The problems we have created in the world today will not be solved by the level of thinking that created them.”       

Before concluding this post is abstract ask yourself: 

• Why has collaboration, with all its hyped and clear product definitions and case studies, failed?
• Why is Japan, a highly advanced Knowledge creating economy, in the pits?
• Why is the US struggling despite the best 'products' technology has to offer?
• Why have administrative reforms failed in India since 1956?
• What is needed for success and growth?

Perhaps the answer is more than what a product or a case study can provide. They may only confuse and confound.  Till a clear systemic answer going to the roots of the problem emerges to the last question we shall be at cross purposes for the black cat can be sighted only in a lighted rtoom. I or my posts cannot be blamed for the absence of light. You may be looking for a different light.  Experiments/pilots are an acknowledged way for distributed people to share the same page. Even prototypes may have meaning only for the creator since scale differences spawn a lot of questions. So the real questions are: Is the need the pilot addresses worth it? Is the philosophy powerful enough? Is there an alternate philosophy over the horizon?

A Perspective of the possible service

System Perspective: My universal process converts IT from a tool to compelling and inexhaustible intelligent energy, supported 24x7 by replication technology, for the daily interactions. It institutes a Knowledge Assembly Line, commencing with a support group, to assemble the Knowledge of the enterprise on each event in a Feedback format. The Feedback develops a Knowledge force that propels the organization towards growth and success. Collective Ability over 50% is possible in 3 years. The cycle above illustrates operation of the system: 

• Like the cycle above is a cycling system with a process for collective effort my IT infrastructure creates a communication system where the process unifies the thinking and action of the collective.   
•  Like the cycle chain unites individual effort to create collective power, the process for interactions implements the discipline for ad-hoc coordination on each event. Regular Feedback, delivered as a byproduct, forges Trust and Teamwork, energizes the latent Collective Ability, and aligns the collective to raise the Collective Ability.  
•  Like for the tandem cycle, individual ability  is of little consequence. Efficient collective action is possible only when there is team learning. The process fosters team learning. 
•  Like each rider focuses on pedaling, personnel focus on their interactions. The system does the rest. The process easily links to external workflow systems for interactions.
•  Each rider’s participation contributes to team performance. The leadership guides direction.

The Knowledge Assembly Line has much in common with Taylor’s Mechanical Assembly Line created for raising Manufacturing productivity about 1908. Following the first manufacturing productivity leap with the Assembly Line, the next quantum jump came with the Quality Circles that developed around the Line after 1960. The Circles fostered Trust and Teamwork, and what is today known as Systems Thinking. Drucker (1992) has estimated that manufacturing productivity increased over forty five times in the 20th century. In the absence of a process to align the thinking and action of a collective for producing Innovation, Learning and Execution, the Knowledge work quality and productivity stagnated in the same period. The quantum jump in Collective Ability and Agility delivered by the system has the potential to activate Moore’s Law or IT’s exponential rate of growth for the conduct of business administration.

The Way Forward

Today the vision concept is silent on the force needed to drive it. The collective has to struggle to align and perform. Supported by the redefined System of Profound Knowledge (last post) early realization of the vision will become possible with unleashing of the Knowledge force for raising Collective Ability. Launching the possibility requires unfailing energy to organize and drive all Knowledge work and interactions for initiating the systematic Feedback at the core of the redefined System.

 

The conventional wisdom deems a single Knowledge process to harness IT is impossible and self-organization by busy personnel is the only way to drive vision. The IT industry has submitted to the wisdom by not exploring beyond the linear one-size-fit-all process. The non-linear possibility of a single all-sizes-fit-one Knowledge process to convert IT to inexhaustible intelligent energy for organizing and driving the vision in place of dependence on self-organization by personnel is today inconceivable; it lies beyond the frontier of Knowledge. It has great potential to advance Management beyond the system limitations of the linear cause and effect machine age where it has languished since the late 80s.

Finding common ground with Deming

Deming believed grasp of his System of Profound Knowledge (1993) would induce managements to progress his principles for raising the quality of decisions, i.e., assuring Learning, Innovation and Optimization. The System did not flourish though those who invested the effort did like Marshall Industries. Perhaps the complex effort demanded was too much for most managers. This blog suggests redefining the System to encourage Feedback. Conduct of Feedback is simple and its power to create the force of Knowledge for producing Learning, Innovation and Optimization is well founded:

Old System of Profound Knowledge:

1.Appreciation for  a system: understanding the overall processes involving suppliers, producers, and customers (or recipients) of goods and services;

2.Knowledge of variation: the range and causes of variation in quality, and use of statistical sampling in measurements;

3.Theory of knowledge: the concepts explaining knowledge and the limits of what can be known;

4.Knowledge of psychology: concepts of human nature.

Revised System of Profound Knowledge:

● Appreciation for a system to foster growth: The Knowledge Spiral defines the inter-dependent components for Knowledge creation: A vision for the collective, Socialization, existence of support groups, and free cross-border interactions in context across the organization.

● Knowledge of the universal force that enhances folly: The Knowing-Doing Gap is universal. It lowers the Collective Ability to define the root problem and apply Knowledge effectively.

● Theory of the power of constructive Feedback: The Systems Theory of Senge concludes that cross enterprise Feedback builds a Knowledge force for innovation and good execution. The force is enhanced by systematic Feedback to practice the Fifth Discipline of Systems Thinking.

● Knowledge of power of the Freedom to interact: The Freedom fosters Feedback. Managed without threat it fulfills the primal desire to learn as also live in Freedom with the recognition, respect and dignity earned. The intrinsic motivation makes Feedback a self-reinforcing practice. The success that follows instills faith in the practice for success and growth of the collective.